What, really, is the difference between a story that postulates elves living in the trees and a story that judges eating man-meat, cooked al a orc, a perfectly acceptable practice? The question is absurd, but the underlying idea is sound. What makes these two books provably morally different? Why do we regard the first with amusement and the second with disgust? The answer lies in the theological (moral) assertions of the two books. The first book does not assert to us that elves actually exist outside the world postulated by the story, nor does it ask us to act as if they did¹. The second book, however, reaches out towards the reader and endeavors to impress upon him a theological dictum: eating people isn’t bad. The two stories are alike in presenting an unreality; they differ in that only the second endeavors to impress this unreality into the world. This reflexivity (a term I have adopted for the phenomenon wherein that which the author has placed into the story is returned upon the reader) is a quality inherent to the theological framework of all stories, a quality responsible for the Christian duty to tell the truth regarding theology within their stories.

First, let’s establish some terms and conditions, to quote ye old website waiver form. The story, as relates to its reflexive (reader-oriented) impact, has three parts and one whole. The whole story is a modified reflection of reality, borrowing whole swathes of existence in order to provide the canvas upon which imagination and ingenuity paint. The three parts are as follows: the recreated, the unintentionally distorted, and the intentionally modified. The first is, of course, outside our concern today, being already perfectly consistent to reality (the relations of the distorted portions to it, being themselves distorted, do not fall into this category)³. The second, the parts of the setting, character, plot, and theology the author has distorted in belief that his distortions actually correspond to reality⁴, and the third, the parts the author has modified with intent, carry the author’s worldview; while immorality is not assured, any fault to be found will be found here, where truth has been replaced by either fiction (internal truth which does not assert external truth, though it may, in a manner like unto a lens focusing light, facilitate the communication of an external truth) or falsehood.

We’ve identified, then, the type of errors that could matter: intentional or unintentional deviations from the reflection of reality. What subset of these should we actually be worried about? Simple factual errors- the wrong date for a historical event, an impossible move in a swordfight, a name with an anachronistic etymology- are not a moral problem (though they are when remediable an artistic detriment). They carry no intent to deceive, and even if they do deceive, emplacing in the reader’s mind a false impression of some true fact, they do no eternal harm. They can be considered the equivalent of a friend who with sincerity informs you that the Roman gladius was generally made out of copper- wrong, but not immorally so. Similarly, factual deviations regarding pure facts- the invention of elves or mithril, the creation of (certain types of)⁵ magic systems, the omission of a historical fact⁶– are not morally deviant; so long as they possess no intent to deceive^1.1, no turpitude is attached, as they contain no inherent moral weight (their ‘is’ assertions being fundamentally incapable of becoming ‘ought’ without aid from a pre-existent moral system).

The problem comes when the error is theological. A neglectful or intentional misstatement of the nature of God or of the truth given us in His Word is not a small thing. We have a duty, after all, to tell the truth of God, to speak of Him the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, for we are witnesses even sans martyrdom (Acts 1:8). Whether this falsehood occurs in the unintentional distortion, out of a misapprehension of God’s character, or in the intentional modification, with intent to lie (and many could fall into both camps, as per Romans 2:15), it remains a falsehood, and because man has a positive duty to witness to his Creator, to give Him glory, these statements in their failure to do so are a sin. This mandate is no small one; the theological net thus cast covers not just direct statements regarding the nature of God but statements regarding the nature of His works, of morality (His character), of man (His image), and of philosophy (theology’s half-grown cousin). The theological framework of the story, the theology which is presented by it as true, ought to be perfectly aligned with reality in all these parts.

To be clear, this dictum does not demand the eradication of all theological or theology-adjacent falsehoods from fiction: fictive statements can evade it, and sub-authorial frameworks do not fall within its bounds. Let’s return to the case of the story which asserts the existence of elves within its own pages. Taken to its full extreme, the existence of elves would have significant theological implications, at least if the author ran with the ‘separate, souled species’ definition. The salvation of any elvish sinner, for instance, would require the death of an elvish Savior, would require a second incarnation for a second race (Rom. 5:18-21). This requirement obviously presents theological challenges. It does not, however, rule out elves entirely, simply the author’s ability to fully integrate them into the world without changes. Several options are available. The author may simply choose to ignore this implication, to pretend the consequence does not exist. So long as he is not seeking to assert the falsehood of its underlying principles, this course is workable, albeit detrimental to the logical coherence of the world⁷. He may also choose (as I have) to remove the ‘separate’ part of the definition, making elves a subset of man. This has, of course, its own theological difficulties. So long, however, as the fictive statements which occasion these difficulties are fictive, are not assertive of an external reality, the theological implications can be bypassed as a part of the suspension of disbelief: because the problems arise only in the internal reality, the full rules of the external reality’s theology need not be applied.

The other exception is the sub-authorial theological framework, a very terminological way of saying ‘theology the author doesn’t present as true’. If the false ideas of characters or cultures inside the story are not presented as true, they are not lies; they are reports. Just as how the Bible can, in perfect truth, report that Saphira lied, saying, “Yes, for so much,” in response to Peter (Acts 5:8), so can stories report the falsities spoken, thought, or acted by their constituent parts without themselves lying. The report does not endorse the lie (which would be lying); the report instead states the lie for what it is. Furthermore, because a sinful world contains many lies and falsehoods, a story which was a perfect facsimile of reality, a non-fiction story, would contain many, many such reports of lies; a fictional story, therefore, cannot be blamed for the same.

The theology the story must be judged by is the theology is actually conveys as true. This theology may, with God’s blessing, be essentially correct, be false only in the adiaphora if at all. It may be verging upon, but not reaching, heresy, may be singular and united but false, may be broken and disjointed, full of holes and contradictions. In some cases, it may even be intentionally self-conflicting, whether because the author has not been able to reach a conclusion regarding two parts of his worldview or because he has accepted an overarching worldview which necessitates and requires intentional contradiction (certain forms of dialectical thought, for instance). The one result you will never get, when you look for a theological framework, is a failure to find one, at least if you look hard enough. Theology is inherent to life and to creation (Rom. 1:20); even its apparent absence or intentional neglect are themselves theological positions (bad ones). Furthermore, because of its all-encompassing nature (see above), even if the nature of God or morality does not appear directly implicated, some aspect of theology (and therefore of these two) will be involved⁸.

What remains, then, is the question of whether we do indeed have a duty in writing to convey Biblical theology as the primary, reflexive (reader-directed) theology of the story? Well, as you have doubtless intuited, we do. The two sides of this problem, the negative and the positive, are as follows: for the negative, if we speak of anything else as truth, we bear false witness as to God and His nature, which should elicit a terror in our hearts to contemplate⁹; for the positive, well, a few different angles exist. First, we have a duty of evangelism, to portray God to His world, to the people who love Him and those who spurn Him, as per the Great Commission of Matthew 28. Second, we are called to keep God’s law (and His character) perpetually upon our lips (Deut. 6:7). Third, the general tenor of Scripture (as well as a hundred specific verses more, I wot) commands us to witness to the world of His name and His nature and His glory (Mark 13:8-9), which we do not do if we speak not the truth. We have a necessitated and affirmed duty to show the truth given in the Bible in all our stories¹⁰.

All this talk comes in the end to a single conclusion: our stories, while they make fictions of setting, time, place, and person, may not make fictions of God and of the study of Him, which is theology, for such fictions are merely lies. This truth derives from the nature of stories as modified reflections of reality which assert truth internally but not externally. Because, unlike fiction regarding the other elements of reality, fictive theology (when asserted as true) is in fact a lie, transcending the page or the screen and entering reality as an expressed external truth, it is impermissible. This communication cannot be avoided; while a theology can exist within a work without being propagated, no story can exist without propagating a theology, as a story is a world-view, implying a worldview and its originating theology. To the Christian, though, this news should bring joy as well as fear. Stories, this news tells us, may speak of His nature, may tell the nations of His deeds, may proclaim His glory to all the earth. Stories are a medium of praise, and in that we shall rejoice.

God bless.

Footnotes

1 / 1.1 – If it did, that would be a problem, though not, I think, as deep as the cannibalism advocacy, given its insanity, unless it was presented as an allegory for ethnic groups (and racial supremacy- technically speaking using different species as analogies for different ethnicities is perfectly fine as long as you’re not saying they are of different inherent values or actually different natures). The problem of whether anybody is convinced by the story that elves are real is separate; the author’s moral duty lies in his intent, not in his skill in carrying it out or the eccentricities of the audience. If you encountered somebody who was convinced by reading The Lord of the Rings that elves were in fact a part of life², you would not blame Tolkien or his books; he had no deceptive intent. Likewise, if you encountered somebody convinced that elves were a racial analogue for, say, Caucasians (a much more likely scenario), you would be perfectly in the right to reject their condemnation of The Lord of the Rings, on the grounds that it’s not in the text. If you’re into theology, this is the question of eisegesis versus exegesis.

2 – I can only imagine this to be a disturbing event.

3 – I’m not going to consider the exceptions to this today in detail, but there are reflections of reality which art should not encompass, reflections which man is not supposed to dwell upon or consider or communicate, at least in part because they both lack any virtue and tempt the audience to sin (pornography, gratuitous depictions of violence, and the pruriently displayed intricacies of sorcery (Deuteronomy 18:10; Rev. 21:8) are among these).

4 – It should be noted that these unintentional distortions are always detrimental, as art is a ‘creation-after-the-image-of-creation modified for the purpose of highlighting or exploring some segment of reality creaturely or divine’. Unintentional modifications either afflict the artistic quality, by reducing the impact of the intentional modifications or afflict the theological quality, as will be discussed today.

5 – We’ll return this another day, in a future article to be found here [link yet to be created].

6 – I have no particular example to give here, but imagine an alternate history novel in which the Spanish Armada was never assembled and you’ll get the gist.

7 – Human secondary creation is never perfectly consistent anyway, if viewed in sufficient detail. Think of it like a photograph: it looks fine from a certain distance, but make it big enough and stuff starts to blur.

8 – The worldview presented will nearly always be the author’s at time of writing. If it is not, this is inconsequential to judging the work, if the author intended the work to convey a worldview other than his own. If it was intended to convey one worldview but conveys another, the problem is one of skill; the book may be judged both by intent and by result (see this article). This communication failure may be occasioned by the parts of the story which reflect the truth of the world interfacing with a false worldview and causing it issues.

9 – This sin is, in part, the sin of the false prophets. To understand the terror of this path, remember the prophets; remember 2 Peter 2. Those who speak as God and speak lies in the same breath end, if God has mercy, like unto Job’s friends (Job 13:7-12), and if He has not, like the false prophet of Revelations 20:1-3, who was cast into the fiery pit.

10 – From the fact that no individual story or segment in the Bible encompasses all of it (for all Isaiah tries) we can derive the truth that no individual story of ours must portray all the truth. We should be careful, however, that we don’t leave out parts of the truth which render the rest lies, like forgetting sanctification and adoption when we speak of justification or ignoring repentance when we emphasize faith. It must be acknowledged also that we will make doctrinal mistakes; nobody can be certain that he is correct in his understanding of all the non-essentials of Christian life (the adiaphora- which are often still very important, even crucial to spiritual health), only that he doesn’t know any one in particular is wrong right now. In this, supplication to God, to render our fallible works inerrant, is meet, and repentance when error is discovered should be our remedy.