Christianity in Middle-earth

• 1. Introduction

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  Christianity in Middle-earth is hidden in plain sight. In a letter to Robert Murray, a Jesuit priest and close friend, Tolkien described The Lord of the Rings in striking terms. He called it "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision." Yet the books contain almost no churches, no priests, and no prayers spoken aloud.

  Three major works make up the Middle-earth legendarium: a 1937 children's book, a novel published in 1954-55, and a 1977 posthumous collection. All three are set in an imagined pre-Christian past. There are elves, wizards, and dark lords, but Christ is never named. Scholars and theologians have spent decades finding the fingerprints of Christian thought on nearly every page.

  How did a devout Catholic author build a faith so thoroughly embedded that most readers never consciously register it? Why did Tolkien warn that making the faith explicit would have been "fatal" to his work? What does it mean that the destruction of the One Ring falls on the 25th of March, the traditional Anglo-Saxon date of the crucifixion of Christ?

• 2. The Hidden Architecture

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  Tolkien explained his method in the same letter to Murray: "the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism." He had removed "practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world." The faith was not absent but invisible, woven into everything.

  The scholar Verlyn Flieger recorded his reasoning precisely. Tolkien wrote that explicit Christian teaching in fantasy was "fatal," and meant the word literally. Doctrine would drain the life from a secondary world. Myth and fairy-story must, he wrote, reflect moral and religious truth "not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world."

  The scholar Patrick Curry adds a complication. Tolkien's Catholic claim, Curry writes, elides the paganism that pervades the work. Middle-earth is both Christian and pagan. Paul H. Kocher, another Tolkien scholar, found a practical freedom in the pre-Christian setting. It freed Tolkien from having to address his non-human races in an explicitly Christian framework; to do so, Kocher noted, "would be awkward if applied to elves, ents, dwarves, and the rest."

  Catherine Madsen, drawn toward faith through the novel, argued the book did not point specifically toward Christianity. She noted Tolkien's own description of Middle-earth as "a monotheistic world of 'natural theology'." What the novel offers, she wrote, is what Tolkien called "recovery," the reawakening of the senses. When Sam looks up from the darkness of Mordor and is struck by the beauty of a star, Madsen called this "the most compelling thing about the book, and also the least Christian... available to anyone of any persuasion, and not contingent upon belief."

  Tolkien himself said: "Of course God is in The Lord of the Rings. The period was pre-Christian, but it was a monotheistic world." When asked who the One God of Middle-earth was, he replied: "The one, of course! The book is about the world that God created, the actual world of this planet."

  Despite his stated dislike of allegory, the scholar Tom Shippey noted that Tolkien deliberately "approached to the edge of Christian reference." He placed the beginning of the quest in Rivendell on the 25th of December, the date of Christmas. The quest ended on the 25th of March, the traditional Anglo-Saxon date of the crucifixion of Christ and of the Annunciation.

• 3. Three Faces of Christ

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  The philosopher Peter Kreeft, himself a Catholic, observed that The Lord of the Rings has no single complete Christ figure. Nothing is comparable to Aslan in C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. Kreeft and the theologian Jean Chausse independently identified three protagonists who together reflect this Messianic pattern. Kreeft described it as "the Old Testament threefold Messianic symbolism of prophet (Gandalf), priest (Frodo), and king (Aragorn)."

  Gandalf fits the prophetic role through his death and return. Several commentators have called his passage through the Mines of Moria a symbol of the resurrection of Christ. The Episcopal priest and theologian Fleming Rutledge likened Gandalf's reappearance to the Transfiguration of Christ on the mountaintop. His robes and hair are "gleaming white." She also noted the parallel to Moses descending from Mount Sinai, his face shining with the reflected light of God; Aragorn comments that his sight had been "veiled."

  Frodo's priestly path is the more painful one. He carries a burden of evil on behalf of the whole world, walking what commentators call his "Via Dolorosa" to Mount Doom as Jesus walked to Golgotha. As he approaches the Cracks of Doom, the Ring becomes a crushing weight. Sam Gamgee carries Frodo up the final slope, paralleling Simon of Cyrene, who helped Jesus carry his cross. When Frodo completes his mission, he says "it is done." As Christ ascends to heaven, Frodo's life in Middle-earth ends when he departs for the Undying Lands.

  Aragorn's kingly role carries the healing office. An old proverb of Gondor declares: "the hands of a King are the hands of a healer." After the battle, he uses the herb Athelas, or Kingsfoil, to revive those stricken by the Black Breath of the Nazgul. Rutledge noted the echo of Christ laying his hand on Jairus's daughter, and of Aragorn calling Merry by name.

  King Theoden of Rohan undergoes a parallel transformation at Edoras. Gandalf visits the hall, lifts Theoden from the control of the traitor Wormtongue, and gets the king to stand, walk, and grasp his own sword. As Theoden straightens, Gandalf announces: "The Lord of the Mark comes forth!" The king's entire aspect is transformed.

  Aragorn's coronation also brought a living sapling of the White Tree into Minas Tirith. The tree had stood dry and lifeless in the Court of the Fountain throughout the centuries the Stewards had ruled Gondor. Commentators have compared this to the Dry Tree of the 14th-century Travels of Sir John Mandeville. In that tale, the Dry Tree has been lifeless since the crucifixion. It will flower again when a prince of the west sings a mass beneath it, and the apples of its trees allow people to live for 500 years.

• 4. Light Splintered

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  Verlyn Flieger traced one overarching theme through everything Tolkien wrote: light as the presence of God and the power to create. She drew on Tolkien's poem Mythopoeia, in which he describes human authors as "sub-creator, the refracted light / through whom is splintered from a single White / to many hues, and endlessly combined / in living shapes that move from mind to mind."

  Flieger argued that Tolkien equated this creative light with the Christian Logos, the Divine Word. Every act of subcreation, from writing a story to crafting a jewel, was a small fragment of the original divine light. The entire arc of The Silmarillion can be read as the progressive splintering of that unity.

  The splintering begins with two great Lamps of Middle-earth, Illuin and Ormal, destroyed by the fallen Vala Melkor. The Valar retreat to Valinor, then lit by the Two Trees, Telperion and Laurelin. Melkor and the creature Ungoliant destroy the Trees as well. Their last light is captured in three jewels, the Silmarils, crafted by the Elf Feanor. Wars are fought across ages for their possession. Eventually all three are lost: one to the Earth, one to the Sea, one carried into the sky by Earendil the Mariner as a star.

  Galadriel captures some of that starlight in her mirror fountain. A portion of that light is finally enclosed in the Phial she gives Frodo as a parting gift. At each stage, the fragmentation increases and the power decreases. Ralph C. Wood noted that Sam's cry of Galadriel's name, "however unintentional," caused his Elven rope to release itself from its knot. It was as if the name itself still carried a trace of that long-diminished creative light.

  The angelic Ainur take the place of Christianity's angels, divided into the powerful Valar and the lesser Maiar. Flieger calls the Valar's role in Middle-earth "eccentric" from a Christian point of view. Unlike true angels, they are sub-creators with their own domains, and they were married to one another. Manwe is King of Arda, Ulmo Lord of Waters, and Mandos Judge of the Dead. Tolkien described them as demiurges, godlike figures in the Platonic scheme able to shape the material world. Some Maiar were sent into Middle-earth in mortal bodies to influence events without directing them. These were the Wizards, or Istari, of whom Gandalf is the best known. Tolkien stated that they fitted the original Greek description Angelos, meaning messenger.

• 5. Sacred Bread and Water

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  In 1958, Tolkien wrote to the American fan Forrest J. Ackerman about the Elvish waybread lembas. He told Ackerman that the bread carried "a much larger significance, of what one might hesitatingly call a 'religious' kind." He pointed to the chapter "Mount Doom" as where that significance becomes apparent.

  The word "waybread" can be read as a translation of viaticum, the Eucharistic food given to the dying for a final journey. In The Silmarillion, the lembas is given to the Elves during their Great Journey to the Undying Lands. This echoes God's gift of Manna to the Israelites during the Exodus, described at Exodus 14.

  The Maia Melian gives lembas to the warrior Beleg as "help in the wild." The bread is wrapped in leaves of silver and sealed with the Queen's seal, a wafer of white wax shaped as a flower of Telperion. Tolkien immediately emphasises that the Eldar had "never before allowed Men to use this waybread, and seldom did so again."

  Tolkien described the Eucharist in a letter to his son Michael as "the one great thing to love on earth." He wrote that there one would find "romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth." Pat Pinsent, writing in A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien, stated that Tolkien's Catholicism "is in fact reflected throughout his writing" and called it "the driving force behind his literary endeavors."

  Pippin shares a sunlit morning meal with Beregond, a Guard of the Citadel, in Minas Tirith. They dine just before the assault of the forces of Minas Morgul. Rutledge compared the scene to the Last Supper. Very soon all who cannot fight leave the city, the sky grows cold, and a Nazgul crosses the sun.

  Baptism finds a counterpart in the Fellowship's passage through the underground Dwarf-realm of Moria. Nine members enter, pass through in darkness, and emerge on the far side of the mountains, symbolically submerged and reborn.

• 6. The Nature of Evil

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  Tom Shippey identified an ancient Christian debate running beneath the narrative. The question: whether evil has an independent existence or is merely a corruption of good. Elrond voices the Boethian position plainly: "nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so." All things were created good. But Tolkien's personal war experience, Shippey noted, was Manichean: evil seemed at least as powerful as good and could easily have been victorious.

  Tolkien described the Downfall of Numenor, the Akallabeth, as "effectively a second fall of man." The temptation for the Numenoreans was the desire for immortality. The ban they broke was not to sail toward the Undying Lands of Aman. This parallels the Biblical prohibition on eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Bradley J. Birzer, writing in The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, noted that Tolkien believed every story was essentially about a fall. His legendarium contains many: the fall of Morgoth, of Feanor and his relatives, and of Numenor among them.

  Brian Rosebury, a humanities scholar, argued that realistically complicated moral conflict saves the book from simple moralising. Gollum is described by Elrond as "an old starved pitiable thing" who still wavers over betraying Frodo and Sam. Boromir, well-intentioned, covets the Ring as a weapon against Sauron and assaults Frodo. He then repents and sacrifices his life defending Merry and Pippin from orcs. Rosebury notes that Saruman "was great once, of a noble kind that we should not dare to raise our hands against."

  The Catholic author Stratford Caldecott calls Frodo "a very 'Christian' type of hero" who "allows himself to be humiliated and crucified." Gandalf's statement after Boromir's death adds another dimension. "It was not in vain that the young hobbits came with us," Gandalf says, "if only for Boromir's sake."

  Rutledge cited Saint Paul's statement in Romans 3:9-10 that "none is righteous, no, not one." She argued that the evil in The Lord of the Rings is not external monsters but a struggle within each individual. Gandalf underlines this when he tells the Steward of Gondor, Denethor, that suicide is forbidden and "heathen."

  John L. Treloar, a Jesuit theologian, connected the Nazgul to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelation. The Ringwraiths are introduced as "terror-inspiring horsemen who bring these four evils into the world." They are bent on conquest, war, death, and ruling non-productive land. Shippey noted that the human race entering Beleriand in the First Age arrives from an eastern darkness "of which they will not speak." The reader is free to assume a Satanic temptation far off the page.

• 7. Providence and Free Will

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  Fleming Rutledge considered divine providence and free will a central theme of The Lord of the Rings. The tension is between divine action and individual freedom. Tolkien's answer, she argued, is structural. The divine will stays almost entirely beneath the surface, signalled through statements in the passive voice. Gandalf says that Bilbo and Frodo were "meant" to have the One Ring; they still had to choose to co-operate with that purpose.

  The Valar, Middle-earth's representatives of providence, are named directly only once in the entire text of The Lord of the Rings. One of Faramir's Rangers of Ithilien, facing the enormous Mumak battle-elephant of the Haradrim, says: "May the Valar turn him aside." The rarity of the reference is itself a sign of Tolkien's method.

  Elrond's words at his council use terms like "purpose," "called," and "ordered." Kocher noted that these imply Elrond believes there is "some living will" at work behind events. Saruman and Denethor have each made extensive use of palantirs, and both fall into despair or presumption: the two distinct sins "against the virtue of Hope." Aragorn was given the personal name "Estel," the Sindarin word for "hope," in boyhood. At the hour of his death, his queen Arwen cries out "Estel, Estel!"

  Two figures in Middle-earth have reminded commentators of the Virgin Mary: the Vala Varda, called by the Elves Elbereth, and the Elf-lady Galadriel. When Frodo, facing the Nazgul on Weathertop, cries out "O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!", Aragorn arrives just in time. Frodo is dangerously wounded but not killed. Sam makes the same invocation, "Elbereth Gilthoniel!", as he faces Shelob in the darkness of her lair, holding aloft the Phial of Galadriel, which blazes with what Tolkien called an "intolerable light." Rutledge writes that Elbereth resembles the Virgin Mary in that she can grant favours and come to the help of those in need.

  At dinner in Henneth Annun, Faramir's men turn silently toward the west. Faramir explains that they look "towards Numenor that was, and beyond to Elvenhome that is, and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and will ever be." Rutledge compared this gesture to the Gloria Patri of Christian liturgy: "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be."

  In a letter, Tolkien described the theological situation of Middle-earth: Eru "is known to exist by the Wise, but is not approachable save by or through the Valar." He added that Eru "is still remembered in (unspoken) prayer by those of Numenorean descent."

  Christianity Today reported that the Bodleian Libraries exhibition "Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth" was "nearly comprehensive." But it had one "glaring omission": any mention of the author's devout, lifelong Christian faith. Michael Ward noted that Tolkien's faith is not obvious in Middle-earth, unlike in C. S. Lewis's Narnia. The report concluded: "Only if we recognize Tolkien's deep Christian faith can we hope to understand the life and work of the 'Maker of Middle-earth'."