Christus surrexit! Surrexit vere!
The Gospels...contain many marvels--peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: "mythical" in their perfect, self-contained significance, and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered history and the primary world... The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. .... There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. for the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary art, that is, of Creation. ...
It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be "primarily" true, its narrative to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had possessed. ... The joy would have exactly the same quality, if not the same degree,as the joy which the "turn" in a fairy story gives: such joy has the very taste of primary truth. But this story is supreme' and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the lord of angels, and of men--and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.
--J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories
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