[Raynor]

The story itself - the battle of little people against big baddies - is the Christian element.

Then again, what moves the battle to its happy ending is the Christian pitty, the one who saves Frodo and the world.

But the knots he ended up tying himself into over Galadriel at a later stage proved that some things, such as trying to 'build in' Mary Myth to his story weren't working; that whole struggle could even be why he never got round to finishing the Silmarillion, which began as a very pagan work, but which grew more and more thorny as he tried to 'Christianise' it.

I am not sure, to what problems of Galadriel are you reffering to? If you mean whether her staying in ME in the Third Age is self-choice or a valar ban, then this isn't related to our issue. As for the later part of your statement, I agree; what started initially subconsiously as Christian, he would later emboss in his work even more evidently, should he had had the time.

Originally Posted by davem

My own feeling is that once the 'Christian' elements have been absorbed into the story (assuming of course the 'absorption' is successful ) they lose any specific Christian aspect & become a part of the Secondary world. Hence, they are no longer 'Christian'. To the extent that they are still identifiably Christian they have not been properly absorbed & the Secondary world is not truly self contained.

We need to consider the fact that Tolkien tried _really_ hard to make his creation like our world. I mean, he try so hard that he almost destroyed his creation. This is true either concerning the phisical level:

Originally Posted by Myths Trasnformed, HoME X

It is at any rate clear, for he stated it unambiguously enough, that he had come to believe that the art of the 'Sub-creator' cannot, or should not attempt to, extend to the 'mythical' revelation of a conception of the shape of the Earth and the origin of the lights of heaven that runs counter to the known physical truths of his own days: 'You cannot do this any more'. And this opinion is rendered more complex and difficult of discussion by the rise in importance of the Eldarin 'loremasters' of Aman, whose intellectual attainments and knowledge must preclude any idea that a 'false' astronomy could have prevailed among them. It seems to me that he was devising – from within it – a fearful weapon against his own creation.

The "real" creation, at least to Tolkien, is religious, religious as in Christian. I doubt he would try to depict something which is bereft of what he thinks is the central part, i.e. the christian part of it - or to depict it in such a way that it was unrecognisable. To emphasize my point, I also reffer to perhaps the most famous qoute of Humphrey's biography:

Originally Posted by "He had been inside his language", Part Four, JRRT A biography

We have come from God (continued Tolkien), and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a ‘sub-creator’ and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic ‘progress’ leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.

His work evolved around mythmaking - which point to Truth. There is no doubt to my mind that he had but the deepest of respect for other religions, but the Truth, to him, is the one writen in the Gospels - the one he tried to convey, in his on way. After all, he did call the Gospels the greatest fairy story of them all...