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@michael-erasmus I really like what you’re trying to aim for. There’s a quote by Flannery ‘O Connor which goes something like, “The greatest dramas feature the salvation or loss of a soul. Without an eternal soul, drama lacks life.” I think playing with salvation and damnation, a capital G God, and man’s relationship with him is high drama. It’s also something few writers capture well. (Contemporary-emeritus fiction writer Alan Paton succeeded, I would say.)

I would also say, the way you described the way you want to show God was powerful, so if this is something real and alive to you, you automatically have decent chance of handling it well.

Some narratives can give us a powerful look at man’s relationship with God without a specific gospel narrative (i.e. Till We Have Faces), and these can be fantastic–worth writing. But I think it’s a shame if we can’t also write books that focus on the greatest of all stories (the gospel) without butchering the very art that comes from the one who wrote the gospel into living history. We ought to be able to handle this.

One stumbling block may be emphasizing allegory over story. Just because a Jesus character dies for your sins doesn’t make it interesting. Just like you could write a story about a bomb going off in New York City that’s a dry as the Sahara. Cool premise does not equal masterful execution. Period.

Another stumbling block may be a lame gospel. This could either be something unorthodox like “God loves everybody just the way they are and that’s what the cross symbolizes” or something orthodox but cookie-cutter and not very dramatic, like, “Protagonist spend 7/8ths of the plot whining over their sin problem only for the Christ figure to come along and now we break every show/don’t tell rule as the protag tells us how happy she is to be forgiven.” I believe the gospel is a dire thing, where God is our antagonist who saves us anyway and kills our chosen one in order to adopt us. It’s every cliche story flipped on it’s head. It’s startling, but you don’t find that in many stories. I think this is not the gospel’s problem, but a lack of theological meditation on the part of the writers. Read G.K.Chesterton and how he geeks out over the paradoxes of Christianity or read the Psalms for crying out loud! Those authors understand the drama of God.

Finally, I believe stringent orthodoxy can get out of hand with fantasy fiction. The virgin birth is a major doctrine of Christianity, but if you’re freaking out because your Christ figure arrives mysteriously on the scene with no earthly mother or father, calm down! Fantasy fiction is supposed to point to the truth. Like a metaphor, it’s not meant to be taken 1027% literally. I really like the Wingfeather Saga because it’s totally a gospel story, but yet it’s not. What’s his name the Christ figure is totally human and sinful and he doesn’t actually save anyone from their sin. It’s all symbolic. We could use more stories like that. I did something kinda similar in my novellette God of Manna. 

Also, for crying out loud, 2/3 of human history has been pre-messianic! So I figure at least 2/3 of fantasy can feature orthodox religious systems with promises characters look forward to than allegory. I would say OT saints were saved by faith, rather than love, but my main point is something about pre-messianic stories just fits with the mythic, ancient vibes of many fantasy stories. I’m working on a literary universe with several different fantasy worlds, and only one ever reaches what I would call a definite new testament era.

I do agree with you that some thematic questions can only be answered from and explicitly Christian worldview, plus all morality ultimately goes back to your worldview (I.e. Protestants and Mormons would both have similar answers to how people should conduct themselves in a moral way, but if were were to ask “Why should people conduct themselves in a moral way?” or “where does morality come from”, I think we’d have slightly different answers, and one I would favor over the other. ;)) But on the other hand, Taylor is right–you can have a positive impact on your readers even without sharing an explicitly Christian worldview. It just depends foremost on the theme you’re addressing and then your convictions, then preferences.

Finally, Christians aren’t the only ones trying to get away with writing religious literature. I would call Brandon Sanderson’s novels very Mormony–but you won’t find me calling them cliche or trite. (Well, okay, some of the moralisms he throws in his stories are cliche and trite, but the stories themselves aren’t.) And I’m wasn’t trying to pound Mormons in this post here. 😛 It’s just incidental I brought them up twice. I think we have one or few Mormons on this site, so if you’re reading this, I appreciate you guys, I just draw a distinction between Christianity and Mormonism because they have very different views of salvation and God.

That was a shotgun-effect post. I just spewed a bunch of ideas everywhere. 😛 I guess I could narrow in on one point if necessary.