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Originally Posted by littlemanpoet
While LotR is clearly Universal, it is a severe contortion to deny that there are specificially Christian themes just because such themes can also be found in Buddhism; this is so because Tolkien was Christian, not Buddhist.
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No. If the themes which underlie LotR are universal then it is not a 'Christian' work. To be a 'Christian' work it would have to have underlying themes which are uniquely Christian. To claim that the 'universal' themes are somehow 'Christian' because they are in a story by a Christian author (ie the themes are Christian because a Christian set them out) is like claiming that if a Christian tells me its raining outside then the statement 'Its pouring down out there' is a 'Christian' statement. If a work contains themes that are 'universal' they are just that - universal - wherever the author got his knowledge of them from.
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Tolkien's use of Northern myth does not confound the Christian themes in LotR, because northern mythic themes have been transformed to fit a Christian world view. More on that later.
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I could argue that Tolkien actually transformed his Christianity to fit a Northern mythic worldview (& I suspect I'd be more correct in that).
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Those of us who have been born into, and nurtured on, Western civilization, have a very difficult job of deciphering what in our brain content is actually Christian-based and what isn't. So much of western culture is received from Christianity that to argue that it can't be found is like an ocean fish insisting that the water's not really salty; it's so used to the salt it can't tell when water's NOT salty.
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Sorry, but I can recognise Christian propaganda when I hear it. I know enough of pre-Christian North-Western European culture to know that, once again, the truth is the other way about. Christianity was very much an add-on. Western culture has its origin in the Roman Empire. Our laws & institutions, our cultural values, are classical/pagan (not a little Viking/Saxon) not Middle-eastern. You can't construct an entire culture from a crucifixion & resurrection.
All of which is a side issue.
The point is. LotR is not a Christian work. It is a work by a Christian, which does not contradict Christian teaching - which, I suspect, is all Tolkien meant by saying it is 'fundamentally' a Catholic work - simply that it is a work which is more or less in line with his faith.
Could you tell us (I ask yet again) what these 'specifically, uniquely' Christian aspects of LotR are, the things which make it a Christian story, rather than just a story by a Christian?