Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

god long before he was ever on Earth. Charles Moorman wrote in “Spaceship and Grail: The Myths of C.S.
Lewis”, “Thus Lewis’s general use of myth, along with his statements concerning the nature of myth, would
seem to point to a unified concept of the pace of myth in literature: Myth itself represents an ultimate and
absolute reality; myth in literature represents a reflection of that central reality, capable of conveying the
meaning and, to some extent, the power implicit in the myth itself. (Moorman, 405). He quotes Lewis as
saying, “… just as, on the factual side, a long preparation culminated in God’s becoming incarnate as Man,
so, on the documentary side, the truth first appears in mythical form and then by a long process of
condensing or focusing finally becomes incarnate as History. This involves the belief that Myth in general
is… a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination” (Moorman, 405).
Despite their common belief in “true myth”, the three most famous Inklings approached this
concept in extremely different ways, coming from very diverse religious backgrounds. Tolkien was a lifelong
“Tridentine Roman Catholic”, firmly grounded in strict, almost medieval tradition. Though he was
“never as public about his Christianity as was his closest friend, C .S. Lewis, Tolkien never hid his faith, and
his Catholicism manifested itself in a number of profound and often surprisingly public ways” (Tolkien
Encyclopedia, 86). Lewis’s public declarations of faith, on the other hand, were far less surprising.
Considered by many to be an “apostle to the skeptics”, Lewis had been an atheist since the age of fifteen
until, through various influences, not in the least Tolkien’s friendship, became a Christian midway through
his life, at age thirty-three. His conversion to Anglicanism (despite Tolkien’s general dislike of the Anglican
church) began a thirty-year ministry of dogmatic evangelism clear in both his fictions and nonfiction
theological works. Charles Williams, the least well-known of the three, was on the outside of the typical
Christian-denominational divide. Williams was an active member of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, an
esoteric offshoot of the Order of the Golden Dawn, for ten years. Williams unofficially broke from the
Rosicrucians in the 1930s to found his own magical-Christian group, the Companions of the Co-inherence,
249