If you want to understand the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism, you could do worse than look at the creation myths of two Oxford friends, Tolkien and Lewis. Tolkien was a devout Catholic. And although his arguments were a key part of Lewis becoming a Christian, Lewis was a Protestant Anglican.
Both Oxford academics, they both wrote fantasy literature. Intriguingly, they both wrote creation accounts in their fantasy worlds. And in both creation is “sung” into existence. But the differences are illuminating.
Tolkien’s creation account is found in the Silmarillion, which was collected and published after his death. The first chapter is “The Ainulindalë”, the song of the Ainur. In this creation account, God makes the spiritual beings first. They then contribute different parts to a song. The song is then shown to be linked to a future plan of creation. And the spirits then go off to shape this world. The key Catholic distinctive here is that God’s relationship to creation, and creation’s relationship to God, is mediated. God makes the world by creating spiritual beings (angels) who then sing together and following that make the world. God does not act directly in the world, nor do any of the main characters seek any sort of direct relationship to him. That mediated action and relationship fits well with a Catholic emphasis on the mediatorship of saints, church, and clergy.
Lewis’s creation account comes in “The Magician’s Nephew”. This is the first in the chronology of Narnia (though I believe the first written “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” remains the correct starting place for reading!). In “The Magician’s Nephew”, a group from Victorian London find themselves in utter darkness, a not yet world. They begin to hear music, and to see a world forming.
“A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard.”
But when we finally meet the singer, we find it is the great Lion Aslan, the Son of the Emperor beyond the sea, the Jesus figure of Narnia. God the Son sings creation into existence. The directness of God acting, and of people relating to God directly, seems to me a Protestant distinctive. That directness of God creating Narnia continues with a directness of action (in most of the books- arguably “The Silver Chair” is a bit different), and especially with a direct relationship of children and Narnians with Aslan. Though characters have to deal with Aslan feeling absent for periods of time, there are also clear times of relating directly to Aslan. This seems to me a Protestant distinctive.
(It may be worth saying that Lewis’ achievement in Narnia is unique, in my reading so far. I do not know of any other attempt to portray a Jesus figure which is both so distinct from the Gospels and yet captures the character of Jesus so well. If you are writing fantasy for a world with God, I’d recommend going with Tolkien’s approach because most attempts to depict a Jesus figure fail.)
I suspect there are other interesting differences here: when and how evil enters the world for example. Tolkien is fighting the long defeat, in a world where things generally get worse, while Lewis has more of a golden optimistic expectation of God turning up to turn things around.
And I don’t want to overplay the differences- these are tendencies not absolutes. Nonetheless, I find the two creation myths helpful to highlight a Catholic tendency to see God relating to the world through mediators, while the Protestant tendency is to see Jesus as the sole mediator, God himself relating directly to the world.
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