Thanks to fantasy stories, readers can find existential satisfaction before they discover intellectual credibility. They can want something to be true even if they can’t yet bring themselves to believe it’s true. The writer can show the world as it ought to be, as it once was, and how it will be again someday. The writer can usher us into a world even better than what we can now imagine. For Tolkien, as for Keller, that’s the seed of Christian belief.
