Travis Seitler [photo]

Travis Seitler is a twenty-something guy living in Marietta, PA with his wife and two kids. Since 2003 He's been writing here about God, government and comic books. You can read more about him if you really want to, and you're invited to drop him a line, like, whenever!

Myth

Posted March 28, 2005

In the sermon my Pastor (Drew Derreth) gave yesterday, he spoke of how fairy tales point to the truth of the gospel, in that there’s something within us that years for the “dashing prince” — the knight in shining armor — to “slay the dragons” and take the downtrodden princess as his bride, to live happily ever after.

I know C.S. Lewis spoke of this in Mere Christianity, but I’m looking for a more elaborate treatise on the subject.

Could anyone offer suggested books and/or articles covering the idea of myth and fantasy being this sort of subconscious yearning for the Gospel?

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6 Comments so far

  1. Pamela B. on March 28th, 2005

    Well…I have not ever heard anything about the fairy tales, just stuff more along the lines of the argument that our innate longing for something proves the existence of God–both in my philosophy textbook and in other sources. That really is the basic argument, anyway. Are you accepting that and asking about the fairy tales themselves, or are you referring to articles describing and explaining the essence of the argument?

  2. Travis on March 28th, 2005

    Kinda something in-between… I guess I’m asking if anyone’s ever sat down and written a book on “The Cross and Myth” that would both explain the essence of the argument, as well as provide illustrations from myths and fairy tales.

    Does that make sense? It’s getting late…

  3. Pamela B. on March 31st, 2005

    Sorry I didn’t respond sooner…since this journal is not LJ, I didn’t remember until I was thinking about it today. ;-) I did look up what you were talking about, though, and the argument your pastor (if I remember your post correctly) seems to be referring to the Argument from Desire, and this particular aspect of it seems to be most associated with C.S. Lewis…as this article shows. It might not be the most reliable source (I don’t know), but the information looks interesting…and it could at least give you an idea of where to look further, I think.

  4. Travis on April 1st, 2005

    Just found an entryon Doug Wilson’s BLOG and MABLOG related to this topic…

  5. Pamela B. on April 2nd, 2005

    That’s an interesting entry…it reminds me of my World Literature I class last year…the teacher had us relate nearly all of what we read to some concept of a hero, and it was striking. She wanted us to compare ideas from that time period to more modern ones–like Superman. She actually even showed us Superman, which was cool…because I’d never seen it before. I was quite amazed by the obvious parallels to Christ. As far as more modern ideas of a hero, especially American ones, we could certainly attribute that to our Puritanical background.

    Whether the older literature supports the argument from desire or not, I’m still not sure…I’m not sure the argument is itself very compelling in the first place, especially since we’ve been influenced so much by existentialistic philosophy (Sartre) and even theology (Kierkegaard). =\ (I have Francis Schaeffer–whose The God Who Is There we studied in Sunday school–and World Literature II both to thank for my current knowledge of that subject.)

    Now I’m off to go and write about this stuff…LOL!

  6. Michael Kelleher on June 28th, 2005

    try “Orthodoxy” by G.K. Chesterton for the likely source of your preacher’s arguments.

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