Tesseract wrote:Are Christians bothered at all by the inclusion of characters such as Bacchus and Silenus, the River God, wood spirits, tree spirits, etc?
Some of the responses...
star asterisk wrote:My response is: no I am not in the least bothered by the use of mythology- I find it very enriching. In Narnia, the use of mythological gods and such is in no way pagan or offensive to my faith.
The mythology in general allows me to see my own faith with a fresh perspective, because it is my belief that most mythologies are in some way biblically rooted, because I find so many similarities. It's fascinating, and C.S. Lewis's use of mythology is part of what makes me love his work.
Shy Galadriel wrote:what Lewis did was make a subtle gesture that Bacchus and Silenus were semi-deities (similar to Tolkien's Valar) that spanned across the worlds. In other worlds, they were angelic beings granted power or status in the worlds for specific purposes. Supposedly in some worlds they would take different forms. In Narnia they took the same forms of Greece.
He was basically taking Pagan Myths and Christianizing them. Lots of people do that (Hans Christian Anderson, anyone?) and it makes reading fun. It's kind of like an easter egg for nerds. I mean historians.
