[davem]

No. God wanted them to remain faithful to him, and if they had done so, he would have given them more wisdom than they could possibly have hoped for by eating the fruit of that one tree. You'll have to trust me on that, because I've experienced it myself.

Ah, but would they (we) have gotten that wisdom through experience or just through word of mouth?

Actually, it depends on God's perspective since He was the one who designed the test. Believe it or not, He wanted Adam (both he and she) to pass the test, and would have rewarded them (and by inheritance us) with the benefits of both the trees of life and knowledge of good and evil. But Adam did not pass the test. However, Jesus did, and that has made all the difference

This is the 'humans as lab rats' theory of religion I suppose. What kind of parent decides to run 'tests' on his children anyway - & then punish them for failing? And if Jesus succeeded where Adam failed I'd say Jesus had the advantage over Adam seeing that Jesus was the one who made everything in the first place (including Adam). I still say that if you leave innocent kids alone in a room with a box of matches which you've gone to a lot of trouble to point out to them & leave easily accessible while knowing that weird cousin Cletus (the one with pyromaniac tendencies) is visiting for the weekend & could wander in on the little cherubs at any time, then not only are you asking to come home & find the whole place a big pile of ashes & dust (My Precious) but you will have to accept most of the moral responsibility for the incident - you being the responsible adult after all. If you were then to go ahead & punish the children by throwing them onto the streets to fend for themselves, well......

Just in case my implication isn't obvious, this means that Tolkien's statement was not a reaction to critics, for no critics had yet read the book. The only critics were those of his own choice, fellow Roman Catholics, who wrote according to the editor's notes "that the book left him with a strong sense of 'a positive compatibility with the order of Grace". So it is two Catholics talking to each other about this work about whom we are 'flies on the wall'.

Well, yes - as that article I linked to shows, LotR is not incompatible with Catholicism, but I don't see that its a specifically Catholic work in any sense. Its not a 'not-Catholic' work. Mostly it doesn't contradict Catholic teaching, but, yes, there are even parts of it that can be compared to bits of the Bible (Why, Aragorn does have long hair & a beard & so did Jesus!). I wasn't 'offended by the article' - actually I found the author a bit desperate to prove his points & the whole exercise a bit silly.

I'd be interested to learn (not having HoME) if the long defeat is a consistent theme in the early drafts?

The 'Long Defeat' (as Tolkien himself so ably demonstrated in the Beowulf lecture) was a theme running through Pagan Northern writings & so cannot be put forward as specifically Christian.

Tolkien made some contradictory statements regarding LotR - he states at one point that all references to organised religion have been 'cut out' - now I've read the early drafts & I can tell you such references were not 'cut out' because the only ones in we find in the early drafts actually remained or were added - to clarify: in 'The Road Goes Ever On' he points out the hymns to Elbereth & states 'These & other references to religion in LotR are frequently overlooked'! So, he's saying on the one hand that he has deliberately 'cut out' references to religion, but on the other chiding his readers for not seeing the references to relligion which are in the book.