A naturally mythopoieic creature: mythic sensibility and human participation in divine creativity

Thesis

In this thesis, I argue that through mythopoiesis, human beings participate in God’s creativity. Certain stories are characterised by a mythic sensibility, an interpretive presence enabling the subject to encounter the world and the self as meaningful. The making of such stories is a characteristically human action distinct from but participating by analogy in God’s ongoing creative action. By approaching this creative action in terms of the Trinitarian return of God to God, mythopoiesis can be understood as a human participation in this return and so as a making toward God, always already theological. Because of the limitations on making imposed by human finitude and sin, mythic sensibilities reveal the world as meaningful in diverse and often contradictory ways. Because mythoi operate according to aesthetics, they do not conform to discursive reasoning, and in a Christian approach, the beauty of Christ becomes the criterion of all rival mythoi. The mythic sensibility revealed in Christ, manifesting as a mythos of unconditional peace, interrupts the violence of conflicting mythoi without succumbing to it. In this way, the mythos and mythopoiesis of Christ opens the redemption of all mythopoiesis by its assumption by God into the Trinitarian dynamic of creation.

Authors: Shamel, A

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Terry Pratchett; Theology and Culture; Fantasy Fiction; J. R. R. Tolkien; Creation; Creativity; Graham Ward; Ursula K. Le Guin; Mythooeisis; Theology; Theology and Literature; John Milbank
• Subjects: Christianity and culture; Theology