C.S. Lewis and the Nature of the Gospels

I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths. They had not the mythical taste. And yet the very matter which they set down their articles, historical fashion – those narrow, unattractive Jews, too blind to the mythical wealth of the Pagan world around them – was precisely the matter of the great myths. If ever a myth had become fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this. And nothing else in all literature was just like this. Myths were like it in one way. Histories were like it in another. But nothing was simply like it.

And no person was like the Person depicted; as real, as recognizable, through all that depth of time, as Plato’s Socrates or Boswell’s Johnson, [ …. ] yet also numinous, lit by a light from beyond the world, a god. But if a god – we are no longer polytheists – then not a god, but God. Here and here only in all time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, Man. This is not a “religion,” nor a “philosophy.” It is the summing up and actuality of them all.

C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (Arthur Owen Barfield, 1984). From The Beloved Works of C.S. Lewis (Inspirational Press) p. 129

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