Tolkien believed that in writing stories man was excercising his identity as a sub-creator, made in the image of God the creator. By doing so we reflect a bit of the face of God. All good stories do this. He explains this most thoroughly in his lecture on “Fairy-Stories” in 1939. He included this poem which he had written for Lewis:
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
With Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons – ’twas our right
(used or misused), That right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we’re made.-from Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings, p.63
