Quote:
Originally Posted by Pitchwife
1. part of the nature of Men as designed by Eru, regardless of any sin they may have committed, and
2. something that may have been tainted, but untainted its name would have been good (see above); which I take to mean that even if it's been tainted, it's still the best way for Eru to achieve the good he has in mind for Mankind.
To me, none of this sounds like orthodox Christianity. Now we know that Tolkien himself claimed LotR to be a thoroughly Christian book ('consciously in the revision', etc.) - which makes me wonder whether
a) there's any kind of loophole in Christian theology that allows for Tolkien's view of death to be considered as orthodox, or
b) this is a case of the truths of his heart prevailing over the truths of his faith.
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One thing that should probably be noted about Tolkien's comment about the
LotR being a consciously Catholic work in the revision is that this comment does not claim to apply to the
Silmarillion, which is where the Creation of the World and the Fall of Man has its recounting. As far as the
LotR is concerned, these two subjects are left pretty much untouched. And as far as those two subjects go, they were written, and little changed thereafter--especially the Music of the Ainur, back in the
Book of Lost Tales era.
Of course, it is also true that Tolkien saw
LotR as part of a cohesive legendarium with the
Silmarillion, but it strikes me as a bit unfair to look for the same sort of theology in both works given the different times in which they were written. While it is true that the
Silmarillion was substantially continued after the completion of the
LotR, it was mostly a rewriting of what had already been written, and the few radically new parts (that aren't expansions of old tales, such as the
Narn i Chín Húrin) ARE, in fact, typically attempts to reconcile the old
Silm with a new, different, worldview. The "Athrabeth" is certainly the main theological attempt, but I think it could be argued that the attempted cosmological changes involved in the Melkor essays included in
Morgoth's Ring (HoME X) could be considered in the same light, though their focus is more on reconciling with a different
physical worldview--that of the round world.
It is interesting, perhaps, that this revision to reconcile with a round world (the "real world") coincided with an attempt to reconcile with a Christian world (again, for Tolkien, the "real world"). I think it is also worth noting that while these changes proved to be almost too much to handle for the
Silmarillion, there is really very little about them that would not be manageable for the
LotR, barring perhaps a bit of the Appendices--meaning that the
LotR is, in at least one sense, fundamentally reconcilable with the "real world"--Christian and round.