Art and Fantasy

A few days ago I was at a site which had articles attacking numerous games, movies, and pieces of literature. The one which struck me most was an article attacking The Lord of the Rings. The sad part was, it was a Christian site. The article accused The Lord of the Rings of paganism, the glorification of black magic, and (horror of horrors!) the lack of allegory. It attacked Tolkien's use of myth, claiming that myth is by nature an untruth and has nothing to do with Christianity. And by this it seems to say that man's creations, his "myths", have no relation to reality or Christianity and are therefore evil. Since man is evil, only something specifically Biblical can contain anything good.

How foolish! Do they think that, because man has fallen, everything he does is evil? It is not so. Man was created in God's image, and therefore reflects God's glory. Although we are under the dominion of sin and everything we do may be tainted by it, we still retain the image of God. We are basically evil; we cannot be completely evil*.

All good things come from God; the truth of mathematics and the beauty of nature are His and reflect His truth and beauty. It is the same for the truths of philosophy and the beauty of art. A beautiful painting reflects Him just by being beautiful. But a bad painting does not become a good one because it is dedicated to God, nor does a good painting become a bad one because it is not. A good painting cannot help reflecting God; and as far as the bad one, what is there to dedicate? Or to look at it another way, art is an expression of Truth: what does not express truth is not art.

Man has a desire to create. God loves creation, and man, made in the image of God, has the same love. Thus man, in the act of creation, follows in the footsteps of his Creator. Of course, man's "sub-creation" is not a new truth or an original thing: it is only a new expression of the eternal Truth. Tolkien said it this way:

Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind...
'twas our right
(used or misused). That right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we're made.

Therefore art, our creation, is in itself a good thing. This goes for any art: good painting, or music, or story. But there are two levels at which a piece of art may be addressed: I'll call them the technical level and the philosophic level. The first says, "Are the proportions of the painting correct? Is the form of the poem kept well? Is the music harmonious?" The second says, "What does it say? And does it say something that conforms to the truth?" And the two levels are distinct from one another. A well-made poem or painting is good at the technical level insofar as it is well-made, even though what it is saying at the philosophic level may not be good.

(I have noticed that everything Christians bring against the Lord of the Rings is on the philosophic level; none I have heard question it at the technical level. And this is not a good thing: it says to me that Christians in general have forgotten the importance of excellence at the first level. Excellence at the second level in art is good, but without excellence at the first level it cannot be called art. And what is so necessary about art? Why, without art there is no beauty; and were we not given our gifts by God and commanded to use them?)


*You might say that nothing can be completely evil. Evil is not complete in itself, and the polar opposite of God would be non-existence.