[Bill Ferny]

Heren, I didn’t want to come off as a Pelagian, so I took your post as an opportunity to clarify my position. I wasn’t necessarily disagreeing with you. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] Which of course brings us back to a discussion of redemption in Middle-Earth.

Redemption, the kind that Tolkien knew from his Christianity, is absent from Middle-Earth. There is no Christ figure, so no matter how noble, no matter how virtuous any of these characters are, they never achieve that “happy ending.” The best that any character achieved was a certain amount of satisfaction that they did the right thing, they could achieve some virtue by “natural law,” but the life of grace escapes them. Even at Aragorn’s death there was regret (personified by Arwen’s long, lonely suffering); Aragorn, like all the other heroes fails to find that peaceful death. The end of human beings, what happens to them after death, is unknown, not even by the wisest elves or the Valar. The Núnenóreans fell because they feared death and were jealous of the elves. Death for humans was much more of a risk, because they didn’t have the Halls of Mandos.

Tolkien’s mythology was a set up for the future, which he envisioned as being our present. That is why his writings are so devoid of incarnational theology, sacrament, etc… Its not that Tolkien didn’t hold to these things in his real life, but that these would have been anachronistic to his world. Unlike in CS Lewis’ Narnia, Middle-Earth wasn’t a parallel world, it was our world, so there could be no Aslan in Middle-Earth.

Bearing this in mind, I think there would be as many intrinsically evil things in Middle-Earth as there are in our own world. Evil is not a physical thing, but a thing of intent and will. Orcs, dragons, trolls, etc… are intrinsically evil, not because they are materially evil, but because they are extensions of an evil will. Like nuclear bombs to us, they are not made from inherently evil stuff, but the purpose to which they are made is to do evil, to thwart the achievement of the good and happy end. The disturbing thing about LotR, that which my wife picked up on long before I ever did, is that the thing that made intrinsically evil stuff like orcs and dragons, an evil will, is still present in Middle-Earth despite the War of the Ring and all the other struggles. In the hearts of all people, a remnant of Melkor’s evil still haunts the human heart. Original sin, maybe? Well, I see it that way, whether it was intentionally put there or not.