Myth as the Grammar of Artists
I grew up in a Christian context that told me my faith could influence whatever line of work I chose. That there was no devision between sacred and secular. People even quoted Scripture to make the point: “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31). That idea sounded fine, but it was never elaborated for me in a way I found meaningful. When I chose the career of a musician and composer, the question became even more pressing: How could my art meaningfully relate to my faith? It didn’t seem like there were many people around who could show me the ropes in this regard.
Happily, I eventually discovered that Christianity has a long history, and that my question has been addressed by deep-thinking Christian artists of the past. Christianity has a centuries-long history of Christian artists. Most of these artists, however, were not theologians explaining a theology of art, but simply living out their convictions. The composer Bach is a perfect example of this. He wrote music to God’s glory and as a way of imitating the order of God’s world; but he did not write anything about how his theology interacted with his musical output. He simply lived it.
There are, however, examples of artists who explicitly pull back the curtain to allow us to see how faith and artistic practice feed upon one another. The question has been approached from a variety of angles, some of which we will explore in other blog posts. But this particular blog will focus on what that artists J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis called “True Myth.” It is one of the richesτ theology of arts that the Christian world has ever produced. It is sometimes fleetingly referenced, but rarely unpacked. But as an artist, I find it explosive with power for my own creative practice. For that reason, I will attempt to unpack what “True Myth” means and how it can shape your own artwork.
What Myth Is and Isn’t
To understand what True Myth is, we first have to understand what the term myth means. There is some confusion here, as the word in common discourse typically means a story that is false or made up. In the scholarly world, however, there are many tools through which to analyze myth, and many of these tools do not neatly fall into a true or false binary. Rather, these tools allow myth to be explored from many different angles.
One such tool for analyzing myth anthropology. With this tool, myths are seen as stories we tell to create a sense of social identity and agreed upon values. Another tool for understand myth is science. That is to say, myth is a product of evolutionary biology which gives humans a sense of purpose, thus favoring the chance of survival. Another way of understanding myth is psychoanalytically. That is, myth is the product of a group’s subconscious mind, much like a dream is the product of an individual’s subconscious mind. Another way to analyze myth is with the tools of historical inquiry. That is, many myths may indeed have a seed of what modern people would call history, but this history has since overgrown into a hybrid animal of history and legend.
It’s difficult to outright dismiss any of these theories of myth, as they each have their thumb on something true. For that reason, many people today prefer to understand myth as some kind of mixture of these various approaches. There is no agreed-upon string theory for the human phenomenon of myth-making. But as we will see later, there is a strong contender for one such theory. It’s what this essay refers to as “True Myth.”
The Artistry of Myth
One fascinating feature of myth is its appeal to artists. There are countless artists who have drawn inspiration for their artwork from the world’s mythologies. Perhaps one such reason is that myths are fundamentally artistic (a point often overlooked in discussions on myth). Just as it is well-documented that nature is a common source of inspiration for artists, so also is it well-attested that mythology is a common source of inspiration. It’s as though myth is as native to us as the world itself.
One place we see this connection between art and myth is in the work of Joseph Campbell. He essentially created a method or framework for comparative mythology. He put the world’s myths side by side and deduced a kind of mythic grammar. First, there is the call to adventure, then the obstacle, then the death of the hero, and finally a rebirth. He called this grammar by various names, including the mono-myth, the hero with a thousand faces, and the cosmogonic cycle. It is striking how many myths rhyme so well with this basic pattern. That’s why artists tend to be drawn to his work.
Undoubtedly, there are problems with Campbell’s work. (He often smooths out real differences between mythic traditions, and relies too heavily on outdated forms of psychoanalysis). Still, there is something lasting to his work. The artistic community, for one, continues to draw inspiration from his work in comparative mythology. To cite just one example, George Lucas wrote his original Star Wars films with Campbell’s work in mind. Despite Campbell’s flaws, there is something enduring about his work. Artistically speaking, his observations work. Within mythology, there are recognizable patterns which form some kind of deep grammar for meaning. For that reason, artists can’t help but return to this well over and over again for their inspiration.
Scripture’s Mythic Voice
The Christian story does not escape this mythic grammar. Within Christian faith communities, it is often under-appreciated that there are time when their Scriptures self-consciously speaks in a mythic idiom. The early chapters of Genesis offer perfect examples: deceiving serpents, divine image, humans formed from clay, and so on. These images are not unique to the Hebrew Scriptures, but are common images in the myriad creation myths of the ancient world. Upon learning this truth, it is a common reaction among Christians to become uncomfortable or not know what to make of it. There is, however, a responsible way to make sense of it. Scripture is not merely mimicking ancient myths—it is entering into conversation with those myths in the same idiom as its ancient counterparts, the idiom of ancient imagination.
Imagine you are a jazz pianist. In the jazz world, you take common tunes called standards and put your stamp on that standard in how you uniquely play it. After the concert, people familiar with the standard will come up to you and say, “The way you played that tune really surprised me. The twists and turns you put on it had me mesmerized the whole time.” It’s the combination of familiarity and surprise that makes the performance of jazz standards to rich. It’s the same with myth. There are common images or standards that get played on the world’s stage. That familiarity is what allows us to take note of the twists and turns, and those surprises are exactly what the writers want us to notice.
Take, for example, the standard of the sun god. In many ancient stories, the sun was a deity—an entity worthy of worship because it brought order from chaos. But the biblical account reimagines that story. In Genesis, the word used to describe the sun can be translated as lamp. It’s as if the author is saying, “The sun is a god? Well, our God is so powerful, he made the sun. It’s just a lamp he hung in the sky.” Or take the sea monsters as another example. In many ancient stories, the sun makes war on the sea monster, and the monster’s carcus is thrown onto the water to create land. Again, though, the biblical story reimagines that ancient jazz standard. Creation is not the aftermath of war, but the result of God’s speaking all things into existence, including the sea monsters. It’s as if the author says, “The sea dragon? It’s no rival to God’s power. It’s just an animal God made to play in the waters.”
How Ancient Myth Speaks Today
Some readers will likely respond to the above analysis by saying, “That’s the coolest thing I’ve heard in a long time.” Others might respond, “If Scripture uses myth, I don’t want to have anything to do with it.” Often, artists respond in the first way, excitedly making symbolic connections between ancient stories and modern life. If you respond skeptically, however, I will address your concerns in a moment. But for now, let’s follow the ancient symbols into modern life. Let’s listen to the world artistically first, and theologically in a moment. For the moment, now that’s we have heard a few of the ancient jazz standards, let’s take a fresh listen to the modern world to see if those standards pop up in modern life.
As we saw, the sun god was an ancient jazz standard in the ancient world. Does that jazz standard still pop up today? I would argue, yes it does. For instance, the scientists Schrödinger observed how the entropy brings things from more ordered states to less ordered states. (A sand castle will always decay into a shapeless lump unless, say, a human intervenes to shape it.) Then he noticed that the evolution of life seemed to flow in the opposite direction. How was it that simple life evolved into complex life? What Schrödinger realized was that the earth is not a closed system. Rather, the sun shines in from outside to give energy and circulation which makes the increasing complexity of life possible. Many modern people will take this observation and infer that there is no room for a creator God to be involved in the creation of human beings or animals because we know the process by which complex life emerged. In other words, there is a kind of resonance with the ancient myth: the sun conquers the chaos of entropy to bring order to this world.
Interestingly, the biblical story is sophisticated in its engagement with this topic. It does not say something so crude as, “You think your god is the sun, but actually our god is the sun.” Rather, it says portrays God as creating light on day one and the sun on day four. Many commentators have noticed that it’s as thought God himself is shining from the beginning and only later appoints the sun as the embodiment and steward of his own light. Again, there is a kind of resonance here with later Christian theology. It’s as thought we might respond, “Yes, the sun does bring order and life into an otherwise chaotic void. Just remember the God who stands behind the sun. The sun is merely an appointed steward of God’s own life and light.” It takes an artist’s eye to see these kinds of connections.
The Myth that Holds all Myths
Now that we’ve looked at myth artistically, we can take some time to look at it theologically. Some readers will undoubtedly be disturbed at the idea of Scripture speaking in a mythic register. If Scripture speaks mythically, what distinguishes it from any other myth? To make matters more pointed, what do we make of Jesus’s life if this mythic mode of communication is true of Scripture? For some readers, it will not bother them so much if creation narratives are symbolically laden. But if the Jesus story is myth, it poses even more challenging questions for Christians. If Jesus’ life echos mythic themes—which it does—what are we to make of it? Is the Jesus story just one myth among many? The situation may appears much like a “he said, she said” courtroom case. If no-one was present to witness the event, who is to say which story is truer than another?
The author C.S. Lewis, for some time, felt the weight of this question. As someone steeped in literature and mythology—a virgin birth, God descending from heaven, resurrection from death—and saw it as just another myth. Eventually, however, he came to see mythic resonance with the Christian story as a feature, not a flaw. He said, “We should not be embarrassed by parallels to other myths. There would be problems if there were not parallels.” That is to say, he saw the mythic patters of the world’s stories as pointers to something real. That is, myths reveal ancient human longings that we still experience today. Might these myths be like shadows that reveal the shape of something solid standing at the far end of that shadow? Might it not be that just as our eyes are organs built to receive the light that shines upon us, so we have an organ for stories sensitive to the light of truth that God shines upon us?
For Lewis, his decisive moment of embracing the Christian story came shortly after talking with another artist friend J.R.R. Tolkien. Rather than arguing that the Jesus story was not speaking in a mythic register, Tolkien said that the Christ story was the “True Myth.” That is to say, it was not a myth with merely symbolic significance, but rather a story that distinguished itself from the others by stepping into history. According to Tolkien, if humans keep telling these kinds of stories, it suggests that we were made for a story like this one to be true. It suggests that there is a true myth that explains all the other myths. This insight helped Lewis, which is why he later wrote, “The story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference—that it really happened.”
An Invitation to Myth-Making
Notice how artistic all of this is. No wonder it attracted artists like Tolkien and Lewis. Tolkien observed that there were “fragments of light” that were scattered throughout the world’s myths. In fact, this is an old observation. The church fathers referred to it as “seeds of the logos scattered through the world.” Tolkien and Lewis are merely adapting that insight and speaking it in an artistic register. They chose to call it by the somewhat quirky phrase “True Myth.” With this framework, they were able to engage the world in an artistically robust way.
Notice how this framework frees us to engage the world’s stories and art without fear. Rather than trembling that we might find something that threatens our faith in the Christian story, we might actually find something that rhymes with that story. Rather than defensively protecting Jesus, we expect to find him in the world because God made this world to reveal himself to us. As artists, that empowers us to notice the world with greater attention and greater depth than ever before. Lewis, for instance, loved to take old myths and retell them in a way that showed their similarities with and differences from the Christian story. It was a powerful way of out-narrating whatever story he heard.
And notice how the framework of True Myth frees use to create our own myths with joy. If God is a storyteller at heart—choosing to reveal himself to us through a true story—then it follows that our creative work as storytellers has immense dignity. Tolkien couldn’t help but revel in the joy of his craft of world-building. It was as though he had been given permission to create for the sheer delight of it, knowing that God also created this world not out of need but from a place of sheer delight. Tolkien called this sub-creating.
Conclusion
I hope this essay has given you a framework for your artistic practices. Once we see how God chose to reveal himself through a true story, then the artistic practice of making stories gains immense dignity. On the one hand, it shows us how to find echos of that story through the world, and re-narrate those stories so that they find their deepest fulfillment. On the other hand, it gives us freedom to create stories of our own, not from any necessity but out of sheer delight. These two applications need not be in conflict, but rather like our two hands, need not work in competition but in coordination. Or like the weight of an old grandfather clock, work not in vacillation but in oscillation. In the following blogs, we will further explore how to apply this framework to our artistic endeavors.
Leave a Reply