Paying Attention To The Sky

Magdalen Daffodils at Merton College, Oxford

Lewis and Tolkien first met in 1926 at a Merton College English Faculty meeting. Initially Lewis noted some apprehension: In his diary, he wrote of the “smooth, pale, fluent little chap” that there was “no harm in him: only needs a smack or so.”

The following is taken from Patrick W. Curles’ Tolkien’s Impact in Literature and Life:

“It was Tolkien who, as a professor of Anglo-Saxon language at Oxford University, led a colleague to embrace Christ in 1929. The colleague was C.S. Lewis, who would go on to become a stalwart apologist for the Christian faith. Lewis also wrote a Christian fantasy series, “The Chronicles of Narnia,” along with apologetic works such as “Mere Christianity,” and “The Problem of Pain.”

It was Tolkien’s view of myth — that it is always grounded in the reality of the transcendent God, (even if subtly) — that ultimately shattered the barriers to Christianity for Lewis.

“Tolkien did not mean by ‘myth’ that it is defined as ‘non-historical,’” Parker said, “but that it exhibits certain characteristics, certain ideas, recurring themes such as the dying and rising God, the sense of the moral universe behind things.

“Lewis said when he read the Gospels, he felt like he was reading a myth because it contained mythical elements. But ultimately, he knew it was fact. This was the ‘true myth’ that was absolutely true and historical.”

There are truths, Tolkien said, that are beyond us, transcendent truths, about beauty, truth, honor, etc. There are truths that man knows exist, but they cannot be seen – they are immaterial, but no less real, to us. It is only through the language of myth that we can speak of these truths. We have come from God, Tolkien said, and only through myth, through story telling (or poetry says DJ), can we aspire to the life we were made for with God. To write and/or read myth, Tolkien believed, was to meditate on the most important truths of life.

It was Tolkien’s view of myth that that most aided C. S. Lewis in his pilgrimage to accept Christianity. All the other myths of the world, Tolkien said, are a mixture of truth and error – truth because they are written by those made by and for God – error because written by those alienated by God. But the Bible is the one true myth. It is a true accounting of truth, while everything else we do is mimicking. This perspective was decisive in Lewis’ conversion to Christianity.

Tolkien and Lewis … were together at least three times per week: on Tuesday mornings and Thursday evenings with the other “Inklings” (a literary circle of friends), and at least one other day for lunch. Tolkien wrote, “Friendship with Lewis compensates for much, and besides giving constant pleasure and comfort has done me much good from the contact with a man at once honest, brave, intellectual – a scholar, a poet, and a philosopher – and a lover, at least after a long pilgrimage, of Our Lord.”

Personalism is what fosters, strengthens and protects the conversation of the soul, every soul, with God. We can accomplish those transcendent activities in any number of ways as we respond to the transcendent in our lives, be it any time we encounter or demonstrate beauty, truth, or honor. It’s the very heady stuff of living and, whenever we find it, our souls cry out for more and we remember our true home, not of this earth.

If we want reform, we must adhere to orthodoxy: especially in this matter …of insisting on the immanent or the transcendent deity. By insisting specially on the immanence [vocab: existing or remaining within; inherent] of God we get introspection, self-isolation, quietism, social indifference — Tibet. By insisting specially on the transcendence of God we get wonder, curiosity, moral and political adventure, righteous indignation — Christendom.

Insisting that God is inside man, man is always inside himself. By insisting that God transcends man, man has transcended himself. …But to a Christian existence is a STORY, which may end up in any way. In a thrilling novel (that purely Christian product) the hero is not eaten by cannibals; but it is essential to the existence of the thrill that he MIGHT be eaten by cannibals. The hero must (so to speak) be an eatable hero.

So Christian morals have always said to the man, not that he would lose his soul, but that he must take care that he didn’t. In Christian morals, in short, it is wicked to call a man “damned”: but it is strictly religious and philosophic to call him damnable.
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy