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Originally Posted by Elu Ancalime
Since this is a religous post, i expect a lot of contrversy and negitive feedback. I myself am a methodist, which is cristian, so my post might be biased. This isnt agsint any religoin, or to promote chritianity, but what i've observed in Tolkiens works. I dont belive everything the bible says; i just havent decided. However this my bias my post.....Many books have cristian themes such as good vs evil, or a hellish dark lord vs a savior fo peple, but i think there is a lot of symbolism in the books. Tolkien meant to create his own literary world, and while his books have christian allusions in them, he did not intend for them as directly as Lewis did. I assume because he was christian, he was biased all the same in a way he might not have realized until after writing hisbooks; he just wrote his won works, with what e had been taught.
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I think the essential difference is that Tolkien explicitly states that LotR is not allegorical. We might find elements of Christian symbolism in it (equally we might not), but they are not there in order to tell us anything about Christianity, they are simply there. After this matters start to get muddier. Whether they are included intentionally and what they might suggest to us are controversial - and we can argue about this. But in the work of CS Lewis such symbols are much more clear and
are there to tell us something about Christianity.
So I think its a case of rather than the Christian 'themes' in LotR being overlooked, they are debatable in the first place, while in Narnia they are much more explicit and they are intended to be taken that way. I suppose the way I look at it is that while a writer may be a devout Christian, it does not necessarily follow that his or her work all includes a 'message' about Christianity. The work of Lewis does include that, but I think the work of Tolkien is more
influenced by that.