Tolkien and Christian/Catholic Morals (Vid inside)

[General Dan]

I was doing some research for a school paper and i happened to come across a video that i found very interesting.

Has anyone have any other morals or ideas about LOTR a this? Feel free to discuss!

[k/t]

It's called "seeing what you want to see".

Well, off to make a video about The Hobbit being Communist propaganda.

[FC Groningen]

I made it past the first 3 minutes then couldn't stand it anymore. This guy makes it look like Christianity/the Catholic church was responsible for the origin of similar stories. As far as I know, the bible mainly contained elements of stories that were already around like Gilgamesh. Tolkien was a history fanatic and because Christianity and a lot of our history is intertwined, it seems not that strange to me that there would be some Christian influences in the book, but the way he puts it, is ridiculous and I really, really doubt Christianity to form the origin of such stories, despite it might be based on popular stories and populism of the time the bible was written.

[The Bold Burgundian]

Get your filthy religion out of my Middle-Earth. Dwarves, there's axework to be done!

[Merlkir]

Tolkien was a very religious person and a solid Roman Catholic, no one can deny that. Christians do tend to project too much into his work though. Recently I had the pleasure of refusing to allow my art be used in some Christian lecture DVDs on Tolkien. While we shouldn't deny the influence of Christianity on Tolkien and his work, using it as propaganda for their bronze age belief system is unacceptable.

[Maiden_Ante]

Tolkien was a very religious person and a solid Roman Catholic, no one can deny that. Christians do tend to project too much into his work though. Recently I had the pleasure of refusing to allow my art be used in some Christian lecture DVDs on Tolkien. While we shouldn't deny the influence of Christianity on Tolkien and his work, using it as propaganda for their bronze age belief system is unacceptable.

This. All resistance is futile. All arguments are invalid.

[General Dan]

Tolkien was a very religious person and a solid Roman Catholic, no one can deny that. Christians do tend to project too much into his work though. Recently I had the pleasure of refusing to allow my art be used in some Christian lecture DVDs on Tolkien. While we shouldn't deny the influence of Christianity on Tolkien and his work, using it as propaganda for their bronze age belief system is unacceptable.

I would say that Fr. Barron does a decent job in explaining Tolkien's Catholic morals. He keeps things in context and knows that it isn't 100% revolved around Christianity, but only bits and peaces as well as the moral. Now i wouldnt know if I'd be able to say the same with others.

[Wizad]

Maybe it would have been clearer to me if Aragorn was nailed to a cross. Or if Saruman was burned at the stake.

[mondpeiler]

I don't deny that there is christian influence!

my point is that some here in this forum pick special elements out of the story and claim them for their religion with a certainty and absoluteness that is simply not appropriate!

and your quote: "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work" is equivocal as wel. why does he name "religious and catholic?" it would have been more definitely to say "...a fundamentally catholic work", if he would have really wanted to state the whole of LOTR a christian story. but he didn't. so it is open if he ment other christian thoughts or other religious thoughts in general. (and last one can be expected, because there are many things that seem to be influenced by other religions than christianity.)

I'm not for ultimately closing this thread, but I wanted to prevent people here from phrases like "this is clearly..." and "you are wrong..." and from claiming that it is an onesided influenced story.
Go on and discuss and point out similarities to our hughe collection of myths - it is nice to see, what people can find in Tolkiens texts and what parallels can be drawn to other myths, but don't be too certain please.



(ah and just to clearify what I mean with certainty related to influence on the story an example (which is not integrated in the story):
Christmas is a christian holiday. But there are many assumpted connections to heathan holidays (midwinter/Jul and winter solistices in general, Sol invictus, maybe even Saturnalia).
So, if one of theese named heathen holidays would have been the basis/fundament for the christian holiday - would it then still be "christian" influence, if it occurs in the text?
[I don't know how you all think, but for me, this is a critical point, where I wouldn't want to claim truth])

[Ngugi]

Anyone going in on the topic what of and where from Tolkien take Christian inspiration, as he was very aware himself on the matter of allegory and did not want to make it a, nor hope it should not be read as a, Christian story, as he for example found CS Lewis religious themes unappealing to be. However we shall not expect him to advocate moral perception that was not his own, see letter 269 quoted under for this complex perception on his creation.
The letters are a good place to look on his perceptions.
Examples from letters (while also suggesting nr 89, 96, 113, 171, 212, 250):

... Saturday 15th. I'm afraid this didn't get off. I had a very pleasant time on Thurs. All turned up except Cecil, & we stayed until after midnight. The best entertainment proved to be the chapter of Major Lewis' projected book – on a subject that does not interest me: the court of Louis XIV; but it was most wittily written (as well as learned). I did not think so well of the concluding chapter of C.S.L.'s new moral allegory or 'vision', based on the mediaeval fancy of the Refrigerium, by which the lost souls have an occasional holiday in Paradise.
...
- Letter 60, 1944

... But in spite of this, do not let Rayner suspect 'Allegory'. There is a 'moral', I suppose, in any tale worth telling. But that is not the same thing. Even the struggle between darkness and light (as he calls it, not me) is for me just a particular phase of history, one example of its pattern, perhaps, but not The Pattern; and the actors are individuals – they each, of course, contain universals, or they would not live at all, but they never represent them as such.
Of course, Allegory and Story converge, meeting somewhere in Truth. So that the only perfectly consistent allegory is a real life; and the only fully intelligible story is an allegory. And one finds, even in imperfect human 'literature', that the better and more consistent an allegory is the more easily can it be read 'just as a story'; and the better and more closely woven a story is the more easily can those so minded find allegory in it. But the two start out from opposite ends. You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power. But that is only because all power magical or mechanical does always so work. You cannot write a story about an apparently simple magic ring without that bursting in, if you really take the ring seriously, and make things happen that would happen, if such a thing existed.
...
- Letter 109, to Sir Stanley Unwin

... But an equally basic passion of mine ab initio was for myth (not allegory!) and for fairy-story, and above all for heroic legend on the brink of fairy-tale and history, of which there is far too little in the world (accessible to me) for my appetite. I was an undergraduate before thought and experience revealed to me that these were not divergent interests – opposite poles of science and romance – but integrally related. I am not 'learned'† in the matters of myth and fairy-story, however, for in such things (as far as known to me) I have always been seeking material, things of a certain tone and air, and not simple knowledge. Also – and here I hope I shall not sound absurd – I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff. Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one thing its 'faerie' is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive.
For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion. For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal. Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world. (I am speaking, of course, of our present situation, not of ancient pagan, pre-Christian days. And I will not repeat what I tried to say in my essay, which you read.) Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story-the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths – which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country.
It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our 'air' (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), and, while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things), it should be 'high',
purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long now steeped in poetry. I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched.
The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd.
...
I dislike Allegory – the conscious and intentional allegory – yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language. (And, of course, the more 'life' a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.) Anyway all this stuff* is mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine. With Fall inevitably, and that motive occurs in several modes. With Mortality, especially as it affects art and the creative (or as I should say, sub-creative) desire which seems to have no biological function, and to be apart from the satisfactions of plain ordinary biological life, with which, in our world, it is indeed usually at strife.
This desire is at once wedded to a passionate love of the real primary world, and hence filled with the sense of mortality, and yet unsatisfied by it. It has various opportunities of 'Fall'. It may become possessive, clinging to the things made as 'its own', the sub-creator wishes to be the Lord and God of his private creation. He will rebel against the laws of the Creator – especially against mortality.
Both of these (alone or together) will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective, – and so to the Machine (or Magic). By the last I intend all use of external plans or devices (apparatus) instead of development of the inherent inner powers or talents — or even the use of these talents with the corrupted motive of dominating: bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills. The Machine is our more obvious modern form though more closely related to Magic than is usually recognised.
...

In the cosmogony there is a fall: a fall of Angels we should say. Though quite different in form, of course, to that of Christian myth. These tales are 'new', they are not directly derived from other myths and legends, but they must inevitably contain a large measure of ancient wide-spread motives or elements. After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth', and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear. There cannot be any 'story' without a fall – all stories are ultimately about the fall – at least not for human minds as we know them and have them.

-Letter 131 to Milton Waldman, presumably 1951

Since the third volume will be rather slimmer than the second (events move quicker, and less explanations are needed), there will, I believe be a certain amount of room for such matter. My problem is not the difficulty of providing it, but of choosing from the mass of material I have already composed.
There is of course a clash between 'literary' technique, and the fascination of elaborating in detail an imaginary mythical Age (mythical, not allegorical: my mind does not work allegorically).
...
- Letter 144 to Naomi Mitchison, 1954


It is not 'about' anything but itself. Certainly it has no allegorical intentions, general, particular, or topical, moral, religious, or political. The only criticism that annoyed me was one that it 'contained no religion' (and 'no Women', but that does not matter, and is not true anyway). It is a monotheistic world of 'natural theology'. The odd fact that there are no churches, temples, or religious rites and ceremonies, is simply part of the historical climate depicted. It will be sufficiently explained, if (as now seems likely) the Silmarillion and other legends of the First and Second Ages are published. I am in any case myself a Christian; but the 'Third Age' was not a Christian world.

'Middle-earth', by the way, is not a name of a never-never land without relation to the world we live in (like the Mercury of Eddison).4 It is just a use of Middle English middel-erde (or erthe), altered from Old English Middangeard: the name for the inhabited lands of Men 'between the seas'.

And though I have not attempted to relate the shape of the mountains and land-masses to what geologists may say or surmise about the nearer past, imaginatively this 'history' is supposed to take place in a period of the actual Old World of this planet.
- Letter 165 to, 19

One point: Frodo's attitude to weapons was personal. He was not in modern terms a 'pacifist'. Of course, he was mainly horrified at the prospect of civil war among Hobbits; 1 but he had (I suppose) also reached the conclusion that physical fighting is actually less ultimately effective than most (good) men think it! Actually I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect 'history' to be anything but a 'long defeat' – though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.

- Letter 195 to Amy Ronald, 1956

... For instance I was born in 1892 and lived for my early years in 'the Shire' in a premechanical age. Or more important, I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories), and in fact a Roman Catholic. The latter 'fact' perhaps cannot be deduced; though one critic (by letter) asserted that the invocations of Elbereth, and the character of Galadriel as directly described (or through the words of Gimli and Sam) were clearly related to Catholic devotion to Mary. Another saw in waybread (lembas)= viaticum and the reference to its feeding the will (vol. III, p. 213) and being more potent when fasting, a derivation from the Eucharist. (That is: far greater things may colour the mind in dealing with the lesser things of a fairy-story. )...

- Letter 213

With regard to The Lord of the Rings, I cannot claim to be a sufficient theologian to say whether my notion of orcs is heretical or not. I don't feel under any obligation to make my story fit with formalized Christian theology, though I actually intended it to be consonant with Christian thought and belief, which is asserted somewhere, Book Five, page 190,1 where Frodo asserts that the orcs are not evil in origin. We believe that, I suppose, of all human kinds and sons and breeds, though some appear, both as individuals and groups to be, by us at any rate, unredeemable.....
- Letter 269

... The borrowing, when it occurs (not often) is simply of sounds that are then integrated in a new construction; and only in one case Eärendil will reference to its source cast any light on the legends or their 'meaning' – and even in this case the light is little. The use of éarendel in A-S Christian symbolism as the herald of the rise of the true Sun in Christ is completely alien to my use. The Fall of Man is in the past and off stage; the Redemption of Man in the far future. We are in a time when the One God, Eru, is known to exist by the wise, but is not approachable save by or through the Valar, though He is still remembered in (unspoken) prayer by those of Númenórean descent.
...

- Letter 297

Due to Tolkien's own perception of his work one can deduce that Christianity in his works is something that may be found in basic tehmatics, tehological and moral considerations rather than characters and events themself.


Also other inspirations of other mythos such as the norse, celtic, finnish or other inspiration or inworld logical demands (shall never be forgotten, as avoiding contradictions become a force) has to be brought into consideration to be sure either a thing actually can be concluded to be from Christianity with any certainty.

[Flinn]

As someone living very close to the Vatican, I'm used to strumentalization.

A thing like this is so common that nobody would really note it in Italy, as a matter of fact I remember quarrels about Tolkien being fascist or racist, or even neo-pagan.. ah and ecologist too

From my point of view such things are nothing more than fiction.

Flinn

[Dunadd]

Thanks Ngugi - interesting stuff - i'm pretty sure i read some of the stuff on him disliking allegory and disliking representing the real world in fantasy writing in the prologue to the Lord of the Rings too

[Ngugi]

No pro'
If you go ctrl+F and search for allegory you find 18 cites on it in the quoted letters

[Col. Tartleton]

The Lord of the Rings has a blend of Near Eastern and European morality and themes, but Tolkien made it clear it's a stand alone story, it's not an allegory of the Bible or the World Wars or the Middle Ages.

Dwarves may be inspired by Jews and Orcs by the Mongols and Arnor and Gondor are obviously like the Roman Empire and Numenor resembles Atlantis. But they aren't those people or those things. They're also something else. They're uniquely Tolkien, and everyone else wants to own them.

However if the Catholic Church wants to try to draw connections in the way Tolkien thought as a person and how that translates into a book with Catholic Doctrines that's quite valid. Tolkien was a Roman Catholic who wanted Latin Mass and all that, and was probably more conservative than the church itself. If there's morality in the books, and there seems to be, it's Christian.

For example Frodo the ring (cross?) bearer suffers again and again. His self sacrifice has a Christian morality to it. However the fact that Golumn must destroy the ring can be understood as Frodo not being like Jesus and seems to suggest that evil is more powerful than good. Which is totally unchristian. Good endures because evil sabotages itself is different from saying that Good is stronger than evil.

Analyze all you want, but don't assume to know the authors mind.

[Ngugi]

To equal the Ring to a cross is to not acknowledge the cross role in christian teology. Crufixifex anyone? While the Ring is evil in itself.

On the main point I concur. Anyone who try to 'decode' Tolkien has to be very aware that personal opinions and prejudices ,how the apply the content, presumably will be more significant for the outcome than the writers own intentions. To quote Tolkien;

... I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presences. I much prefer history, true or feigned. ... I think many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides to the freedom of the reader, and the other in the proposed domination of the author.
- preface LotR

[Col. Tartleton]

I didn't say the ring was allegorically the cross. I said it was a cross to bear. It isnt a wedding ring. However rings are strongly tied to Germanic Kingship. I can't think of anything like it elsewhere. It's Tolkien.

[Dunadd]

Seems reasonable to me. Frodo suffers so everyone can be saved and then leaves for the West - Valinor, land of the gods ; Jesus in the Bible suffers so everyone can be saved and then goes to heaven.

Not an exact parallell, but definitely some similarities.

(and no i'm not saying that's what Tolkien intended when he wrote it, nor that LOTR is about Christianity, but that maybe Tolkien's own beliefs and the history of his own world influenced his work even in some ways he wasn't necessarily consciously aware of)

[Master Shu Win]

Dont forget that Tolkien was a devout catholic and was raised in such a manner by his mother but since he served in the first world war i doubt he had a strong belief in god afterwards but it was still their. It way of influenced some elements but he mostly based all lore after finnish and viking myth. The video was comical at best priest trolling Tolkien fans classic!

[Maegfaer]

since he served in the first world war i doubt he had a strong belief in god afterwards

You're making one big assumption here. You seem to assume that all people who have seen horrific wars lose their faith in their God. That's very untrue, it differs per person. Some completely lose their faith, others are only strengthened in it. I'm not an expert on the life of Tolkien, but I never heard or read that his experiences in WWI caused his faith to waver, nor is there any sign of that in his books, on the contrary even. In all of Tolkien's books those who stay loyal to the Valar and Good are the ultimate heroes.

[Lugiahua]

but since he served in the first world war i doubt he had a strong belief in god afterwards but it was still their.

Not necessary true.
C.S. Lewis served in WWI, and was seriously wounded by friendly fire, only became a Christian after the War.