Thread by @mythic_ethos, A MYTHIC THREAD:I've always been fond of Lewis and Tolkien because like [...]

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mythic_ethos

A MYTHIC THREAD:

I& #39;ve always been fond of Lewis and Tolkien because like myself they have a deep love for pagan mythos while also being able to proclaim the truth of Christ.

They were able to see that pagan myths were expressions of God in an unfocused manner through the images and imaginations of man in order to tell stories about the world.

This is actually what converted Lewis. Tolkien made him realized Christianity is the “true myth”. Christ’s story is “God’s Myth”, the story in which God directly expresses Himself through the real and historical life of the second person of the Trinity.

Many people look at pagan myths and see similarities with Christianity (the deluge, risen gods, angelic beings) and conclude Christianity is just another rehashed lie. Lewis didn’t see it this way. It led him to conclude NOT “so much worse for Christianity” but....

“So much better for paganism.” Paganism contained a good deal of meaning that was realized and perfected in Christ. He saw a resemblance between Christianity and stories of “pagan Christ’s”.
God is the Father of lights (James 1:17).....

The Father of “natural lights as well as spiritual lights.” Even the fluttering lights of Paganism could be attributed ultimately to Him. As Edmund Spenser said “Divine Wisdom spoke not only on Mount of Olives, but also on Parnassus.”

Lewis in a scholarly work on early poetry wrote: “gods and goddesses could always be used in a Christian sense.” Dante, Milton, And Spenser all recognized that the redeemed gods could all perform true, good and beautiful deeds.

Lewis’s book English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, he wrote: “the gods are God incognito and everyone is in the secret.” the poets understood this.

Lewis says that they understand paganism as ”the religion of poetry through which the author can express, at any moment, just so much or so little of his real religion as his art requires.”

”Transferred classicism”, a term coined by Lewis, was used for those poets who imagined their Christianity under classical forms. ”God is, to some degree disguised as a mere god.”

The practice of using mythological untruths to hint at theological truths was the best way to write poetry which was Christian without being devotional.

Once Tolkein showed to Lewis that the similarities of certain pagan aspects and Christian truths, Lewis was able to understand that they ”ought to be there” which he stated in an essay. In fact, it would be a problem if those similarities were absent.

This is how the people of the Middle Ages saw and interpreted these things. For example, they interpreted the following poem by Virgil as a pagan prophecy of Christ....

”The great procession of the ages begins anew.

Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns,

and the new child is sent down from high heaven.”

I could write more but that& #39;s enough for now.

I& #39;ll add to this thread as I see fit

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