Representative of the broader project of Narrative Theodicy, itself a God-justifying account at the intersection of immanence and transcendence, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis suggest an intrinsic connection between the religiously neutral fairy-story/myth and the religiously positive Christian eschatological metanarrative. “One of the recurrent truths reflected in many myths and fairy tales is what Tolkien calls the ‘eucatastrophe’,” notes Gregory Bassham; “the sudden joyous turn in which good improbably triumphs over evil, producing a ‘happy ending’ to the story.” The redemptive narrative structure of equilibrium–tension–resolution, for example, being the immanently good plotline of the stories that really matter, is inherently strewn with the finite valuables of free will, soul-making, higher order goodness, and aesthetic pleasure. The three-act structure of creation–fall–re-creation, alongside it, being the transcendently good plotline of the story that matters most, is likewise populated by the infinite valuables of a best possible world, the felix culpa, and the divine-human relationship.
If Tolkien and Lewis are correct, that in the Gospel accounts one finds the fairy story behind all fairy stories and the myth behind all myths, then the Christian theodicist might possibly leverage these fictional works for the broader task of theodicy. Stated otherwise, this paper asserts that, pertinent to both the fairy-story/myth and the Christian eschatological metanarrative is the transcendental power to reframe the false, the evil, and the ugly with the true, the good, and the beautiful. “Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened,” maintains Lewis; “i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets … while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things’.” Given the typological connections between these fictional accounts and the Christian eschatological metanarrative—between the stories that really matter and the story that matters most—sufferers are therein presented with a multiplicity of Narrative Theodicies; those capable of addressing the variety and intensity of particular instances of suffering.