The Origin and Value of Mythology
Theological and Historical Introduction
By Dr. Cory Brock
In 1876, when Herman Bavinck penned these thoughts on mythology, he was only twenty-two years old. He composed this short essay for his literary exam in Kampen, a requirement to earn a diploma that would enable further study. He had already spent time at the University of Leiden, and one can surmise that upon his return to Kampen he had been reading Hegel. He received distinguishing marks for this brief reflection—and though he was young, it is notable for its nuance and depth.¹
The year of its composition is significant. In 1876 the Netherlands passed the Higher Education Act, which shifted the university toward a modern scientific centre for research. One consequence was that theology within the universities was reconfigured into religious studies. Theology was fit for private piety, or for the church and its seminaries perhaps, but it was not to be treated as knowledge alongside the other more ‘scientific’ disciplines. This was the intellectual atmosphere Bavinck had just breathed at Leiden. And it is the atmosphere against which his mature career would be a sustained protest. He made it a lifelong mission to insist on the ongoing relevance of the Christian faith for the academy and for the world and that without it the human heart remains unsatisfied. That thesis stands at the centre of his Christian Worldview.² It is already present, in seed form, here.
Within this same climate, religious studies scholarship had largely adopted an evolutionary account of religion. Drawing on Hegel's philosophy of history and Darwin's instinct for development, scholars applied the evolutionary hypothesis not only to humanity but to religion itself. Hugo Winkler's pan-Babylonian theory was representative: all religions were birthed from polytheism, moving through tribal deities and henotheism toward monotheism, with Christianity a late bloomer in the long history of divinity.³ Monotheism, on this account, was the product of evolution.
Bavinck argues the reverse—a reversal that is not uncommon in his works. Polytheism, he contends, is not a stage of progress but a degeneration. The human mind, under the corruption of sin and its noetic effects, breaks down the unity of God into fragments; those fragments become the basis for individuating gods. People under sin prioritize their sensory life—they take what they see, combine it with their deep need for religion, and construct an illusion of corruptible deities. These ideas require story to give them life, which is why Homer and Hesiod matter: they are not inventors but gatherers, collecting and shaping the inherited ideas and longings of their people. Mythology, for Bavinck, is therefore not disconnected from the Christian faith, nor is it a mere antithesis to it. It is the product of a sinful response to the Triune God's genuine self-revelation in nature and history.
His evolutionary and historicist language is worth noting. He describes mythology as a stage in the development of "nature-worship," a "childhood" in the path of human world-and-life-view development, a movement of "spirit" in which "the slumbering self-consciousness" begins to awaken. This register is less familiar in the mature Bavinck. He is clearly working within the idiom he had absorbed at Leiden, and the reader should take that into account. But the argument driving that language already belongs to the Bavinck we know.
What makes this essay especially interesting is the degree to which it anticipates themes Bavinck would spend a lifetime developing. Three deserve particular notice.
First, he is already reaching for Schleiermacher's language of "the feeling of dependence" to describe the root of religion—but he deploys it critically. Mythology, at its heart, is this feeling of dependence misplaced. The religious instinct is real and irreducible; the problem is its misdirection.
Second, the theses of Christian Worldview and Philosophy of Revelation are stated here with striking precision. "The task of the philosopher therefore is to interpret it," Bavinck writes, "and to trace the thought that lies at the foundation of every myth." To trace the thought beneath the form—this is entirely characteristic of his mature method. It is identical to the thesis of Philosophy of Revelation. Beneath the mythological stories one can find the ideas through which the ancient Greeks sought to explain the mystery of life. And the questions underlying worldview formation are already named: What is the relation of the world to God? Of the self to God? Of God to the world? Of the self to the world?
Third, the young Bavinck is already practising what might now be called cultural apologetics in an Augustinian mode—affirming and confronting. He calls mythology "beautiful" in thought and concept, something that serves to "broaden our horizon." For the Christian reader it has genuine value: it discerns truth in many a story, it reflects the longing that only God can satisfy, and above all it points—however distortedly—toward what Christ alone ultimately realises. What the peoples sought in mythology, Christ is the true and better.
This essay, then, is not merely a curiosity of Bavinck's student years. It is a window into a mind already formed in its deepest instincts—committed to revelational epistemology, generous toward pagan thought, and convinced that the Christian faith does not stand apart from the human story but stands as its fulfilment.
The Origin and Value of Mythology
By Herman Bavinck
Translated by Mr. Jonathan Tomes
Edited by Mr. Cody S. Edds
H. Bavinck.
July 1876.
…and they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and of four-footed animals and of creeping things.
-Paul
As soon as man forsakes the God of Revelation, he creates after his own fancy a Being whom he serves, and the saying holds in full force: as man is, so is his god. Even if from Eden’s garden a pure conception of God was once carried along, that conception too had to be reshaped according to the demand of the wandering intellect. For sin increased by progress along the path away from God and, in league with unbelief, effaced the memory of the once-given Revelation. When one had lost the touchstone of God himself in the heart, one could no longer preserve a notion without content in its purity; one had to forsake it. For this reason, I regard the priority of monotheism as not only defensible before the tribunal of science, but only by its acceptance is the origin of polytheism, otherwise as insoluble a riddle as that of language, fully explained along the historical line of degeneration. For the forsaking of the monotheistic conception of God, the consequence of forsaking God, led necessarily to polytheism. This is why Lessing too says in his Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts, on the condition that God has revealed himself to man: “As soon as human reason, left to itself, began to work upon the concept of the One God, it broke down the One Infinite into several more finite ones, and gave each of these parts a distinguishing mark.”⁴
The Origin of Mythology
Hence too we find a polytheistic worship of gods among all peoples, except Israel, who through revelation regained God and with him the pure conception. Such polytheism, in the childlike state of the peoples, clothes itself in the motley garb of Mythology; a remarkable and characteristic form in which the Heathen religion manifests itself.
The nations were at first children. Just as with the individual man, we observe also among nations a period of youth and bloom, a high point, an ἀκμή, and a period of old age and decline before vanishing altogether. In that childhood, the sensory life came to the fore and exercised the greatest influence. On the other hand there remained, as a faint, dim reflection of the divine light that once shone within man, in his heart, the need for religion and worship. This need, becoming ever more indefinite, soon resolved itself into a feeling of dependence upon a power above and beyond him.
These two factors, the inward longing for religion and the childhood receptiveness to the influence of the sensory life, gave rise to nature-worship. This was the first form of religion among all peoples, and at the same time the foundation of the artful edifice of Mythology.
For first of all, they had to feel themselves dependent on what surrounded them, on nature. They felt this dependence whether the awe-inspiring thunder rolled through the firmament, or the flickering lightning struck down bringing destruction. They felt it whether the refreshing rain made the earth fruitful and caused food to spring forth, necessary for life and existence, or whether day and night, summer and winter, sowing and harvest time, brought a benevolent and unshakably regular alternation. In all the circumstances bound up with their way of life, as savages, as nomads, or as agricultural peoples, they were ruled by the forces of nature. The harm these forces brought disposed them to fear; the blessing they bestowed, to grateful veneration. In a word: men stood entirely passive over against nature.
They were hindered by “the darkness of their foolish heart and the vanity of their reasonings” from “perceiving the Invisible things of God by their understanding” (νοούμενα καθορᾶν). Like the child who, seeing the stars, philosophically asks after their origin, every working of nature whose influence was perceptible in their life had to appear as a god to their childlike fancy. For this fancy, not the understanding, reigned then. It created gods, believed in their existence, perceived in everything a trace of the Godhead, and brought it about that “Things then felt, which ne'er can feel again.”⁵
Those gods, at first few, such as Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, multiplied as the circle of life expanded, as culture grew, as needs increased, as the gods of other peoples became more known.
Pantheistically, men identified nature and god, did not see the distinction between the finite and the infinite, the natural and the spiritual, and bowed before the personified powers of nature.
[Princip]ally of a religious, but also of a moral, historical, and philosophical character are the ideas furnished in rich abundance by this view of nature. For all the conceptions, formed according to the measure of their development, man set in relation to the gods. He represented them under images, in the glowing language of fancy. These conceptions concerned the questions of life and the weighty facts of their history, both of earlier and later times. Man was an unwitting poet, and despite himself the rich treasury of myths was born.
Yet from this view of nature alone we should still not be able to explain the character and full richness of the myths. This nature-worship, created not by the understanding but by fancy which has yet to mature, could not continue to satisfy. It had to be replaced by a new period in development.
Man begins, after he has come to recognize through habit and familiarity the unfree regularity of nature, to feel his own strength and influence, to become conscious of himself. There comes a reaction. Alongside the sensual need that created nature-worship, the spirit too develops, into which the sensory perceptions likewise penetrate. The slumbering self-consciousness awakens, the spirit raises itself, the understanding tears itself loose from the swaddling-bands of fancy. In other words, man begins to set himself actively over against nature. But now the dominion of the forces of nature no longer satisfies him; he shakes them off. As he himself rises in development, his gods too must become more exalted. He gains the conviction that no longer blind, bound, however personified, forces of nature, but free, moral beings rule over him. While the need for divine worship remains the same, its form must be modified, more in conformity with the developing spirit. Between the sensory and the spiritual need, a treaty must be made. That transaction now consists in this: that between gods and forces of nature, formerly one, there now comes a separation, and consequently the conceptions and relations of both undergo modification. This period we find most clearly among the Greeks in the transition from the Pelasgian into the Hellenic age, of which Homer is the great representative.
The gods in Homer have an independent existence and the character of men. Naturally so. When one made them into free, moral persons, independent of nature, one had to ascribe to them, knowing nothing higher, a being whose properties were borrowed, taken from man. They differed only in measure and degree. They differed in what made the gods absolutely gods, in immortality, though the possibility of dying still remained even with them. Thus, while on the one side they became self-conscious, self-acting, and the idea won in purity, on the other side their purity was diminished by the assumption of human defects.
Through this anthropomorphism of the gods the way was paved for the full unfolding of those innumerable myths, in the main already given by nature-worship, in which the blinding superstition, “that monster, hellish of stock and bastard fruit of falsehood,”⁶ emerges, in the pure development of polytheism, even more powerfully than in nature-worship. For one was freer in the work of development, now that the gods, separated from nature, stood on their own. At will, properties, including those one discovered in oneself, could now be personified. New gods were thereby formed, the already existing myths modified or developed, combined or dissected; and continually new ones could be created out of the inexhaustible source of rich imagination.
Thus arose that rich treasure of fables which, however often confused and obscure, are rich in reading and through the beauty of their thoughts come [to be admired]. It arose more by the working over of what one possessed than by the creation of something new, and likewise by the absorption and weaving in of myths borrowed from elsewhere.
Yet one must beware of supposing that those myths were made on purpose. Although Herodotus too says (II:53): “These men, namely Homer and Hesiod, were they who framed a theogony for the Greeks, and gave names to the gods, and assigned to them honors and arts, and declared their several forms,”⁷ it holds only in a relative sense. Of deliberate fabrication there is no question. They created according to their own laws, or rather drew from the existing stock. They were the interpreters of their people, for whom the gods so lived, thought, and worked, as they were represented by them.
The Value of Myth for Human Development
From the origin of Mythology, its value can easily be deduced. That origin makes it known to us as the treasury of the entire world- and life-view [wereld- en levensbeschouwing] of the peoples in the state of their childhood. Its value becomes more important the better one understands what Mythology is. Certainly, whoever stares only at the surface, who penetrates no deeper than to the seemingly senseless and absurd tales, does not even dream of the treasure they contain within themselves. Of Mythology too there holds that splendid image which Plato gives us in his Symposium of Socrates. Socrates is there represented to us as resembling a Silenus-figure that outwardly, rough and misshapen, captivates us by no single artistic touch. But behold, that Silenus-figure opens, and one discovers a divine image, beautiful in form and expression, a masterpiece of art. So was Socrates, says Plato. So now is it also with Mythology. Resembling outwardly foolish children’s tales, it contains, despite the much that is unexplainable and obscure, in the form of images, the thoughts that the peoples formed concerning the origin, essence, and connection of God, man, and nature. The task of the philosopher therefore is to interpret it, and to trace the thought that lies at the foundation of every myth. Mythology is one great, beautiful poem, the work of the childlike fancy, of the rich imaginative power, of the naive poetry, among all peoples, but among the highly gifted Greeks above all.
It is therefore not merely an auxiliary discipline, to make the writers, both of earlier and later times, intelligible to us. It takes an independent place among the branches of Antiquity. It allows us to cast a deep glance into the character, the customs, and the manner of thinking of a people, and it opens to us a period in the developmental history of mankind.
Mythology is suited in general, by the wealth of its beautiful thoughts and conceptions, to sharpen our judgment, to broaden our horizon, to enrich our style by heightening its beauty and force. It is therefore of particular importance for the literary scholar, the historian, and the philosopher.
For the literary scholar: who would have to regard most of its products as unintelligible and powerless, and would have had to lack the key to the unlocking of much that is beautiful and splendid, were the cultivation of Mythology to be banished.
For the historian: who tries to dig up the history of the Pre-historic age, also laid down in those myths, and, however little, tries to illuminate “the night of that impenetrable darkness.”⁸
For the philosopher: who, dissecting the form, traces out the idea that pressed itself upon man concerning the riddles of life and was expressed in the language of fancy.
The Value of Mythology for the Christian
Finally, what in my view determines the proper, and therefore the highest, value of any matter: also for the Christian it has value. The Christian sees in Mythology a whole series of attempts undertaken by man to escape the constricting bonds of nature, and, the Hercules-myth is proof of this for us: to become one with God. Through the fruitlessness of those attempts it was, however, too poor to bring satisfaction, despite all the wealth of its treasures. Soon afterwards, when, as in Greece, philosophy, in league with the mockery of men like Aristophanes, set about criticizing Mythology, faith in those fables of folly had to vanish. For faith always suffers under the breath of criticism; even now in those whose faith is not directly rooted in the firm soil of the historical Christ.
Mythology had this advantage over the abstract Humanitarian doctrine which came in its place, of which our Moderns now possess the “Mishnah” [literatio]: it was very concrete and therefore exerted, more than the latter, an influence on life. Yet it was not proof against the assaults of the understanding, or rather still, of the unsatisfied heart. It had to perish, because it gave only a thought, no reality. And not by a thought about God, only by God himself, can man be satisfied, however beautiful the lesson may be that the thought contains for him who possesses the reality.
Mythology discerns the truth in many a myth, and, by the failure of its attempts, demonstrates the necessity of this condition. It is therefore for us Christians a signpost that strengthens us in the conviction that we are on the right path when we see in Christ the only Reality, the realization also of what the peoples sought in Mythology.
Pastoral Postscript
By Mr. Josh Tennant
Imagine an ordinary morning in the ancient world. Wake up, throw on your tunic, sit down for breakfast. As you dip your bread into wine, you ponder the stories of old. “Odysseus really went through some things. I hope I can overcome the difficulties in my life.” Reaching for figs, you whisper, “It would be nice to be as strong as Hercules.” While leaving for the daily shopping, you pass the shelf of the household idols and hope they grant you wellness and safety. Once at the market, you hear a commotion. Strangers have arrived and are proclaiming something astonishing: that a divine power has entered history, death itself has been conquered, and a man has come back to life! This is nothing new—you’ve heard similar stories in the old myths. Yet somehow this is different; this is about an unfamiliar foreign deity. The strangers are taken to the high court, the Areopagus, the place where those guilty of religious offense and crimes are judged. Since it has strong ties to mythical stories, it seems fitting that those claiming a seemingly different myth would be questioned there. Tensions are high but curiosity is piqued. Eventually, one of the strangers speaks and you hear him say:
“Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for
‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.”⁹
Stunned by what you just heard, something sinks inside you. The divine being is not like an image formed by the art and imagination of man? You’re overwhelmed and confused, thinking you’ve gotten it wrong. “Have I formed the divine by my own imagination?” you muse with dread. Something eventually sparks in your spirit, and dread turns to light and hope. “The stories I’ve been taught point to my weakness and to strength found only outside of myself. My imagination cannot be the source from which this God comes from but instead my imagination is from God. My dependence is on him and not the other way around.” With this, you leave your false myths behind and follow the apostle who proclaims the “true myth.”
What Herman Bavinck is unveiling in his writing is that myth reveals something profoundly true about human nature. Though our myths are corrupted, they still point toward realities that are true. The fall of man affected our reasoning, yet it did not erase humanity’s dependence upon something greater than ourselves. Humanity still longs for transcendence, meaning, and communion with an ultimate source of being. In our inability to rightly comprehend the one Triune God in His divine simplicity, humanity tends to isolate particular aspects of God and elevate them beyond their proper place. The attributes become separated into “mini gods,” and this fragmentation gives rise to polytheism. Yet God’s covenant people remained monotheistic because of God’s continual relationship and revelation to them. Through covenant, they were reminded of who God truly is. Without that revelation, they too would drift into polytheism. This reflects what Bavinck described as the “organic” nature of creation and revelation in several of his writings. After the fall humanity was not severed from its created purpose but remains dependent upon God and unable to escape His revelation entirely. The image of God is distorted and depraved rather than destroyed. Human culture, religion, and myth continue to contain fragmented shadows of truth, yet mixed with idolatry and imagination.
What Bavinck is trying to teach us is that apart from God’s revelation and covenant, humanity’s desire to remain tethered to its original source of being translates into imagination enthralled with powers beyond us—powers that are both fearful and wondrous, relatable to our affections, yet bendable to our will. Human experience and fallen reason begin to dictate the idea of the divine image within us. Nature gives and takes away; humanity became both fearful of it and grateful to it. Knowing they were powerless facing storms, famine, death, and chaos, and yet possessing an innate design for dependence and worship, it is sadly understandable that people personified nature and ultimately deified it. Humanity leaned not on true understanding, but on experience and desire. In doing so, they lost the distinction between Creator and creation. As civilizations developed and gained greater control over nature—learning to cultivate, shape, and harness it according to human purposes, the fearful fascination with nature itself began to fade. Humanity then sought something greater still: free, rational, moral beings who controlled nature itself. The gods increasingly became reflections of mankind. The gods were made in the image of man.
Through these myths, people believed nature and events could be controlled by appealing to the gods. What we can learn from Bavinck’s insight is that mythology therefore shines light upon the inner design and desires of the human soul. It reveals within humanity a sense of beauty, freedom, creativity, and passion, but also longing to rest in and rightly rely upon something greater than ourselves. Myth reflects a faint recognition that something in the world is not right. It became an outlet for humanity’s groaning and yearning for restoration. Myth is the poetry of human experience: despair mingled with hope. Within mythology humanity envisions itself overcoming suffering through force, will, strength, and cunning. Heroes save not only themselves but also those they love. Yet possession of the true myth is greater than possession of myths born merely from imagination. Myth may reveal truths about the world and ourselves, but it remains infused with falsity. Therefore, it must be sifted carefully so that within it we may discern God’s design and the reality fulfilled in Christ.
Perhaps in a limited sense, myth, though to a lesser degree, did for the pagan world what the law and sacrificial system did for the Israelites—preparing categories through which humanity could connect its experiences to what Christ accomplished. Through mythic themes of sacrifice, resurrection, deliverance, redemption, and victory over darkness, pagan humanity was being prepared to understand what Christ was doing in history. God uses human experience itself to reveal His work and purpose. This explains why certain stories resonate so deeply across cultures and generations. When a lion is murdered yet rises again through an “old magic” to destroy the evil witch, something within us recognizes the beauty of death overcome by sacrificial love. When a benevolent wizard returns from the grave and rides forth with radiant light to overthrow darkness, we recognize the longing for a conquering deliverer. When a thief seeking only to feed his family is imprisoned under the law, yet finds redemption and freedom through grace, we recognize our own condition and hope for mercy. As C. S. Lewis wrote in God in the Dock, “The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be a myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history.”¹⁰ However, Christianity is not simply another mythic story elevated to historical status, it’s the divine reality which our myths unknowingly drew inspiration from. Pagan mythology reflects humanity’s futile search for God, whereas the gospel is God’s redemptive self-revelation entering history itself to restore us to a state far greater than any mythical legend could compare. If you have experienced this restoration, seek to discover how to use your imagination to see the wonderful works of God.
¹ See James Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography (Baker Academic, 2020), chapter 5.
² Herman Bavinck, Christian Worldview, trans. James Eglinton, Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, and Cory Brock (Crossway, 2019).
³ See Bavinck’s explanation of Winckler in Philosophy of Revelation, eds. Cory Brock and Nathaniel Gray Sutanto (Hendrickson, 2018), 1.
⁴ “Sobald ihn die sich selbst überlassene menschliche Vernunft zu bearbeiten anfing, zerlegte sie den Einzigen Unermeßlichen in mehrere Ermeßlichere, und gab jedem dieser Teile ein Merkzeichen.” Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (Berlin, 1780).
⁵ “Und was nie empfinden wird, empfand.” Friedrich Schiller, “The Gods of Greece,” in The Poems of Schiller, trans. Edgar A. Bowring (London: George Bell & Sons, 1910), 72.
⁶ Willem Bilderdijk, De dichtwerken van Bilderdijk, 2nd pt. (Haarlem: A. C. Kruseman, 1856), 352.
⁷ Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt, rev. John Marincola (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 105.
⁸ From the Christmas carol, “Bethlehem, O Chosen One.”
⁹ Acts 17:22-29 (ESV).
¹⁰ C. S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact,” The Timeless Writings of C. S. Lewis (New York: Inspirational Press, 2003), 343.