C.S. Lewis, Mythology and Reality

The heart of man is not compound of lies,
But draws some wisdom from the only wise,
And still recalls Him.
-JRR Tolkien, Mythopoeia

The great 20^th century Oxford Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Christian apologist, lay theologian and author, C.S. Lewis, was also (IMHO) the greatest modern mind to study and elucidate the unique qualities of the particular type of story commonly called myth. Not to be lumped in with legend, a type of story rooted in a true event that as ages pass by is embellished with fantastic details and impossibilities. Or fairy tales and folk tales that seek to impart moral lessons of virtue and vice. Myth is an imaginative story born from the poetic mind to impress on the senses the truth about reality. Myth results from man’s attempt to understand the phenomena of nature and the world he lives, in light of the eternity written on his heart. Whilst Mythology writer Edith Hamilton, and modern mythology scholar Joseph Campbell would claim that myth merely was an early form of science melded with art, C.S. Lewis would say it is much more than that; myth is the exercise of human imagination reaching for the Creator who transcends, yet is immanent in his creation.

Prof. Lewis describes six characteristics of literature that make a myth:

1. It is extra-literary, or independent of the words used. Mythology is not a literary style; it is not a specific form of poem, book, or essay. It is an image that carries with it a meaning that touches human experience and longing.
2. The pleasure of myth does not depend on literary devices such like suspense or surprise. The mere existence of the stories image is what one finds enjoyment in. Creative plot is not an important function. In some myths, it is clear from the beginning what is going to occur; in fact in many cases, the exact end of a character is revealed before the story is even underway.
3. Our sympathy with the character is minimal. We do not identify specifically with the character. They are like shadows moving along a wall. We are not sad or joyful for the individual character, but their tragedy or triumph is something we understand and react to.
4. Myth is always fantastic and deals with impossibilities and the preternatural. Myths reside in a world where the uncommon occurs. The natural order of the world and the universe are constantly subverted and changed by the powerful influences of its supernatural inhabitants.
5. Though the experience may be sad or joyful, it always is grave and never comic. There is never humor for the sake of being funny. The experience of myth leaves the feeling that we have encountered something solemn.
6. The experience is not only grave, but awe inspiring. We feel as if something of great importance has been communicated to us. We recognize that whatever it was, it was much greater than ourselves. We somehow know that the facts we believe to be true, though not wrong, are somehow incomplete to the way things actually are.

Secular mythologists would claim that mythology is the result of ancient man observing the facts and building up the story upon them. As time progressed, simple and crude myths became more elegant and complex, constantly reappearing in higher, more organized forms. Jesus Christ is immortalized in legend as a god that dies and comes back to life, because the concept was copied from less ordered myths about corn gods or gods of the harvest, who die in the fall and are reborn again in the spring. The secularist sees the search for religious significance as growth upward from the simple answers of mythology. C.S. Lewis says that this is the modernist assumption that higher things are always copies of lower things. Much like Darwinian evolution, where more complex life forms have evolved from lower life forms, the secularist claims that Christianity, along with other great religions, is simply myth evolved into a higher form.

On the contrary Lewis would demonstrate that lower things are copies of higher things. Mankind exists as the main example of this. We are made in God’s image. We are a copy of an infinitely higher being. Though the communicable attributes of God are present in mankind, mankind is not God and never will be. Likewise the pagan myths are true in as much as they are copies of the complete truth. The pagan myths though not true in historical reality, are nonetheless the distorted reflection of a higher reality.

We discover then, that the heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. “By becoming a fact it does not cease to be a myth. God is more than a god, not less. Jesus is more than Balder not less,” Lewis says. Jesus Christ’s life, death and resurrection, rather then being the enemy of the mythical heroes of paganism is actually the historically true fulfillment of what those myths were about. The pagan myths give us a glimpse into what was really meant to satisfy our longing as humans. Pagan myths do not disprove Christianity, but reveal that pagan people received a glimpse of truth and reality prior to it becoming fact. One finds truth expressed in pagan myths that are the echoes of God himself.

The human imagination is the receptor for the shadows and echoes of what God left for us to desire. We readily recognize in human stories the qualities of beauty and truth that we long for. The patterns of mythology originate in God and carry part of His truth, even though it is often distorted. Mankind longs for the beauty embodied in myth that cannot be complete in this world. The fulfillment of that longing is what Lewis calls joy. “If I find in myself a desire in which no experience in the world can satisfy, then the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it; that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures where never meant to satisfy it, but only arouse it, to suggest the real thing.” So then, says Lewis, if we are made in Gods image, and cannot exist apart from him, then it would make sense that we have a craving for this very joy that is beyond all earthly satisfactions. The imagination therefore reflects this truth. In its longing for fulfillment it creates an image that reflects the reality we were created for.

C.S. Lewis also claimed that it is right that other religions possess truth. The similarities or parallels that other religions contain should not alarm Christians. In fact, according to Lewis, we should be alarmed if they didn’t. It is the similarities that demonstrate the divine origin that humanity shares. All the great religions possess the truth to some extent, but they do not have the complete truth. The pagan myth contains some truth; that is why as humans we find momentary satisfaction in the images they present. But the Christian myth is a factually true myth. It contains the complete truth and provides lasting and complete fulfillment, or joy. Lewis says that “the story of Christ is a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with a tremendous difference that it really happened”. Other religions are made up of men’s myths, generally revealed by God in the minds of poets. Christianity is God’s myth. God’s special revelation expressed through real things. Pagan myth seeks an answer, but God’s myth is the answer.

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passing of an era

Jerry Falwell is dead. If you know me, you know I have strong distaste for some of the things he espoused. Nevertheless, he shepherded his people the best he could and preached the Kingdom without wavering. I rejoice with him as he is now basking in the marvelous light of the Savior.

UPDATE: Frank Turk has a thought to think.

And: Doug Wilson pays his respects.

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Christianty Today does something productive...

... for once, by hosting a debate between Douglas Wilson and Christopher Hitchens. I'm surprised that CT choose to involve a real theologian, rather than a Hybels, Warren or Osteen(!).

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for glory and beauty, imperishable

"When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
(John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn)

Beauty is defined as the quality of something that brings “delight to the sense or mind”. In this post I am hoping to touch on how (post &) modern Christian culture has pretty much given away the intrinsic value BEAUTY to subjectivity in a way that leaves appreciation or scrutiny to mere preference. There is such a thing as absolute beauty, or in other words, aesthetic perfection, and as Christians we need to care about it.

If part of our chief end as human beings is to enjoy God forever (and it is), then we are to delight in Him by embracing his manifold perfections with intellectual fervor that evidences a renewed mind. This mind renewed by the Spirit should effectively transform us to discern true ideas that are good, acceptable and perfect. But, it likewise follows that we should delight in Him through our senses, by experiencing the manifold joy of the fullness of God and enjoying the riches of his creative perfections through touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing.

Food, drink, visual art, poetry, music, architecture, story, the human form, all of these physical realities exist at the pleasure of the created order of God. Whether the residue of God’s fingerprints are undeniably clear or smudged and muted by the impacts of sin, the collected works of humanities’ creative abilities are shadows of the Ultimate. In part the Christian act of worship is joyful discernment of the good, acceptable and perfect qualities intrinsic to the essence of that which is expressed in art, culture and life.

What I am NOT talking about is creating a Christian equivalent of what the world offers. The activity of (post &) modern evangelical Christianity has a history of pursuing all sorts of sensual delights in a hopelessly lame way. (I once attended a church that now boasts the church feels “just like your favorite coffee shop”) I think it's fair to say that a large portion of American Evangelicalism has anchored the Gospel to a pathetic and kitsch subculture that is running away into complete banality and irrelevance. As long as Christians think that "changing the culture" means accepting the popular culture, and stripping away the “bad stuff” (alchol, nudity, curse words, Democrat politics, etc.), the mission objective will perpetuate Christianized worldliness. “Changing the culture" needs to be about wholesale swapping out of world views- "Spirit of the age" for the "Spirit of Christ.” The contrary results of post-modern and modern evangelicalism betray confused presuppositions about almost all aspects of theology.

This mentality has pursued intellectual delight and sensual delight to much the same end. Anti-intellectual theology and sloppy, topical and anthropocentric preaching have produced cheap grace or legalism and hordes of milk fed Christians, incapable of connecting their fraudulent presuppositions and values to the world around them. To steal in plain daylight from Doug Wilson, if a deep, thoughtful, God exalting, Christ centered personal faith is rich, hardwood, the faith of the masses is mobile home grade wood veneer. In an effort to sell church, a church sells out. It capitulates on hard teachings so controversy doesn’t send people packing, or needlessly bore the goats in the crowd who are just there to punch in to the religion time clock.

BUT, to their credit, in the midst of this doctrinal squishiness, moral relativism has been nearly always resisted. HOWEVER, the blind acceptance of aesthetic relativism and its snaggle-toothed offspring “pop culture", has given way to trite and unimaginative faux-culture that's always a step behind the world, soap and sponge in hand. Like Brittany Spears, Tickle Me Elmo, or OP shorts, its popularity is disposable. Loss of the ability to produce and appreciate things that pass the test of true beauty (transcendence and longevity) is evidence of jejune ecclesiology and the over-arching rejection of epistemic certainty and God-centeredness.

Absolute truth and moral ethic are championed by most conservative evangelicals, but aesthetic absolutes deemed impossible. Citing that “it’s what’s on the inside that counts”, or blithely accepting that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” somehow the Biblical fact God made a physical world, and it was good, is overlooked. It is as if an odd type of Gnosticism has crept in. Instead of denouncing all that is physical as evil, it despises the value of true beauty with ambivalence.

Not all of Christendom has failed in this area. But it is something that has shackled the mission of much of the American church to the rise and fall of worldly whims. Of course there is the error to the other extreme of worshiping beautiful things. Idolatry is still idolatry whether the icon is beautiful or ugly. We should be motivated to worship God when enraptured by beautiful things. We are in awe of Michelangelo’s brush strokes on the Sistine Chapel, but remember God made Michelangelo.

For those of us fed on the stale bread of aesthetic relativism, meaningful appreciation of beauty in art, culture and life seems daunting and elusive. Learning to appreciate true beauty can mean the painful letting go of comfortable preferences. It could be likened to the world shattering pangs as one is wrested away from the autonomous fog of untutored spiritual youth, and into the glorious doctrines of grace. The Scripture is not silent on the value and qualities of beauty, any less then it is on the sovereignty of God. As we must cast aside our preconceived false beliefs, we must also cast aside our flesh taught aesthetic sensualities, and in both strive to long for what is good, acceptable and perfect.

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Owen on the outcome of sin management

"Through lack of acquaintance with the mystery of the gospel and the efficacy of the death of Christ, they have imposed a system of self-wrought mortification on the necks of their disciples which neither they nor their forefathers were ever able to bear. The mortification they press is not suitable to the gospel in nature or effect, and regularly has the deplorable outcome of producing superstition, self-righteousness and anxiety of conscience in those who take their teaching up." (John Owen, The Mortification of Sin, p. viii)

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dude...

"The cavity created by ignorance is always filled with falsehood."

-John Piper from My Kinsman Are Accursed Part 1

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