Christian Humanism and the Imaginative Mysteries
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“A collection of essays by Hillsdale professor Bradley J. Birzer explores the moral imagination of the great Christian humanists to reflect on literature and film—and, of course, Batman.” - Acton
Some Thoughts on Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov
Well, I finally did it. I read Dostoevsky. It wasn’t a joyride, so I don’t think I’ll pick up Crime and Punishment anytime soon. After chewing through a meal like Karamazov, I’m doing dessert reading for a while (the book equivalent of Concrete Mixers from Culvers—minimally nutritious, over too soon, but yummy and chunky).
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My Covid Year Reading: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
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Belcher shares Pastor Tim Keller’s hunch that Stevenson bases his dualistic characters on the Apostle Paul’s old and new man wrestling in Romans 7:4-24; vs. 23 is surely alluded to when Jekyll reveals a “perennial war among my members.” - Ref21
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C. S. Forester’s Novels of Vocation
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“In the midst of his tension-filled mission and outbreaks of combat, Commander George Krause prays, reads his Bible, and employs Luther’s devotions. As we go inside his mind and point of view, we find that Scripture verses are always popping up in his head, and that he is constantly struggling with the sense of his sinfulness and his limits over against his faith.” - Veith
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The Chronicles of Narnia Still Grips Our Imagination, 70 Years Later
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“As this month marks the 70th anniversary of the publication of C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Christians would do well to ask whether The Chronicles of Narnia might show us the way to address the generations to come.” - TGC
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In Praise of Useless Reading
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“One of the great reasons to read works of the imagination is to overcome our habitual disposition toward utility.” - Jessica Hooten Wilson
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Review: Ember Rising
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“In this story there is a real evil, real danger, real pain. And, more importantly, real hope and real joy. I felt the story showed respect to the feelings and thinking of kids: it avoided cloying, no-fall-ever-happened saccharinity; and yet it didn’t over-burden the kids with darkness.” - Mark Ward
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"Fiction can sometimes, like Nathan the prophet’s story of the ewe lamb, awaken parts of us that we have calloused over"
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“But, finally, good fiction isn’t a ‘waste of time’ for the same reason good music and good art aren’t wastes of time. They are rooted in an endlessly creative God who has chosen to be imaged by human beings who create.” Why Christians Should Read Fiction
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Adam Blumer's The Tenth Plague released today
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Christians and Mythology (Part 7: Sub-creation, Escape, and Eucatastrophe)
The rest of the series.
In this final post I want to focus further on Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-stories,” which I referenced several times in Part 6. We looked at Recovery in the previous post, and I’d like to conclude this series with a look at Sub-creation, Escape, and Eucatastrophe.
Sub-creation
Before C.S. Lewis’s conversion to Christianity, he viewed myths as being worthless lies, despite their being “breathed through silver.” To persuade him otherwise, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a poem titled “Mythopoeia,” in which he mentions the defaced image of God in man. Tolkien writes about the original mandate for man to exercise dominion over creation. Man is a “Sub-creator, the refracted light / through whom is splintered from a single White / to many hues … . / We make still by the law in which we’re made.”1 In other words, since we bear God’s image, though imperfectly, we create because God creates. We imitate and glorify the ultimate Creator as we engage in sub-creation. Tolkien puts it more clearly in “On Fairy-stories” when he writes about creating fantasy: “[W]e make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.”2 Of course, Lewis eventually came to agree with Tolkien, and they both used mythology to create their own myths.
On the contemporary scene, one Christian who I believe is excelling in the sub-creation of myths is Young Adult author N.D. Wilson, whom I mentioned in Part 1. Wilson’s second book in the Ashtown series (with characters such as Gilgamesh, Arachne, and Ponce de León) was released on September 11, 2012. Christians have lots of practice complaining about fiction they don’t like, but here is a Christian who is lighting a candle in the fiction world, rather than simply cursing that bespectacled Potter boy.
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