Can fantasy fiction point to Scriptural truths?

At the end of October, the British Library suffered a paralysing cyber attack which affected their website and many online services.

Sir Roly Keating, the British Library’s Chief Executive, stated that: ‘The people responsible for this cyber attack stand against everything that libraries represent: openness, empowerment, and access to knowledge.’ Nonetheless, their physical sites have stayed open, and I was recently delighted to visit their Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibition.

The exhibition covers a plethora of texts and artefacts from rare ancient manuscripts to computer games and Warhammer figures, and is housed in an immersive setting which walks you through fairy woodlands and giant archways. Beginning with fairy and folk tales, the exhibition takes in epics and quests, portals and worlds as well as the ‘weird and uncanny’ and, of course, the worlds of fandom. You can see the Beowulf manuscript alongside plenty of Tolkien memorabilia from both books and films, an early draft of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe together with costumes, artwork and even giant screens where you can play immersive fantasy video games.

The fantasy genre is no longer the preserve of the seriously geeky; this exhibition celebrates its creative and literary merit, artistic legacy and huge popularity. It also tackles the relationship between fantasy and the real world – as the author Neil Gaiman (part of the advisory board for the exhibition) has put it, fiction is often ‘the lie that tells the truth’. J.R.R. Tolkien also believed that fantasy and myths could reflect deeper truth: ‘We have come from God and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed, only by myth-making, only by becoming a “sub-creator” and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall.’

In his famous essay, On Fairy Tales, Tolkien describes the idea of the ‘eucatastrophe’ – the happy ending which comes against all expectation, when circumstances cannot get much bleaker. It is the riders of Rohan arriving over the horizon sounding their horns at the battle of the Pelennor Fields, or the shield coming down just in time for the Rebel Alliance to blow up the second Death Star, or Belle declaring her love for the Beast just before the last rose petal falls. Tolkien says that this eucatastrophe is evangelium (good news), giving a fleeting glimpse of ‘Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.’

Tolkien used the word evangelium intentionally, because as a Christian he knew that there would ultimately be a happy ending, beyond the walls of this world, as he puts it. In one of his plays, Oscar Wilde wrote: ‘The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.’ But the story of the Bible says that a happily-ever-after is not fiction, it is part of the author’s plan.

I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away’ (Rev. 21:3-4).

The British Library’s exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination runs until 25 February 2024.