A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18

by Joseph Loconte

The friends finally returned to Lewis’s study, where they talked until 3:00 a.m. The subject was Christianity. Lewis did not understand the meaning of the central teachings of the faith: the concepts known as “the blood of the Lamb” and “the atonement.” How could the life and death of Jesus have “saved the world”? How could the sacrificial death of someone two thousand years ago help us now? It all seemed irrelevant and incomprehensible.95 Tolkien answered him immediately, and in his answer he revealed the core of his own philosophy as a writer and as a Christian thinker.96 Yes, the story of Jesus the Christ is a kind of myth: it is the authentic story of the Dying God who returns to life to rescue his people from sin and death and bring them to “the Blessed Land,” where “though they make anew, they make no lie.”97 The difference between Christianity and all the pagan myths is that this Dying God actually entered into history, lived a real life, and died a real death.