I put a further comment about this on Arneson’s Facebook wall that I want to share here.

Consider how stories involve elements such as the following:

• crossing the threshold

• atonement

• descent into Hades

• growing strong through ordeals

• resurrection

• sacrifice

These elements resonate with us in stories because they are deeply true to how the world is. A good story, even if it’s make-believe, will be true to how the world is, showing patterns that lie at the heart of reality. For example, in the real world, monsters can be defeated, there is always hope, and everyone’s true nature is eventually revealed. In the real world, we discover ourselves, not through a process of self-making but through humility, virtue, and the arts of self-limitation. In the real world, selfishness leads to loss and division but virtue leads to restoration. Pride leads to folly but humility leads to wisdom. True love is found not in consuming and devouring but in self-giving and sacrifice. These are inevitable structures of narrative because they resonate with how the world is at a deep primal level.

One structure that is particularly significant is sacrifice. I agree with Annie Crawford that sacrifice is an inevitable feature of narrative structure, a kind of built-in mechanism by which disorder is corrected—something deeply embedded in the very structure of things.

Responding to Crawford's position, you wrote "Sacrifice appears as an inevitable feature of narrative structure, a kind of built-in mechanism by which disorder is corrected. The question is no longer whether the sacrifice is commanded by God, but whether it is rightly directed within the unfolding of the story. In this way, sacrifice risks becoming something man determines and applies, rather than something he offers in obedience." It seems like in your more recent post you've doubled-down on the idea that if sacrifice is an inevitable feature of narrative structure, a kind of built-in mechanism of creation, then it is no longer something received from God but something derived from the structure of things.

I appreciate that you are trying to protect divine revelation from being absorbed into symbolic systems, but in doing so, do you risk undercutting the idea that creation itself is intrinsically symbolic and participatory. Consider, if sacrifice is not rooted in the structure of reality, and is not discoverable in the nature of things, then it is not intrinsic to reality but layered over the top through divine fiat. But if sacrifice is not in any sense “built into” reality, then biblical patterns start to look arbitrary and typology becomes less intelligible.

Creation is not neutral “stuff” but exists by participation in divine energies; therefore, it is iconic/symbolic in its very structure. Reality is ordered sacramentally, which is why we cannot separate the meaning of sacrifice from structures of narrative/reality, or treat symbolic systems (even alchemic symbolism or “story structure”) as mere interpretive overlays. Reality is structured by patterns that are inherently meaningful. Stories, myths, rituals reflect deep structures of being. So when we come to something like sacrifice, it is not just commanded—it is inscribed in the fabric of reality. Revelation fulfils a pattern that is already primal within reality itself. You will have to show how, in your view, the participatory depth of reality is not getting muted. Even if your intent is to protect orthodoxy from esoteric drift, your framing can functionally resemble a modern flattening/reductionism.

Of course, you rightly wish to guard Christianity from collapsing into esotericism or autonomous symbolic speculation. Symbolic interpretation can indeed become dangerous when detached from revelation and ecclesial authority. Christianity is not merely mythology, nor is Christ merely one symbolic archetype among many. Yet in reacting against these dangers, I wonder if you risk moving too far in the opposite direction. Consider, at several points in your three articles you contrast sacrifice as something “revealed” with sacrifice as something “derived from the structure of things.” I wonder if this framing risks introducing a tension between revelation and ontology that classical Christianity has generally avoided. Revelation unveils, purifies, and fulfills meanings already rooted within creation through the participation of the latter in the divine logoi and energies. Fire, ascent, purification, sacrifice, light, and transformation are not arbitrary metaphors imposed upon reality from without; they are real correspondences grounded in the structure of being. Sacrifice is ontologically real and perfuse throughout creation and literature, because creation itself is ordered toward communion, self-offering, transformation, and participation in divine life. This matters enormously because once meaning is detached from the inherent structures of creation, Christianity risks becoming something merely added onto an otherwise secular world. Then nature becomes spiritually mute while revelation becomes external legislation imposed upon reality from outside, leading ultimately to a separation of grace and nature.

From your most recent article (patristicorthodoxy.subs…), it seems you would agree with much of the concerns I just expressed. As you write, "Creation is not neutral. It is ordered, meaningful, and directed toward God. It bears true relations, ordered hierarchies, and a real end (telos). In that sense, one may speak of participation and analogy without hesitation." It seems, rather, that your concerns are at the level of epistemology rather than ontology: fallen man cannot reliably discern sacrificial truth apart from revelation. Thus, the question is not whether the universe is ordered symbolically, but whether unregenerate man can see it clearly. Am I tracking with you? Assuming I am, I do wonder if you are offering good-faith reading of what Crawford and others in The Symbolic World community are actually saying. None of us are claiming that pagans can see reality "clearly" - they see through a glass darkly, which is why even pagan stories, false religions and incomplete systems (like alchemy) contain elements of the truth that we can learn from without offering a complete package (see my earlier comment about learning from the wisdom of the serpent). And neither are those of us within TSW community attempting to construct sacrifice from below - to somehow deduce or infer the full-orbed biblical doctrine of sacrifice simply from analyzing narrative structures. That would be silly. So it is not, as you argue in your latest piece, that we are arguing that sacrifice is "derived" from symbolic or narrative structure - no one is arguing for that type of derivation. On the contrary, it is precisely because we affirm a Logos cosmology (rooted in God's revelation, both special and general) that the pattern of sacrifice is perfuse throughout the created order and has left its footprint inevitably—I would even say, with some qualification, “necessarily”—on narrative structures.

To be sure, human beings distort symbols, misunderstand sacrifice, and corrupt worship. Pagan sacrifice itself demonstrates how easily sacrificial logic can become twisted and demonic. But distortion presupposes an underlying reality being distorted, as C.S. Lewis shows so well in "Till We Have Faces." The existence of corrupted sacrificial systems suggests that humanity dimly perceives something true about the structure of reality, even while misreading it. Revelation is necessary, but not because concepts like sacrifice are meaningless apart from revelation, but because fallen humanity misinterprets creation. But the church fathers are clear that this misreading and misinterpretation is never total, which is why the project of assimilation and adaptation with paganism was a key part of the Patristic agenda, in the spirit of "logos spermatikos." I give examples in my book (amazon.com/Rediscoverin…) and my priest has emphasized this as well in a recent sermon about how all beauty is God's beauty (youtube.com/watch?v=Dzw…). Thus, when we notice that sacrifice is basic to mythic narrative structure, or that Christ's life follows the patterns of the hero's journey, this should fill our hearts with joy just as much as finding the story of the gospel written on the stars.

Again, these meanings, including the meaning of sacrifice, are not autonomously “discovered” by human beings through symbolic systems. Or course we do not start by reading patterns and then arrive at the biblical doctrine of sacrifice. No one is saying this, so it starts to feel that you are beating at windmills. Neither are any of the philosophers TSW (let alone Crawford), arguing that sacrifice is no longer something received from God but something derived from the structure of things. It is, of course, possible that we are affirming other premises which entail these further implications, so that your critique functions as a type of Modus Tollens (i.e., "if you assert P, then Q follows, but Q is patently false; therefore P must be false"). But I don't think you've successfully made this case. For example, you will need to more clearly demonstrate how the affirmation that (1) "sacrifice appears as an inevitable feature of narrative structure, a kind of built-in mechanism by which disorder is corrected" somehow entails, (2) "sacrifice is no longer something received from God, but something derived from the structure of things." When #1 is understood in the larger context that I've been explaining it here (which is also the context that Crawford, following C.S. Lewis would affirm), #2 simply doesn't follow.