From the CASE seminar, Creation, redemption and Lord of the Rings. Best read after the first two papers, available in Case #4.

Lord of the Rings devotees gathered recently at New College to explore a theological perspective on Tolkien’s trilogy and the recent film treatments. Three papers were presented—two of them are printed here; the third paper, by Dr Kirsten Birkett, is available in the subscriber-only Associate Access section of the CASE website.

Let’s be clear from the start: I don’t consider the Lord of the Rings to be a work of theology. Theo=god, logos=word: this novel is not full of words about God. There are other books, and in particular, another Book, that offer words about God. LOTR was not written to defend a particular view of God. It wasn’t written to examine God’s nature, nor to justify the ways of God to human beings (cf. Milton’s famous explanation of the purpose of Paradise Lost). Nor was it written as an allegory of God’s relations with the world, as was Spenser’s great poem, The Faerie Queene. In fact, it is known that Tolkien detested allegory, as Diane will explain. LOTR is not about theology, it is about a particular world—the world of Middleearth, somewhere between heaven and the underworld—and its history, its struggles, its natural features, its legends and fables. One of the astonishing features of Middle-earth is how real it seems. It has an extensive history and a cultural complexity that matches or surpasses that of actual nations. The names are real: Mordor, Galadriel, Smeagol and Deagol, Lothlórien. They seem to derive from actual lineages, real genealogies. And yet, we know that they sprang from the mind of one man: J.R.R. Tolkien.

(See PDF for complete article.)

Files: clarke-tolkien-theology.pdf