[Guinevere]

I finally finished reading the whole 5 pages of posts – another fascinating (but time-consuming) discussion!

I voted yes, not only because for Tolkien Eru meant God, but because he pretty much reflects my own conception of God. In fact, reading Tolkien’s works was rather like a revelation to me!!

I must admit that my own faith is rather vague – that is, I have a deep longing to believe in God, and with my feelings I do believe, but as soon as I start thinking rationally, I start doubting. There’s just too much injustice and suffering in the world to believe in a God that is omnipotent AND loving. It doesn’t need the direct experience of suffering – just read history (“a long defeat” indeed!) or listen to the news every day –it could lead one to despair! For years I just tried to evade thinking too much about that. It was reading Tolkien’s works and letters that caused me to reflect on my own belief again.

I feel rather like one man who wrote to Tolkien about his experience with LotR:
letter #328

…I had a letter from a man, who classified himself as “an unbeliever, or at best a man of belatedly and dimly dawning religious feeling….. but you”, he said, “create a world in which some sort of faith seems to be everywhere without a visible source, like light from an invisible lamp.” (……) If sanctity inhabits his work or as a pervading light illumines it then it does not come from him but through him. And neither of you would perceive it in these terms unless it was with you also. Otherwise you would see and feel nothing,

I think just because LotR is NOT overtly Christian , or religious at all, its morals appeal to so many different people.
As Tolkien said himself in letter 142

The religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.

And in letter 156

…I have purposely kept allusions to the highest matters down to mere hints, perceptible only by the most attentive, or kept them under unexplained symbolic forms.

posted by Mr.Underhill
It's interesting to me that he found, or sensed, that the best way to talk about the truths that he held so dear was to not talk about them, if you take my meaning. To portray the underlying truth without the trapping, or in a different trapping.

posted by Davem
If it can (& often is) read & enjoyed by readers who do not percieve any Christian elements in it (even ones familiar with the tenets of that faith) then Christianity is obviously not something that underlies the story.

That way, Tolkien gives the reader the freedom to interpret it in his own way. (Many might be put off by overt Christianity, including myself!) Just because the allusions are so subtle and so general, they are working , and can be accepted by everyone.

from Letter131

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.

Tolkien managed to merge these ancient truths with his Christian faith, and the result is very convincing (for me at least) . Also historically: the ancient pagan deities were very often turned into catholic saints!


On the whole I find the end of LotR a well-balanced mixture of sadness and hope. Hope without guarantees perhaps, but the book “lifts up my heart”. I get the comforting impression that a merciful providence is behind everything.

Now the Silmarillion is quite different. So sombre and pessimistic, everything seems doomed from the start. At first I found it really hard to believe that such tragic and hopeless stories like the one about Túrin were written by the same author… But the more I read in it – and especially after reading U.T., I grew more and more fond of it.
It seems to me that Tolkien's works, especially the Silmarillion, are partly his own way of pondering over those questions that engage us all: about death and immortality, good and evil, free will and providence and the meaning of suffering and injustice in the world.
And I think Davem has hit upon a truth (for me anyway) when he wrote:

Recently I've begun to wonder whether what we get from LotR is not 'satisfaction' a having our spiritual questions answered or our confusions & dilemmas resolved, but rather a 'confirmation' of our own doubts & uncertainties

I guess that’s why I sympathize with the Númenoreans saying
“For of us is required a blind trust, and a hope without assurance, knowing not what lies before us in a little while.”
And with king Meneldur asking “If either way may lead to evil, of what worth is choice ?”

Eru is inscrutable indeed (as is God in my eyes at least), yet there is some attempt at a justification

“"Thus even as Eru spoke to us shall beauty not before conceived be brought into Ëa, and evil yet be good to have been."
(Manwë to the other Valar)
"...and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater"
(Haldir to the Fellowship)

And something similarly hopeful is expressed in letter #64 (1944).

All things and deeds have a value in themselves, apart from their "causes" and "effects" . No man can estimate what is really happening at the present sub specie aeternitatis.
All we do know, and that to a large extent by direct experience, is that evil labours with vast power and perpetual success - in vain : preparing only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in.

Davem, quoting Roa_Aoife
But you know what they say: "When all else fails, manipulate the data."

Precisely. And I suspect this is pretty much what Tolkien did.

Honestly, I’m surprised to hear you talking in such a way about Tolkien ! And I don’t think I would have liked the lecture of this Mr.Hutton (was that his name?) in Birmingham.

Davem:
What it is, rather (I would say) is a work that came from his heart, & one that he didn't have much control over - he wrote & re-wrote it, till he found out 'what really happened'. He then attempted to understand it, make sense of it - mainly for himself, but also for the readers who quizzed him on it.

That's more like it!