How Myth Became Fact - Jacob (Blog Post 9)

 My favorite essay by Lewis has to be “How Myth Became Fact.” For Lewis, Myth represents something higher than both factual knowledge and one’s immediate experience. Myth offers one not just truth but reality. Myth makes the concrete and particular into something universal. Part of the mystery of the Christian narrative, for Lewis, is that the Myth does not remain a myth but rather the Myth becomes flesh and dwells among us. This is the Christian mystery. I think it is a mistake to assume the Christian narrative has its power in it being a myth alone. What gives the Christian narrative its power is that the Myth becomes something more than myth, that it is a true Myth. As Tolkien writes, “this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation.” In Myth becoming fact, Myth finds its fulfillment. If the Christian story remained just myth, the story would be robbed of its significance. Myth does just remain spirit, but takes on flesh whose glory one can behold.

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