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Originally Posted by Saucey
A prime example of this is the frequent bandying about of “truth-with-a-capital-T”, a word for which (despite many requests) I have never received a satisfactory explanation. As I understand it, it denotes the existence of some objective, eternal “truth”, independent of mankind, which cannot be denied. But I don’t necessarily accept that as a concept and so cannot accept it as a “given” in a discussion.
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Truth: Truth is the matching relation between a truth bearer (me saying that the world is round) and a truth maker [reality] (the world being round). The matching of those two is 'Truth.'
As for the text of The Lord of the Rings being Christian or non-Christian this really is a ridiculous discussion. It does
not depend on the reader's point of view. It has nothing to do with the reader. If you're asking if the text is Christian for
davem, for
Fea, for yourself, or for myself - then it depends on how we interpret the text.
But the
actual meaning of a text is not dependant on a reader's
interpretation, it depends on the author's
intentions. To decide if "Rings" is a Christian work or not (which really shouldn't be the issue here) you have to go back to Tolkien's intentions.
Tolkien did not intend for the books to be "Christian." Are there Chrisitan elements in them? That's what the discussion should be - I think there are. There are also many other elements in them.
But the books are not
Christian works because Tolkien didn't intend them to be.