In the mythopoetic tradition of the Inklings—especially in the writings and thought of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien—myth is not merely a fictional tale, but a participatory mode of truth-telling. Myth is narrative that reveals the eternal within the temporal, the divine within the human, and the real through story.

C.S. Lewis on Myth

Lewis believed that myth, when rightly understood, points beyond itself. In his essay “Myth Became Fact”, he writes:

“We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology… We must not, in false spirituality, withhold our imaginative welcome. If God chooses to be mythopoeic—and is not the sky itself a myth—shall we refuse to be mythopathic?”

Lewis sees myth as a vessel through which deep truths, particularly theological ones, can be experienced as well as understood. For him, Christianity is the true myth—a myth that became historically and bodily real in the Incarnation of Christ.

The Inklings’ view of myth is also rooted in classical and Christian tradition. Like Plato, they believed in eternal Forms, and like the early Church Fathers—especially St. Athanasius and St. Augustine—they saw the world as a symbol-laden reality, through which God speaks.

In light of Scripture and classical Christian metaphysics, myth was not escapism but re-enchantment: a means by which we recover wonder, moral clarity, and a vision of the cosmos as charged with meaning.

Founding Myth

The concept of a founding myth carries deep theological, literary, and anthropological resonance. While the term is often used today in secular or sociological contexts to refer to the stories that legitimate a nation, institution, or culture, for the Inklings (especially C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien), the idea of a founding myth reaches toward something far more profound: the mythic grounding of reality in divine truth.

Founding Myths as Memory of the Logos

In Lewis’s view, pagan founding myths are not merely cultural fabrications but dim echoes of a divine archetype. In “The Weight of Glory”, he writes that myths, especially those that express longing for beauty, justice, or redemption, are “good dreams sent by God”—preparations for the fullness of truth in Christ.

A founding myth is not simply the origin story of a people or institution, but a yearning for the true beginning, which is ultimately found“In the beginning was the Word [Logos]…” (John 1:1). All myths, but especially founding myths are the narratives that root a people in the cosmos.

Thus, the true founding myth is the creation of the world by God through the Logos, and its redemptive re-founding in the Incarnation.

Tolkien’s Sub-Creation and Mythic Origins

Tolkien’s legendarium (The Silmarillion, especially the Ainulindalë) presents an important example of a founding myth that is theological in nature. In the Ainulindalë, the “Music of the Ainur,” is a myth of creation that mirrors the biblical Genesis, filtered through a mythopoetic lens.

Here, the founding myth is a harmony that gives birth to the cosmos—a divine song sung by angelic beings under the direction of Eru (God). It reflects the belief that creation is not only ordered but beautiful, and that evil itself is a discord that cannot undo the greater harmony.

This is more than a story: it is an imagined participation in the truth of creation, a way of seeing the world as created, fallen, and being redeemed.

Founding Myth and the True Myth

Lewis and Tolkien saw all founding myths—whether Greek, Norse, Babylonian, or nationalistic—find their fulfillment in what Lewis calls the True Myth: the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

The Christian mythopoetic founding story is the Historical books of the Bible. Genesis 1 is the Creation of the World. Genesis 2 is the Creation of Man. Genesis 3 is the founding myth of human suffering. These stories are all both true and symbolic. Historical founding myths.

The calling of Abraham is the founding myth of Israel—rooted in history, yet filled to overflowing with theological meaning.

The Incarnation is the refounding myth of the whole Cosmos. Yet it is not merely mythic. It is fully historical—the Myth become Fact.

Modern thinkers often treat founding myths as useful fictions—narratives that hold a people together but need not be literally true. The Inklings reject this reduction. They would argue that such a view is both cynical and spiritually impoverished.

Lewis wrote:

“The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the dying god, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history.”

In this light, the Gospel is not only the fulfillment of all founding myths, but it re-founds reality itself—creation, time, and the whole human race—on the cornerstone who is Christ (cf. Eph. 2:20).

Myths are also related to ritual, but this isn’t the right place for a full exposition. As a teaser, though, baptism is a ritual reenactment of our founding myth. It is how the true founding myth individuates, how we pass through the Red Sea, how we die with Christ. It is how we become a character in the founding myth of reality, so that the True founding myth becomes our story.

We live in a world that has tried to reject myth, but all that has done is make our world’s founding mythology (darwinism, the Big Bang, etc.) invisible to us. But we have always been in the same storytelling war since the dragon in the garden proposed a different founding myth with his, “hath God really said…” But, unlike Adam and Eve, we need not be ashamed of our True Myth. It really is the greatest possible story.