The Theological Landscape of Middle Earth

By Francis of the Child Jesus Nekrošius, C.S.J.

Fantasy may be a nice entertainment. But not only: fantasy can convey the deepest questions of human heart, including religious and theological ones, and responses expressed in the way which would not be possible in any other way, namely, through mythological archetypes and symbols. This book explores those contained in J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy, especially in "The Lord of the Rings."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781716185045

Book preview

Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version.

Nihil obstat

Rev. Alain-Marie de Lassus, C.S.J.

Censor deputatus

Imprimi potest

Rev. Thomas Joachim, C.S.J.

Prior generalis

February 24, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-716-18504-5

Second Edition:

© 2020 by Francis of the Child Jesus Nekrošius, C.S.J.

First Edition:

© 2019 by Newman House Press

Cover Design: Agnė Paulėkienė

Digital book(s) (epub and mobi) produced by Booknook.biz.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

I.     Beauty and Transcendence

A Theology of Fantasy

Scriptural Grounds

Anthropological Grounds

What Is Beauty?

Beauty As a Way of Access to God

Beauty and the Theology of Fantasy

II.    Mythopoiesis and Fantasy

Myth

Christian Mythopoiesis

Mythopoiesis in The Lord of the Rings

The Baptism of Imagination

III.  Theology in The Lord of the Rings

Apocalyptic Patterns

Sacramentality

Purification, Sanctification, Evangelization

Mythological Sources

Keys to Interpretation

IV.  The Aging and Despairing World

Fantasy’s Effects

Theological Outcome

Hope—And Holiness

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A GLOSSARY OF NAMES

PREFACE

Some ten years ago, while I was assigned to my native Lithuania, it came time again for the annual Summer Family Festival, a four-day event that the Brothers of Saint John hold each year in a beautiful National Park. During this Festival there were various activities for different age groups; the teenagers had their own camp a bit apart from the main campus of the event. For years, my role at these gatherings was giving talks and spiritual direction to parents. But that particular year I was charged with the teenagers camp. While reflecting on ways to engage them, an idea came to me. A few years previously I had watched the movies made by Sir Peter Jackson based on the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien. I was deeply intrigued by the Christian symbolism and imagery that pervaded them. So the decision was made to have the young campers make some videos of their own—using a simple camera—and thus to preach them Christ without naming Him.

I will not linger over the details of how we made that movie in those four days of the Festival. On the last night of the event, everyone was staying and waiting eagerly for the premier viewing. It turned out to be a surprisingly great success.

This was the seed of my interest in the process whereby fantasy could assist in the evangelization of the modern world. What was imagination’s role in this process? Subsequently, I was sent to serve as a Campus Minister at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. The Brothers and Sisters of Saint John involved in campus ministry were allowed to develop programs according to their inspiration. And thus it happened that a weekly student discussion group "From The Lord of the Rings to the Book of Revelation began. Its outcome was a trip to New Zealand, where Jackson’s movies were filmed, and where the participants embarked on yet another adventure: a pilgrimage to Middle-earth," in the footsteps of Frodo Baggins and the Fellowship of the Ring. Even more so than in Lithuania, I was able to witness how fantasy, amazingly, enables young adults to connect with the mystery of God, as our Creator and Redeemer, as the Giver of meaning to our lives.

Our group included Sam and Rachel Zamarron, who documented the trip for viewing on the EWTN television network. Rachel later wrote a series of articles about our Journey.¹

Shortly after, I began work on my own further academic studies, including the writing of a master’s thesis on the subject now closest to my interest—the theology of fantasy in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. I was encouraged by one of my thesis readers, Dr. Gregory Glazov, to continue work on this subject, and thus this book came to be written.

It did not come about easily, though. I owe very grateful acknowledgments to several people at Seton Hall: to Fr. Christopher Ciccarino, who did not reject this topic as unworthy of theological research; to Msgr. Gerard McCarren, the thesis director; and to Dr. Gregory Glazov. Fr. Peter Stravinskas, publisher of Newman House Press, believed this book could be of interest to many.

I also have had the benefit of assistance from three sympathetic collaborators: Sister Laura Rachel Yanikoski, who helped me to revise my thesis text; and then Sister Mary Emmanuel Reichenberger and Mrs. Wendy Yanikoski, who thoroughly read my manuscript and offered numerous and valuable suggestions. If certain passages remain difficult to understand, it is solely my responsibility.

My heartfelt thanks and prayers go to everyone who has helped me to bring this book into being.

INTRODUCTION

He may become like a glass filled with a clear light for eyes to see that can.

—Gandalf, about Frodo²

In his major work on the spiritual and theological vision behind J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Stratford Caldecott relates how Viggo Mortensen, the actor who played Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s film trilogy, responded when asked, "Why is The Lord of the Rings so popular? He replied, Because it is a true story. And Caldecott continues: In other words, it ... communicates something that is true, something that people feel and recognize as important for their own lives."³

Neither Mortensen nor Caldecott meant a historical truth, or a philological, or a scientific one. Instead, they spoke about the reality and value of beauty⁴: natural, artistic, moral, and spiritual. Beauty points to an even deeper Truth underlying them all, and awakens a longing in the human heart for that Truth, which is also Goodness and Beauty. It is the via pulchritudinis, which the Pontifical Council for Culture in its document bearing the same name⁵ deemed to be the privileged pathway for the evangelization of the contemporary culture. In this culture, the image is used in a more powerful way than it probably ever was before, to inoculate ideas and excite passions. And ideas have consequences, warns Caldecott. They shape our society, our economy, our very lives.⁶ Those who disdain using images in the communication of their ideas would see their impact waning, however true and good these ideas might be. This is valid also for the transmission of faith; and this is why the use of imagination in this transmission nowadays becomes so important.

The via pulchritudinis, this trail to God, is blazed by means of the human faculty of perceptive and creative imagination which Tolkien called fantasy. It enables man, created in the image and after the likeness of God the Creator (Gen 1:26), to be a sharer and participator in His own creative activity. Tolkien considered this human faculty’s culmination to be mythopoeia,⁷ as myths were the best way of conveying truths which would otherwise be inexpressible.⁸ Craig Bernthal explains:

If we imagine a solar system, with the Divine Logos, the Word of St. John’s prologue, at the center like a blazing sun, and world mythologies swirling like planets around it, we have a good picture of Tolkien’s basic idea. At the closest orbit to the Son/Sun we have salvation history, the true myth, the Word which Tolkien believed God himself was inscribing in human events, the most important chapter being the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Orbiting very closely to the Truth as inscribed in history is the recording of that truth in the Bible, especially the four gospels. At farther removes, and with more or less eccentric orbits, were other world mythologies. The ones which came in closest, perhaps more like comets than planets, were the rising and dying god myths attached to the Near East, Eastern, Greek, and Germanic deities such as Baal, Melqart, Ishtar, Adonis, Eshmun, Tammuz, Ra, Dionysius, Persephone, Odin and Baldur. That there were many such myths was not, for Tolkien, to suggest that Christianity was just another dying and rising god myth, but rather a confirmation of Christian belief: not so much the worse for Christianity, but so much the better for the pagans that so many of them in so many places and times have seen part of the Truth. Closely akin to myth, and gravitating toward it were fairy stories, whose miraculous, happy endings, achieved after hope is lost, catch an Easter-like joy. . . .

Within Tolkien’s Logos-centric system we also can place deliberately constructed myths, which also take a position with respect to Truth, such as Virgil’s Aeneid, Dante’s Commedia, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Tolkien’s own legendarium. In love with Germanic myth, Tolkien placed the orbit of his work somewhere between the biblical account of Truth and those myths and sagas, which included not only Norse and Celtic mythology, but Anglo-Saxon literature such as Beowulf, The Wanderer, and The Battle of Maldon.⁹

The Divine Logos is not only Truth. He is also Goodness and Beauty. The closer a myth’s planet or comet is to the Sun (the Son), the more it stirs up not only faith, but also hope and love in the one who gets involved with it. Thus, myth encompasses not only an information of our mind through archetypal and symbolic images which communicate ideas, but also a transformation of our heart/ will and of the whole of our life. Myth achieves the latter by inspiring ideals to pursue and the virtues needed for the quest. In the words of Caldecott,

Man is the storytelling animal. The things we make, perhaps especially the things we make in our own heads, prove that we ourselves are made in the image and likeness of God. We are made in the image of a Creator, and if we do not create we are hardly human. Tolkien calls us sub-creators, and his vast, elaborate mythology (of which The Lord of the Rings is simply the iceberg-tip) is a working out of what that means, of what creativity is, of what human virtue is, and how we are to exercise our freedom in order to become more capable of love.¹⁰

This book explores the theological relationship between beauty and human mythopoeic creativity, as expressed in Tolkien’s legendarium,¹¹ especially in The Lord of the Rings. Also considered are its consequences for our daily lives, particularly in our relationship to God, the ultimate Beauty of Truth and Goodness. The first chapter ponders the meaning as well as the scriptural and the anthropological grounds of the expression theology of fantasy. The theology and methodology of Thomas Aquinas in his Summa theologiae are taken as a frame of reference. The philosophy of Aristotelian realism which grounds Thomas’ theology is presupposed, and his methodology of seeking through rational reflection a better understanding of truths drawn from divine Revelation is followed. Beauty, as understood from the Thomistic point of view, is explored as a way of access to God.

The second chapter examines what myth truly is, and its purpose, in contradiction to the misconception that myths are only beautiful lies.

The third chapter seeks to reveal the theological message in The Lord of the Rings, first by discerning its apocalyptic pattern of polyvalent symbols and archetypes, and highlighting the essential difference between the pagan pre-Christian mythology and Tolkien’s pre-Christian legendarium. Tolkien’s mythological background of The Lord of the Rings is provided for theological interpretation of his masterpiece.

The fourth chapter presents Tolkien’s analysis of fantasy’s effects: recovery, escape and consolation, along with their theological implications of salvation, redemption and consolation. The place and importance of eucatastrophe¹² is considered, as well as the end-effect of consolation both in faith and in fantasy. This coincidence can be recognized as a theological convenientia, to employ the term of Aquinas. It grounds Tolkien’s theology of fantasy given in the epilogue of his On Fairy-Stories. Hope is its theological outcome.

Hence the conclusion contemplates holiness as the ultimate escape from the ugliness of sin into the beauty of God’s grace. It is empowered by hope, which is inspired by beauty perceived as the radiance of the eucatastrophic eschatology. It enables Christian heroism to take up its daily challenge.

The Glossary presented at the end of the book contains information about the proper names mentioned in my text. Those who are not familiar with Tolkien’s writings will no doubt find it useful.

I

Beauty and Transcendence

A THEOLOGY OF FANTASY

Thomas Aquinas defined theology—from Greek θεóς (theos), God; and λóγoς (logos), reason, meaning, word—as a reasonable discourse on God and on everything created by Him—man first of all—as considered from the point of view of God Himself.¹³ Fantasy—from Greek φαντασíα (phantasia), imagination, appearance—is commonly understood to mean a human faculty or activity of imagining impossible or improbable things. It also designates a genre of imaginative fiction involving magic and adventure, especially in a setting other than the real world.¹⁴

Given these definitions, the question naturally arises: What could theology, which explores what is the most real and the foundation and source of reality itself, i.e., God, have in common with fantasy, which is about imagining impossible or improbable things, i.e., apparently having nothing to do with the reality? Is not theology of fantasy an impossible, even a logically contradictory, concept?

Although J. R. R. Tolkien never uses the expression theology of fantasy, many writers do. The issue to be clarified is whether this concept accords with Tolkien’s understanding of fantasy, making it coherent and justifiable, at least as far as his definition of fantasy is concerned. To answer this question, it might be worthwhile to set forth what numerous contemporary Christian thinkers mean by theology of fantasy. However, since this scope is too large for the present study, it will be focused mainly on the perspective of Stratford Caldecott, especially as related to the works of Tolkien.

The richest source for Tolkien’s understanding of fantasy is his article On Fairy-Stories, of which an entire section is entitled Fantasy.¹⁵ Tolkien agrees with the generally admitted sense of the word Imagination, which ordinarily means, following his account, the ability of the