“Echoes of the Gospel-event in Literature and Elsewhere”

pp. 50 - 58

Reflects how many gospel themes are also in fairy tales you read to children: good/evil struggle is the transcendent one; but there are also others. Ordinary people are assigned extraordinary tasks for which they get supernatural aid; a prince marries a princess who is then elevated by the process (Christ and the Church); the refrain, “they lived happily ever after,” which applies to the citizens of the new heaven and earth. Analogies from Bible and lit: a seed decays and then grows, caterpillar/butterfly; womb/tomb (Who in a womb would even believe there’s a glorious life beyond this? We’re realists after all.), rocket analogy (our life has stages that include the dropping of parts). Rossow cites C. S. Lewis, who liked to comment that the frequency of biblical echoes in mythological accounts argues for the truth of the gospel. Then R gives some examples of literature that intentionally patterns itself after the gospel (Lewis, A Tale of Two Cities, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, Greene’s The End of the Affair, Billy Budd, Flannery O’Connor ‘s stories, Brideshead Revisited.