Christianity and Tolkien

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Rhod the Red

Well if people read it with a kind of religious filter, they're idiots.

Anyone who attempts to find their own preferred beliefs in a book is often taking out of it only what they put into it. Garbage in and garbage out.

He didn't write the books as a religious kind of text, but to 'create a mythology' for the modern world. We know he was dissatisfied with the Aurthurian legends, etc.

But what did Tolkien mean by mytholology? Surely not a “bunch of false stories about multiple gods”? You are not even beginning to make an argument.

And for the Hobbit; intended as a book for children.

Completely irrelevant. There are books for children that push one particular religion or one particular philosophy. That the Hobbit just isn’t one of those books is all that matters, not that it is a children’s book.

Anything else for either book is pure intellectual dishonesty.

You are not posting clearly. You do not indicate what you mean by anything else.

Originally Posted by Draugohtar

I mean in Tokien's own words, The Lord of the Rings is, "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work."

True, Tolkien writes this.

Tolkien also states in Letter 142 (emphasis mine):

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.

See also in Letter 146:

So while God (Eru) was a datum of good Númenórean philosophy, and a prime fact in their conception of history. He had at the time of the War of the Ring no worship and no hallowed place. And that kind of negative truth was characteristic of the West, and all the area under Númenórean influence: the refusal to worship any ‘creature’, and above all no ‘dark lord′ or satanic demon, Sauron, or any other, was almost as far as they got. They had (I imagine) no petitionary prayers to God; but preserved the vestige of thanksgiving.

First, Tolkien places his stories in a world which is largely secular in which prayer and worship is largely unknown to the Men of whom he treats, and unknown to the Hobbits (except for grace at meals as a tradition in Gondor and one case where Men cry out for the Valar to cause an elephant to swerve). From Letter 165:

I am in any case myself a Christian; but the ‘Third Age′ was not a Christian world.

In short his work may be a Roman Catholic and religious as it is possible to be in a fictional place and time before Jesus was even born and not even Judaism existed and where religion itself is represented as almost unknown. There is a single all-powerful God, but he is represented as very distant from the affairs of the world at that time.

That is, the work is in reality not very Roman Catholic or religious beyond the working out of the plot in this pre-Christian time, and even there much that Tolkien put in that represented his own understanding of Roman Catholicism was common morality and not specifically Christian.

I am very tired of commentators attempting to bring in Christianity where one sees only common morality, or uncommon morality, which need not be especially Christian. American commentators especially bring in a hatred of anything Muslim. Roman Catholic commentators bring in Galadriel, an Elvish wife and mother of a daughter, as though she were a symbol of the Virgin Mary.

Tolkien writes in Letter 320:

I was particularly interested in your remarks about Galadriel. .... I think it is true that I owe much of this character to Christian and Catholic teaching and imagination about Mary, but actually Galadriel was a penitent: in her youth a leader in the rebellion against the Valar (the angelic guardians). At the end of the First Age she proudly refused forgiveness or permission to return. She was pardoned because of her resistance to the final and overwhelming temptation to take the Ring for herself.

Tolkien admits that probably some of Galadriel comes from Roman Catholic teaching about the Virigin Mary, but that, on the whole, she is quite different. She is very definitely not the Virgin Mary.

It's just not an allegory.

The Lord of the Rings is not an allegory at all. Tolkien insists on this again and again and again. But readers keep insisting on trying to misinterpret his story as an allegory. Christian interpreters often wrongly and sloppily bring this in.

Originally Posted by Draugohtar

It is true Tolkien did not set out to write a 'Religious text,' however interpreting the Lord of the Rings without invoking Christian/Catholic ideals and mythos will never achieve an accurate result.

And interpreting it as though it were true to specific Roman Catholic beliefs, or Christian beliefs, also often produces nonsense. You mentioned Christ figures all over the place. Where? Frodo, whom Tolkien himself admits failed in his task when he reached the limits of his strength. Aragorn? The resurrected Gandalf (but apparently not the resurrected Beren and Lúthien)?

Resurrected figures who are not related to Jesus appear in medieval tales and folk tales and even in the Christian Bible. For example, in the Finnish Kalevala the hero Lemminkäinen is killed when he attempts to slay the black swan of Tuoenela, the river of death. His body is ripped into eight pieces and thrown into the river. Lemminkäinen’s mother rakes up the body, puts it back together, and brings him back to life using nectar from heaven obtained through a bee. The Welsh romance of Peredur, which we know Tolkien studied, brings in the three sons of the King of Suffering who each day are slain by a monster known as an Addanc but are resurrected in the evening by magic baths in which their corpses are placed by their three lady loves. The Grimm’s fairy tale “The Juniper Tree″, which Tolkien liked very, very much, has its protagonist slain near the beginning but brought back to life at the end.

The so-called Christianity in The Lord of the Rings is more subtle than much Christian interpretation which is nonsense. Christ-figures I see as such nonsense.

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

I of course agree that Tolkien and Lewis deplored the abuses of the medieval period. I am speaking to the philosophical viewpoint, which is the basis for any other thought, deed, speech, etc.

People often act from desire that is not in accord with any philosophical viewpoint. In short, philosophical viewpoint is often not the basis for thought, deed, speech, etc. Only sometimes is what you say true.

As to abuses committed by a culture, you must admit that the modern is not pure as the driven snow in comparison to the medieval. If anything, it's worse: millions of decent citizens murdered for the sake of political ideology, for example. No matter how you cut it, orcs will behave like orcs, whether they look like one or not.

No-one here has claimed the modern culture is as pure as driven snow. Nor has anyone claimed that medieval culture was as pure as driven snow. As for people killed for political ideological reasons, there are the various crusades, including the Albigensian crusade. And casual mentions or urgings of the killing of Jews in various texts.

Where does either Tolkien or Lewis clearly state that they would rather have lived in medieval times?

The great debate was between the Realists and Nominalists. In the medieval era, Realist meant something quite different than it does today. This debate did occur because of the changes you describe, but the Realist position was never disproven; it merely fell out of favor, the same fate of current day Christianity.

Then provide an experiment that would prove either medieval Realism or Nominalism, or at least show that either was theoretically falsifiable. That lack is the reason such arguments have fallen out of favour.

[littlemanpoet]

No thanks, Jallanite. I'm not involved in this thread to win a debate. I'm interested in an exchange ideas, hoping to learn something. Let me know when you're interested in that.