(OPINION) By his own admission, C.S. Lewis grew up a rationalist, shaped by a naturalistic viewpoint characteristic of the modern West. Naturalism holds that Nature (usually capitalized) is all that exists.
Religion is nice, perhaps even inspiring, but it isn’t the stuff of real life.
In 1925, Lewis became a fellow and tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford. There he met J.R.R. Tolkien. Six years later, Lewis was at a dinner party with Tolkien and Hugo Dyson. He was expressing his difficulty with mythological tales which Lewis said are beautiful and moving, but “lies and therefore worthless.”
“No,” said Tolkien, “They are not lies.” He went on to tell Lewis…
“You look at trees and call them ‘trees,’ and probably you do not think twice about the word. You call a star a ‘star,’ and think nothing more about it. But the first men to talk of ‘trees’ and ‘stars’ saw things differently. To them, the world was alive with mythological beings. They saw these stars as living silver, bursting into flame in answer to eternal music.”
In “Surprised by Joy,” Lewis describes what happened the following day: “When we [Warnie and Jack] set out [by motorcycle to the Whipsnade Zoo] I did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.”
I share this story because Tolkien recognized what Lewis had never imagined: an ancient mythological background saturated with spiritual beings. Beginning some 500 years ago, it was discarded for a naturalist background. “The heavens” were discarded for mere blue sky.
To read the rest of Michael Metzger’s post, please visit his Substack page.
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