This is long overdue: if there has been any single book, apart from The Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion, that has opened my eyes to the riches of Middle-earth, it is Matthew Dickerson’s Following Gandalf.

Although “only” 234 pages in length, Following Gandalf is packed with more insight and biblical truth than any other commentary on Tolkien of which I am aware. This is not to say that others are not valuable or insightful in their own right, but only that Dickerson’s book treats a breadth of spiritual issues with surprising depth in a relatively short work.

I have, of course, reviewed other books and will review still more in the future. Following Gandalf, however, deserves more than that, so thought-provoking as it is. So I’m going to blog my way through the book, chapter-by-chapter and, sometimes, point-by-point. I have been leading a study of Christian themes, virtues, and values in Tolkien’s writings for several months now; Following Gandalf has been the text we have used and profited from tremendously. my goal is to be able to convey some of Dickerson’s wisdom and insights in this series.

This post, however, does not address Dickerson’s work but is meant to serve as a necessary foundation for it. In this post I will spend some time discussing a critical subject in Tolkien and one that is often misunderstood, i.e., his description of the Gospel as “True Myth.” Once that has been accomplished, I will begin to work through Following Gandalf.

It is important to discuss what Tolkien meant by calling the story of salvation a “myth” because his meaning is very different from that which we have today. “Myth” or even “fairy stories” were not escapist or purely fantastical writings; for Tolkien (and C.S. Lewis) myth was a literary form that allowed for the expression of truths not able to be explained in other forms. Tolkien wrote,

After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of ‘truth,’ and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear.” (Letters, p 147)

In the following quote from his classic work “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien uses the term “fairy-story” as virtually synonymous with “myth.” He explains,

The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels – peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: ‘mythical’ in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe [the good outcome, ending, or consolation]. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the ‘inner consistency of reality.’ There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and one which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads to sadness or to wrath.” (Tolkien Reader, pp 88-89)

Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis as well, believed that myth was a means of communicating truth that could not be conveyed in any other way. All myths and all religions, they argued, contained some aspect, some distorted reflection of the True Myth, which is the Gospel as revealed in the Bible. Myths – and especially intentionally pre-Christian myths such as The Lord of the Rings – were meant to reflect and point to the one Myth that has entered history and reality in the Person of Jesus Christ. God’s story – the Gospel – is found in all the distorted writings and imaginings of fallen people, people who still bear the image of God but are unable to apprehend or express the full meaning of the True Myth.

Birzer, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth, further explains Tolkien’s view:

Indeed, for Tolkien, myths expressed far greater truths than did historical facts or events. Sanctified myths, inspired by grace, served as an anamnesis, or a way for people to recall encounters with transcendence that had helped to order their souls and their society. Myth, inherited or created, could also offer a ’sudden glimpse of Truth,’ that is, a brief view of heaven.” (p 24)

Birzer draws from Lewis to explain the concept more clearly:

‘The story of Christ is simply a true myth,’ Lewis wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves. ‘One must be content to accept it in the same way, remember that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths, i.e., the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there.’” (p 26)

Associating the word “myth” with Jesus Christ, the Bible, and the Gospel is somewhat uncomfortable if not downright unnerving for most conservative Christians. Bultmann, over 100 years ago, had set about to “demythologize” the Bible, i.e., to remove from it miracles, signs, and wonders that could not be explained rationally or scientifically. For Tolkien or Lewis to describe the Gospel as myth – even true myth – seems to be disparaging and denying the veracity and historicity of the Bible.

But read again Tolkien’s own definition of the True Myth of Christianity. It clearly states that in Christianity – and only in Christianity – myth has entered into reality and history. The truth of the Christian myth is the root of all other myths and legends. Or, as Lewis says, the True Myth of Christianity is God’s myth and not merely a myth created by the mind of man. Whether man’s efforts are called myth, religion, naturalism, modernism, or postmodernism, they all stand in qualitative contrast to the truth of God’s myth.

Duriez’s Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings (reviewed here) will provide a final witness in this post to the meaning of True Myth in Tolkien’s writing and Christian faith.

Myths are normally attempts to explain or understand the reality in which we find ourselves. In Tolkien’s fiction the myths belong to his secondary world of Middle-earth . . . Yet Tolkien intended his invented mythology to illuminate the real, primary world. He hoped that it would bring to his reader recovery of a true view of things, escape from the prison of inaccurate and misleading presuppositions, and true consolation, consolation which pointed to the historical gospel story.” (p 196)

Tolkien’s view of myth, which deeply influenced C.S. Lewis, is captured in a poem written to Lewis at the time his scepticism about Christian belief was shattered . . . Tolkien persuaded Lewis that, at the heart of Christianity, is a myth that is also a fact – making the claims of Christianity unique. But by becoming fact it did not cease to by myth, or lose the quality of myth . . .

“Tolkien spoke of the ’seamless web of story.’ Human stories were interrelated and, by God’s grace, carried insights into the true nature of things. It is the gospel, however, that has broken into this web of story from the real world . . .

“Tolkien’s belief that God in his grace had prefigured the gospel evangelium in human stories, a view shared by C.S. Lewis, was a kind of natural theology.” (pp 197-8)

Far from being fantasy or fiction created by fertile human imaginations, myth was for Tolkien a way of knowing truth. Myth was a literary form and, at the same time, a way of capturing a glimpse of the transcendent truths of existence. In the Gospel, that Truth had entered into history and reality, and the Christian Myth was the singular truth to which all other stories pointed and from which they actually grew.

Good myth, such as The Lord of the Rings, and True Myth, as found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom, reveal ultimate reality to readers. Such myth draws back the curtain of familiarity, as Lewis said, and confronts the reader with what is actually transpiring and true. It momentarily, at least, shows the reader God’s view of life and His purposes for His creation. The True Myth exposes the lie of the present world system in which we find ourselves and grants us instead an eternal perspective to guide us in this lifetime.

All paths do not lead to God, but all myths point to the one True Myth of Christianity. It is in this sense that Tolkien believed the Gospel to be one and only True Myth, and the only means by which people must be saved.



Namárië.