A to Z with C.S. Lewis: M is for Myth

Although most readers of C. S. Lewis know that he spent much of his life as an atheist, few realize that Lewis’s journey to faith did not take him directly from atheism to Christianity.  On the contrary, Lewis spent two full years as a theist (a believer in God but not in Christ) before he was able to accept the Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement, and Resurrection.

What held Lewis the theist back from embracing Christianity was his great knowledge and love of mythology.  From his passionate study of Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, Lewis knew that every ancient culture was aware of the pervasive power of human sin and guilt, particularly as it manifested itself in terms of forbidden acts or taboos.  In order to deal with such taboos, these cultures not only practiced rituals of sacrifice and ablution, but harbored a cherished myth about a god who came to earth, died, and then returned to the abode of the gods.

Frazer referred to this divine, or sometimes semi-divine, scapegoat as the Corn King, for his death and rebirth paralleled the seasonal cycle of the grain: what Americans call wheat, the British call corn.  As the grain is harvested and milled but then returns to life in the spring, so the Corn King is killed and buried, only to be reborn and renewed.

In Greece, the Corn King goes by the name of Adonis or Bacchus.  In Egypt he is called Osiris.  Amongst the Babylonians and Persians, he bears the name of Tammuz and Mithras.  And in the northern regions of Scandinavia, he is called Balder.

Given the persistence of the Corn King across all ancient cultures, Lewis concluded (along with most of his fellow academics) that Jesus of Nazareth was nothing more than the Hebrew version of the Corn King myth.  That is, until one fateful night, he took a long walk with his friend J. R. R. Tolkien (author of The Lord of the Rings and a committed Catholic).  As they strolled along Addison’s Walk on the grounds of Magdalen College, Oxford, Tolkien suggested something to Lewis that revolutionized his understanding of myth and the Christian gospel.

What if, Tolkien suggested, the reason Christ sounded so much like the Corn King myth was that Christ was the myth that became fact?  To put it another way, perhaps the reason that every ancient culture yearned for a god to come to earth, to die, and to rise again was because the Creator who made all the nations placed in every person a desire for this very thing.

And, if that is the case, then does it not make sense that when God enacted his salvation in the world, he did it in a way that fulfilled the desire that he put in all of us?  Indeed, if the life, death, and resurrection of Christ had been a wholly foreign thing, with no glimpses or foreshadowings in the myths and legends of the world’s peoples, then it would seem that Christ was an alien god, one whose plan of salvation bore no resemblance to our most ancient and persistent longings.

But if Christ is the fulfillment of all the legends of the Corn King—if he is truly the myth that became fact—then the God of the Bible is not just the God of the Jews but of all the nations.  Christians believe that the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday fulfilled the messianic prophecies recorded in the Old Testament.  What Lewis learned from Tolkien is that Christ fulfilled as well all the deepest yearnings of the pagan peoples.