The following essay appeared in the Fall 2025 issue of Silence & Starsong Magazine.
The Fear of God is the heart of horror. Supernatural, sci-fi, psychological and existential horror all point to death. And what is death if not the curse of God? Mortality is tightly bound to morality, and the Judge of all the earth has determined that we “must needs die” for our transgressions. Because all things, including stories, belong to Christ the King, reclaim both tale and genre for Christ. Yet there are some stubborn redoubts we have yet to assault. One popular genre is cosmic horror which is ripe to be synthesized into a Christian genre. For the sake of brevity, we will focus specifically on H.P. Lovecraft’s conception of the genre. Then we will look at common aspects of biblical horror and demonstrate the synthesis of cosmic and biblical horror into Theistic Horror.
Cosmic Horror Defined: The Truth is Maddening
Cosmic horror is the antithesis of Plato’s allegory of the cave, which is a story of prisoners who are born, live, and die in a dimly lit cave. In their ignorance, they mistake shadow puppets as the “real.” At some point a prisoner escapes the cave and enters daylight. He is blinded by the sun which represents wisdom and knowledge. He then returns to the cave to convince others to come with him and know the truth. Lovecraft and other cosmic writers turn the allegory on its head. The prisoner still escapes the false world, but instead of seeing the sunlight they come to find they are like ants about to be stepped on by a monstrous foot.
As Lovecraft writes in “The Call of Cthulhu”:
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
In Lovecraft’s world, were we to understand the universe properly, our poor human minds would go insane, because, in fact, the universe is pointless and uncaring, full of horrors and dark intelligences. And so, the only conclusion that one can make is that it was far better to stay in the cave and believe in the shadow puppets. The true horror, though, is that one cannot go back to the sanctuary of the anthill, because he knows the sanctuary is a lie—a good lie, but a lie nonetheless and so the truth often drives Lovecraft’s characters insane.
Civilization’s Fragility
There is, however, a parallel to insanity in societal collapse. If insanity is the microcosm, then civilizational collapse is its macrocosm. The individual mental collapse is mirrored in the wiping out of (Western) society. Lovecraft was a New England, upper crust atheist, and atheist have no reason to hope. One real world event that seems to have informed his belief was witnessing mass immigration of foreigners to the New York and New England area in the early 1900s. He writes about it in the opening to “The Horror at Red Hook.” The people of Red Hook, New York, are replaced by the alien, and the city slips into savagery and “otherness.”
Modern discussions of the “other” are usually limited to talking about how the majority mistreats the minority. Modern critics fail to understand the importance of “other” in relation to the “self.” Without the “other” there cannot be the “self.” The disappearance of borders means that that which was bordered also ceases to exist. To not have an identity and an exclusive place, means that there is no home. Lovecraft’s horror includes the horror of displacement and supplantation.
The Return of Strange Gods
Lovecraftian cosmic horror often includes alien and particularly Eastern-like gods (Dagon, Azathoth, and Nyarlothotep, etc.). Lovecraft writes of the ascendency of Eastern superstition. In his “Cthulhu mythos” there is a persistent grimoire called the Necronomicon. It was written down by the fictional “Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.” This book of forbidden esoteric knowledge drives the reader mad or otherwise brings about his destruction.
What is implied by the existence of the Necronomicon is that the “East” is older and ultimately more powerful than the West. Its gods are greater than Western Rationalism. For instance, in The Shadow Over Innsmouth the main character visits the fictional Massachusetts fishing town while doing genealogical research. Over the course of the story, he discovers that after a severe economic downturn the town made a deal with the devil: mating with alien fish-like people and having hybrid offspring. The Innsmouth residents worship Dagon, a fish god, who inevitably proves to be more powerful than modern, Western notions of decency and virtue. At the end of the story the character embraces the Innsmouth branch of his lineage confessing that:
I shall plan my cousin’s escape from that Canton madhouse, and together we shall go to marvel-shadowed Innsmouth. We shall swim out to that brooding reef in the sea and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many-columned Y’ha‑nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever.
Note how the narrator views the horror as wondrous and glorious, which indicates madness, the closest thing an atheist can come to evil. Insanity, civilizational collapse, and foreign gods all wrapped together.
The Horror of God: The Incomprehensibility of God
The incomprehensibility of God is a horror that both believer and unbeliever experience. The latter find him the most incomprehensible because in the blindness of their sin they cannot understand how God can be good, or how they could be wicked. Likewise, Christians cannot comprehend God, yet they can through the eyes of faith understand him far better. Still, for both believer and unbeliever, God is infinite and we are finite. Humans may live forever, but we were born in space and time, and we require God’s condescension in the person of the God-man, Christ. Consider the appearances of God in the Old Testament, before the incarnation of Christ, which come with not a little bit of horror:
And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled. … And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.
Exodus 19:16-18
Though the Hebrews were God’s chosen people and had been delivered from Egypt, they still feared the God that they could not fully comprehend, name, or control. Man approaching the divine is not without its horror. Thunder and lightning are completely beyond our control, striking suddenly and viciously and louder than we would like. The clouds are huge, dark, and stormy. They make us feel small and all of this on a mountain far up in the heavens.
False gods were carried around as graven images. The use of images is an attempt by the worshipper to gain a level of control over the god. This is why Jacob, when he wrestles with the angel, asks for the angel’s name but is not given it. To name something is to give it form and definition. It is to gain some comprehension of it. Armed with the familiar name, worship is less terrifying (though not devoid of horror because their gods were capricious). Worship then becomes strictly transactional. The false images can be manipulated, controlled, bribed to grant their worshipers what they desire.
But the true God is none of these things. He is not carried, but leads his people as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. God takes no form as an animal, nor can any form be described to him, which makes him truly and uniquely other. Even His name adds more mystery, because it is self-referential: he is the I AM. God’s immensity, his power, and his incomprehensibility strikes our human hearts with fear.
The Judgment of God
Part of what makes the book of Revelation such a great piece of horror is how surreal it is. Ordinary earthly events and characters mingle with vast supernatural forces; mythological creatures breach into physical reality. Creation is being consummated, the veil between natural and supernatural is torn, and no more are these forces and entities hidden. Lovecraft never arrives at the final return of the gods and the remaking of the world that follows the collapse of civilization, but in Revelation we are given a vision—albeit hard to decipher exactly—of what the collapse of civilization and the remaking of the world would look like.
The judgment is the judgment of the “end.” It is the end that most do not believe and sincerely hope will never come. After the book of life is read and your name is found in it, then you enter into heaven. If your name is absent, then you are cast into hell. There is no other chance; there is no more pleading. The decision is final. So terrible will be the judgment that Revelation 6 describes it:
And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?
As an enemy of God, the very sight of him and his host of angels sparks animalistic fear, but not an irrational fear. Anything else that could happen to them would be infinitely better than coming into contact with God as their judge. It is better to be buried alive miles deep in the earth, rather than appear naked before God’s presence and judgment.
We see through a glass darkly the judgment of God every day, because every day is filled with little deaths (and little births). Each ending—be it the day, the week, the season or the funeral—is a taste of the final end. That final end will be the full picture, the full taste. It will be the fear of the dark, fear of being alone, fear of heights, depths, monsters, claustrophobia, all at once and amplified exponentially. Ultimately each fear is a fear of death. And because God is not an annihilationist, death will be experienced for eternity: you will be dead but you will not cease to exist.
The Providence of God
Within the judgment of God lies the providence of God. God is not only all powerful but all controlling. The Heidelberg catechism defines it as:
[H]is almighty and ever present power, whereby, as with his hand, he still upholds heaven and earth and all creatures, and so governs them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things, come to us not by chance but by his fatherly hand.
Having no control over your life is disturbing. Even more disturbing is the idea that a specific intelligent being is arranging everything that happens to you, good or bad. When you read and re-read biblical narratives, you witness God’s providence. There is a certain a that comes from re-reading Job. Job goes through the valley of the shadow of death, and brings the reader with him. There is also a certain dread in reading the Gospels when you as the reader walk with Jesus and witness his teachings and miracles knowing that each word brings you closer to the crucifixion.
When the illusion of our total control is checked we feel trapped. Not only are we not in control, but we cannot “see” what controls us. The authority over us is often invisible whether it be man or divine. Christians must go through life trusting themselves to God’s providence while the unbeliever (who is still subject to it) can have no such comfort. All in all, the unbeliever fears God, specifically his judgment. Both believer and unbeliever fear his incomprehensibility and even his providence. Within these parameters is a rich vein of stories to be mined.
Synthesis of Theistic Horror: Theistic Horror for the Damned
The logical synthesis between cosmic horror and the horror of God would be horror for the damned. Those that are not believers have the most reason to fear and many of them enjoy being scared. The greatest difficulty for the author would be to create a main character who is reprobate but still virtuous enough to be sympathetic to the reader. Consider the cosmic horror tropes in light of the synthesis.
The Truth is Maddening
Hell is maddening; there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” As we saw earlier, the people of the world at the return of Christ beg for mountains and hills to fall and cover them. The idea that all your deeds—even the ones done in secret as well as your very thoughts—will be judged is enough to drive one mad or perhaps into pure denial (which is what most choose). While the threat of the return of Christ is perhaps better reserved for the third trait (Return of Strange Gods), it is nonetheless present in this section hanging over the unbeliever like a sword of Damocles. Other aspects of the maddening truth are that we are all (whether for or against God) his instruments, doing the will he would have us do. Just as Babylon was raised up to destroy Judah and carry her into captivity, so did Assyria rise up and destroy Babylon for defiling God’s temple. None can escape his will. Even his enemies do his bidding.
Civilization’s Tenuous Presence and Impending Destruction
There is the city of God and there is city of Man, Jerusalem and Babylon. The city of man in all of its sinful pride will be wiped away:
And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more”
Revelation 18:9-11
This wicked city serves the same purpose as Lovecraft’s view of civilization. The return of Christ signals the end of the world system: the system that cares more for earthly things than spiritual things, the system of anti-christ, of sinful lusts. As strong as that civilization may appear (especially against other earthly powers), it is tenuous. It is ready to fall over at any moment, “for in one hour is thy judgment come.” Civilizations are always rising and falling. When it is destroyed, those who were made rich off of it will mourn and weep. In the collapse of nations there is a microcosm of the final judgment, a mini-revelation with God waiting on the other side.
Those who hate God, love the world. They love the wicked system that is the city of Babylon. Of course, Western Civilization had its great sins, one of which is apostasy; even Lovecraft understands that no rational atheism can withstand the foreign supernatural because the supernatural has no place in its atheistic system. Given how much ink has been spilled in assaults on Christians that have not been carried out on other “irrational” faiths, one must conclude that something particular about Christianity concerns atheists greatly. In fact, if it were to become undeniably true to them, or were the population to turn in repentance and faith, the atheists might well go mad as everything they consider to be great about civilization is washed away.
Return of the Strange Gods
There is today a confrontation between West and East, much like Lovecraft describes. Mass immigration from Hindu and Muslim countries brings with them their alien gods. There is plenty of material here for Christian writers who wish to carry the torch for Lovecraft. From the late 1990s to the early 2010s atheism reached its apex in the form of “New Atheists” with its four horsemen, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Their dominance, however, was short-lived. These men are either dead or insignificant. New age spirituality and various other patchworks of beliefs have arisen, filling the vacuum that atheism left behind.
Jehovah too is a kind of returning “strange” God. Unbelievers are scared of the Christian boogeyman creating a theocratic dystopia popularized in the novel and TV show, The Handmaid’s Tale. This fear should be exploited in Christian stories. What is paradise to a Christian is hell to the damned. The worship of God is insanity to the atheist.
Christians Writing About the Horror of God
There is a lot of source material for good horror in the Bible, but those that have done it have done it too sparingly. Compare the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark with the narrative in 1st Samuel when the ark was taken by the Philistines. Raiders uses the “power of God” as a deus ex machina to save our heroes, but the horror (and holiness) of God is the story in 1st Samuel 5-7. The Israelites failed in their duty and used the Ark as an ordinary weapon. The Philistines captured the Ark and “trapped” it as a trophy in their temple to Dagon. As it turns out, Dagon is trapped in the temple with God. The idols are destroyed and the Philistines are afflicted with tumors. God does not require saving. Even when the Israelites are given the ark back, they too are struck down by God’s wrath because “they had looked into the ark of the Lord.” No one can control God.
All readers of horror want to feel scared and uncomfortable, to ride the wave through to the end. Some people like to be scared—at least the ones that read horror—and everyone is afraid of God on some level. The horror of God is for the believer also, because in this life we will suffer many trials and, of course, we will face the final horror of death, which is the curse of God.
Not every story that Silence and Starsong publishes has to do with God, or is even explicitly Christian, but none of our stories will violate or contradict Christianity. Demons cannot be good. God cannot be evil, nor can he be just another Lovecraftian elder god. God is impassible, full of holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. Theistic Horror, by definition, cannot make good evil or evil good. This is not a limitation but a strength, because it requires unique and interesting storytelling. Consider what C.S. Lewis did in his short novel, The Great Divorce. He did not intend an accurate depiction of hell, but it serves to make a point that is true.
If the first rule is to be careful with God in your stories, then the second rule is to write a good story. Our goal is conquest of genres, but to do that authors must always love to tell stories, otherwise you are peddling bad propaganda. Authors are first and foremost storytellers. If authors answer the call to write theistic horror there will be further trial and error and new rules will undoubtedly be added. We are at a unique cultural moment where eldritch horror is experiencing a renaissance, while legacy media and traditional publishing is dying. This is the moment for writers to tell scary stories of and for the glory of God.