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actually i'm wrong it was WWI...Quote:
Originally posted by lotrfreak
well..correct me if IM wrong... but he wrote about the Bible
the evil he alludes to was the axis powers the allies were fighting....
would you please post a link or transcript to your bible reference....sounds interesting.
what do u mean Bible reference? I told you his ideas are from the bible... he didnt write bible verses
lotr that's what richard means... he's asking for the bible references not quotes.Quote:
I told you his ideas are from the bible
oh.....sorry.... I will... sec... I'll log off while i find buches....
lotrfreak--- (keep in mind) he did not write it just using the Bible.
Many of the war/battle scenes in Lord of the Rings are based on the horrible sights and battles Tolkien had to endure during WWII.
buches? What the heck are "buches"? ;)Quote:
Originally posted by lotrfreak
oh.....sorry.... I will... sec... I'll log off while i find buches....
UA, thank you....you are correct...Quote:
Originally posted by lotrfreak
[B Lord of the rings does have a biblical message: it just doesn't quote the Bible.In Lord of the rings, they try to overcome the evil with their own will power. [/B]
LOTR,
i may have misunderstood your post...i was wondering what the biblical message is and
if someone else had made the connection..
the motive for destroying the "one ring that rules them all" was to get rid of evil from middle earth...i do not believe the message was to destroy evil, an impossible task anyway.
the journey undertaken by frodo and co.involved a little bit more than will.....it was for the good of middle earth, altruisitic in a sense, but i think Tolkien's message was one of what people, together, can do to make a bad situation, better.
thanks
These Letters are from Tolkien himself:
From Letter #320:
...I think it is true that I owe much of (the character of Galadriel) to Christian and Catholic teaching and imagination about Mary.... -----------------------------------------------------------------
There are many other letters dealing with Tolkien's thoughts on his Christianity - both in relation to his works and general comments made to his family and friends.
From Letter #142:
The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like `religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.
From Letter #131:
...Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one thing its `faerie' is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion.
For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal. Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary `real' world. (I am speaking, of course. of our present situation, not of ancient pagan, pre-Christian days.)... In the cosmogony there is a fall: a fall of Angels we should say. Though quite different in form, of course, to that of Christian myth. These tales are `new', they are not directly derived from other myths and legends, but they must inevitably contain a large measure of ancient wide-spread motives or elements. After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of `truth', and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear.
These are just facts:
Yet Tolkien's grand book has outlasted its cult-status. The Lord of the Rings is an undeniable classic: a work which invites repeated readings without exhausting its potential to deepen and define our moral and spiritual lives. Young and old alike keep returning to these big books for both wisdom and delight. True fantasy, Tolkien declared in his 1939 essay "On Fairy-Stories," is escapist in the good sense: it enables us to flee into reality. The strange new world of hobbits and elves and ents frees us from bondage to the pseudo-reality that most of us inhabit: a world deadened by bleary familiarity. Fantasy helps us recover an enlivened sense of wonder, Tolkien observed in this same essay, about such ordinary things "as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine."
I.
Despite the eucharistic hint, Tolkien's work is not self-evidently Christian. As C. S. Lewis observed upon its first publication, the Ring epic is imbued with "a profound melancholy." The ending is tearfully sad. Frodo is exhausted by his long quest to destroy the Ring of coercive power that had been fashioned by the monster Sauron. Though the victory has been won, Frodo cannot enjoy its fruits. And so he sails away to the elven realm, leaving his companions behind. Sauron and his minions of evil may have been defeated, but the triumph is only temporary. Evil will reconstitute itself in some alarming new form, and the free creatures of Middle Earth will have to fight it yet again.
The word "doom" -- in its Anglo-Saxon meaning of damning judgment as well as final fate in ruin and death -- pulses like a funereal drumbeat throughout the entire work. Toward the end of Volume I, the elf Legolas offers a doom-centered vision of the world. It sounds very much like an elvish and Heraclitean version of entropy. "To find and lose," says Legolas, is the destiny "of those whose boat is on the running stream.... The passing seasons are but ripples in the long long stream. Yet beneath the Sun all things must wear to an end at last." Though elves are so long-lived that they seem immortal to humans and hobbits, the tides of time will sweep even them away. A deeply pagan pessimism thus pervades all three of the Ring books.
Yet it is a mistake, I believe, to read Tolkien's work as sub-Christian. Not by happenstance was Tolkien the finest Beowulf scholar of his day. His thesis about the Anglo-Saxon epic may also be applied to his own fiction. Beowulf is a pagan work, Tolkien argued, exalting the great Northern and heathen virtue of unyielding, indomitable will in the face of sure and hopeless defeat. Yet it was probably written by a Christian, Tolkien contended, who infused it with Christian concerns: "The author of Beowulf showed forth the permanent value of that pietas which treasures the memory of man's struggles in the dark past, man fallen and not yet saved, disgraced but not dethroned." So does The Lord of the Rings recount a pre-biblical period of the earth's ancient history -- where there are no Chosen People, no Incarnation, no religion at all -- yet from a point of view that is distinctively Christian.
There is little that is Christian about The Hobbit, Tolkien's first fantasy work, published in 1937. It is a standard quest-story about the seeking and the finding of a tremendous treasure, a delightful "there and back again" tale concerning the adventures of Bilbo Baggins. But by the time he published The Lord of the Rings in 1954 and 1955, Tolkien had deepened and widened his vision, especially concerning the nature of heroism. The Hobbits prove to be perennially attractive characters because they are very unconventional heroes. They are not tragic and death-defying warriors like Ajax or Achilles or Beowulf; they are frail and comic foot-soldiers like us. The Nine Walkers -- four hobbits, two men, an elf, a dwarf, and a wizard -- constitute not a company of the noble but of the ordinary.
They all learn, in a proleptically Christian way, what every mortal must confront: the solemn reality that we no sooner find our lives than we have to give them up. Unlike Bilbo, Frodo his nephew is not called to find but to lose, indeed to destroy, his great gem: the Ring of Total Control. It is not a task that he eagerly seeks but only reluctantly accepts. Yet Frodo proves to be a fit bearer of the Ring. Not only does he possess native powers of courage and resistance; he is also summoned by a mysterious providential grace. The destruction of the Ring is nothing less than Frodo's vocation. And the epic's compelling interest lies in our discovery of how, just barely, Frodo remains faithful to his calling. For in so doing, he does far more than save his beloved Shire from ruin. Frodo learns -- and thus teaches -- what for Tolkien is the deepest of all Christian truths: how to surrender one's life, how to lose one's treasure, how to die, and thus how truly to live.
Early in the narrative, Frodo recalls that his Uncle Bilbo, especially during his latter years, was fond of declaring that
... there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door," he used to say. "You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to."
Tolkien's work is imbued with a deep mystical sense of life as a journey or quest that carries one, willy-nilly, beyond the walls of the world. To get out of bed, to answer the phone, to open the door, to fetch the mail -- such everyday deeds are freighted with eternal consequence. They immerse us in the river of time: the "ever-rolling stream" which, in Isaac Watts's splendid rendering of the 90th Psalm, "bears all its sons away." From the greatest to the smallest acts of courage and cowardice, we travel irresistibly on the path toward ultimate joy or final ruin.
II.
For Tolkien the Christian, the chief question -- and thus the real quest -- is how we are to travel along this Road. The great temptation is to take short-cuts, to follow the easy way, to arrive quickly. In the antique world of Middle Earth, magic offers the surest escape from slowness and suffering. It is the equivalent of our machines. They both provide what Tolkien called immediacy: "speed, reduction of labour, and reduction also to a minimum (or vanishing point) of the gap between the idea or desire and the result or effect" (Letters, 200). The magic of machination is meant for those who are in a hurry, for us who lack patience, for all who cannot wait. Sauron wins converts because he provides his followers the necromancy to coerce the wills of others, the strength to accomplish grand ends by instant means.
The noble prove, alas, to be most nobly tempted. Gandalf, the Christ-like wizard who literally lays down his life for his friends, knows that he is an unworthy bearer of the Ring -- not because he has evil designs that he wants secretly to accomplish, but rather because his desire to do good is so great. Lady Galadriel, the elven queen, also refuses the Ring of Force. It would make her enormous beauty mesmerizing. Those who had freely admired her loveliness would have no choice but to worship her. Perhaps alone among modern writers, Tolkien understood that evil's subtlest semblance is not with the ugly but with the gorgeous. "I shall not be dark," Galadriel warns, "but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!"
The one free creature utterly undone by the lure of total power is Saruman the wizard. Like Judas, he is impatient with the slow way that goodness works. He cannot abide the torturous path up Mount Doom; he wants rapid results. Since the all-commanding Sauron is sure to win, Saruman urges Gandalf and his friends to join forces with the Dark Lord. Those who face defeat can survive only by siding with the victor, using his coercive power to achieve their own noble aims: "We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things we have so far striven in vain to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends."
Saruman is doubly blind. He fails not only to see that laudable designs, when achieved by compulsive force, become demonic; neither does he perceive the hidden strength of The Hobbits. The chief irony of the entire epic is that hobbitic weakness becomes the paradoxical solution to the problem of Absolute Might. The Hobbits are worthy opponents of Sauron exactly because their life-aims are so very modest. Wanting nothing more than to preserve the freedom of their own peaceable Shire, they have no grandiose uses for the Ring. Their meekness uniquely qualifies them to destroy the Ring in the Cracks of Doom. This is a Quest that can be accomplished by the small even better than the great, by ordinary folk far more than conventional heroes. In fact, the figure who gradually emerges as the rightful successor to Frodo is the least likely hobbit of them all, the comically inept and ungainly Samwise Gamgee.
In the unlikely heroism of the small and the weak, Tolkien's pre-Christian world becomes most Christian. Their greatness is not self-made. As a fledgling community the Nine Walkers experience a far-off foretaste of the fellowship that Christians call the church universal. Their Company remarkably transcends both racial and ethnic boundaries. Though it contains representatives from all of the Free Peoples, some of them have been historic enemies -- especially the dwarves and the elves. Yet no shallow notion of diversity binds them together. They are united not only by their common hatred of evil, but by their ever-increasing, ever more self-surrendering regard for each other. Through their long communal struggle, they learn that there is a power greater than mere might. It springs not from the force of will but from a grace-filled fellowship of kindred minds and souls.
III.
Perhaps we can now understand what Tolkien meant when called The Lord of the Rings "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work." Its essential conflict, he insisted, concerns God's "sole right to divine honour" (Letters, 172, 243). Like Milton's Satan, Sauron will not serve such a Deity. He is intent upon his own supremacy, and he reads all others by his own light. He believes that anyone, having once possessed the power afforded by the Ring, would be determined to use it -- especially the magical power to make its wearer invisible. He assumes that Frodo and his friends will seek to overthrow him and to establish their own sovereignty. Yet Sauron's calculus of self-interest blinds him to the surprising strategy of the Company. Under Gandalf's leadership, they decide not to hide or use the Ring, but to take it straight back into the Land of Mordor -- Sauron's own lair -- there to incinerate it.
Not for want of mental power is Sauron thus deceived. He is a creature whose craft and power are very great, as his fashioning of the Ring proves. Sauron also embodies himself as a terrible all-seeing Eye. He can thus discern the outward operation of things, but he cannot discern the inward workings of the heart. Sauron's fatal lack is not intelligence, therefore, but sympathy. He cannot "feel with," and so he is incapable of community. The orcs, those evil creatures whom Sauron has bred to do his will, constantly betray each other and feud among themselves. Tolkien thus holds out the considerable hope that evil cannot form a fellowship: there is no true Compact of the Wicked, but there is a real Company of the Good.
The animating power of this Company is the much-maligned virtue called pity. Frodo had learned the meaning of pity from his Uncle Bilbo. When he first obtained the Ring from the vile creature called Gollum, Bilbo had the chance to kill him but did not. Frodo is perplexed by this refusal. 'Tis a pity, he contends, that Bilbo did not slay such an evil one. This phrase angers the wise Gandalf. It prompts him to make the single most important declaration in the entire Ring epic:
"Pity? It was pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that [Bilbo] took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity."
"I am sorry," said Frodo. "But ... I do not feel any pity for Gollum.... He deserves death."
"Deserves it! I daresay he does," [replies Gandalf]. "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.... [T]he pity of Bilbo will rule the fate of many -- yours not least."
"The pity of Bilbo will rule the fate of many" gradually becomes the motto of Tolkien's epic. It is true in the literal sense, because the Gollum whom Bilbo had spared so long ago is the one who finally destroys the Ring. But the saying is also true in a deep spiritual sense. Gandalf the pagan wizard here announces the nature of Christian mercy. As a creature far more sinning than sinned against, Gollum deserves his misery. He has committed Cain's crime of fratricide in acquiring the Ring. Still Gandalf insists on pity, despite Frodo's protest that Gollum be given justice. If all died who deserve punishment, none would live. Many perish who have earned life, Gandalf declares, and yet who can restore them? Neither hobbits nor humans can live by the bread of merit alone. Hence Gandalf's call for pity and patience: the willingness to forgive trespasses and to wait on slow-working providence rather than rushing to self-righteous judgment.
The unstrained quality of mercy is what, I suggest, makes The Lord of the Rings an enduring Christian classic despite its pagan setting. As a pre-Christian work, it is appropriately characterized by a melancholy sense of ineluctable doom and defeat: the night that comes shall cover everything. Such profound pessimism must not be disregarded. It has its biblical equivalent, after all, in the description of death found in Ecclesiastes 12:5: "Man goeth to his long home."
Yet this gloomy saying is not the ultimate word. Near the end of their wearying quest, Frodo and Sam are alone on the slopes of Mount Doom. All their efforts seem finally to have failed. Even if somehow they succeed in destroying the Ring, there is no likelihood that they will themselves survive, or that anyone will ever hear of their valiant deed. It is amidst such apparent hopelessness that Sam -- the bumbling and unreflective hobbit who has gradually emerged as a figure of great moral and spiritual depth -- beholds a single star shimmering above the dark clouds of Mordor:
The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of that forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.... Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master's, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo's side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep and untroubled sleep.
Sam here discerns that light and shadow are not locked in uncertain combat. However much the night may seem to triumph, it is the gleaming star which penetrates and defines the darkness. These hobbits cannot name their source, but they know that Goodness and Truth and Beauty are the first and the last and the only permanent things.
need i say more?
what? you still want more? well...okay
If the study of literature shows nothing else, it shows that every author, consciously or subconsciously, creates his (or her) work after his (or her) own world view. Tolkien is no exception. "I am a Christian..." he writes(1), and his books show it. Christianity appears in The Lord of the Rings not as allegory--Tolkien despises that(2)--nor as analogy, but as deep undergirding presuppositions, similarities of pattern, and shared symbols.
That there should be similarities between the presuppositions of of The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien's Catholic faith is to be expected given Tolkien's views on Christianity and myth. Regarding the gospel story Tolkien wrote, "The gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essences of fairy-stories."(3)Since all myths are subordinate to the overarching "myth," it would be surprising if parallels were not found between greater and lesser. This is certainly true where the author consciously recognizes his archetype. If he has at all grasped its form and meaning, if the archetype has at all succeeded in working its way to his heart, then it must also work its way to his pen.
The essence of the gospel and of fairy-tales is, in Tolkien's own word, euchatastrophe--the surprising, hopeful turn in all man's despair and sorrow. Joy is the result, a brief glimpse springing out of the inherent evangelium of the genre.(4)This is the dominant note of, and even the apology for, fairy-tales.
Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy is set in a pre-Christian world. Hence it cannot adopt an explicit Christianity. Nonetheless it can, and does, shadow Christianity just as the Old Testament pre-shadowed the New, although admittedly Tolkien's is a post-view set as a pre-view. The Christian types to be found in The Lord of the Rings which we will examine are of two sorts: shared world view and shared symbols.
The first category embraces such distinctly philosophical issues as good and evil, historical perspective, freewill and predestination, grace, mercy, providence, judgment and redemption. The development of these themes in The Lord of the Rings is Christian or at least Hebraic.
Shared imagery is no less important to the tenor of the whole work. An example of shared imagery is the antithesis of dark and light so evident in both John the Apostle and Tolkien. Observe the close connection between Haldir's statement, "But whereas the light perceives the very heart of darkness, its own secret has not been discovered,"(5)and John's "The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it."(6)
Focusing on the shared world view, we see that Tolkien's work embodies a definitely Judeo-Christian view of good and evil. Even is seen as perverted or fallen good. Perhaps the best expression of this characteristically Judeo-Christian viewpoint comes when Elrond, the high elf, says, "Nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so."(7)Evil is also seen as self-destructive--a theme which cannot be divorced from scripture.(8)Evil is self-blinded, too. That which it does in malice, that which seems to be its greatest victory, proves to be its own undoing. No clearer illustration of this truth is possible than Christ's resurrection which proved to be the surprising undoing of Satan's greatest triumph. The fiend underwent a devastating and unlooked for humiliation in achieving this victory.(9)It is akin to Sauron's defeat at the moment he was gloating in the stupidity of the march of Aragorn and his meagre six thousand to the gates of Mordor.
Another aspect of evil developed in Tolkien is the insatiable hunger to possess, to rule, to dominate. The Bible captures the same idea with pictures of locusts, of the sword, of wild beasts, of striving kings, and of Satan going about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he might devour. "Devouring" is an apt symbolization of insatiable lust. It closely parallels the Trilogy's symbol "hunger." In contradistinction to evil beings, good creatures are filled and satisfied over and again. They even partake of foods which are magically sustaining--miruvor and lembas. These two elements also serve to remind us of the water and bread of life.
C. S. Lewis conceived of devils as mirthless. Since "humor involves a sense of proportion and power of seeing yourself from the outside...we must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment..."(10)
Tolkien's view of evil beings has much in common with this of Lewis. Laughter is the domain of good; cruel mockery and joyless mirth is attributable to evil. The latter is always devoid of refreshment. One wonders how Tolkien viewed the widespread acceptance of put-downs and cruel repartee as popular forms of entertainment.
One last example will suffice to show the close similarity Tolkien's Ring sustains to the Christian dilineation of good and evil. This is desolation. With the fall came the curse, with evil barreness: foul wilderness, grimy desert, salton marsh. The Lord of the Rings presses home this point again and again: Isengard's smokes and fumes, Mordor's ash, wanton slashing by orcs, brown lands, and the vicious hewing down of the shire's trees. One catches a theme from Hosea in this: the birds and fish languish because of Israel's sin.(11)Fruitfulness for Tolkien, as for the Christian, is the joy of the good. Even the fact that The Lord of the Rings places rational creatures as masters of nature is significant. It is not a viewpoint one would necessarily find in (for example) a Hindu myth.
We turn now to The Lord of the Ring's view of history. Willis B. Glover remarks, "Tolkien's novel is a history not only in that its form is a narrative based on documents (eg.: The Red Book) that indicates a continuity with our own time, but also in that it presents events through which a future is being created by the actions of rational creatures." Glover considers Tolkien's sense of history as more Biblical than is usual in the modern novel, because The Ring ever suggests the existence of an "unnamed authority" to whom the actors are responsible and who works in history in ways inscrutable to finite creatures.(12)History transcends nature, is open ended, unrepetitive, and a creative interaction of God and men in nature. All modern history comes from one work: The City of God by Augustine of Hippo, which in turn found its beginning, middle, and end in Biblical creation the ages of man, and the final apocalypse. Tolkien's history is of this kind, rather than pagan cyclicism.
Because of history's open-endedness and the input of God and man, both free will and predestination intertwine. Out of respect for freedom, Gandalf, Elrond, and other good leaders consistently refuse to coerce those over whom they exercise authority (except in punishment, as with Saruman when his wand is broken) insisting instead upon the liberty each has to make choices, and directing a measure of rational persuasion wherever it seems essential. (In this way, Gandalf persuades Theoden, King of the Mark). Yet, because of his high position in Hobbit esteem, or indeed in the esteem of all free peoples, a word from Gandalf bears almost the force of a command. This insistance on free-will seems almost to contradict the story's underlying assumption of providential predestination. Frodo is told, for instance, that he is free to take or leave the great ring and yet Elrond--in almost the same breath--assures him that to take it is his fate.(13)Thus Tolkien maintains both elements and presents choice as a crucial event.
Where evil abounds, there must grace the more abound. Grace is not a fully developed theme in this pre-Christian world; but it is present. Much has been said in the literature of the providence which finally destroys the great ring through the greed of Gollum when Hobbit frailty was unable to do so. Undoubtedly this is a key aspect of the story, especially when we recall the numbr of merciful acts on the part of goodfolk which allowed Gollum to survive to become the destroyer of the ring. Important as this development is, I think the repentance offered the fallen is no less worthy of attention.
Of all those to whom repentance was offered, only Boromir accepted it. It has always been a disappointment to me that no one else repented. Especially disappointing was the eventual loss of Gollum. At one time he stood very near redemption, but Sam's suspicion pushed him back, and he soon after attempted his most vile deed, the attempted murder of Frodo by Shelob. Not one person with whom serious persuasion was used--Saruman, Gollum, Wormtongue--was able to change course.
There are whole classes of fallen which appear unreedemable. These are the orcs, trolls, balrogs, etc. In many ways their graceless existence seems akin to that of devils or demons. In other ways, this is not so; they remind the reader of those groups of people whom Israel was told to annihilate as if none were capable of salvation, because their wickedness was full.
In Tolkien's Middle Earth, each person receives his just deserts. Justice, while tempered with mercy, is inexorable in the end. For his betrayal of Frodo, Boromir dies of orc arrows. In remembrance of his repentance, however, he dies honorably; but it is death all the same, and flows as a direct consequence of his treachery; it was he who scattered the fellowship of the ring and made them vulnerable to attack.
Sauron, after bringing desolation to much of the world, is fated to gnaw himself through endless ages. Gnawing one's tongue is a symbol also used in the Bible of eternal doom. Even Frodo is penalized for his final failure at the brink of the chasm. He has a wound which will always give him pain. The same could be said also of Bilbo. Frodo's penalty may even include self-exile from Middle Earth.(14)Examples could be multiplied, but the list would be too long. One facet of Justice emerging from The Lord of the Rings is the incapacity of repentance to forestall just dessert.
For all that, hope is a dominant note of the trilogy: hope despite darkness, fear, or pessimism. Hope is possible only in a Christian world. It makes no sense to a non-believer; hence the despair of modern man in this post-Christian age. In any given situation neither characters in books nor their counterparts in the more complex real world know in what their choices will result. So limited is our vision and theirs, that circumstances and evil seem omnipotent. Without hope, such times would overwhelm the anxious heart. Such hope is found in the certitude of God, the Unseen Mover.
The Christian element I find among the most appealing is individual worth and responsibility. Even the smallest hobbit has great potential; indeed, only in Sauron's lands are the merits of individuality ignored. There, everyone has a number and not everyone a name. More explicitly Christian is the notion of the small thing, the weak and simple, overthrowing the wise and powerful.
Of all the elements remaining to be discussed, the most neglected among reviewers are the virtues of patience and perseverance. These two qualities, along with fidelity and humility, win the war for the free peoples. It is just the absence of these same characteristics which overthrows Sauron, despite his long years of patient brooding.
Having mentioned fidelity, perhaps I should note the stress Tolkien places on this virtue, for while he illustrates the others often enough, he indoctrinates us with this one. There are numerous examples and remarks decrying the hideous practice of oath-breaking, the need of oath-keeping, the sobriety with which oaths are to be sworn. This is biblical and in stark contrast to (say) the oathbreaking of Guthrum with Alfred the Great after swearing on his sacred bracelet. Whatever deadly price must be paid, an oath once made is sacred. We do not always remember what a nasty pincers the Israelites put themselves in when they made their treaty with Gibeon--war against the united forces of Southern Palestine. Yet, they fulfilled their pledge and it brought them their greatest victory.
Such is the message of Tolkien. When Faramir advises Frodo to break oath with Gollum, we think it wrong. This message is not to be disregarded, but one fears it too often was in the history of the church from which Tolkien draws his springs of virtue. And every war in history has been fought over the shards of a broken treaty.
One further Christian element I do not wish to neglect. This is resurrection. Every hero in the story goes toward his death and, against all hope, returns. Gandalf is the clearest picture, for we actually believe him dead for several chapters when he falls in Moria. Gimli, Aragorn, Legolas, and Pippin ride to Mordor's deadly gates while Sam and Frodo trudge helplessly to Mount Doom. With Eowyn and Faramir, Merry lies at the brink of death in the Houses of Healing. Yet each is finally plucked from death to stand greater than before and to fill a higher role, just as Christ after death ascended.
Other Messianic overtones in The Lord of the Rings may not be so obvious. Frodo patiently bears a "cross." Aragorn has titles remniscent of Christ, a bride to gain, and a kingdom to enter. The return of the heroes has eschatalogical overtones remniscent of Pauline or Johannine theology.
As we noted in the opening paragraph of this essay, Tolkien employs biblical symbols. Light and bride have already been mentioned. Others which come to mind are healing leaves, deep-rooted trees, pure water, precious jewels, ashes, redness as the color of sin, and secret sources of life. The sleeplessness of evil, so terrible in The Ring, is clearly the antithesis of blessedness. God grants to his beloved ones sleep.(15)
So far I have dealt with The Lord of the Rings as a Christian book, but it is only fair to turn briefly to a few elements which might seem both doubtful and out of place in such a definition. The greatest lack is Christ. Despite Messianic overtones, he has no place in the trilogy. Neither is there any atonement for sins or communion with the spirit world. Worship is most nearly approximated, suggests Sandra L. Meisel, in the free-folks' delight in beauty and nature.(16)
As we have noted, there is also a real lack of forgiveness of sin. To evade corruption, a being is furthermore cast entirely upon the resources of his nature and his friends. He has no help from the Holy Spirit. Thus it is obvious that I have used the term "Christian" most loosely. Tolkien makes no really Christian demand of his readers. At the same time it is fair to add that a Christian reader will not find the book opposed to his faith. It is at the very least decent reading--and if one looks at its literary qualities, much more than that.
Those qualities of the book which are most likely to come under heavy fire for being unchristian are warfare, magic, and sexism. Sexism I will not examine.
Warfare is an aspect of Tolkien which pacifist critics might deplore as unchristian. Against this the defense will have to argue that war is not always wrong. As long as the entire cosmos is a vast battleground between forces of good and evil, there must be a wars in the physical as well as the spiritual arena. In a moment of profound observation, Chesterton noted that there are some cultures and systems so utterly anti-thetical to one's own, that one can desire nothing but their annihilation.(17)At any rate, warfare with unremitting slaughter was characteristic of the pre-Christian era.
Magic, the second element needing defence, seems at first sight less defensible. Has it not always been anathema in the Judeo-Christian tradition?
There are distinct differences, however, between the magic in Tolkien, and magic, even white magic, as we know it. The magic of the pure is first of all latent power. Either you have it or you do not. It is never an attempt to seize power from outside oneself: that is sorcery. Spells never, absolutely never, are applied to people. Only objects receive them. Gandalf comes closest to using his magic against persons. He fights with his wand. Magic in The Ring is benevolent when good, and is uplifting. In a sense it symbolizes the supernatural or spiritual aspect of things which otherwise is lacking.
Tolkien's good magic does not show the invidious disregard for God and man which earthly magic must. When we turn to black magic, we see that those who use the machinery of magic (such as the palantirs and rings), are injured or destroyed by that machinery. Never once--and this is to Tolkien's credit--are we allowed to see black magic close up, its rites and sorcery. Angmar is called a sorcerer; his sorcery is never shown, but like all sorcerers fell under the power of the Black Lord.
Those who peer into powers not meant for them, especially shadow powers, are snared by the shadow. Tolkien clearly illustrates this in Saruman's case. Elrond pounds the message home, saying, "It is perilous to study too deeply the arts of the enemy, for good or for ill."(18)
All the same, the resurgence of interest in myths, the occult, and fantasy which Tolkien and C. S. Lewis (among others) engendered in the evangelical community is to be deplored. There seems to be a serious erosion of the uniqueness of Christian teaching.
This caveat aside, Tolkien's work is a monument of genius against which all other fantasies can aptly be compared. In general, The Lord of the Rings has an enduring quality lacking to much other fantasy, because it is built on permanent principles. Right and wrong do not change; Tolkien's absolutes are built on Christianity. the moral principles of tolkien justify his work. Despite casteism, sexism, sterotypes, and (sometimes) bad poetry, it remains a clear, beautiful, and moving appeal to our noblest impulses.
Could Tolkien have bettered the moral tone of the work? Probably not. More Christ would have endangered the work with sacrilege. More platitudes would have made it a bore. No, J. R. R. Tolkien has blended his multifarious elements with unparalleled wit, scholarship, and charm. The Lord of the Rings stands as a unique testimony to the power of a Christian pen.
Before I read this, can you tell us the citation for it? IE, who wrote it? That's customary. Helps me understand it in context.
I disagree. For the oldsters out there, Harry Potter is like Goofus and Gallant (from Highlights). All kids get into mischief, good kids do the right thing in the end, and they are rewarded, bad kids do the wrong thing in the end, and it never works for him. It's theme is very Christian actually! It's a very moral work. Good things come to people who do good.
Quote:
Originally posted by lotrfreak
actually, i would read lotr if it wasnt written by a christian author, but it would have to have some type of message from the Bible for me to read it. I dont read Harry Potter because I'm not allowed to, but frankly, I don't want to. Lord of the rings does have a biblical message: it just doesn't quote the Bible.In Lord of the rings, they try to overcome the evil with their own will power. In Harry Potter they got themselves into trouble. They went to find evil. They also went to a school to learn magic to make potions and fly on brooms? No, no, Lord of the Rings is nothing like that.
Okay, mean English teacher coming out: no, most of this isn't fact. This is just someone's opinion. A well reasoned opinion, I won't argue. Looks like someone's thesis. It would be an interesting thesis to do. (I'm sure it's been done many times).
When an author uses phrases like "I believe", and "grand", that suggests its his opinion. There are a few facts interspersed, but it's primarily a thesis statement, and a well reasoned argument.
One fact from this is: some scholars believe LOTR has christian themes.
PS, you might consider citing referenes of academic work. Someone spent a lot of time (probably years) doing this work.
Quote:
Originally posted by lotrfreak
These are just facts:
Yet Tolkien's grand book has outlasted its cult-status. The Lord of the Rings is an undeniable classic: a work which invites repeated readings without exhausting its potential to deepen and define our moral and spiritual lives. Young and old alike keep returning to these big books for both wisdom and delight. True fantasy, Tolkien declared in his 1939 essay "On Fairy-Stories," is escapist in the good sense: it enables us to flee into reality. The strange new world of hobbits and elves and ents frees us from bondage to the pseudo-reality that most of us inhabit: a world deadened by bleary familiarity. Fantasy helps us recover an enlivened sense of wonder, Tolkien observed in this same essay, about such ordinary things "as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine."
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Gosh i could not even be bothered reading all that, way too long, now back to the lady in purple, its people who file cases like that who really spoil it for the legit cases out there, silly woman, if that were said to me, i would just laugh it off or better still come up with something smart and witty back.SOME PEOPLE, gee this thread is really dragging along isnt it?
[QUOTE]Originally posted by lotrfreak
[B]These Letters are from Tolkien himself:
From Letter #320:
...I think it is true that I owe much of (the character of Galadriel) to Christian and Catholic teaching and imagination
The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like `religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.
I.
Despite the eucharistic hint, Tolkien's work is not self-evidently Christian.
There is little that is Christian about The Hobbit, Tolkien's first fantasy work, published in 1937.
They all learn, in a proleptically Christian way, what every mortal must confront: the solemn reality that we no sooner find our lives than we have to give them up.
Perhaps we can now understand what Tolkien meant when called The Lord of the Rings "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work." Its essential conflict, he insisted, concerns God's "sole right to divine honour" (Letters, 172, 243). [QUOTE]
got it,
i believe that you may want to say that he was influenced by christianity and those teachings.
tolkein admits that the Galadriel/Mary connection
was influenced by the christian/catholic religion...one reference....but from that are we to glean that the LOTR was ALL a biblical revision??
the simarillion does read like Genesis for the most part.....
i'll look for the full text of his letters and
see what they say, in context. no, not that i do not believe you, it's just that a few snippets of a letter and an exhaustive interpretation of the body of his work can never accurately 'decode'
what he meant, or what the message of his books is. i can make the same correlation about stephen king's THE STAND...check it out
everyone plagerizes everyone else....
not doubting you....just looking for a bit more of what HE meant when he wrote the books...and just how much he borrowed from the bible!
thanks.