Truth in Myth

[Vincent_L]

JRR Tolkien held to the view that myths contained an echo of divine truth. Which is not the same thing at all as saying that myths are true or the same as the Church and its teaching but rather that even in the various pagan cultures there remains a form, however confused, of reality.

Are there any works that explore this idea more ?

I’m not looking for those that explain that the Church isn’t really pagan, I know it isn’t pagan. Nor am I asking about whether there is one path -vs- many paths, there is one path.

Rather I’m interested in works that deal with the fact that in these various myths and cultures around the world there remains truth in some form, that show how the Church has used this similarity to evangelize or to reach these people, etc.

Hope that makes sense.

Thanks.

 

[djeter]

Although he can be stunningly unreliable in some contexts, Luke Timothy Johnson explained mythic language and truth in the following way:

**Mythic Language **

"Let us begin with the candid recognition that all religious language claims more than it can demonstrate, define or even understand….

Although Paul says that Christians have been given “the mind of Christ” [1 Corinthians 2:26], he means only that Christians have been shown how to think about their lives in the pattern of Jesus the Messiah, not that they have been given the power to know the full mystery of God….

For this reason, religious language is better regarded as mythic rather than historical or as scientific. “Myth” does not mean “made up” or “untrue.” Myth is a language seeking to express a truth about the world and humans that lies beyond what we can test and prove. It seeks to express the basic truths of human existence: where do we come from, why are we here, and where are we going?..

When Paul says, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” [2 Corinthians 5:19], he speaks mythically. His terms “Christ” and “world” point to empirical realities. But their meaning is so dependent on a specific human story that they cannot be analyzed historically or scientifically. The terms “God” and “in Christ” and “reconciling …to himself” are beyond even the possibility of being demonstrated. God is not an object we can locate and measure. Reconciliation with God is not capable of being tested.

Without such mythic language, Christians could not say anything about the world’s origin or destiny in God. …Myth finds its natural expression in narrative, and the Church’s creed itself tells a simple story…Because God is the main character in the story, it is, in the most proper sense, mythic. Christians are therefore, people who claim to live within a story whose protagonist is God – a character whose very existence cannot be demonstrated by the means of knowing most respected by the world."

In the secular world most regard “myth” as a form of untruth but a moment of reflection will tell you this is not the case.

dj

 

[nuntym]

JRR Tolkien held to the view that myths contained an echo of divine truth. Which is not the same thing at all as saying that myths are true or the same as the Church and its teaching but rather that even in the various pagan cultures there remains a form, however confused, of reality.

Are there any works that explore this idea more ?

I’m not looking for those that explain that the Church isn’t really pagan, I know it isn’t pagan. Nor am I asking about whether there is one path -vs- many paths, there is one path.

Rather I’m interested in works that deal with the fact that in these various myths and cultures around the world there remains truth in some form, that show how the Church has used this similarity to evangelize or to reach these people, etc.

Hope that makes sense.

Thanks.

G. K. Chesterton deals with these ideas very well in the book The Everlasting Man, which can be read online for free here. An excerpt:

There is very good reason to suppose that many people did begin with the simple but overwhelming idea of one God who governs all; and afterwards fell away into such things as demon-worship almost as a sort of secret dissipation. Even the test of savage beliefs, of which the folk-lore students are so fond, is admittedly often found to support such a view. Some of the very rudest savages, primitive in every sense in which anthropologists use the word, the Australian aborigines for instance, are found to have a pure monotheism with a high moral tone. A missionary was preaching to a very wild tribe of polytheists, who had told him all their polytheistic tales, and telling them in return of the existence of the one good God who is a spirit and judges men by spiritual standards. And there was a sudden buzz of excitement among these stolid barbarians, as at somebody who was letting out a secret, and they cried to each other, ‘Atahocan! He is speaking of Atahocan!’

Actually Chesterton was talking here about an American Indian tribe, not Australian aborigines, as he clarified himself in the end of the book, but anyways he made his point there.

I would suggest also his other books Orthodoxy and Catholic Church and Conversion, which may be found online (as well as numerous books of his) here.

 

[MarcoPolo]

I read the book C.S. Lewis on Scripture (oddly enough a good friend of Chesterton and Tolkien ). It’s a short book, like 110 pages if I remember right. There’s 1 or 2 chapters in there on Lewis and the idea of myth and how a story can unlock truth with a depth that a static list of data can never do.

 

[Vincent_L]

G. K. Chesterton deals with these ideas very well in the book The Everlasting Man, which can be read online for free here.

Thanks for all the answers on this thread. I must say that while not directly dealing with the details and instead dealing with the concepts no one I have read is as profound as Chesterton.

Until today I had not read him.

I cannot put him down.

 

[nuntym]

Thanks for all the answers on this thread. I must say that while not directly dealing with the details and instead dealing with the concepts no one I have read is as profound as Chesterton.

Until today I had not read him.

I cannot put him down.

I had that exact reaction when I first read Orthodoxy. I couldn’t put it down, and when I finished that, I had to read more.

For the next few months I devoured those books online.

And well, as Dale Ahlquist said in The American Chesterton Society website, I felt cheated that I never knew him or his works until last year.

I’m glad that I was the one who introduced you to G. K. Chesterton

 

[djeter]

Thanks for all the answers on this thread. I must say that while not directly dealing with the details and instead dealing with the concepts no one I have read is as profound as Chesterton.

Until today I had not read him.

I cannot put him down.

I have several essays (reading selections from) on my site along with reading selections I’ve made from Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. They will help guide you in your readings and understanding of G.K.

I’ve also gotten a lot of postive feedback on this essay that uses Garry Wills’ comments on the young G.K. struggling with solipsism – a view rarely seen these days what with EWTN’s caricature of G.K. overwhelming all else.

You can find it here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/09/15/the-diabolists-among-us/

Delighted you found him.

dj