The Lord of the Bible?

[Child of the 7th Age]

Thanks for your thoughts--- Helen, Littlemanpoet, and many others. I admit I purposely pushed hard on my previous posts to generate discussion. The line I enthusiastically drew was probably too dramatic. As a Catholic, Tolkien would have accepted and understood that evil is real…. that it is personal and possessing in a way some modern thinkers totally fail to see . Even so, the Northern pagan world view is, in my eyes, ultimately more negative, fatalistic, and pessimistic than that espoused by the Christian faith.

The best way I can address this is by stressing the Christian and pagan views of hope and hopelessness.. This contrast is one of the most poignant themes running through the Legendarium. I think it's fair to state that Hope is rarely seen in the context of the old Northern myths. In speaking of Beowulf, Tolkien himself described the pagan era as “heathen, noble, and helpless.” In several interviews and published writings, Tom Shippey has argued that one of Tolkien’s main motivations was to consider how pre-revelation men, who were placed in an utterly hopeless situation, still chose to make moral choices.

All of this leads us back to the question of the world's end, something others also talked about on this thread. In Christianity, goodness remains even if it lies beyond the walls of the world and we can not reach it in our human state. In paganism, there is no ultimate goodness that survives after the end (and perhaps not in our modern theories either where everything ends with a bang or poof).

LotR is filled with examples of pagan hopelessness. Just a few come to mind. There is Aragorn’s grim statement after the loss of Gandalf that “We must do without hope”, the totally hopeless assault of the Free Peoples at the Black Gate, and Frodo’s grim comment to Sam, “It’s all quite useless….You are the fool, going on hoping and toiling.” These could be multiplied a hundred times. Yet there are also the other statements and examples of hope strewn throughout the book, which we have discussed a hundred times before on this board. The presence or absence of hope best sums up the Christian/pagan dichotomy for me.

When I read biographical accounts of Tolkien, I see some of this dichotomy in the author’s personal life. (My apologies to Bêthberry--I can't resist.) Tolkien apparently fought back against moodiness and depression much of his life. He was constantly struggling back to hope. This could also explain why he appended the Athrabeth to the Legendarium. He felt the need to resolve the vexing dilemma of pagan hopelessness and Christian hope late in his own life. In the end, Tolkien came down at least publicly on the side of hope and his own religious faith.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Child of the 7th Age

When I read biographical accounts of Tolkien, I also see this dichotomy in the author’s personal life. (My apologies to Bêthberry as I can't resist.) Tolkien apparently fought back against moodiness and depression much of his life. He was constantly struggling back to hope. This could also explain why he appended the Athrabeth to the Legendarium. He felt the need to resolve the vexing question of pagan hopeless and Christian hope near the end of his own life and, in the end, came down at least publicly on the side of hope and his own religious faith.

Please, Child, there's no need to apologise, as I always enjoy your historical observations. I don't by any means wish to deny the possibility of historical study. My interest is simply to suggest that a biographical/psychological motivation is not the only reason why LotR might harbour this kind of dual vision. Writers can be inspired as much by what they read as by their own lives; what I think is interesting is that one of Tolkien's favourite poems demonstrates a quality which we find--or which some find--in his work.

There are writers whose work is constantly reduced to their lives, everything explained by recourse to their personal lives and self-expression. This tack really does a disservice to the works which the authors produced and so I am leery of always going solely to the life to explain something in the work. There could well be an artistic or storytelling purpose for the text which the biographical methods misses.

Originally Posted by Child

All of this leads us back to the question of the world's end, something others also talked about on this thread. In Christianity, goodness remains even if it lies beyond the walls of the world and we can not reach it in our human state. In paganism, there is no ultimate goodness that survives after the end (and perhaps not in our modern theories either where everything ends with a bang or poof).

This reminds me of a saying in philosophy: "When the ends keep receding, the means must justify themselves." Is there a moral basis for behaviour which does not depend upon an end-time scenario? Is this admittedly very modern morality explored in LotR?