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| "Man Writing" by Oliver Ray |
Last week, I looked at creativity and fiction, arguing that both are expected (and good) results of being made in God's image. Today, we focus on fantasy, which has come under scrutiny from some Christians over the years, generally due to the presence of magic in such tales.
Defining Fantasy
Broadly, fiction is anything that did not happen. Fantasy is a sub-genre, and is anything that could not happen (based on what we know of the world, and without divine intervention). There are different levels, from something set in our world but with elements (creatures, objects, or powers) that do not exist, to something set in a completely different world. Three other definitions:
From MasterClass:
Fantasy is a genre of literature that features magical and supernatural elements that do not exist in the real world. Although some writers juxtapose a real-world setting with fantastical elements, many create entirely imaginary universes with their own physical laws and logic and populations of imaginary races and creatures. Speculative in nature, fantasy is not tied to reality or scientific fact.
From Brandon Sanderson, in his reading and activity guide included in Alcatraz Smedry vs. the Evil Librarians:
From J.R.R. Tolkien, in his essay On Fairy Stories:Fantasy is a literary genre that often includes:- Characters who are magical, are inspired by mythology, or have special powers.- Settings that include unexplored parts of the known world, or new and different worlds.- Plot elements (actions) that cannot be explained in terms of historical or scientific information from our known world.
fairy-stories as a whole have three faces: the Mystical towards the Supernatural; the Magical towards Nature; and the Mirror of scorn and pity towards Man.
Tolkien's thought is intriguing, and requires more definitions. I take these from different dictionaries based on the definition I feel most accurately captures what he is saying:
- mystical: "inspiring a sense of spiritual mystery, awe, and fascination."
- supernatural: "attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature."
- magical: "of, relating to, or having special powers to make things happen that would usually be impossible"
From these definitions, I highlight that fantasy is not tied to reality or fact, so it has elements "that cannot be explained in terms of . . . information from our known world," and it captures a sense of mystery and awe towards the supernatural.
The Rise and Value of Fantasy
In From Homer to Harry Potter, Matthew Dickerson and David O'Hara (D&O) discuss the genre's rise as a reaction against the Enlightenment, which downplayed or denied the supernatural in its focus on science and rationalism.
D&O's work has wonderful insights into the value of fantasy (too much to summarize here), but we can say a few things. Like all fiction, fantasy's value lies in teaching wisdom (eternal truths not tied to a specific time, event, location, or object). The elements in fantasy as a genre are helpful for doing so in at least two respects:
- in creating an imaginary world, we start with a 'blank slate' where authors can create stories apart from (or highlighting) our biases. We leave our preconceived notions at the door- or are confronted by them- as we're presented with a completely new setting.
- the supernatural elements of fantasy remind us that there is more to this world that we can see, comprehend, or control. It reminds us that not everything is natural, discoverable, or controllable. Some things are above and beyond us. This in turn points us to humility, mystery, awe, and a greater purpose. It can also reinforce "a biblical emphasis upon a symbolic perception of reality." (from here)
C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien both recognized the genre's value. It is telling that these two Christians played a formational role in the genre. This article has some good points; Lewis argued that "by casting all these things [the truths of the Gospel] into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency." Indeed, fantasy and "Myth, at its best, is both a distant view into the whole and a close mirror of the personal." (D&O)
There is a lot of potential here for some amazing stories. But the supernatural element in most fantasy is portrayed through the use of magic. How do we handle that?
Magic in the Bible
From Google/Oxford, magic is "the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces." The Bible is chock-full of magic (Bible Gateway has an outstanding summary) and is clearly against the use of magic in the real world:
There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. (Deuteronomy 18:10-12a)
But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8)
Why? Simplistically, there are two supernatural forces working in the real world: God and His angels, and the devil and his demons. Since magic in the real world is trying to bend things to our will using supernatural means, there are only two possibilities: 1) we're using God to do so, or 2) we're using evil.
Asking God for His supernatural aid is not only acceptable but commanded. Beseeching God to help us can look a lot like magic- see Exodus 7:8-12, where (at God's command) Aaron casts his staff down before the Egyptians and it turns into a snake. The Egyptians answer, doing the same thing by their dark arts . . . and then Aaron's snake swallows theirs. To the onlooker, both would look like magic; the key is the source. There are many other examples of this in Scripture, like Samson asking for God to grant him supernatural strength in Judges 16:28-30, or any of Jesus's miracles (like calming the storm in Mark 4:35-41). God intervenes with His supernatural- and good- power all the time, and that can be to answer a human's request for aid. Thus the Bible isn't condemning the supernatural in principle; it is condemning evil sources of it. We conclude that the Bible's calls against magic are clearly against beseeching (or trying to control) evil supernatural powers to intervene or empower us.
Magic in Fantasy
As we think of magic that appears in fantasy fiction, we must consider two things: 1) the system/source and 2) the intent.
Remember that the problem of magic in the real world is its source. The fantasy writer, in contrast, has created a different world with different rules- which includes how magic works and its source. (Recall that the genre is not tied to reality or fact.) The 'magic system,' as its commonly termed in the genre, varies by author and is part of the creative element. It is not (necessarily) making a statement about real magic at all.
The source of magic may not be revealed in a work, but presented as a fact of that imaginary world without further explanation. In that case, we must determine the intent- how and why the author has designed the magic system. What is the author trying to achieve by including magic? What purpose is it serving? I can't be exhaustive here, but a few possibilities:
- The magic may not be supernatural at all, but simply something the majority in the story do not understand (or cannot see or control themselves) and thus view it as supernatural.
- It may be there to show that some people's gifts are not just in physical or mental areas. We can be gifted in ways hard to explain or teach; fictional worlds may replicate that through a magic system.
- Authors may use magic elements to replicate technologies that exist in our world. Fantasy is often set in worlds without guns, cars, medicine, phones, and the like. Sometimes the magic in fantasy is a simple substitute for things we take for granted today- the ability to communicate (or travel) over vast distances quickly, the power to heal or harm, etc.
- the magic system may be a neutral source of power, capable of being wielded by a gifted subset of the population for good or evil. It may be inserted to aid character development, plot progression, or point us to the general truths about the purpose and use of power.
In most fantasy I've read, the source itself is usually not the issue, nor is the author's intent malign. The focus is generally on what characters do with the power granted to them. You will know if a given magic-wielding character is good or not by their fruit.
I conclude that having magical elements in fantasy fiction is not inherently wrong- it is not necessarily based on evil sources, but on how the author defines the magic system and why it is present in the story. We shouldn't turn off our brains and assume all is okay, but neither should we dismiss any use of magic in fiction as malevolent. We need humility, wisdom, and discernment.
Religion in Fantasy
The fact that fantasy is separate from our world raises another question- what about religion? The above argument about magic holds here, too; the fantasy writer is under no obligation to create a world where religion looks like something we recognize in the real world. And that should not scare us- the point of stories is to convey specific wisdom, not all wisdom.
Tolkien's work was consciously religious and yet he despised allegory. He once wrote: "That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism." His stories convey specific sets of truths but not all truths. And so it is with most writers. We should never look to any fictional work, let alone fantasy, for a systematic theology that creates an equivalent to everything we find in the Bible. That isn't the point of such stories. Again, we remember Jesus and His parables- each was to convey a specific point of wisdom. None were exhaustive recaps of all truth. "In other words, fairy tale is not a place to deny the supernatural, but neither is it a place for systematic theology of pilosophy of religion . . . we should not look to them for that." (D&O)
Wisdom- timeless truths- generally focus on who God is, who we are, and the relationship between us (or what is expected of us). Some fantasy stories will focus on one category or another. I did a series of posts (here, here, and here) on the wisdom I saw in the Lord of the Rings movies. There is an awful lot there . . . but it by no means comprehensive. Nor should it be. Those stories say a good deal about man but very little about God. They still illustrate powerful truths, and ultimately point us to God when we more deeply see who we are as man. We come to the place, as Tolkien intends, where we view man with scorn and pity and are ripe to realize our need for a Savior.
Guidelines for Consuming Fantasy
Ultimately, our basic questions apply to fantasy: is it true, is it good, is it edifying? Just remember that:
- 'is it true' applies to wisdom and not propositional truth
- we should not expect a fantasy tale to re-create all wisdom, but to convey specific timeless truths
- fantasy is a different world, defined by the author, and so we should not necessarily associate any magic or religion that we see in a fantasy world with a real-world equivalent. We must understand the rules of that world and intent behind them. This points us back to the message(s) and goal(s) of a work, as discussed in part one.
I'll end with some links to other Christian perspectives on fantasy:
- from the Gospel Coalition, on the theology of fantasy in Lewis and Tolkien
- from Kingdom Pen, on magic, fantasy, and the Christian writer
- from Medium.com, on if it is wrong for a Christian to consume fantasy
Next week, I'll continue this series by looking at tabletop games.
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