[Estel the Descender]

I found this article at http://www.users.cts.com/king/e/erik...n/gdfchrst.htm
entitled, Did Tolkien Intend for Gandalf
to Represent Christ?. I post a copy of it here:

Did Tolkien intend Gandalf's Death and Return to represent Christ and the Ressurection?

Heavens, no! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

This would have represented a too literal embodiement of Christian ideal, which Tolkien thought undesirable in a story. He specifically stated this while commenting on the Arthurian tales:

"{i}t is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion. For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal. Myth and fairy- story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary `real' world."LETTER #131

This is not to say that he didn't like the Tales; he did, but his feeling was that such a direct connection between one of his characters and Christ was allegorical - which he utterly disliked.

Further, in one of his letters, he flatly denies this type of allegory (which he avoided in his stories and repeatedly denied):

"Thus Gandalf faced and suffered death; and came back or was sent back, as he says, with enhanced power. But though one may be in this reminded of the Gospels, it is not really the same thing at all. The Incarnation of God is an infinitely greater thing than anything I would dare to write. Here I am only concerned with Death as part of the nature, physical and spiritual, of Man, and with Hope without guarantees." LETTER #181

However, Tolkien's work is religious and consciously admitted by Tolkien to be so. While he disliked "allegory" he still embodied his religious ideals and beliefs into his work by making them "symbolical", if you will. Gandalf's death and return is meant to "symbolize" that the sacrifice of one's self for a worthy purpose can be changed and enlarged to another and higher purpose.

In another article I found here at http://www.users.cts.com/king/e/erik...n/jrrtcrst.htm
titled Was Tolkien a Christian? excerpts from Tolkien's letters regarding his Christianity:

From Letter #131:
...Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one thing its `faerie' is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion.
For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal. Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary `real' world. (I am speaking, of course. of our present situation, not of ancient pagan, pre-Christian days.)... In the cosmogony there is a fall: a fall of Angels we should say. Though quite different in form, of course, to that of Christian myth. These tales are `new', they are not directly derived from other myths and legends, but they must inevitably contain a large measure of ancient wide-spread motives or elements. After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of `truth', and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear.

From Letter #142:
The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like `religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.

From Letter #165:
It is not `about' anything but itself. Certainly it has no allegorical intentions, general, particular, or topical, moral, religious, or political. The only criticism that annoyed me was on that it `contained no religion' (and `no Women', but that does not matter, and is not true anyway). It is a monotheistic world of `natural theology'. The odd fact that there are no churches, temples, or religious rits and ceremonies, is simply part of the historical climate depicted. It will be sufficiently explained, if (as now seems likely) the Silmarillion and other legends of the First and Second Ages are published. I am in any case myself a Christian; but the `Third Age' was not a Christian world.

From Letter #195:
Actually I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect `history' to be anything but a `long defeat' - though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.

From Letter #213:
...I object to the contemporary trend in criticism, with its excessive interest in the details of the lives of authors and artists. They only distract attention from an author's works (if the works are in fact worthy of attention). and end, as one now often sees, in becoming the main interest. But only one's guardian Angel, or indeed God Himself, could unravel the real relationship between personal facts and an author's works. Not the author himself (though he knows more than any investigator), and certainly not so-called `psychologists'. ...I was born in 1892 and lived for my early years in `the Shire' in a pre-mechanical age. Or more important, I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories), and in fact a Roman Catholic. The latter `fact' perhpas cannot be deduced; thou one critic (by letter) asserted that the invocations of Elbereth, and the character of Galadriel as directly described (or through the words of Gimli and Sam) were clearly related to Catholic devotion to Mary. Another saw in waybread (lembas)=viaticum and the reference to its feeding the will (vol. III, p. 213) and being more potent when fasting, a derivation from the Eucharist. (That is: far greater things may colour the mind in dealing with the lesser things of a fair-story.)

From Letter #269:
With regard to The Lord of the Rings, I cannot claim to be a sufficient theologian to say whether my notion of orcs is heretical or not. I don't fell under any obligation to make my story fit with formalized Christian theology, though I actually intended it to be consonant with Christian thought and belief, which is asserted elsewhere.

From Letter #310:
...So it may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis:...We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendour.

From Letter #320:
...I think it is true that I owe much of (the character of Galadriel) to Christian and Catholic teaching and imagination about Mary....

[img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] Well, so much for that!

[ December 01, 2002: Message edited by: Estel the Descender ]