myths to Christianity meant that Christianity was just another myth—perhaps more developed and advanced, but mythical (and unhistorical) just the same. The idea that Christianity was just another myth had been addressed by Chesterton a number of years before. In 1904, Chesterton had engaged in a public debate with the British atheist newspaper editor Robert Blatchford, in which he addressed this argument: Mr. Blatchford and his school point out that there are many myths parallel to the Christian story; that there were Pagan Christs, and Red Indian Incarnations, and Patagonian Crucifixions, for all I know or care. But does not Mr. Blatchford see the other side of the fact? If the Christian God really made the human race, would not the human race tend to rumours and perversions of the Christian God? If the centre of our life is a certain fact, would not people far from the centre have a muddled version of that fact? If we are so made that a Son of God must deliver us, is it odd that Patagonians should dream of a Son of God? The Blatchfordian position really amounts to this—that because a certain thing has impressed millions of different people as likely or necessary, therefore it cannot be true … I like paradox, but I am not prepared to dance and dazzle to the extent of [Blatchford], who points to humanity crying out for a thing, and pointing to it from immemorial ages, as proof that it cannot be there. The story of a Christ is very common in legend and literature. So is the story of two lovers parted by Fate. So is the story of two friends killing each other for a woman. But will it seriously be maintained that, because these two stories are common as legends, therefore no two friends were ever separated by love or no two lovers by circumstances? It is tolerably plain, surely, that these two stories are common because the situation is an intensely probable and human one, because our nature is so built as to make them almost inevitable.
Tolkien tried to disabuse Lewis of the notion that the mere similarity of the Christian story with pagan myths was a reason to reject the Christian story. Like Chesterton, he argued that the case was just the reverse. The first step in Tolkien's argument was to show that the Gospel stories themselves (stories Lewis already believed to be historical claims) were themselves mythical in their imaginative appeal. He compared the Gospel story in this respect with a particular kind of myth: the fairy tale. One of the things that distinguishes fairy tales from other myths, he argued, is something he called Consolation. Consolation is the joy of a happy ending. And the highest form of this Consolation is the kind of happy ending that surprises us. Tolkien coined his own term for this surprise happy ending: Eucatastrophe.
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The God of Men—& of Elves
At the end of the traditional dramatic tragedy, the protagonist experiences a sudden turn for the worse: a catastrophe. But euchastrophe is different. It is, literally, “the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn.’” In his later autobiography, Lewis himself gives an example of eucatastrophe from the story of Odysseus returning home after ten years to find his house filled with suitors accosting his wife. She had been stalling, hoping against hope for the return of her husband. But what can he do against the over 100 men who have occupied his home? Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, arrives back at his dining hall, takes up the bow of Iphitus hanging on his wall, strings it, and, to the surprise and shock of the suitors drinking his food and his wine, he slaughters them all. In Tolkien's own Lord of the Rings too, the journey of Sam and Frodo through Mordor and to the fires of Mt. Doom is perhaps the best example of eucatastrophe: Just as it seems that the entire quest has been in vain because of Frodo’s final decision, in the end, to keep the ring, Gollum steals it from him and unwittingly falls into the fire, destroying himself and the ring—and saving Middle Earth.
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e don’t know exactly how the conversation went that night in Lewis’ rooms, but we know from the scraps of information given by both men that they discussed how the Christian gospel was the ultimate eucatastrophe, and a eucatastrophe that exceeded all others because of its historical truth. Tolkien articulates this in his essay, "On Fairy Stories," published some sixteen years later in a book that Lewis himself edited: 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. 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 none 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 either to sadness or to wrath.
But how did this answer Lewis’ objection? He had believed that fairy stories were meaningful but not real,
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