Covenantal Faërie: A Reformed Evaluation Of Tolkien’s Theory Of Fantasy

By Yannick F. Imbert

[Yannick F. Imbert is Professor of Apologetics at the Faculté Jean Calvin, Aix-en-Provence, France.]

Without much debate, J. R. R. Tolkien can be ranked among the most important fantasy writers. In 1939, Tolkien was invited to give the Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St. Andrews, for which he chose the topic of “fairies,”[1] a surprising one for this highly academic milieu.[2] Tolkien’s lecture, “On Fairy Stories,” along with Chesterton’s chapter “The Ethics of Elfland” in his Orthodoxy, represents one of the most highly articulated theories of Faërie.[3] In his essay, Tolkien addresses questions of the nature, origin, and function of fairy stories, thus giving the essay a significantly scholarly and theological content. Section 1 of the present article will introduce one of the two basic components necessary to a proper consideration of fantasy, or more properly “Faërie,” and explore the construction of what Tolkien called humankind’s sub-creative capacity. The relationship between God’s creative act and humankind’s creativity will be discussed through the contrasted use of Thomas’s concept of analogy and a Reformed understanding of covenantal analogy as presented by Cornelius Van Til. Section 2 will explore the purpose and nature of the imagination before concluding in Section 3 with founding a Reformed understanding of Faërie as a covenantal-ethical creative activity.

The discussion and evaluation of Tolkien’s theory of Faërie must thus take place in the context of his theological tradition, that is, Thomism. At this point, the association of Tolkien with the Thomist tradition might seem rather arbitrary. However, there are good indications that we should read Tolkien against a Thomist theological background. To begin with, Tolkien can be seen as a successor to the Catholic literary revival of the first half of the twentieth century, along with such names as G. K. Chesterton, Maurice Baring, and Hilaire Belloc.[4] This Catholic revival was for an important part the outcome of the Papal encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis (“Feeding the Lord’s Flock”), promulgated by Pope Pius X on September 8, 1907, and condemning modernist and evolutionist positions regarding Catholic faith and dogma.[5] In the wake of the anti-modernist controversy and in the midst of British academic fascination with the same theses, it is no surprise that British Catholics turned towards literature and history.

Tolkien’s Thomist background is further supported by his association with Thomist theologians and writers, such as G. K. Chesterton and Christopher Dawson. The latter was one of the most influential Catholic historians of the twentieth century, and, considering his influence, it is hardly surprising to find an influence on Tolkien.[6] In fact, it appears that Dawson was familiar with Lewis, Tolkien, and the Inklings. Therefore, when he became editor of the Dublin Review, he listed members of the Inklings as desirable regular contributors to the journal, including the aforementioned authors.[7] Tolkien, for example, published his Leaf by Niggle in the 1945 issue of the review at the invitation of Dawson.[8] But Dawson’s relation to Tolkien reached beyond mere recognition. In fact, Tolkien shows decisive signs of direct interaction with Dawson. The first and most personal of these is the fact that Tolkien and Dawson were co-parishioners at St. Aloysius (Gonzaga) Church, served by Jesuits until 1981.[9] Furthermore, in his seminal essay “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien demonstrates a familiarity with the writings of Dawson, borrowing several expressions that play a key role in the developing argument.[10]

Additionally, it is impossible not to mention Chesterton among the influences that shaped Tolkien’s creativity. It was actually difficult for anyone not to come under the spell of Chesterton.[11] Even though his influence was both pervasive and almost invisible, it would be difficult to pinpoint his influence on Tolkien. However, that influence is almost undeniable, as is his Thomism. With respect to the latter, things are straightforward as far as Chesterton was concerned, as the following statement makes clear: “The fact that Thomism is the philosophy of common sense is itself a matter of common sense.”[12] However, the task of exploring and evaluating Chesterton’s influence on Tolkien is difficult, especially since the latter rarely, if ever, directly acknowledged the influences behind his vision.

But the decisive Thomist influence on Tolkien was certainly that of Cardinal John Henry Newman, one of the artisans of the Oxford Movement and one of its first members to come back to the “Roman flock.” Newman’s Thomism is crucial to Tolkien for two reasons, or mainly for these two reasons. First, Newman’s influence on English Catholicism cannot be overestimated, and from his early days in the Oxford Movement to the latter days of his Apologia, Newman’s theology is infused with Thomism. Second, Newman’s influence was palpable in Tolkien’s education under the supervision of Father Xavier Francis Morgan, the Tolkien boys’ guardian and at one time the chaplain of Cardinal Newman. There is little doubt that Tolkien was educated in the tradition of Newman’s Catholicism.

I. Analogy, Covenant, And Subcreation

1. Thomist Subcreation

The space allowed for this article precludes a lengthy discussion on Tolkien’s construction of a Thomist fantasy theory.[13] St. Thomas’s theology of creation is both complex in its content and broad in its implications, and, unfortunately, evaluating Tolkien’s theory of Faërie through Thomism is made more difficult by the differences between Thomas and Thomists on analogy. One of its main features is a consistent reference to the Creator of all things as the source of all being.[14] Thomas uses the term “source” quite explicitly, often associating it with terms such as “cause” or “mover,” as seen in his philosophical construction of the cosmological arguments.[15]

But Thomas does not stop with saying that God is the source of all that exists. Starting with the observation that that which is actual is closely related to that which was formerly only potential, Thomas affirms that God is the source of all for which being can be predicated. Therefore, nothing that exists, whether in actuality or potentiality, does so outside the creating activity of God, the Source of all beings. To say the contrary would be to support the opinion that some potential things exist independently from God. Actual and potential things alike have their source in the originator of beings, the one in whom potentiality and actuality are coextensive. Indeed, it is possible to read Question 3, Article 2 of Thomas’s Quaestiones disputatae de potentia as indirectly treating this very question.

Tolkien himself echoes Thomas in his use of the expression “Prime Being,” even if it is in a rather loose reference to the Creator-God.[16] Moreover, Tolkien stressed in quite Chestertonian terms the ultimate sovereignty of God over all creations—whether “real” or “imaginary,” whether “actual” or “potential.” For example, he once stated that “in every world on every plane all must ultimately be under the Will of God,” thus affirming with Thomas that all that exists, even in the mind, has its source in God, the Divine Mind, source of our own minds.[17] Tolkien, in one of the devotional letters he was accustomed to sending, wrote to his publisher’s daughter that there is a “Creator-Designer, a Mind to which our minds are akin (being derived from it) so that It is intelligent to us in part.”[18] The reference to God as the Designer leads us to investigate the relation between God and his creation.

This is significant to Tolkien’s understanding of fantasy because, opposing the contemporary definition of fairy stories as tales about fairies—little airy, tricky, flying creatures—Tolkien argued that fairy stories are more about the land of Faërie. Tolkien’s constant reference to fairy stories as stories about the land of Faërie points towards the priority of the created order of Faërie. For him, Faërie is primarily a place and not a state of being; and fairy stories are not about small creatures called fairies, but about a land called Faërie.[19] They are about the Perilous Realm, the place of Faërie, a place where beings of all sorts stay and wander, enter and trespass, live and die.[20] Tolkien’s stress on the “spatial” and physical nature of Faërie leads to questions about the origin and nature of Faërie as a created order; for a Roman Catholic like Tolkien, a created order implies the existence of a creator.

In approaching Tolkien’s theory of subcreation from a critical perspective, it is first necessary to look at the related notions of being and analogy. As we well know, the notion of being is central in Thomas and provides the ground for his understanding of the concept and function of analogy. Tolkien’s reference to God as the Prime Being is, of course, a clear reference to Thomas’s concept of a transcendental notion of being, which provides the ground for understanding the relationship between God and man. Thomas is usually seen as defending the view that both God and man have being according to their own nature. God has being according to his nature, and man has being according to his nature, thus providing a basis for an analogical relationship between God and man.

In the epistolary quote mentioned above in which Tolkien talks about the “Creator-Designer, a Mind to which our minds are akin (being derived from it) so that It is intelligent to us in part,” the importance of this allusion to the analogical spirit of Thomism cannot be overestimated. Moreover, for Thomas the concept of analogy functions as a proportional category. This analogy of proportionality is not the only kind of analogy present in Thomas’s writings, but it is his main means of explaining and describing the Creator-creature distinction. The application of Thomist analogy to the theory of fantasy leads to the description of the subcreated order as analogical to our created order.

2. Van Til On Thomist Analogy

A Reformed evaluation of Tolkien’s theory of fantasy must approach the task from an analogical direction, and then must focus on Thomas’s concept of ontological analogy, or analogy of being—as it has popularly been understood by Thomist literary writers. One of the main problems with this notion of being is the ambiguity of the term “being,” which can be applied to all things, thus functioning as common ground for both God and man.[21] Even though it is highly doubtful that Thomas himself entertained the view of a univocal expression of being, this view has certainly been held by some Thomists. Such a common ground is a danger that most of the Christian tradition has been trying to avoid. The danger is to blur the distinction between the Creator and the creatures by including both in a univocal concept of being—and, as a consequence, a univocal notion of creativity and imagination.

The distinction between God and his creatures proves to be a stumbling block for many Christian theologies. Many are those who have strived to maintain this difference without denying the possibility of a real relationship between God and man. Van Til argued that, in fact, Reformed theology is best placed to solve the problem of God’s relationship to man—while maintaining their essential distinction. This distinction between the Creator and his creatures is one of the features most stressed by Van Til. For him, there is no other starting point in theological investigation than the consideration of a duality of being: “The Christian concept of hermeneutics is based first of all upon the creation idea, that is, upon the conviction that there are not merely one but two levels of existence, and that man must be interpreted in terms of God.”[22] For Van Til, there is not one concept of being, but two radically distinct ones, that is, the ontological Trinity, and creatures.[23]

And thus, this initial stress on the duality of being in Reformed theology naturally leads to the issue of analogical reasoning. Of course, the importance of a concept of analogy is not restricted to Thomism or Roman Catholicism. However, by contrast to the concept of an “ontological analogy,” Reformed theology defends the position of a covenantal, or epistemological, analogy.[24] In fact, Reformed theologians do not deny the necessity of analogical thinking. For example, Van Til argues that “the necessity of reasoning analogically is always implied in the theistic conception of God, if God is to be thought of at all as necessary for man’s interpretation of the facts or objects of knowledge. In other words, he must then be thought of as the only ultimate interpreter, and man must be thought of as a finite reinterpreter.”[25] Van Til always emphatically stressed the necessity of analogical reasoning, as Thomas did in his own way, but with a very different theological basis and conclusions. We do not imply that the Thomist and the Van Tilian concepts of analogy are identical—even though there might be more commonalities than are often recognized. Van Til’s main difference from the Roman Catholic understanding of analogy is his location of analogy within an epistemological framework, not an ontological one. In Thomas’s theology, the notion of analogy is most properly connected to the category of creational ontology, that is, to human nature. The necessity for analogical relationship is due to human nature, that is, to a sort of defect ontologically inherent in human nature.[26]

For Van Til, analogy is also the fruit of an ontological category while not being ontological in itself. We could well summarize the differences between Thomas’s concept of analogy and Van Til’s, indicating that although “for Thomas there was an analogy of being, for Van Til, the notion of analogy was meant to communicate the ontological and epistemological difference between God and man. This difference has been expressed historically in terms of an archetypal/ectypal relationship.”[27] In other words, Thomas’s concept of analogy is most properly connected to God’s being itself, thus grounding the necessity of analogical thinking for Van Til in the radical distinction between God and man.[28] This explains the reason Van Til located this necessary analogy in ontology while making it an epistemological category. In fact, if God and man are radically and ontologically differentiated, this entails that their knowledge must also be radically different, thus necessitating the introduction of analogy.[29] The difference between Thomas and Van Til is thus an opposition between ontological and epistemological analogies. Further, this distinction between the Thomist and the Van Tilian concept of analogy is closely connected to the different views they held regarding the relation between nature and grace—more precisely between natural knowledge and renewed knowledge. Van Til has repeatedly argued against the crucially mistaken Thomist dichotomy between nature and grace. It is impossible to give a complete summary of Van Til’s criticism of the Thomist nature/grace dichotomy here. Rather, we will explain this dichotomy in terms of epistemological categories.

Starting with Thomas’s theology, one of the most important points to notice is that for Thomas knowledge is not necessarily mediated. This conclusion is demonstrated in his concept of the beatific vision, in which a human being will be given immediate knowledge of God. As a consequence, the analogical relationship between God and man will eventually be superseded by the beatific vision—the immediate creaturely knowledge of God. Thomas asserts the necessity for the concept of analogy because of the created nature of human beings. For Thomas, created human nature is somehow defective—and being defective, it cannot comprehend God. This necessitates the entry into the beatific vision for a proper knowledge of God.[30]

By contrast, Van Til maintains the necessity of analogical reasoning even in the beatific state. Van Til affirms that in no state will man be able to attain an immediate knowledge of God because his status as creature denies him this possibility. Rather, man will know truly, as he always did, but still not exhaustively—which is for Van Til the crucial relevance of the concept of analogical reasoning.[31] One of the reasons for Van Til’s insistence on the permanence of analogical reasoning is the Reformed conviction that all knowledge of God is revelational in nature.[32] For Van Til, taking his cue from Bavinck, human knowledge is always supernaturally mediated.[33] Both natural prelapsarian knowledge and beatific, or consummate, knowledge require a revelational mediation—a point argued by Van Til in analogical or derivative terms.[34] For Thomas, the concept of analogy is made necessary because of a creaturely fact, that is, the defect of created human reasoning and creativity. Interestingly enough, for Van Til, analogy is also made necessary by a creaturely fact. However, Van Til does not equate this fact with a defect but with a natural state: the state of having been created.[35]

As a concluding remark, it is difficult to see concretely how this rejection of ontological analogy affects the writing of fairy stories. However, it is certain that, given Tolkien’s reliance on the Thomist understanding of analogy, his overall concept of how fairy stories are affected by their relation to the “Christian story” is open to criticism. To go further in this evaluation of Tolkien’s Thomist Faërie, we will now contrast Thomas’s analogia entis approach to the Reformed covenantal framework.

3. Covenantal Subcreation

The brief evaluation of Thomist analogical subcreation points to the problem inherent in the reasoning based on an ambiguous concept of being. As we have seen, even though Thomist theology is merely trying to provide a ground on which to establish the possibility of a relation between God and man, the combination of being and analogy does not help Thomism to achieve this goal.[36] Reformed theology also faces the problem of finding a proper ground on which to base its exposition of the relationship between God and man, but locates the covenantal relationship not in the ontological realm but in an epistemological and ethical one. The central concept in this matter is the doctrine of the covenant, considered as the relationship between God and man.[37] Of all twentieth-century Reformed theologians Van Til is probably the one who has most vehemently defended this element. One clear summative sentence of Van Til’s view of the covenant is given in his Christian Apologetics, in which he affirms that “basic to the whole activity of philosophy and science is the idea of the covenant.”[38] One of the driving theological concepts of Van Til’s presuppositional apologetics is the understanding of the relationship between God and man in exclusively covenantal-ethical terms. In fact, according to Van Til, the covenant is not merely a framework for obedience, but the very vehicle for human consciousness and knowledge of God:

Covenant consciousness envelops creature consciousness. In paradise Adam knew that as a creature of God it was natural and proper that he should keep the covenant that God had made with him. In this way it appears that man’s proper self-consciousness depended, even in paradise, upon his being in contact with both supernatural and natural revelation. God’s natural revelation was within man as well as about him. Man’s very constitution as a rational and moral being is itself revelational to man as the ethically responsible rector to revelation. And natural revelation is itself incomplete. It needed from the outset to be supplemented with supernatural revelation about man’s future.[39]

This “supernatural revelation about man’s future” can be described as being essentially the covenant. Bavinck thus explains the function of the two trees of the Garden of Eden—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life—in terms of human knowledge of God’s will for the future of his creatures. Without this supernatural and revelational knowledge, man would not have attained this understanding by “natural” and unfallen reason. For Van Til, from the creative act to the consummative act, all relations between God and man are revelational, that is, covenantal.[40] The contrast between the Thomist and the Van Tilian positions is thus between an ontological category and a covenantal-ethical one.

Our discussion and evaluation of Thomas lead us to conclude that in his theology, human activity is an ontological response to the Creator—a response motivated by a form of analogical relationship, the analogia entis. As a consequence, Thomist myth-making must also be regarded as an ontological human response. By contrast, for Van Til, all human activities are first and foremost covenantal-ethical responses to God.[41] This ethical direction of Van Til’s characterization of man’s stance towards God is based on the Reformed doctrine of sin and his all-encompassing concept of the covenant. To begin with, Van Til stresses his opposition to the Thomist understanding of sin as an ontological category. Van Til once again relocates the nature of sin to the ethical category allowing only for a metaphysical consequence of sin—man becoming sinful and the noetic effects of sin perverting the whole human person, including his imagination and “myth-making” capacity so important to Tolkien and Lewis. For Van Til, to define sin as an ontological category is to allow for the very possibility for human autonomy.

In this sense Thomism is consistent since it provides the noetic ground for its subsequent epistemology. In fact, if sin is metaphysical in nature, we are bound to affirm that unbelievers are metaphysically separated from God and that their nature is independent from God himself. It would also entail the freedom of mankind’s imagination from any constraints including the Creator. In turn imagination could create worlds “of its own,” wholly independent from created reality—but this even the Thomist Chesterton does not allow.[42] Van Til, of course, would not have allowed this separation. In fact he affirmed that

there is not and can never be an absolute separation between God and man. Man is always accessible to God. There can be no absolute antithesis in this sense of the term. In this respect Protestant theology, and in particular Reformed theology, stands over against the analogia entis idea of Romanist theology. On a Romanist basis man might, as it were, escape from the face of God. He might fall entirely into the realm of nonbeing. . . . There is therefore on the basis of Romanism no inescapable revelation of God within the constitution of man.[43]

For Van Til, God’s revelation of himself is an inescapable reality from which man cannot hide. Whether man acknowledges his covenantal relationship with God or not, or whether he deceives himself in claiming his alleged autonomy, man cannot escape the reality that God is his God.[44]

Further, for Van Til, the human stance towards God is ethical in nature because it is essentially a covenantal position. Van Til unabashedly affirms that all human beings are covenantal beings, that is, that they are either covenant-keepers or covenant-breakers.[45] This essential covenantal relationship between God and man is further justified by the understanding that all human knowledge is mediated, and by Van Til’s conviction that God’s creational revelation of himself to man is covenantal in nature. For Van Til the consequence is that “the natural man seeks to suppress the pressure of God’s revelation in nature that is about him. He seeks to suppress the pressure of conscience within him.”[46]

The consequence of this ethical-covenantal position is that the response of man to God is, in any given human activity, a covenantal and ethical one—not an ontological one. In his alternative choice of action and creation, man always demonstrates his position as covenant-keeper or covenant-breaker, as submitting to the grace and will of God or rebelling against them.[47] Van Til affirms that “Man as a creature cannot will anything either by way of obedience or by way of disobedience except in a relation of subordination to the plan of God.”[48] By contrast to the Thomist ontological analogy, and because of the centrality of the covenantal relationship in Reformed theology, we can term this analogical relationship between God and man “covenantal analogy.”

Thus, Faërie is not an ontological response to God, nor is it an ontological category, the fruit of man’s analogical creative activity. Rather, Faërie is an ethical activity, involving an ethical response on the part of the fairy story writer. Faërie is the ethical artistic activity of man before the glorious and self-contained Lord of all.[49] Faërie also demonstrates what Van Til, following Kuyper, called the “principle of antithesis.” The fairy story subcreator proclaims either God’s creation and faithfulness or man’s autonomy. He wanders either into a land filled with God’s loving blessings, or into a land of shadows. Since all human activity is covenantal in nature—testifying either to the breaking or the keeping of the covenantal relationship with God—Faërie is also a covenantal activity, an artistic endeavor that can give glory to God by displaying the loving obedience of God’s creatures fulfilling the divine will.[50]

II. The Purpose And Nature Of The Imagination

If fantasy, myth-making, or Faërie, as Tolkien called it, takes root in analogical participation, Tolkien’s Thomist fantasy is also built on a well-informed reflection on the nature and working of the imagination. Indeed, it is impossible to understand the construction of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth without considering the nature and workings of the imagination. In the following paragraphs, we will consider how Tolkien’s view of the imagination reflects an interaction with significant authors such as Barfield, Coleridge, Chesterton, or again Thomas Aquinas. We will at the same time evaluate Tolkien’s imagination through the lens of a Reformed approach to the imagination.

1. Tolkien On The Imagination

It is impossible to describe in a few summative paragraphs the complexity of Tolkien’s view of the imagination without referring, even briefly, to the relevance of four philosophers and theologians. The first, as should be expected, is Thomas and his discussion of the place of imagination with respect to other powers, especially the intellect. For Thomas “the kinds of power in the soul are distinguished through their objects. The higher a power the more extensive its scope, as we noted above.”[51] Second, Samuel T. Coleridge and his interpreter Owen Barfield, who were a crucial influence on Tolkien’s view of myth and language, are important to the understanding of Tolkien’s imagination.[52] The powers of what Coleridge called primary and secondary imagination are, in this context, an important part of this Coleridgean influence.[53] Third, Newman, with his construction of the “illative sense,” should receive proper attention in the way Tolkien adapted this insight to a theory of imagination and Faërie. Fourth, Chesterton’s Thomism is crucial to the understanding of Tolkien’s writings. It is from Thomas that Chesterton borrows the conviction that the world is, and that to recognize it as such is just a matter of common sense. For Chesterton, as for Thomas, there was no point in asking the question of the reality of cognition and recognition.[54]

The question of the purpose and nature of the imagination is a complex one and it is impossible to answer this question in the few pages allocated here. Rather, we will only look at Tolkien’s definition of the imagination and contrast it with definitions established by contemporary theologians. We will conclude with a brief presentation of Calvin’s opinion on the matter.

In the recent edition of Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories” edited by Flieger and Henderson, previous versions and drafts are included. In one of the versions of the essay, Tolkien comments on the faculty of the imagination in this way:

The faculty of conceiving the images is properly called the Imagination. But in recent times Imagination has been held to be something higher than Fantasy; to be the power of giving to ideal creations the inner consistency of reality. That distinction seems to me confused. The mental part of image-making is one thing, and should naturally be called imagination. The grasp, and vivid perception of the image, a necessary preliminary to its successful expression, is a difference not of kind but of degree. The achievement of that expression which gives the inner consistency of Reality—that is, commands Secondary Belief—is indeed another thing: the gift of Art.[55]

Tolkien begins by agreeing with Coleridge that the imagination is the faculty that forms images based on the five senses. However, he parts company with Coleridge on the distinction between two kinds of imagination. Instead of talking like Coleridge about two kinds of imagination, Tolkien argues that the difference is one of degree.

For Tolkien, there still exists two degrees of imagination, one natural and one artistic. The former is image-making proper, the perception and description of it. The latter is the “achievement” of the “artistic” expression arising out of this initial formation of images. This achievement is complete only when it gives to the “imagined creation” the inner consistency of Reality. Tolkien argues that the secondary degree of the imagination necessarily reflects the consistency of reality. Tolkien’s theory of the imagination is very close to a definition of fantasy, or rather, fantasy is the closest to pure imagination because of the special power Tolkien attaches to it. In forming his theory of the imagination, Tolkien demonstrates the influence of Romantic philosophy and artistic theory.

Chesterton was the latest influence on Tolkien’s already fertile mind. Coming under the influence of Chesterton was not difficult, and it was far from uncommon. One of the main differences between Chesterton and the previous authors mentioned is that he did not try to build a theory of the imagination. Certainly, it could be argued that neither did Thomas, but there is in the Angelic Doctor’s writings a lengthy discussion about the imagination. As for Coleridge, he was directly concerned with the powers of the imagination, whereas Chesterton did not have a precise, full-blown theory of the imagination. Some of his most important points are found in Orthodoxy, especially in the chapters “The Maniac” and “The Ethics of Elfland”; in the Father Brown story “The Blue Cross”; as well as in related journal articles written for the London Illustrated News.[56]

Tolkien valued highly the power of the imagination and the existence of Faërie.[57] For example, he stated that “the magic of Faërie is not an end in itself, its virtue is in its operations.”[58] Tolkien’s view of the imagination is a complex blending of all previous influences. At first sight, Tolkien seems closer to Barfield, and thus Coleridge, than he is to Chesterton, not to mention Thomas. However, a closer look is needed. In so doing, we are confronted at first with a problem. It is difficult to find a precise answer regarding the question of whether the imagination functions, for Tolkien, more like Thomas’s or Coleridge’s interpretations. In fact, Tolkien seems to integrate some aspects of both. His use of the expressions “primary world” and “secondary world” obviously echoes Coleridge’s distinction between primary and secondary imagination.

However, it is notable that Tolkien never refers to the distinctively Barfieldean aspect of Coleridge’s theory of the imagination. Never does Tolkien mention the “evolution of consciousness,” or the possibility that imagination might give insights into the coming stages of this evolution. Rather, in Thomist terms, the imagination is similar to the intellect in that it serves as an analogical relation to the universal being. As Thomas affirms: “For the intellect is in potency or in act according to the relation it maintains with universal being. In considering the nature of this relation, we find, at its highest degree, an intellect whose relation to universal being consists in being the very act of being taken in its totality.”[59]

This use of the imagination in Coleridgean and Barfieldean terms contrasts with aspects Tolkien clearly borrowed from Chesterton and Thomas. For example, Tolkien commented, “I should have said that liberation ‘from the channels the creator is known to have used already’ is the fundamental function of ‘sub-creation,’ a tribute to the infinity of His potential variety, one of the ways in which indeed it is exhibited, as indeed I said in the Essay [i.e., “On Fairy Stories”].”[60] This recalls Thomas’s view that the fruits of the imagination are based on the information furnished by the senses. Imagination does not work out of a vacuum, but with pre-existing elements.[61] Strangely, Chesterton seems to go much further than Thomas in arguing that fairyland provides liberation from the observable laws of this world. In turn, Tolkien echoes both Thomas and Chesterton in defining Faërie as that “which combines with its older and higher use as an equivalent of Imagination the derived notions of ‘unreality’ (that is, of unlikeness to the Primary World), of freedom from the domination of observed ‘fact,’ in short of the fantastic.”[62] It is not certain whether Thomas would have wholeheartedly agreed or not, should he have been faced with the question, since he seems to have entertained a dual view on this matter. Of course, he allows for the creative powers of the imagination as seen in the Summa theologiae. But Thomas also argues that the imagination cannot create something standing at the opposite of God’s creation. It seems therefore that there is a binding aspect to the imagination according to Thomas, a counterbalance to freedom from “observed fact.”

This distinction is at the heart of the Thomists’ understanding of the nature and workings of the imagination, and thus is also at the heart of both Chesterton’s and Tolkien’s theories. To borrow the words of Jacques Maritain, another well-known twentieth-century Thomist:

Art, then, remains fundamentally inventive and creative. It is the faculty of producing, not of course ex nihilo, but from a pre-existing matter, a new creature, an original being, capable of stirring in turn a human soul. This new creature is the fruit of a spiritual marriage which joins the activity of the artist to the passivity of a given matter.[63]

The imagination, says Thomas, does not copy but imitates. A copy is merely a reproduction of the exact original while an imitation is a creative work based on the model. True imagination is not content with merely (re)producing perceived images, but also creates images based on pre-perceived ones. This is seen in Chesterton’s previously quoted comment on the connection between the actual world and the imagined world. This connection exists and is set forth by Chesterton in terms of the moral nature of all possible worlds, moral nature that reflects that of the Creator. As we have already said, this demonstrates that for the Thomists, imagination is not unbridled but is bound by the nature of the universal Being.[64]

We can now see the implication of Thomas’s explanation of the working of the imagination for Tolkien’s theory of the imagination. Faërie is not a land completely abstracted from the nature of the primary world. Certainly, it is independent in its form, but it corresponds to the nature of the primary world. As we have said, the view that imagination functions analogically to the sense-forms perceived by the sensitive soul is central. Significantly, Tolkien said that “creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it.”[65] This perception-freedom is seen in the evolution of Tolkien’s language, an evolution that is based on the framework learned from the philological study of actualized languages. Another example is Tolkien’s creativity in the matter of descriptions, which is always based on a first “exemplar,” our actualized world, as imagination works out new mental images based on existent and substantial ones. Tolkien’s descriptive skill is a demonstration of Maritain’s assertion that “artistic creation does not copy God’s creation, it continues it.”[66] Thus, the order of Faërie is a continuation of our created order. The appeal of Faërie is a continuation and extension of the appeal of God’s revelation on nature.

3. Imagination As A Mode Of Cognition

A proper view of the nature and function of the imagination recognizes the imagination as one aspect of the whole human person. Early Reformers like John Calvin allowed for the cognitive relevance of the imagination. Interestingly, Calvin mentions the powers of the human soul in Book 1 of the Institutes dealing with “the knowledge of God the creator.”[67] From the start, Calvin allows the imagination to function as a means itself or within the means of cognition.

In chapter 15 of Book 1, we find a summary of his position regarding human nature, its faculties, and the meaning of the image of God. Calvin’s opinion is that imagination, which he calls “fantasy,” a term that recalls Thomas’s phantasia,

distinguishes between the objects brought into the sensorium [common sense]: Next, reason, to which the general power of judgment belongs: And, lastly, intellect, which contemplates with fixed and quiet look whatever reason discursively revolves. In like manner, to intellect, fancy, and reason, the three cognitive faculties of the soul, correspond three appetive faculties, viz., will, whose office is to choose whatever reason and intellect propound; irascibility, which seizes on what is set before it by reason and fancy; and concupiscence, which lays hold of the objects presented by sense and fancy.[68]

For Calvin, the power or faculty of the imagination is at the very beginning of the cognitive process. It is that specific power that allows the initial processing of the information furnished by the five senses—a point he grants to Thomas and the medieval scholastics.

This is not the only point that Calvin concedes to the medieval scholastics. In the very first two pages of the sixth paragraph directly concerned with the faculties of the soul, there is much agreement between Calvin and the “schoolmen.” However, two main issues stand between Calvin and his Catholic predecessors regarding the nature and faculties of the soul. The main one is the rejection by the non-Platonic tradition of the immortal nature of the human soul. Calvin will not have the soul be anything other than immortal; he is uncompromising on this point, rejecting most of the latter medieval theologians in their stress on the materiality of the soul. The second point of disagreement is the Thomist distinction between different kinds of soul. Calvin declares that he “repudiate[s] those persons who would affirm more than one soul in man, that is, a sensitive soul and a rational soul.”[69] It is not clear who Calvin had in mind, even though Plato’s Republic is referenced. Thomas, following Aristotle, had argued for a threefold division of the human soul, adding the vegetative soul to the previous two, and thus falls under the criticism of the Genevan Reformer.[70]

Calvin is concerned about maintaining the unity of the human personality and so will not hear of several souls in man.[71] Such a division is unwarranted and unsupported by biblical evidence. Van Til makes the same point, affirming that “we will not set the feeling in opposition to the intellect. God has created man as a harmony. One aspect of man’s personality cannot lead us deeper into reality than another aspect can.”[72] This also explains the importance and necessity of the regenerative work of the Spirit for the proper working of the imagination. In fact, if human personality is a whole, the noetic effect of sin has a global effect, and so does the regeneration of the Spirit.

Beyond these two main disagreements, Calvin is not afraid to claim that “I, indeed, agree that the things they [the philosophers] teach are true, not only enjoyable, but also profitable to learn, and skillfully assembled by them, and I do not forbid those who are desirous of learning to study them.”[73] In fact, Calvin does not argue against the scholastics regarding the faculties of the soul but merely simplifies their categories and retains only three cognitive powers: fantasy, reason, and understanding, as we saw in the preceding summary quote. Further, these three cognitive powers are not separate powers each yielding a specific kind of knowledge, but they are three consecutive and necessary aspects of the process of human cognition. It would thus be a mistake to affirm that the imagination by itself can yield knowledge. For Calvin, the three cognitive powers should be in relation to one another in order for human cognition to function properly.

To go further into a Reformed view of the imagination it is necessary to notice Calvin’s attitude towards images—the close semantic, etymological derivation and use of the terms “image” and “imagination” requires it. Calvin has the reputation of having been extremely opposed to images and to have been the cause of the dramatic iconoclasm that marked the non-Lutheran Reformation. That Reformed iconoclasm led to a period of artistic slumber is, no doubt, an overstatement. Certainly, Calvin strongly opposed the use of any images in the worship of God, and he was uncompromising on this point. However, Calvin’s attitude is not due to a rejection or denigration of the imagination itself.

Rather, it is because imagination has a first place in the process of cognition that Calvin never ceased warning against the dangers of imagination standing alone. For Calvin the whole process of human cognition is a three-step process moving from the imagination to reason to the understanding. In the same manner that reason, if uninformed by the two other modes of cognition, is a potential ground for pride and idolatry, so imagination, if cut off from reason and understanding, leads to pure vanity and folly. On this matter, all three modes of cognition can lead to epistemological deception when they are not used together as a single, regenerated epistemological process.

For Calvin, the issue of the use of images is therefore a pastoral one. He is concerned that the congregants might be attracted to the images without making proper use of their cognitive faculty and thus might be led into spiritual and intellectual deception about God. That is, Calvin is concerned about the unrestrained imagination that compromises the knowledge of God the Creator. Again, this is so because for Calvin, the imagination is the primary faculty in the order of cognition—in terms of order, and process, not in terms of cognitive importance. Therefore, the imagination is also the primary factor in the order of temptation.[74]

This brief survey of Calvin’s position regarding the imagination, its nature and faculty, points towards the importance of the sanctified imagination. By this we do not mean the kind of regenerative and mediating nature that other theologians have granted to the imagination. In fact, Calvin also stresses the necessity for the imagination to be informed by a mediating category, but it is a very different one—a category that can be explained through two main features of Calvin’s theology.

First, Calvin repeatedly affirms that mediation is in essence always personal—the mediator being Christ himself. Mediation, as a transcendental and renewing category, is thus never purely human but primarily divine. Moreover, mediation so conceived is not impersonal as it is in the case of a mediating faculty like the imagination. In the matter of relation with the “spiritual world,” that is, the absolutely personal triune God, the mediating element must be personal. In the case of personal human restoration, the mediation must be personal as well.

Second, Calvin, having rightly been called the doctor of the Holy Spirit, stresses the holistic nature of the regenerative work of the Spirit. Again, the means of regeneration cannot be other than divine.[75] The means of recovering true meaning about anything, about our environment or about God himself, is due to the regenerative work of the third person of the Trinity. Moreover, this regenerative work is not based on any faculty inherent to man but works in renewing all human faculties, including the imagination. To exclude the imagination from the regenerative process is to give it a place identical to natural reason in Roman Catholic theology. In fact, it is a return to semi-Pelagianism.[76] Of course, a proper Reformed theory of the imagination will have nothing of the sort and will proclaim the necessity of being renewed in our imaginative capacity as in all other human capacities.

In conclusion, for Calvin, it is precisely because imagination has such an important place that it should be carefully used, and always in tandem with the two other modes of cognition. Hence, Calvin stresses the necessity for creativity but rejects the use of images in worship and devotion.[77] Moreover, we should also consciously strive for the regeneration of our imagination.

III. Conclusion: Covenant And The Nature Of Faërie

In this concluding section, we will look at what Reformed theology can contribute to the understanding of Faërie. Two central Reformed concepts form the foundation of this contribution, that of common grace and the covenant. Indeed, if a Thomist account of Faërie is, at its core, informed by a Thomist understanding of creation and imagination, it is quite logical that a Reformed understanding will be theologically informed by main epistemological and metaphysical concepts.

1. Common Grace And The Theology Of Faërie

The Reformed notion of common grace is a central concept in the understanding of the present condition of the unbeliever and his relation to truth, history, and God.[78] As Ryken says, “God reveals truth not only in the Bible but in creation, including culture and human reason. God’s common grace endows all people, believers and unbelievers alike, with a capacity for truth, goodness, beauty, and creativity.”[79] Actually, Ryken commits the mistake here of confusing common grace for a notion belonging to the created order: in fact, common grace does not give the ability for goodness, truth, or beauty. These “abilities,” if they can be so called, are part of what it is to be created by God. The knowledge of the beauty and covenantal goodness of the creation is a knowledge implanted by God at creation. It is part of being created in the image of God.

Seerveld is more to the point when he affirms that “what the concept Common Grace rightly describes, it seems to me, is the state of affairs that after the fall creational structures in which creatures continued to live and move and have their meaning did not become anti-godly but remained integrally valid (geldend).”[80] Seerveld continues by arguing that what changes is merely the human answer to God. Common grace implies that there is no antithesis between man and the created world. Notably, that is a point that Van Til also makes in connection to proper philosophical and theological investigation.

Common grace works in all human activity to restrain sin and allow for civil works. Common grace describes the attitude of God towards unbelievers, an attitude that results in the blessing of natural gifts like sunshine and rain. In some ways, common grace also serves to explain why unbelievers can have an intellectual understanding of the truths of nature and the truths revealed in the Bible.[81] This implies that, in the matter of mythopoeic creation, common grace provides a different way of understanding and interpreting the value of pagan myths.[82] God, through the activity of his common grace in mythologies and mythmakers, works through unbelievers to disclose his grace, their rebellion, and their knowledge of the Creator. As such, the writing of fairy stories is open to apologetic evaluation.

2. Covenantal Imagination

To continue our investigation of covenantal Faërie, a few words regarding the principle of imagination and artistic creation are necessary. A proper foundation, in Reformed theology, is found in the union of the categories of covenantal relationship and common grace, both informed by the central concept of the image of God—both the image of God per se, Christ, and the image of God in man.[83] The focus on the second person of the Trinity as the “principle” of our imaginative pursuit results in stressing two theological points. First, we need to maintain the integrity of created human nature. Being made in the image of Christ, we were created to know God and reflect his person and character. We were created for knowledge, imagination, and so forth. This emphasis helps us ground the Reformed theory of the imagination in the ethical realm. The capacity for fairy story writing is part of a created capacity that reflects the original innocence of man, and that now reflects love and obedience, or rebellion and pride. Secondly, we need to maintain the covenantal nature of all human capacities. Our imagination is a covenantal imagination: it stands before the eye of God. A complete study of Reformed Faërie should also investigate the relation between the natural, moral, and metaphysical laws of the created order and their implications on the laws of the subcreated order. It would also be necessary to explain more precisely the issue of inner consistency of the Faërie world. A few of these elements have been only hinted at in this study, which aims at being a preparation for a more extensive study.

The center of a proper Reformed theory of Faërie is not in the aforementioned themes, but rather in the covenantal and ethical definition of Faërie. Fairy stories are within man, in the imaginative faculty that is itself part of the image of God. Fairy stories are ethical in nature since they reflect our covenantal position before God. As such, all fairy stories will reflect either love of God or rebellion against him. Fairy stories either proclaim that the triune God is Lord of man—and elves—or proclaim man’s alleged autonomy. A Reformed perspective on the imagination and Faërie, applied through Van Tilian apologetics, can provide a lasting and glorious answer to Samwise’s question: “Who invented the stories anyway?”[84] The God who is, the ontological Trinity, is the epistemological and metaphysical basis for Faërie and fantasy writing. For us, Faërie becomes an ethical artistic response to the glory of the creative God.

Notes

1. Defining “fantasy,” or even “fairies,” is a difficult task. Dictionaries and introductory works are not helpful here since each one presents a different view of fantasy. Colin Manlove, a respected literary critic, gives two definitions which, taken together, give a more precise meaning to his use of the word. Fantasy, he says, is “a fiction dealing with the Christian supernatural, often in an imagined world” (Colin Manlove, Christian Fantasy: From 1200 to the Present [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992], 5).
2. See Flieger and Anderson’s commented edition of Tolkien’s “On Fairy Stories”: J. R. R. Tolkien, Tolkien On Fairy Stories (ed. Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson; London: HarperCollins, 2008), esp. 128-30.
3. For Chesterton’s “The Ethics of Elfland,” see G. K. Chesterton, The Collected Works (ed. G. J. Marlin et al.; 35 vols; San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986-1992), 1:249-68.
4. In a way, Dorothy L. Sayers, though strictly speaking an Anglican (as was C. S. Lewis), or rather an Anglo Catholic, can be seen as part of the same literary revival.
5. Pius X, Pascendi dominici gregis, The Holy See, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_x/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_19070908_pascendi-dominici-gregis_en.html (accessed April 24, 2009).
6. In his introduction to Sanctifying the World, Birzer makes a very convincing case for the crucial importance of Dawson, quoting from a wide range of highly respected Catholic theologians and scholars paying their respects to Dawson, among these the French neo-Thomist Etienne Gilson. See Bradley J. Birzer, Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson (Front Royal, Va.: Christendom Press, 2007), 4-5. In 1950 a Dominican journal even compared Dawson to the famed Newman stating that: “Mr. Dawson is an educator; perhaps the greatest that Heaven has sent us English Catholics since Newman” (Kenelm Foster, “Mr. Dawson and Christendom,” Blackfriars 31 [1950]: 423).
7. Birzer, Sanctifying the World, 8.
8. J. R. R. Tolkien “Leaf by Niggle,” Dublin Review 216 (1945): 46-61.
9. Tolkien shared with Christopher Dawson a special interest in Newmanian Catholicism, as Pearce points out: “Returning to Oxford [in 1909] he [Dawson] came to know several more Catholics and a few priests, again through his friendship with Watkin. At the Newman Society (the Oxford Catholic society for undergraduates) he heard Wilfrid Ward speak on the circumstances in which Newman wrote his Apologia pro Vita Sua. It was about this time that he first became interested in Newman and the Oxford Movement, and Newman’s Apologia was to be a considerable influence on his own conversion. According to Christina Scott, ‘His whole attitude was rather like Newman’s. He came to the Faith through history and the study of the Fathers of the Church’” (Joseph Pearce, Literary Converts: Spiritual Inspiration in an Age of Unbelief [San Francisco: Ignatius, 2000], 41).
10. The first two of these borrowed phrases, the “march of Science” and “improved means to deteriorated ends” (J. R. R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays [London: HarperCollins, 1997], 149) refer to Dawson’s argument in The Judgment of Nations, that “a civilization which concentrates on means and neglects almost entirely to consider ends must inevitably become disintegrated and despiritualized” (see Christopher Dawson, The Judgment of Nations [New York: Sheed & Ward, 1942], 118).
11. Michael Ffinch reports that Gardiner commented, “Mr Chesterton’s extravagances have none of this quality [self-conscious, bound to his time]. He is not a rebel. He is a wayfarer from the ages, stopping at the inn of life, warming himself at the fire and making the rafters ring with his jolly laughter.” Gardiner humorously noted, “I can conceive of him standing on his head in Fleet Street in sheer joy at the sight of St. Paul’s” (Michael Ffinch, G. K. Chesterton [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986], 105).
12. G. K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1933), 171. As Hunter commented, “Etienne Gilson, the noted Thomist scholar, says that Chesterton in St. Thomas Aquinas was ‘nearer the real Thomas than I am after reading and teaching the Angelic Doctor for sixty years’” (Lynette Hunter, G. K. Chesterton: Explorations in Allegory [New York: St. Martin’s, 1979], 173).
13. The author has tried elsewhere to give such an assessment. See Yannick Imbert, “Who Created the Stories Anyway? A Reformed Evaluation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Theory of Fantasy” (Ph.D. diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 2010).
14. As Thomas made clear, “Not only is it not impossible for God to create something, but from what has been established we cannot but hold that all things are created by him” (Summa Theologiae, Vol. 8, 1a.44-49: Creation, Variety and Evil [ed. Thomas Gilby; trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006], 31 [1a.45.ii]).
15. See, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, Book 3: Providence (trans. V. J. Bourke; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 74-75 (3.18). In Summa Theologiae, Vol. 2, 1a.2-11: Existence and Nature of God (ed. Timothy McDermott; trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 194 (appendix 6), we find the editor’s summary of Thomas’s First Way: “The argument leads to a first mover which is not itself in motion, primum movens immobile. Notice the moderation of the conclusion, which claims no insight into God’s own existence but merely says that there is a source of motion ἀρκη κινήσεως, and this we understand to be God.”
16. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (ed. Humphrey Carpenter; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 192.
17. Ibid., 191.
18. Ibid., 399.
19. Tolkien, Monsters and the Critics, 113-19.
20. Ibid., 109.
21. This reflects a popular understanding of Thomas, one that has been challenged by recent Thomist scholarship.
22. Cornelius Van Til, Psychology of Religion (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1971), 53.
23. “The meanings of all words in Christian theory of being depend upon the differentiation between the self-contained God and the created universe” (Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith [ed. K. Scott Oliphint; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2008], 237).
24. For Van Til true analogy is concerned with the knowledge of God and the knowledge of creation: “God has with the facts given the interpretation of the facts. . . . It is the triune God who tells us what he has done for sinful man’s redemption. The final aspect of this redemption is that, by the regenerating power of the Spirit, sinful man learns to submit his own interpretation, once based on the idea of human autonomy, to the interpretation which the God of grace has provided for him in the Word through the inspiration of the Scripture. This is truly a biblical and therefore a truly analogical methodology” (Cornelius Van Til, The Doctrine of Scripture [Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1967], 15).
25. Cornelius Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1967), 203.
26. Van Til explains this defect in terms of the Thomist scale of being: “For Aquinas the natural is inherently defective; it partakes of the nature of nonbeing” (Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 349). Oliphint clearly explains that this notion comes from Thomas’s idea that all essences participate in the “scale of being” according to their substance. The proportionality between substance and existence always remains identical for all creatures, and it is also identical for God (see p. 349 n. 19). On the same matter, see Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetics: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1998), 220-35.
27. Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 62 n. 25.
28. This concept of analogy is not similar to Thomas’s analogia entis. Rather, analogy for Van Til demands that man “think God’s thoughts after him.” The difference between Thomas and Van Til can also be described in terms of what these theories were intended for. As Oliphint reminds us, Thomas’s analogy was “calculated to respond to the problem of theological predication in the context of the dilemmas posed by affirming the simplicity of God” (K. Scott Oliphint, Reasons for Faith: Philosophy in the Service of Theology [Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2006], 97; a clear and brief critique of Thomas’s analogy is given on pp. 105-10).
29. For a clear summary on this matter, see Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetics, 222-23. See also Van Til’s Survey of Christian Epistemology. The core of this work is man’s analogical knowledge more than it is really a survey of epistemology.
30. For Van Til, the Thomistic notion of the beatific vision implies that man will be able, at some point in history, to go beyond his creaturehood and attain a comprehensive spiritual knowledge. Van Til maintains, however, that human knowledge will always be un-exhaustive but true, even in the state of consummation. Our limited creaturehood is a blessing and man will never be able to outgrow it. See Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics (ed. William Edgar; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2003), 40.
31. Van Til’s description of the importance of analogical reasoning is not a consensus by any means. It even reached a very tense ecclesial level in the discussions between him and Gordon Clark. See Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetics, 677-85; see also 227 n. 152.
32. “For Calvin, creation itself is directly and clearly revelational of the creative and sustaining activity of God. Man is therefore naturally in contact with the expressed will of God. For the supernatural revelation of God to Adam was natural to him. This supernatural revelation is part of the normal or natural state of affairs for man” (Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 157-58).
33. For more on Van Til’s position, see Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetics, 203-4.
34. “Even in paradise, therefore, supernatural revelation was immediately conjoined with natural revelation” (Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 254).
35. Again Van Til points to the unchanging nature of the Creator-creature distinction: “The Christian idea is therefore the recognition that the creature can only touch the hem of the garment of Him who dwells in light that no man can approach unto” (Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel [Nutley, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1977], 11).
36. For Van Til, the Thomist ground for a relationship between God and man, and for a proper view of their historical relation, is found in neutral human knowledge. Bahnsen summarizes Van Til’s criticism: “The Thomistic approach assumes that fallen man is capable of reasoning in a proper way (prior to repenting of sin and submitting to the Savior) and that knowledge and intelligible interpretation of experience are philosophically possible apart from God’s revelation” (Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetics, 47).
37. For Van Til, not only is the relationship between God and man covenantal in nature, but all creation displays this covenantal status: “Natural revelation, we are virtually told, was from the outset incorporated into the idea of a covenantal relationship of God with man” (Van Til, Christian Apologetics, 67).
38. Ibid., 62.
39. Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 113-14.
40. Here Van Til follows Calvin’s conviction about the crucial importance of the created and revelational knowledge of God: “With singular sagacity, Calvin avoided this scholastic approach when he spoke of the revelation of God as penetrating into the penetralia of man’s psychological being. The sense of deity is the principle of continuity he presupposes as that in relation to which the ethical reaction of man takes place. And this means that man is always reacting ethically to this revelation of God” (Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology: Prolegomena and the Doctrines of Revelation, Scripture, and God [ed. William Edgar; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2007], 54).
41. “Ethical” is defined in Van Til’s sense of something that deals primarily with the will of man (Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theistic Ethics [Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1980], 1).
42. In one of his detective stories, Chesterton has his priest-detective, Father Brown, make the following surprising statement: “Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don’t fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, ‘thou shalt not steal’” (G. K. Chesterton, “The Blue Cross,” in The Father Brown Stories [London: Penguin, 1994], 38). MacDonald made the same basic comment about the necessary identity of moral laws which “must everywhere be fundamentally the same” (George MacDonald, Lilith [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981], 40).
43. Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 177.
44. Van Til again explains this in the double terms of God’s own interpretation and God as concrete universal. First, God interprets created reality, thus providing a preinterpretation, and man cannot but produce a derivative reinterpretation. Second, God is the “concrete universal,” the only “transcendental” through whom all things take on meaning. For Van Til’s use of “concrete universal,” see Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetics, 241.
45. Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 257.
46. Van Til, Christian Apologetics, 194.
47. For the use of the terminology “alternative choice,” see John Murray, Collected Writings (4 vols.; Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1976-1982), 2:61-66.
48. Van Til, Christian Apologetics, 36. See also: “True freedom for man consists in self-conscious, analogical activity” (Van Til, Christian Theistic Ethics, 37).
49. As Van Til affirms, “The Christian notion rests on the presupposition of the existence of the self-contained ontological trinity of God, who dwells in light that no man can approach unto. The non-Christian notion rests on the assumption of the existence of would-be autonomous man who has not yet exhaustively interpreted the realms of ultimate chance” (Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel, 46). Any Christian concept, including Faërie, must then be built on the presupposition, on the covenantal presence, of the self-contained Trinitarian God.
50. “In the case of non-Christian thought, man’s moral activity is thought of as at once creatively constructive, while in a Christian’s thought, man’s moral activity is thought of as being receptively reconstructive” (Van Til, Christian Theistic Ethics, 22).
51. Summa Theologiae, Vol. 11, 1a.75-83: Man (ed. Timothy Sutter; trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 121 (1a.78.i).
52. It is possible to say that, if Tolkien was influenced by Coleridge, it was certainly through his interaction with Barfield. However, due to Barfield’s re-reading of Coleridge along anthroposophical lines, it is also possible to argue that Tolkien recombined the insights gained from Coleridge.
53. Coleridge, considering the uneven imaginative power displayed by humankind, came to identify two different sorts of imagination that are one in kind and two in degree (see the discussion in Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria [ed. James Engell and W. Jackson Bate; vol. 7, bk. 1 of The Collected Works of Coleridge, ed. Kathleen Coburn; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983]). This division is rendered necessary by the relation between Coleridge’s philosophy of the mind and his metaphysics. In Coleridge’s view, imagination is constitutive of human nature, and since it is a means of reconciliation between self and environment, it must have metaphysical relevance. That is, imagination must be shared by humankind sui generi but must also be of different degrees to allow for the outworking diversity of human imagination. It is in this context that Coleridge’s famous distinction between primary and secondary imagination takes place (ibid., 304-5). See further on his distinction between primary imagination (an aggregative power [ibid., lxxxix]) and secondary imagination (a constructive power [ibid., xciii]).
54. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, 176.
55. Tolkien, Tolkien On Fairy Stories, 110-11.
56. Chesterton, Collected Works, vols. 1, 12, and 27-35.
57. In a Reformed direction, Nicholas Wolterstorff helpfully remarks that a world of art, like Tolkien’s Faërie, can be said to exist, that is, to be a state of affairs: “My suggestion now is that the world projected by way of an artefact of art not only includes certain states of affairs but is itself a state of affairs. By way of this artefact the artist projects a possible or impossible state of affairs. That is the reality with which he deals. It need not be actuality” (Nicolas Wolterstorff, Works and Worlds of Art [Clarendon Library of Logic and Philosophy; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980], 127).
58. Tolkien, Monsters and the Critics, 116.
59. See Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (trans. L. K. Shook; New York: Random House, 1956), 234.
60. Tolkien, Letters, 188.
61. ST 1a.85.i asks, “Does our intellect understand material, corporeal realities by abstraction from sense images?” St. Thomas’s answer is that “our intellect both abstracts species from sense images—in so far as it considers the natures of things as universal—and yet, at the same time, understands these in sense images, since it cannot understand even the things from which it abstracts species without turning to sense images, as mentioned before” (Summa Theologiae, Vol. 12, 1a.84-89: Human Intelligence [ed. Paul T. Durbin; trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006], 57 [1a.85.ii]). In matter of the origin and material on which basis fairy stories are invented, Tolkien made the same point. In fact, he argued that true fairy story is creative but not illusory: “It is at any rate essential to a genuine fairy-story, as distinct from the employment of this form for lesser or debased purposes, that it should be presented as ‘true.’ The meaning of ‘true’ in this connection I will consider in a moment. But since the fairy-story deals with ‘marvels,’ it cannot tolerate any frame or machinery suggesting that the whole story in which they occur is a figment or illusion” (Tolkien, Monsters and the Critics, 117).
62. Tolkien, Monsters and the Critics, 139.
63. Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism with Other Essays (n.p.: Filiquarian, 2007), 63.
64. Or, more properly, sensation leaves an imprint on phantasia. Phantasia is thus bound by pre-existing matter, as existing and/or perceived. See Norman Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Creation: Aquinas’s Natural Theology in Summa contra Gentiles II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 346. Cf. SCG 2.52.vi.
65. The rest of the quote continues: “So upon logic was founded the nonsense that displays itself in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll. If men really could not distinguish between frogs and men, fairy-stories about frog-kings would not have arisen” (Tolkien, Monsters and the Critics, 144). A few pages later Tolkien repeats this same point: “Fantasy is made out of the Primary World, but a good craftsman loves his material, has a knowledge and feeling for clay, stone and wood which only the art of making can give” (ibid., 147).
66. Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, 63.
67. John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion (trans. Henry Beveridge; 2 vols; London: James Clarke & Co., 1949), vol. 1.
68. Ibid., 1:225-26 (1.15.6).
69. Ibid., 1:225 (1.15.6).
70. Calvin’s interpretation of Thomas, if he had Thomas in mind, is open to criticism since we have seen that Thomas strongly defends the unity of the human soul. It is probably better to speak of a distinction within the human soul. However, it is true that Thomas makes the human soul in part identifiable to the soul of other creatures. Calvin, and most Reformed theologians, make the human soul radically different from any other created “soul” because of the image of God within man.
71. Francis Turretin was to argue at length for the immortality of the soul. See Francis Turretin, The Institutes of Elenctic Theology (ed. James T. Dennison, Jr.; trans. George Musgrave Giger; 3 vols.; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1992), 1:473-88. However, he does not elaborate much regarding the order of cognition on p. 488.
72. Van Til, Psychology of Religion, 63.
73. Calvin, Inst. 1:225 (1.15.6).
74. In fact, we see in the direction taken by many evangelical aestheticians the very path Calvin tried to avoid. Calvin tried to avoid the danger of making the imagination a direct bridge between man and God, or a direct means of cognition, a view held by many of the theologians we have examined.
75. In Van Til’s apologetic, “the necessity of noetic salvation is integral to the Christian worldview and has an enormous bearing upon the defense of the faith” (Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetics, 197).
76. This semi-Pelagian imagination is very close to the Thomist distinction between natural and supernatural gifts. In this case, we could see the imagination as a natural gift, contrasting it with the Thomist notion of a superadditum. This makes the imagination a Thomist and Romantic faculty.
77. “I am not, however, so superstitious as to think that all visible representations of every kind are unlawful. But as sculpture and paintings are gifts of God, what I insist for is, that both shall be used purely and lawfully,—that gifts which the Lord has bestowed upon us, for his glory and our good, shall not be preposterously abused, nay, shall not be perverted to our destruction” (Calvin, Inst. 1:57 [1.9.12]).
78. See, e.g., Van Til’s “Letter on Common Grace,” in Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel, 149-95. Here again the Reformed philosophy of history is indissolubly linked to the true knowledge of man and the nature of the relationship between God and man.
79. Leland Ryken, Culture in Christian Perspective: A Door to Understanding and Enjoying the Arts (A Critical Concern Book; Portland: Multnomah, 1986), 13. We should notice that even this statement has come under attack. Seerveld, for example, rejects the traditional notion of beauty. This notion of beauty is also rejected by Begbie, who begins by commenting on Kuyper’s and Bavinck’s view of beauty. For them, “glory is the highest form of beauty. However, even if the fullness of glory is denied us in this life, we can see it mirrored in the beauty of the created world, primarily in the qualities of harmony: balance, rhythm, symmetry, proportion, etc.” (Jeremy Begbie, Voicing Creation’s Praise: Towards a Theology of the Arts [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991], 97).
80. Calvin Seerveld, A Christian Critique of Art and Literature (Toronto: Tuppence; 1995), 25.
81. “[Grace, common or special] does not preserve some remnants of the image of God either in the wider sense or in the narrower sense, if these be taken in scholastic form. How can common grace keep sin from being in principle hostility to God? There are no degrees in the principle of depravity. In this sense the image of God has been lost. On the other hand, common grace does not preserve remnants of the image in the wider sense, if this image is thought of as that which is unchangeable. How can remnants be saved of that which was never subject to change?” (Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology, 54).
82. “Man was to deal covenantally with every fact of history. He must therefore have available to him in history the direct confrontation of God and his requirements” (Cornelius Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge [Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1969], 29).
83. On that matter it would probably be useful for Reformed aestheticians to keep in mind that the expression “image of God” can be understood in three ways. It can first refer to the “ontological” image of God, Christ himself. Further, it can be understood as the image of God in man, a category subdivided into “broad” and “narrow” definitions of the image of God.
84. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, being the first part of The Lord of the Rings (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1954), 43.