All of this has merely served as a preamble to discussing the individual and community in Middle Earth, Tolkien’s subcreated world. There is not time to enter into the discussion itself. I thought it more important to provide the key by which we can enter Middle Earth and the tools by which we can apply the truths found therein to the truths we find in the created world in which we live. These principles, rooted in the author’s Catholic faith, are the animus by which Tolkien asks, and answers, fundamental questions about the individual and his relationship with the community of neighbors he is commanded to love. Throughout The Lord of the Rings, the perennial tension between the selflessness and the selfishness in human nature is felt palpably on almost every page. Tolkien illustrates, as only a master storyteller can, that only if selflessness, born of humility, prevails can the individual and the community prosper, and not only prosper but, ultimately, survive. In practical terms this means that self-sacrifice, that is to say, heroism—heroic virtue—is absolutely necessary as the antidote to spiritual obesity, that is to say, hedonism. Heroism or hedonism, that is the question. To be or not to be. To be as we were meant to be, or not to be as we were meant to be. That is the question.
And there is much else besides. Central to any understanding of The Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion is the power of tradition as both a guide and protector of the community. Faced with the dynamics of time, which is sometimes given the misnomer of “progress”, tradition serves as both a steering wheel and a brake. Thus Middle Earth is strengthened by the knowledge of genealogy, by the longevity and immortality of the elves, and by the sheer “entishness” of the ents, who serve as the very quintessence of tradition—a tradition that is particularly applicable in terms of etymology and ecclesiology. Akin to the centrality of tradition is the nature of authority, both authentic and usurped, a question that is as central to, and therefore as applicable to, the liberal secularist world in which we live.
Ultimately, we should end with the ultimate—in the sense of the ultimate question to which all other questions owe their relevance and all other answers owe their rectitude. Toward the end of his life, Tolkien was asked by a young girl, “What is the purpose of life?” Tolkien’s reply will serve as the ultimate rationale for his beliefs vis-a-vis the individual and the community. The extent of the duty of the individual to the community, and its limits, and the extent of the community’s responsibility to the individual, and its limits, all spring from the duty of the one and the responsibility of the other to praise and love the One who gives meaning and life to both.
Enough of me. Here is Tolkien, answering the question “What is the purpose of life?”
So it may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis: Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te, gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam. We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendour.
And in moments of exaltation we may call on all created things to join in our chorus, speaking on their behalf, as is done in Psalm 148, and in The Song of the Three Children in Daniel II. Praise the Lord . . . all mountains and hills, all orchards and forests, all things that creep and birds on the wing.
34
_____
RELIGION AND POLITICS IN THE LORD OF THE RINGS
THE LORD OF THE RINGS was, without doubt, the most popular book of the twentieth century. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the film adaptation of Tolkien’s masterpiece has brought his work to a whole new generation of readers and moviegoers. Fifty years after its first publication, it is being read by more people than ever. It is, however, interesting that Tolkien’s popular success has been greeted with scorn by the liberal secularist denizens of the self-styled literati.
Why, one wonders, was there such an abysmal gulf between the views of the reading public and those of the self-styled “experts”? Perhaps it has something to do with the religious and political content of The Lord of the Rings. Certainly Tolkien’s stance, theologically and politically, was aeons removed from the position of his critics. He was a lifelong practicing Catholic and, as such, would elicit little sympathy from the ranks of the moral relativists who proliferate among the modern literati. Similarly, he was an opponent of socialism, in both its national and international guises, as well as a critic of the hedonism masquerading as capitalism, which is put forward as socialism’s only alternative. As such, he would alienate the intelligentsia of both the socialist and the antisocialist camps. Furthermore, Tolkien’s religious and political beliefs are made manifest in multifarious ways throughout his work, particularly in The Lord of the Rings itself.
Let’s examine the religious and political dimension of “the greatest book of the twentieth century”.
“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” This was Tolkien’s own judgment of his work. On another occasion, he wrote about a “scale of significance” in the relationship between himself, as author, and his work. At the very top of this scale of significance, enshrined as the most important of the “really significant” factors governing the nature of his work, was the fact that “I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories), and in fact a Roman Catholic”.
In what way is The Lord of the Rings “fundamentally religious and Catholic”? Although it is too subtle to be read merely as a formal or crude allegory, it is, in fact, so religious and Catholic, and so fundamentally so, that it is impossible to enumerate the many instances of what Tolkien called the religious “applicability” of his work in an essay of this length. In brief, however, the salient Christian features in The Lord of the Rings can be sketched as follows.
On the literal level, “the Lord of the Rings” is Sauron, described by Tolkien in The Silmarillion as “the greatest of Melkor’s servants”. Since Melkor is, in fact, Satan, as is made apparent in the creation story at the beginning of The Silmarillion, Sauron is actually the greatest of Satan’s servants and is, like his master, a fallen angel. As such, the evil in The Lord of the Rings is specifically and unequivocally satanic and demonic. There is, therefore, no moral relativism in Middle Earth. Followers of Sauron are quite literally going to hell.
On a deeper level, however, “the Lord of the Rings” is not Sauron at all. On the contrary, “the Lord of the Rings” is the same Lord that Tolkien worshiped as a Catholic, the one true God who reigns for all eternity. Samwise Gamgee, the hobbit, perceives as much when he affirms that “above all shadows rides the sun”. Sauron and his evil forces are referred to as “the Shadow”, whereas the sun is used by Tolkien, in The Hobbit as well as in The Lord of the Rings, as a symbol of God’s presence and a sign of the rarely perceived but nonetheless omnipresent hand of providence. Sauron might believe that he is the Lord of the Rings, but the wise, of whom Samwise is a shining example, know better. Again, there is no room for relativism or agnosticism in Tolkien’s world.
What, then, is the Ring? It is a symbol of sin in general and original sin in particular. The “one ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them” is, in fact, the one sin to rule them all and in the darkness bind them: the original sin of Adam and Eve. How do we know this? It is revealed to us by Tolkien in one of the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, in which he states that the Ring was destroyed or “unmade” on 25 March. This, of course, is the Feast of the Annunciation, the day on which the Word was made flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The date of 25 March was also, according to medieval belief, when the Crucifixion took place. Taken together, the Annunciation and the Crucifixion destroyed or “unmade” original sin, signifying man’s redemption from Satan’s power.
If the Ring is sin, it follows that Tom Bombadil, as the only living being in Middle E
arth who is unaffected by the Ring’s power, represents unfallen Adam or unfallen Creation, a timely and timeless reminder of the way things could and should have been if we had remained obedient to the will of God. Similarly, the example of Gollum shows us the effect of falling into sin habitually. When we put on the ring, or commit sin, we become invisible to the eyes of the good world created by God and, simultaneously, more visible to the eyes of the infernal world inhabited by the forces of evil. Quite literally, when we put on the ring / sin, we enter Satan’s world. If we leave it on, we stay there. If we leave it on long enough, we stay there forever. Gollum is fading and is in dire danger of falling into the infernal pit. The ring-wraiths, once proud kings of men, have already done so.
The Lord of the Rings is so filled to the brim with an abundance of religious significance that it would be possible to write a whole book on the subject—as indeed I and others have done! Perhaps a few further examples, briefly listed, will whet the reader’s appetite. Tolkien confessed that his characterization of Galadriel was inspired by his love for the Blessed Virgin; lembas, the elvish way-bread that possesses such remarkable power, has been likened to the Blessed Sacrament, not least because lembas translates from the elvish as “life-bread” or “bread of life”; the parallels between Denethor and Theoden represent a parable of pagan despair versus Christian hope; and the list goes on and on. There is so much more.
If much has been written on the religious significance of The Lord of the Rings, less has been written on its political significance—and the little that has been written is often erroneous in its conclusions and ignorant of Tolkien’s intentions. There are exceptions, but alas, they are merely the exceptions that tend to prove the rule. Much more work is needed in this area, not least because Tolkien stated, implicitly at least, that the political significance of the work was second only to the religious in its importance.
I addressed the fundamental tenets of Tolkien’s political philosophy in the essay entitled “The Individual and Community in Tolkien’s Middle Earth”, which precedes the present essay. This philosophy itself has far-reaching consequences on the purely political level. Significantly, it led Tolkien to reach the same conclusions as had Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Rerum novarum and as had G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc in their advocacy of what became known as distributism. What Chesterton and Belloc called distributism is, to all intents and purposes, what the Catholic Church, in her Catechism, calls subsidiarity. The Lord of the Rings is, on the political level, a mythical exposition of these ideas of subsidiarity. The Shire is itself the model of a society in which subsidiarity is the established norm. It is a family-centered society rooted in human-scale communities living in harmony with the primary realities of nature. Hobbits shun the artificial accretion of unnecessary technology and resist the encroachment of the power of the machine. The Enemy, on the other hand, seeks domination through the power of technology and through the employment of the machine. Whereas hobbits, elves and men of good will have organically oriented minds and hearts, rooted in roots (tradition) and bearing fruit (wisdom), the evil forces have only “a mind of wheels” bent on the destruction of the natural order (civilization) and its replacement by the artificial (modernity).
The Ring itself has great political significance. It teaches us that the thing possessed possesses the possessor, or, as Christ put it, that where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. This is a sobering lesson, rooted in perennial wisdom. It is a lesson that our own meretricious and crassly materialistic age is in need of being reminded.
Perhaps we can now understand why the liberal secularist intelligentsia despises Tolkien’s masterpiece. The Lord of the Rings is not merely a riposte to the agnosticism and hedonism of the proponents of modernism and modernity, it is an antidote to their poison. And, of course, as is proven by Tolkien’s immense popularity, most people still prefer good old-fashioned Christian morality to new-fangled ideas of moral relativism. Purity is still preferable to poison. And that’s a happy ending of which Tolkien himself would have approved.
35
_____
QUEST AND PASSION PLAY:
J. R. R. TOLKIEN’S SANCTIFYING MYTH+
THE PHENOMENAL POPULARITY of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings continues to be greeted with anger and contempt by many self-styled literary “experts”. Rarely has a book caused such controversy, and rarely has the vitriol of the critics highlighted to such an extent the cultural schism between the cliquish literary illuminati and the views of the reading public.
It is perhaps noteworthy that most of the self-styled “experts” among the literati who have queued up to sneer contemptuously at The Lord of the Rings are outspoken champions of cultural deconstruction and moral relativism. Most would treat the claims of Christianity in general, and of the Catholic Church in particular, with the same dismissive disdain with which they have poured scorn upon Tolkien. Indeed, their antagonism could be linked to the fact that Tolkien’s myth is enriched throughout with inklings of the truths of the Catholic faith.
According to Tolkien’s own “scale of significance”, expressed candidly in a letter written shortly after The Lord of the Rings was published, his Catholic faith was the most important, or most “significant”, influence on the writing of the work. It is, therefore, not merely erroneous but patently perverse to see Tolkien’s epic as anything other than a specifically Christian myth. This being so, the present volume [Birzer’s J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth] emerges as a valuable and timely reiteration of the profoundly Christian dimension in the work of the man who is possibly the most important writer of the twentieth century.
Professor Birzer grapples with the very concept of “myth” and proceeds to a discussion of Tolkien’s philosophy of myth, rooted as it is in the relationship between Creator and creature, and, in consequence, the relationship between Creation and subcreation. In his rigorously researched and richly written study, Professor Birzer helps us understand the theological basis of the mythological world of Middle Earth and enables us to see that Tolkien’s epic goes beyond mere “fantasy” to the deepest realms of metaphysics. Far from being an escapist fantasy, The Lord of the Rings will be revealed as a theological thriller.
Tolkien’s development of the philosophy of myth derives directly from his Christian faith. In fact, to employ a lisping pun, Tolkien is a misunderstood man precisely because he is a mythunderstood man. He understood the nature and meaning of myth in a manner that has not been grasped by his critics. It is this misapprehension on the part of his detractors that lies at the very root of their failure to appreciate his work. For most modern critics, a myth is merely another word for a lie or a falsehood, something that is intrinsically not true. For Tolkien, myth had virtually the opposite meaning. It was the only way that certain transcendent truths could be expressed in intelligible form. This paradoxical philosophy was destined to have a decisive and profound influence on C. S. Lewis, facilitating his conversion to Christianity. It is interesting—indeed, astonishing—to note that without J. R. R. Tolkien, there might not have been a C. S. Lewis, at least not the C. S. Lewis that has come to be known and loved throughout the world as the formidable Christian apologist and author of sublime Christian myths.
Integral to Tolkien’s philosophy of myth was the belief that creativity was a mark of God’s divine image in man. God, as Creator, poured forth the gift of creativity to men, the creatures created in His own image. Only God could create in the primary sense, that is, by bringing something into being out of nothing. Man, however, could subcreate by molding the material of Creation into works of beauty. Music, art and literature were all acts of subcreation expressive of the divine essence in man. In this way, men shared in the creative power of God. This sublime vision found (sub) creative expression in the opening pages of The Silmarillion, the enigmatic and unfinished work that forms the theological and philosophical foundation upon which, and the mythological framework within which, The Lord of the Rings is stru
ctured.
The Silmarillion delved deep into the past of Middle Earth, Tolkien’s subcreated world, and the landscape of legends recounted in its pages formed the vast womb of myth from which The Lord of the Rings was born. Indeed, Tolkien’s magnum opus would not have been born at all if he had not first created, in The Silmarillion, the world, the womb, in which it was conceived.
The most important part of The Silmarillion is its account of the Creation of Middle Earth by the One. This Creation myth is perhaps the most significant, and the most beautiful, of all Tolkien’s work. It goes to the very roots of his creative vision and says much about Tolkien himself. Somewhere within the early pages of The Silmarillion is to be found both the man behind the myth and the myth behind the man.
The “myth” behind Tolkien was, of course, Catholic Christianity, the “true myth”, and it is scarcely surprising that Tolkien’s own version of the Creation in The Silmarillion bears a remarkable similarity to the Creation story in the book of Genesis. In the beginning was Eru, the One, who “made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made”. This, therefore, is the theological foundation upon which the whole edifice of Middle Earth is erected. Disharmony is brought into the cosmos when Melkor, one of the Holy Ones, or archangels, decides to defy the will of the Creator, mirroring the fall of Satan. This disharmony is the beginning of evil. Again, Tolkien’s myth follows the “true myth” of Christianity with allegorical precision.
Literary Giants Literary Catholics Page 27
