The Theology of Fantasy (Timothy Lawrence, 9/01/24, Voegelin View)
Theology and fantasy are akin in that they are both imaginative projects. Theology concerns itself with a reality that is beyond the direct experience of our senses and thus must necessarily be known by the imagination – the same faculty that underwrites fantasy. The book centers around this trifecta: because theology and fantasy have imagination in common, they not only become relevant to each other, they can talk to one another, and the conversation can go both ways: theology can inform fantasy, and fantasy can inform theology. Fantasy can both “implicitly articulate what we believe” and “help us imagine a world that is still enchanted.”
Drawing from C.S. Lewis’ famous statement that the fantasy of George MacDonald “baptized” his imagination, a crucial step in his conversation to Christianity, Thrasher and Freeman suggest that the “baptism of the imagination” shapes what it is plausible or even possible to believe: “fantasy functions as a tool to shape the conditions for belief.” At the same time, fantasy is unavoidably shaped by the beliefs of those who make it. Each essay in the book concerns itself in some way with this back-and-forth dialogue between theology and fantasy, and in so doing demonstrates fantasy’s potential as a tool for serious theological work, rather than just a frivolous, escapist hobby.
Early on, the text sets forth a Christian understanding of fantasy, drawing largely from the work of J.R.R. Tolkien (who in turn drew from George MacDonald and Samuel Taylor Coleridge). According to the Christian mythopoetic theory of Tolkien, arguably the greatest Christian fantasist, fantasy has its roots in the theological and anthropological claim that humans are made in the image of God. As such, human fantasy is an echo of God’s own creative work. The human makers of fantasy are, in Tolkien’s terminology, “subcreators” whose make-believe worlds reflect the real world created by God. As Tolkien writes in On Fairy-Stories, “[W]e make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.”