[Bill Ferny]

Hello. For the last week I’ve been buried in the life and times of William Marshall… the historical Aragorn? Not by a long shot, so don’t start any such thread. Anyway, I haven’t had much time for free will debates, just the politics of Henry I and Thomas à Becket, and King John and that pesky thing called Magna Carta. It was nice break, LOL.

Great thread, Saucepan Man. However, I have to agree with doug and Aratlithiel… it is critically important to understand the difference between repentance, forgiveness and redemption. Repentance is the seeking for forgiveness, the acceptance that one has done wrong, turning from evil to good, usually made manifest by one’s actions (i.e. practice of virtue instead of vice, or symbolic actions meant to demonstrate sorrow and self-humiliation). Forgiveness is to grant (from the party wronged) pardon or remission of some penalty due to one’s actions.

Redemption is a bit more tricky. There are two aspects of redemption, the act of redeeming and the act of being redeemed. To redeem something means to regain possession of by paying a price. To be redeemed is be bought back. I can redeem lost property by paying the mortgage due on that property (doh! Why must I remind myself of that?). The important thing here is who is being redeemed, and who is doing the redeeming. From what or who is who or what being bought back? That last question is a taxing one for someone given to seeing Christian themes in Tolkien, especially in light of the Osanwe-kenta.

If you posit that there is no original sin in Arda, then you would be forced to accept that Eru made a pretty crappy world where rational beings were born into slavery to suffering, domination, death, doubt, etc, etc. You would also have to accept that all these bad things came from the hand of Eru. However, Elrond says at the Council of Elrond, that everything starts out good (which is enough to convince me that determinism isn’t at work in Arda). If everything starts out good from Eru, then its rational beings by their handy work that makes everything crappy. That, in a nutshell, is original sin. Folks making the world crappy.

If you posit that there is original sin in Arda, a state of apriori corruption and guilt shared by all rational beings in Arda, then there is a price to be paid in order for Eru to regain possession of those rational beings. If this is true, then what is the price, and who pays it? Do these rational beings pay their own price for redemption by virtuous actions? That would seem to be the case from a cursory reading of the LotRs. For example, Boromir seems to redeem himself through his valor shortly after attempting to take the ring. Of course, that makes Tolkien’s world a Palagian one. That very well could be the case, as Tolkien himself seems to make the act of repentance the same as the act of redeeming (buying one’s own self back) when he writes: “but if Melkor would repent and return to the allegiance of Eru, he must be given his freedom again. He could not be enslaved, or denied his part.”

So, over the years many people have argued that Tolkien, like most fantasy writers, created a Manachaen world. That’s not the case at all. He created a Pelagian one. Given this, any character that actively attempts to repent, and in his or her repentance practices some sort of virtue, then they gain redemption. Then, Boromir is definitely redeemed. Gollum, no. Saruman, definitely not. Wormtongue, no, because his murder of Saruman had nothing to do with seeking repentance, and certainly nothing to do with virtue. As far as the the Haradrim, Southrons, Variags, Easterlings, Dunlendings and Corsairs of Umbar are concerned, maybe they did and maybe they didn’t. It would depend on the individual. I’m sure there were soldiers in the German Wehrmacht during WWII that were good and virtuous soldiers, just ignorant or misinformed (i.e. Erwin Rommel).

I’m willing to drop it at that. I know that Tolkien, as a Catholic, did not accept Pelagianism. He would have personally believed that human beings can not possibly pay the price due to bring them back to God. However, its easy to see how he came to place so much emphasis on the practice of virtue and repentance. He was writing at a time when so many Catholic writers such as Josef Pieper, Hahn, and O’Brien (albeit in very different ways) were resurrecting the life of virtue discussion in Catholic moral theology. While those guys could always fall back on incarnation theology to stop them from falling into Palegianism, Tolkien didn’t have that luxury in his mythological world, nor do I think he was even conscious of the dichotomy in the draft or in the revision. But, as I’ve said before in regard to Eru, Tolkien’s mythology has too many non-Christian roots for it to be reduced to Tolkien’s Christian world view, no matter how staunchly he clung to this world view in real life.

Oh, by the way, Bill Ferny wasn't acting out of fear, he just doesn't like hobbits and their silly waist coats. [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img]