Why Berserkers Went Berserk

Far gone is the Teutonic world of St. Boniface who, upon encountering a people who had entrusted themselves to the Norse gods, was compelled by the love of Christ to chop down their sacred oak. In the secular West of today, the Lord Jesus is no longer preached as the real God in contrast to imagined deities. Instead, a colder, more sterile world confronts the Christian message- an atheistic world which denies the existence of things or beings not observed through empirical study.

This confrontation forces the individual Christian of our time to help safeguard his belief in the supernatural by befriending the pagan of the past. For it is our current materialistic age, with its rejection of any talk of things existing beyond our senses, which would certainly have been considered absurd by pre-Christian paganism. But this critical sentiment of modern sensibilities ought to be shared without embarrassment by contemporary believers of Christ as well because, whereas our zeitgeist claims all can be explained by thorough scientific study- for the life of the spirit, the life of the invisible is not real it tells us- the contemporary Christian, alongside the pagan of history, must emphatically shake his head in disbelief.

The ancients indeed would be sympathetic to the Christian dismissal of so foolish a philosophy. The myths of pagan literature from centuries and centuries ago should not be disregarded or absolutely dismissed by Christian culture for, in some sense, they are part of its heritage too. They help make us aware of the transcendent world that exists beyond the control of man.

Part of being Christian is to discern different aspects and representations of the truth wherever they may be found in the hopes that they might bring us closer to some dimension of the Truth. These pagan myths which provide us with alternative stories of the unseen influence or etiology of things must be respected rather than outright repudiated, for, often enough, they help open our minds to the reality of a spiritual world that goes unnoticed by modern man.

No longer does Haephestus' smithy cause the volcanoes to smoke or Thor's hammer the skies to light up. Persephone's six-month imprisonment in Hades is no longer a sophisticated way to speak of the bitter dead of winter. As elves have left the forests and nymphs have abandoned the seas, the population of the earth has been narrowed down to but one lonely species: modern man.

The unpredictability and extraordinariness of reality is comfortably explained away by our modern positivistic culture that places supernatural trust in itself and the empirical sciences it reverently bows down to. Poseidon's temper does not cause storms- we do by warming the planet with our pollution; Asclepius does not keep us safe from harm by a virus- we do by keeping six feet away and wearing a mask. More and more is man becoming the center of his own modern myths: "The sphinx must solve its own riddle"[1] at the risk of devouring itself- man must become the solution to his own problems at the risk of being confounded in his anxiety. What is not seen, what is not empirically observable, is not real we are led to believe; we are real however, and we are the center of our own story. Whereas the gods were temporarily supplanted by God in the age of Christendom, now God has been supplanted by Man in the age of scientism.

Perhaps then, if our age ought to be considered wrong in all these presuppositions which attribute the origin of all things to either ourselves or other natural phenomena, the ancients may justly be regarded as correct in attributing some extraordinary things to supernatural causes. Of course, the metamorphic gods and other worldly creatures these pagans imagined were not ever real. Nevertheless, mythic imagery is conducive to creating within us a sense of awe and mystery towards the world around us.

Undoubtedly, there is a certain wonder that we ought to have when we encounter realities like sunsets, forests, oceans, or even the intimate hearths of our homes and mythology gives us an imaginative sense of this wonder by seeing these things as much greater than ourselves. Perhaps something is to be learned from the myth-makers of old when they attempted to personify the action of events, the onset of human emotions, the origins of various things with powerful deities and fanciful creatures. Maybe there is truth to be gleaned from such extra-sensory and imaginative thinking.

Could there really ever be a greater comprehension of the panic of battle captured in the imagination than by visualizing it as Homer did with the raging god Ares fighting amidst Trojan battle lines? Is it not only boring but simply naive to dismiss any thought of supernatural forces (demonic or angelic) which might surface during war? Why Berserkers went berserk was not merely because they wanted another's food, treasure, or women. No! The seemingly entranced Viking warrior wanted to be found worthy by Odin's Valkyries to be admitted into Valhalla where he hoped to feast and await the final battle of all things at Ragnarök. He did not merely want what other humans had- the economic reasons why he fought were only secondary; primarily, he wanted to enter into that cosmic fight for the universe between gods and giants. Mythology, in its many forms, does not merely bring with it the levity of made-up creatures and immature deities like us. Its storytelling allows us to witness the gravitas of life that captivatingly invites us into things and events much larger than ourselves.

Chesterton once wrote that paganism could be summarized as "an attempt to reach the divine reality through the imagination alone."[2] Within its own limited framework (or unlimited, if we speak of the imagination as unrestricted by the reasoning of the intellect), mythology certainly provides intimations of truth that ring true to the ears of any man in search for God or of how we ought to live.

Certainly, Zeus does not hurl lightning bolts, but picturing his strong arm throwing one as if he were tossing a spear is perhaps a poignant way to envision the power of One who is even stronger than Zeus. Likewise, Prometheus may not have stolen fire from the gods and given it to men, but this might be an apt way of imagining the beneficence of One who, though owing nothing to His creatures, generously stoops down from His throne to share with humanity such a gift. Similarly, Odin may not have lost an eye in his quest for wisdom, but somehow that story seems to fittingly applaud the wise man who has not counted the cost, nor heeded the suffering necessary, to acquire wisdom. Furthermore, can it not be said more compellingly that just as the Lord only permitted Moses to see His back as His glory passed by (c.f. Ex 33:20-23), so too did Eros refuse to allow Psyche to see him every evening when he came to make love to her? There was just that something in the divine which was too great for both the leader of Israel and a maiden lover on a mountain to behold! Hence, with all their mythology the pagan storytellers who first portrayed the gods and their interactions with men like so were certainly circling around an acute awareness of the real nature of God as revealed to His people.

Thus, possessing a firm and trustworthy belief in the one true God that the Church had received through the incarnation of the Son, the Christian is empowered to do more than simply enjoy the fruit that divine revelation provides him with through scripture and tradition- as good and sufficient as that revelation is. In addition to this, it allows him to swim out into the deep waters of the human imagination and there tread the surf of myth as well. May it never be that the Christian is forbidden to use his imagination in this way!

Nonetheless, the imagination ought never be considered a self-sufficient path to achieving a true knowledge of the Creator, or of reality in general. Rather, it must be limited within the bounds of reason if it is to be recognized as providing us with legitimate access to the fullness of truth. It is as if, on one hand, natural religion holds up an individual’s belief in things divine and subjects them to his reason, while, on the other, mythic religion allows man's imagination to soar unfettered by reason into realms as inspiring as the unsurpassed beauty of Helen of Troy. As helpful and pragmatic as reason is, in and of itself it cannot bring us to these inspiring heights of beauty; yet, as rousing and exciting as the imagination is, lest we begin to worship the many gods of the heathens, we must keep it in check and grounded in the truth by the use of our reason. Only in the Christian religion then is the imagination (i.e. a Christian imagination which is captured by such beliefs as a baby being born of a virgin, or a carpenter who could control the storms of the sea, or a servant who suffers and so is able to defeat Death by his own death) and reason (i.e. a Christian rationality that assents to the theological realities of the Divine Logos, the First Cause, the Eternal reason and coherence of all things) are bound together so closely that a Person is formed in their union: the Word that was made flesh and dwelt among us (c.f. Jn 1:14).

It was for good reason then the Apostle Paul applauded the Athenians for building an altar to an unknown god, for what the Greeks erected in their immaturity redounded to the greater glory of the Lord Jesus who would soon be preached to them (c.f. Acts 17:22-31). Their ignorantly built altar pointed them to a Truth that utterly surpassed their understanding.

So too we might add, the stories these pagan thinkers told reorient the human heart as well towards the lessons Christian revelation further purifies and crystalizes. For, if the assertion nihil ex nihilo means anything, then the content of these mythic stories must have come from somewhere else that was surely within truth’s orbit. Hence, the question inevitably arises for us Christians to ask: Whence do these stories, these myths come?

The Anglican priest and physicist John Polkingshore appropriately put it that myth conveys truth so sacred that it can only be transmitted by means of a story.[3] In other words, it is the story-format that most properly and adequately conveys the essence of any deep and profound truth. This is probably why our Lord spoke in parables so often. Our minds seem to be more deeply affected by characters and their actions than by ideas and data. When we put a face to a name we are more likely to remember it in the future. Similarly, if we put a truth about something into a story we are more likely to grasp and appreciate the essence of that truth.

Thus, although there are false beliefs and heterodox worldviews to be shunned by the follower of Jesus as he reads through ancient myths, already possessing in his own intellect the fullness of truth in Christ Jesus, the Christian is in a unique position to be able to extract truth from falsity by holding up pagan beliefs handed on through mythic stories to the standard of divine revelation that has been handed onto him from the Church. Consequently, the Christian is enabled to sift through the waters, rocks, and dirt of these pagan tales to find the gold within them that lies awaiting to be unearthed along their riverbeds. As St. Basil the Great once said, Christians must be like bees who carefully:

"do not visit all the flowers without discrimination, nor indeed do they seek to carry away entire those upon which they light, but rather, having taken so much is adapted to their needs, they let the rest go."[4]

Certainly, it is obvious that a Christian should not regard pagan authors like Homer or Hesiod as theologians on par with Augustine or the Cappadocian Fathers. That the theology believed by pagans is in contrast to that believed by Christians is evident enough! But what is this essential “honey” we might ask that St. Basil says the Christian bee can extract from the flowering pagan myth?

Besides the exaltation of virtue that the Greeks suffused their literature with, in addition to the limitless bravery the Norsemen held up as the standard for all in their mythology, the idea that overwhelmingly colors all of Christian theology- and which is shared by both pagan and monotheistic thought- is that the world is moved by forces beyond our sense and understanding. In fact, one particular Christian author chose to use the medium of his own mythology to convey this elementary truth: J.R.R. Tolkien.

His story of the origin of Middle-Earth found in The Silmarillion is a beautifully syncretistic myth of how a world is formed under the direction of the fictional divine being Eru (also known as The One). In this myth, Tolkien has the world come about by means of secondary agents that Eru creates from his mind. These emanations that proceed from the mind of Eru (i.e. the Valar), are the immediate causes of what eventually brings about the existence and splendor of Middle-Earth. Tolkien chose to insert these divine-like beings in his creation account of Middle-Earth to express a profound truth by way of the story/mythological format. This truth is that God can and does use freely acting agents to, at the very least, govern the world we live in. The Valar in Tolkien’s myth are the ones who “sing” into being Middle-Earth by their own special creativity. They truly create what will become Middle-Earth by a most magnificent and thought-provoking action: they first hear an initial note that hums from the divine mind of Eru- then they elaborate on it themselves in their own unique ways.

Should a Christian see this world-forming story as blasphemous, a tale expressed mythologically and not “factually” true in that the act of creation belongs only to God and no other?  A fanciful world brought into being by god-like figures who themselves then create other beings who are to populate what has been made? As Tolkien was a devout Christian himself, I do not think we can jump to that conclusion, even if the notion of beings other than God creating matter strikes the Christian as unorthodox. What indeed must Tolkien have been getting at in inventing the Valar? Who, in reality, might they be?

Perhaps in a way that might be considered guilty of succumbing to our modern age's anthropocentric focus, could not man be substituted as such a potentially creative character in our world? Does not man mysteriously participate in the divine creation of the Creator God in Genesis by himself creating a new world whenever he procreates? Moreover, in an even more mundane way, does not man additionally shape an ever-new, ever-evolving world by freely choosing good or evil in the innumerable decisions he is demanded to make throughout the day? "You have made him little less than a god; with glory and honor you crowned him, gave him power over the works of your hand, put all things under his feet," we are told by the Psalmist (Ps 8:5-6).

Maybe, in a still more sublime way that might strike closer to the chord of Tolkien’s thought, a true Christian understanding of the Valar could be seen in those existent beings we learn of through Christian revelation called the angels. Tolkien's friend C.S. Lewis seems to have thought along this same line when he similarly had angel-like figures rule and protect the various planets of the galaxy in his own fictional works collected in his Space Trilogy. Interestingly, Lewis seems to have patterned these angelic beings after the personalities of the Greek gods and goddesses of old, thus demonstrating an appropriate Christian interpretation of the pagan myths of the past.

But, regardless of whether or not one assents to the idea our world was brought into being by angelic assistance, Tolkien’s The Silmarillion does intimate enough truth in it to make a Christian at least wonder at the idea of how our world is governed. Maybe God does oversee His creation through such an extravagant medium as the ministry of the angels? This idea ought not strike the orthodox thinker as heterodox. It is only a occasionalist who would deny such a possibility.

Heavily developed during medieval Islam, philosophical occasionalism denies any genuine creative power in creatures to bring about effects. Rather, the Islamic occasionalist, under the guise of protecting the all-sovereignty of God, propounds that every effect is wrought directly by the immediate, active will of God. But not only does this position attack Tolkien's creation of Middle-Earth by the Valar, it also undermines the Christian belief in an eternally fruitful creativity of God whose creations are enabled themselves to freely participate in some derivative form of His own creative power. The angelic doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, refutes the occasionalist by writing:

"There are certain intermediaries of God's providence, for He governs things inferior by superior, not because of any defect in His power but by reason of the abundance of His goodness; so that the dignity of causality is imparted even to creatures."[5] 

How wonderful is the idea that God created the world! How more wonderful is the idea that God's creation is full of causal agents empowered to imitate their Creator in some small way! Now this is a universal hierarchical order both Christians as well as pagan myth-makers can rejoice in! For, it is as if the world is a symphony assembled by a composer under the direction of a conductor. The cause of the music is not limited to the composer writing the music nor even to the conductor directing the musicians. Less so is it limited to the skill of the musicians themselves. The causal chain of the music extends back to the maker of the musical instruments and even to the maker of the pen itself with which the composer wrote the piece. Each is properly said to be a cause in the existence of the music- some more immediate, some more remote. Perhaps then God's creative power works similarly with an almost innumerable chain of causes working together to form the world we live in. Does this sound familiar? Does it not sound a bit like the pagans’ pantheon of their deities- with their list of gods superior to other gods, who themselves reign supreme over other gods who existed before them, etc., etc.? The Lord governing things “inferior” by those that are “superior”?

Indeed, we will only acquire a fuller knowledge at the end of time concerning how God works and how he has chosen to weave the fabric of existence. But until then, we have our ancestors’ myths to provide us with manifestations of different values we honor in life- different qualities all of which find their ultimate reality in Him. And as long as our minds are not like ships "surrendered to the rudder, to follow whither they list," drinking poison alongside of honey, [6] we can rest assured that by our reading of pagan mythology we can legitimately glimpse at certain truths about God and about the world around us from a perspective surprisingly akin to our Christian one.

While leaving aside what is not true, the wise Christian can recognize the worth of such powerful stories that developed outside divine revelation, stories that speak to us through shadows and symbols of a much greater reality that lies behind them. For Hamlet could have been speaking to modern materialistic man more than to Horatio himself when he said:

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."[7]

Indeed, there are more things we must tell modern man. Not less.

[1] Ralph Waldo Emerson, “History,” in The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Norwalk, CT, Easton Press, 1979), 2.

[2] G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (San Francsico, CA: Ignatius Press, 2008), 110.

[3] Polkingshore, Science and Religion in Quest of Truth (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 113. c.f. “Myth is indeed often understood in a positive sense, as a kind of visionary means of expression for realities that go beyond what is visible and tangible; thus, it would embody a higher truth than what is merely factual would…[a myth] transcends the factual element.” Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2002), 216 and 301.

[4] Basil, Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature.

[5] The Summa Theologica, Part I, q. 22, art. 3 in Great Books of the Western World, vol. 19, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province Chicago, IL: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952), 131.  

[6] Basil, Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature.

[7] William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act I, scene 5 in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (New York, NY: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1994), 679.