Editing Fairy (section)

==Christian belief in fairies==
Most Christians have been negative or skeptical regarding creatures such as fairies or nature spirits, but a minority of Christian thinkers have advocated for the reality of fairies in positive terms. One early example is [[Origen of Alexandria]] in ''[[Contra Celsum]]'' (8.31) from about the year 248:

{{Blockquote
|text=We indeed also maintain with regard not only to the fruits of the earth, but to every flowing stream and every breath of air that the ground brings forth those things which are said to grow up naturally — that the water springs in fountains, and refreshes the earth with running streams — that the air is kept pure, and supports the life of those who breathe it, only in consequence of the agency and control of certain beings whom we may call invisible husbandmen and guardians; but we deny that those invisible agents are demons.
}}

About a century later ({{circa|335}}), [[Athanasius of Alexandria]] gives an exclusively negative assessment of these same creatures (''On the Incarnation'' 8.47) as simply "demons ...taking up their abode in springs or rivers or trees or stones and imposing upon simple people by their frauds." While such negative or skeptical ideas remained the majority positions for Christians, some exceptions can be found such as the Scottish minister [[Robert Kirk (folklorist)|Robert Kirk]] who wrote ''The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies'' in the later seventeenth century (1893).

In the modern era, [[C. S. Lewis]] writes about the possibility of fairies being real in "The Longaevi" (the "Long-livers" or "Long Lived Ones") in his book ''[[The Discarded Image]]''. Lewis also shared this account of comments by [[J. R. R. Tolkien]] within a letter to Arthur Greeves (22 June 1930):

{{Blockquote
|text=Tolkien once remarked to me that the feeling about home must have been quite different in the days when a family had [[local food|fed on the produce of the same few miles]] of country for six generations, and that perhaps this was why they saw nymphs in the fountains and dryads in the woods – they were not mistaken for there was in a sense a real (not metaphorical) connection between them and the countryside. What had been earth and air and later corn, and later still bread, really was in them. We of course who live on a standardised international diet (you may have had Canadian flour, English meat, Scotch oatmeal, African oranges, & [[Australian wine]] to day) are really artificial beings and have no connection (save in sentiment) with any place on earth. We are synthetic men, uprooted. The strength of the hills is not ours.
}}

Tolkien shares more about the possible reality of fairies in a manuscript published posthumously:

{{Blockquote
|text=If Fairies really exist—independently of Men—then very few of our 'Fairy-stories' have any relation to them... They are a quite separate creation living in another mode. They appear to us in human form (with hands, faces, voices and language similar to our own): this may be their real form and their difference reside in something other than form, or it may be (probably is) only the way in which their presence affects us. Rabbits and eagles may be aware of them quite otherwise. For lack of a better word they may be called spirits, daemons: inherent powers of the created world, deriving more directly and 'earlier' (in terrestrial history) from the creating will of God, but nonetheless created.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Tolkien |first1=J. R. R. |editor-last1=Flieger |editor-first1=Verlyn |chapter=Manuscript B |title=Tolkien on Fairy-stories |date=2008 |publication-place=London, UK |publisher=Douglas A. Anderson |publication-date=2008 |pages=254–255 |isbn=978-0007244669 |quote=If Fairies really exist—independently of Men—then very few of our 'Fairy-stories' have any relation to them: as little, or less than our ghost-stories have to the real events that may befall human personality (or form) after death. If Fairies exist they are bound by the Moral Law as is all the created Universe; but their duties and functions are not ours. They are not spirits of the dead, nor a branch of the human race, nor devils in fair shapes whose chief object is our deception and ruin... They are a quite separate creation living in another mode. They appear to us in human form (with hands, faces, voices and language similar to our own): this may be their real form and their difference reside in something other than form, or it may be (probably is) only the way in which their presence affects us. Rabbits and eagles may be aware of them quite otherwise. For lack of a better word they may be called spirits, daemons: inherent powers of the created world, deriving more directly and 'earlier' (in terrestrial history) from the creating will of God, but nonetheless created, subject to Moral Law, capable of good and evil, and possibly (in this fallen world) actually sometimes evil. They are in fact non-incarnate minds (or souls) of a stature and even nature more near to that of Man (in some cases possibly less, in many maybe greater) than any other rational creatures, known or guessed by us. They can take form at will, or they could do so: they have or had a choice. Thus a tree-fairy (or a dryad) is, or was, a minor spirit in the process of creation who aided as 'agent' in the making effective of the divine Tree-idea or some part of it, or of even of some one particular example: some tree. He is therefore now bound by use and love to Trees (or a tree), immortal while the world (and trees) last—never to escape, until the End. It is a dreadful Doom (to human minds if they are wise) in exchange for a splendid power. What fate awaits him beyond the Confines of the World, we cannot know. It is likely that the Fairy does not know himself. It is possible that nothing awaits him—outside the World and the Cycle of Story and of Time.}}</ref>
}}

[[File:David Bentley Hart 3 Nov 2022 Interview cropped.png|thumb|upright|American theologian [[David Bentley Hart]]]]
Christian theologians [[John Milbank]] and [[David Bentley Hart]] have spoken and written about the real existence of fairies<ref>{{cite web|author=David Bentley Hart|author-link=David Bentley Hart|title=Saving Scholé with David Bentley Hart|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezqs2qxGyeY&t=17s|date=30 December 2022|publisher=Classical Academic Press|quote=At the 2:42 mark: Remind them, and this is absolutely vital, that fairies are real.}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|author=David Bentley Hart|author-link=David Bentley Hart|title=The Armstrong Archives: Otherworlds with David Bentley Hart|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA8TLn38dRw&t=4s|date=22 February 2023|publisher=Leaves in the Wind|quote=At the 1:54 mark: Believing in fairies, ...right now, that's got to be part of orthodoxy, that's got to go right into the creed.}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|author=John Milbank|author-link=John Milbank|title=Stanton Lecture 8: The Surprise of the Imagined|url=http://theologyphilosophycentre.co.uk/papers/Milbank_StantonLecture8.pdf|date=3 March 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|author=David Bentley Hart|author-link=David Bentley Hart|title=The Secret Commonwealth|url=https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2009/10/the-secret-commonwealth|date=20 October 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|author=David Bentley Hart|author-link=David Bentley Hart|title=God, Gods and Fairies|url=https://www.firstthings.com/article/2013/06/god-gods-and-fairies|date=June 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|author=David Bentley Hart|author-link=David Bentley Hart|title=Therapeutic Superstition|url=https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/11/therapeutic-superstition|date=November 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|author=David Bentley Hart|author-link=David Bentley Hart|title=...Of Hills, Brooks, Standing Lakes and Groves...|url=https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2010/10/hellipof-hills-brooks-standing-lakes-and-groveshellip|date=29 October 2010}}</ref> as has the Christian philosopher [[Stephen R. L. Clark]].<ref>{{cite web|author=Stephen R. L. Clark|author-link=Stephen R. L. Clark|title=Why We Believe in Fairies|url=https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/03/why-we-believe-in-fairies|date=March 2017}}</ref><ref>Clark, Stephen R.L. (1987). "How to Believe in Fairies." ''Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.'' 30 (4):337-355.</ref> Hart was a 2015 Templeton Fellow at the University of Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study and has published the most on this topic including references in multiple interviews and books, especially ''[[Roland in Moonlight]]''. For example, Hart has written:

{{Blockquote
|text=Of course mermaids exist. Or, to be more precise, of course water spirits and magical marine beings of every kind are real and numerous and, in certain circumstances, somewhat dangerous. ...The modern reports of real encounters with [[mermaids]] or other water-spirits, such as two from Zimbabwe, one from South Africa, three from northeastern India, and so on ...are so ingenuous, well-attested, and credible that only a brute would refuse to believe them [and] there is a real moral imperative in not dismissing such tales as lies or delusions.<ref>[[David Bentley Hart]] (2020). "Selkies and Nixies: The Penguin Book of Mermaids." ''The Lamp: A Catholic Journal of Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Etc.'' Issue 2. Assumption 2020. pp. 49-50.</ref>
}}