[The Saucepan Man]

I still feel that you & Aiwendil are wanting 'Truth' reduced to a set of 'facts' which you can analyse & 'see through', rather than accepting that is the 'source' of 'facts' as well as everything else.

On the contrary, I accept that truth cannot be reduced to a set of facts. The very essence of what I am saying is that truth is often intensely personal and cannot be analysed and objectively judged “right” or “wrong”. What I am resisting is the reduction of these individual truths to a single “Truth” which we all must subscribe to whether we like it or not. I, for one, would not like to live in a world where there was only one “correct” set of values, beliefs and interpretations (which we either see or we don't see) since, in its purest form (when all "see the light"), that world would require us all to think alike. If, for example, there were “correct” and “incorrect” emotional reactions, as the article by Lewis which you quote suggests, then I would dread the day when we all found the “correct” response. The world would be a very dull place indeed if we were all responding emotionally to things in the same way.

I can't help feeling that you are running scared of a belief - that if you were to accept that 'Truth' is 'real' then you would have to put down your Tolkien, pick up a Bible & head off to Church.

I am not at all scared of belief. I have my own beliefs, with which I am comfortable. They are no doubt very similar to yours and many others posting here in very many ways. But they are personal to me, and I do not expect others to accept them as the “Truth”, or even their truth. They are simply my truth.

But really, I do think that my personal beliefs have very little to do with the issues under discussion, save to illustrate that we all respond differently (to a greater or lesser degree) to Tolkien’s works, something which I firmly believe we should be entitled to do without being told that we are somehow missing something.