though the dismissal of the doctrine of penal substitution on moral grounds by Jeffrey John, an Anglo-Catholic priest and Dean of St Albans, in a broadcast talk during Holy Week 2007 has drawn fire in his direction. In his book Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis mentions that before becoming a Christian, the doctrine of penal substitution had seemed extremely unethical to him, and that while he had since found it to be less so, he nonetheless indicated a preference for a position closer to that of Athanasius, in which Christ's death is seen as enabling us to die to sin by our participation, and not as a satisfaction or payment to justice as such. He also stated, however, that in his view no explanation of the atonement is as relevant as the fact of the atonement. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in his fantasy fiction series, The Chronicles of Narnia, depicts the king Aslan surrendering himself to Jadis the White Witch as a substitute for the life of Edmund Pevensie, which appears to illustrate a ransom or Christus Victor approach to the atonement. George MacDonald, a universalist Christian theologian who was a great influence on Lewis, wrote against the idea that God was unable or unwilling to forgive humans without a substitutionary punishment in his Unspoken Sermons, and stated that he found the idea to be completely unjust. See also Atonement in Christianity Divine retribution Satisfaction theory of atonement Reformed theology Retributive justice Substitutionary atonement Notes References Citations Sources Gustaf Aulen, Christus Victor tr. A.G. Hebert (SPCK 1931). John Calvin (Jean Cauvin), Institutes of the Christian Religion. James Denney Atonement And The Modern Mind, (Hodder And Stoughton, 1903). F. W. Dillistone, The Christian Understanding of the Atonement (Nisbet 1968). Steve Jeffery, Mike Ovey, and Andrew Sach, Pierced for our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution (IVP, 2007). Paul Fiddes, Past event and Present Salvation: the Story of the Atonement (1989). Stephen Finlan, Problems With Atonement: The Origins Of, And Controversy About, The Atonement Doctrine, . J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (Adam & Charles Black 1968). Norman McIlwain, 'The Biblical Revelation of the Cross', Part 1 and 2 - Online Edition. Leon Morris. The Cross in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965) Chap. 8 The Cross in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: