J.R. Tolkien: The Birth of Christ is the “Eucatastrophe” of Man’s history

This Christmas we have another contribution to the fantasy story line created by the Christian author, J.R. Tolkien. An animated film titled The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is being released set over a century before the main events in the Lord of the Rings. Now, I have not seen this. I am not offering a recommendation to see it. It is a development of a character’s story mentioned briefly by Tolkien in one of his appendices. So far, it seems to have been met with lackluster reviews from the critics. I will defer to those in our community who have film and television, literature, animation and screenwriting expertise on whether this is a good contribution to the broader Tolkien inspired corpus. But what this work reflects is the continued draw to human imagination of fantasy and of what Tolkien called “fairy stories.”

It may seem strange in our disenchanted and skeptical, if not cynical, era to see so many drawn to such stories. Whatever else that signifies, I suspect it represents a hunger for the transcendent, for some encounter with a grand adventure that connects us to a deeper and more enduring reality; something that can infuse meaning into the mundane.

I want to share with you some excerpts from Tolkien’s (1947) essay, On Fairy Stories, in which he introduces the Christ-inspired notion of a “eucatastrophe:” a point in a story line when a catastrophe results in a sudden and dramatic turn to the positive. Tolkien asserted that fantasy literature commonly includes eucatastrophic events. That is precisely what the “true” myth of the incarnation constitutes. Through this real event in space and time, the eternal Creator and sustainer of the universe became the pivotal part of our concrete, everyday human existence. In the incarnation we have the real and ultimate eucatastrophe that all the fantasy stories prefigure in only dim ways. It is the concrete instance, in the real flow of time that our planet has endured, of the fulfillment of the deepest longings that have occupied humanity. Tolkien puts it this way:

“The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable Eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the Eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the Eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy… There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits… Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused. But in God’s kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the “happy ending.”

We have much work to do while Christ tarries. But may we find in the amazing surprise “turn” of the story through the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus a source of joy that fuels our imagination and passion. Our deepest and holiest longings are not mere fanciful wishes but rather dim anticipations of a glory that is ahead of us which no eye has yet seen or ear heard (1 Corinthians 2:9). We have confidence that this anticipation, this grand life motivation, this hope, is not a delusional fantasy.  It is a glimpse of the penumbra of the yet unseen fullness of God’s glory already manifest in the miracle of Christmas:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,
and we have seen his glory,
glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
– John 1:14

Joy to you and yours this Christmas season. Joy to the world and for all time because of this gracious, game-changing turn in the flow of history wrought by the incarnation of Jesus.