The Heroes’ Journey: Christ the Myth and the True

Lewis and Tolkein's "True Myth"

So much has already been written about the monumental phrase “true myth” in reference to the conversation between the professors JRR Tolkein, the Catholic, and CS Lewis, the atheist-turned-Christian, in how this prompted Lewis’s conversion. However, it seems most of the attention in considering this phrase has been on the “true” part, when it was the “myth” aspect that captivated Lewis so much. It is myth that is the human element here because that is the thing ubiquitous to humanity. The fact that it happened to be true is what makes it divine. It pulls the human myth out of itself and into the heavens. 

True Man Includes Man's Stories

If one wants to share with others the truth of Jesus Christ, one must be willing to plumb the depths of humanity as he did, even when it doesn’t appear to resemble that divine, true element that Christians recognize in him. This is where the role of myth comes in. If one gets hung up on certain elements of a mythology, either pre-modern or post, because it doesn’t reflect some aspect of Christianity, then one will surely miss opportunities to evangelize a culture more familiar with the post-modern mythology than Christianity anyway. Worse yet, one will miss out on an opportunity to form real unity between Christianity and the culture, the sacred and the secular, God and Man. 

This is where Joseph Campbell’s idea of the monomyth, popularly known as “the hero’s journey,” comes in. The basic idea behind the monomyth is that every culture’s mythological structure follows a relatively basic pattern of Departure, Initiation, and Return, with several sub-elements in each. In this journey the hero receives a call from without, perseveres through a series of trials, and returns home having mastered both the old world from which he was called as well as the new world in which the story took place. 

Roots in the Church Fathers

None of this is meant to undermine the originality or historical truth of the story of Jesus. In fact, one finds biblical precedent for this in the theological topic of recapitulation. This concept is explored in the Church Father and Doctor, St. Irenaeus, who saw in Jesus a re-living and fulfillment of the nation of Israel. One even finds this in the composition of many Old Testament stories as there are repeated “creation,” “covenant,” and “fall” narratives that follow a pattern within Genesis and Exodus. 

These “myths” would have been the cultural and theological formation for the 1st century Jewish people and it was those same myths that the Gospel writers would have drawn upon to draft their own narratives. This doesn’t trivialize the importance of the Jesus “myth,” but actually became a way to evangelize, as one finds in St. Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho. Jesus was called by God the Father at his baptism at the beginning of his ministry, similar to Noah, Abraham and Moses. He experiences trials and temptations in the chaos that both the sea and desert represented to ancient cultures just as the three Old Testament archetypes had. Even where the Old Testament parents fall short, Christ’s conquering of trial and temptation only further indicates not a departure but the fulfillment that the Jewish people saw in the Messiah. 

Reflecting All of Creation

On a cosmic scale, there is a return element for the Old Testament patriarchs as God forms a covenant, establishing a new relationship, with all three on a mountain, the point of origin for the biblical man and meeting place between heaven and earth in virtually all mythology. One sees this fulfilled in the entire Paschal Mystery, the Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, as they all participate in his, and by his humanity’s as well, return to God the Father. How all of the specific elements of the Paschal Mystery constitute a “return” deserves its own forthcoming blog post (so stay tuned), but suffice it to say that the significance would not have been lost on the early Christians and it is why these elements were so essential to the Gospel proclamation as well as Christian worship. 

Faith and Reason, Myth and History

In historic Christianity there has always been a beautiful, fruitful marriage between faith and reason. Reason here is not limited to the hyper-rational, box of scientism that even some Christians try to fit reason into. Reason includes the human knowledge and experience that for most of human history has been communicated through myth. I would argue it continues to be communicated through our modern myth of comic books, sci-fi and fantasy as well. This is the reason that faith can wed and build upon in order to draw us to the Hero who initiates our own call to adventure, an adventure that finds its return in the One upon whom all adventures find their End.