The Lord of the Kingdom

Rivendell, Seventh Age - Things are coming to a head at the church of which I am a member. We will vote on a new constitution on January 13 and the outcome of that vote will shape the future of the church.

The old constitution has been somewhat of a Ring of Power in the church for many years. It has allowed for (what I believe to be) unbiblical practices - such as the ordination of women as elders - and facilitated a less-than desirable atmosphere regarding spiritual growth. The new constitution restores a biblical foundation for the church and effectively undoes the negative influences of the old.

The vote on the 13th is like the Council of Elrond because the outcome is uncertain. Clearly Gandalf, Elrond, and Aragorn knew the path that had to be taken to undo the evil that had been found, but they had no assurances that the Council would follow their advice and send the Ring to Mount Doom. Similarly, those of us desirous of a new constitution at our church are clear about what needs to be done for the health and survival of our church, but we have no guarantees or assurances either.

At the Council of Elrond the participants were agreed in their opposition to the evil but not in their views of what needed to be done. Our situation - let’s call it the Council of Zion - is more complicated. Not all believe the old constitution is a problem; not all want to change the way church has been and is been done. Who knows what will happen when the Council ends? It may not be glorifying to God whichever way the vote goes.

Even as the Council of Elrond erupted into fruitless argument, so too has the pending Council of Zion begun to bring out the worst in some of us. Politicking of the ugliest kind has emerged and the lines have been drawn, albeit not talked about openly. The courting of votes and gossip have begun and an “us and them” mentality has emerged.

Some of us are determined not to get involved in the politics and gossip. We have chosen, rather, to commit ourselves and the Council of Zion to God: it is his church, not ours, and we will trust him to discipline us so that we might hang on to our lampstand. Like David, we are tempted to number our troops and trust in the numbers rather than God. We endeavor to be more like Jehoshaphat, whose prayer I have adopted for our own situation:

6 O LORD, the God of our fathers, are You not God in the heavens? And are You not ruler over all the churches of the world? Power and might are in Your hand so that no one can stand against You.
7 “Did You not, O our God, establish this your church long ago and preserve it for those who now enjoy its fellowship?
8 “We have worshiped and served in it, and have offered up the praise of our lips in thanksgiving and love to Your name, saying,
9 ‘Should evil come upon us, the sword, or judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will remain with this church and before You (for Your Spirit is in this church) and cry to You in our distress, and You will hear and deliver us.‘
10 “Now behold, we have sinned against You and one another; we have strayed from the commands You gave us long ago,
11 and now those who would oppose our return and obedience to You are before us.
12 “O our God, will You not deliver us for the sake of Your Name? For we are powerless before this great multitude who are coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are on You.” - from 2 Chron 20

It is especially the last portion of the king’s prayer that we embrace: we are powerless and we don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on him.

As many of you as might be inclined as you read this, or whenever you might think of us, I would ask to please pray for our church. We are trusting God to preserve and prosper his church of which we are fortunate to be members. We will allow him to fight the battle, believing that we need “not fear or be dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not [ours] but God’s.”

Nargothrond, West Beleriand. Seventh Age. - Scholars and experts in all things Tolkien are in general agreement that the most beautiful writing in all of Tolkien’s legendarium is Ainulindalë: The Music of the Ainur. This remarkable chapter opens The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s life-long endeavor and his chief love. Ainulindalë is a creation story, one which is drawn from, embellishes, and slightly distorts the true myth account found in the Book of Genesis in Jewish and Christian bibles. The style is high and lofty: one is caught up in the imaginative genius of the creator of Middle-earth, at times hoping that he is filling in gaps in the method employed by God to bring our own Middle-earth into being.

There is another short work by Tolkien that, for me, is even more compelling and gripping. It is found in Book X of The History of Middle Earth, Morgoth’s Ring: The Later Silmarillion, Part One: The Legends of Aman. The essay is entitled Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth, or The Debate of Finrod and Andreth. To my knowledge, this remarkable dialogue is only found in this book, which was edited by Christopher Tolkien. Like Ainulindalë, Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth provides an intimate glimpse into the heart and theological mind of the wizard who was J.R.R. Tolkien.*

The debate is between Finrod, the elven brother of Galadriel, who was also known as Edennil, the Friend of Men. Of him it was written,

Finrod (son of Finarfin, son of Finwë) was the wisest of the exiled Noldor, being more concerned than all others with matters of thought (rather than with making or with skill of hand); and he was eager moreover to discover all that he could concerning Mankind.

Andreth, of the race of Men, is introduced as

a woman of the House of Bëor, the sister of Bregor father of Barahir (whose son was Beren One-hand the renowned). She was wise in thought, and learned in the lore of Men and their histories; for which reason the Eldar called her Saelind, ‘Wise-heart’.

Tolkien tells us that,

In the days of the peace before Melkor broke the Siege of Angband, Finrod would often visit Andreth, whom he loved in great friendship, for he found her more ready to impart her knowledge to him than were most of the Wise among Men. A shadow seemed to lie upon them, and there was a darkness behind them, of which they were loth to speak even among themselves.

The debate covers a variety of subjects but one of the more fascinating is the discussion concerning redemption of Arda, i.e., creation. Their conversation had begun with the issue of Death, which Andreth held to be a curse placed upon Men by Melkor, the satanic lord of Middle-earth whose Ring was Middle-earth itself and into which he had placed much of his power. Finrod disputes such a notion of Melkor’s power and tells Andreth of his first-hand knowledge of the natures of Melkor and Eru (God):

‘We know Melkor, the Morgoth, and know him to be mighty. Yea, I have seen him, and I have heard his voice; and I have stood blind in the night that is at the heart of his shadow, whereof you, Andreth, know nought save by hearsay and the memory of your people. But never even in the night have we believed that he could prevail against the Children of Eru. This one he might cozen, or that one he might corrupt; but to change the doom of a whole people of the Children, to rob them of their inheritance: if he could do that in Eru’s despite, then greater and more terrible is he by far than we guessed; then all the valour of the Noldor is but presumption and folly . . .’

Andreth struggles to believe Finrod’s reasoning, however, and instead admits of her despair - the loss of hope - for Men. The debate now turns to the matter of hope, redemption, and a new creation.

‘Have ye then no hope?’ said Finrod.

‘What is hope?’ she said. ‘An expectation of good, which though uncertain has some foundation in what is known? Then we have none.’

‘That is one thing that Men call “hope”,’ said Finrod. ‘Amdir we call it, “looking up”. But there is another which is founded deeper. Estel we call it, that is “trust”. It is not defeated by the ways of the world, for it does not come from experience, but from our nature and first being. If we are indeed the Eruhin, the Children of the One, then He will not suffer Himself to be deprived of His own, not by any Enemy, not even by ourselves. This is the last foundation of Estel, which we keep even when we contemplate the End: of all His designs the issue must be for His Children’s joy. Amdir you have not, you say. Does no Estel at all abide?’

‘Maybe,’ she said . . . ‘It is believed that healing may yet be found, or that there is some way of escape. But is this indeed Estel? Is it not Amdir rather; but without reason: mere flight in a dream from what waking they know: that there is no escape from darkness and death?’

‘Mere flight in a dream you say,’ answered Finrod. ‘In dream many desires are revealed; and desire may be the last flicker of Estel. But you do not mean dream, Andreth. You confound dream and waking with hope and belief, to make the one more doubtful and the other more sure . . .

‘What then was this hope, if you know?’ Finrod asked.

‘They say,’ answered Andreth: ‘they say that the One will himself enter into Arda, and heal Men and all the Marring from the beginning to the end. . . . How could Eru enter into the thing that He has made, and than which He is beyond measure greater? Can the singer enter into his tale or the designer into his picture?’

‘He is already in it, as well as outside,’ said Finrod . . .

‘For, as it seems to me, even if He in Himself were to enter in, He must still remain also as He is: the Author without. And yet, Andreth, to speak with humility, I cannot conceive how else this healing could be achieved. Since Eru will surely not suffer Melkor to turn the world to his own will and to triumph in the end. Yet there is no power conceivable greater than Melkor save Eru only. Therefore Eru, if He will not relinquish his work to Melkor, who must else proceed to mastery, then Eru must come in to conquer him.

‘More: even if Melkor (or the Morgoth that he has become) could in any way be thrown down or thrust from Arda, still his Shadow would remain, and the evil that he has wrote and sown as a seed would wax and multiply. And if any remedy for this is to be found, ere all is ended, any new light to oppose the shadow, or any medicine for the wounds: then it must, I deem, come from without.’

________________

* The story is told of one of Tolkien’s sons who was completing paperwork prior to being inducted into the English military during World War II. When required to state his father’s occupation, Tolkien’s son wrote, “Wizard.”

Avallónnë. Seventh Age. - As I think about these days in which we live, about the voices that hold sway over Christendom from the pulpit, and the captivating reasonings in well-constructed books, as well as in the reams of words written here online - as I reflect on these matters, I am reminded of Tolkien’s words in The Lord of the Rings, Book III, a chapter entitled “The Voice of Saruman.”

The Riders of the Mark have accompanied King Théoden of Rohan and Éomer his nephew, Gandalf and Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli to the stairs of Orthanc, the stronghold-turned-prison of Saruman, now the Wizard of Many Colors. The Riders eavesdrop on the speech of Saruman to their king.

Suddenly another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves. When others spoke they seemed harsh and uncouth by contrast; and if they gainsaid the voice, anger was kindled in the hearts of those under the spell. . . .

“The Riders stirred at first, murmuring with approval of the words of Saruman; and then they too were silent, as men spell-bound. It seemed to them that Gandalf had never spoken so fair and fittingly to their lord. Rough and proud now seemed all his dealings with Théoden. And over their hearts crept a shadow, the fear of a great danger: the end of the Mark in a darkness to which Gandalf was driving them, while Saruman stood beside a door of escape, holding it half open so that a ray of light came through.”

Those who would mesmerize us with words and ear-soothing tones may still be found among us, drawing us under their spell with their seductive speeches and attractive demeanor. They are strong, powerful, and popular; by agreeing with them, we reason, we will share in those qualities. Those who speak roughly or without the allurement of rhetorical skills are dismissed as unfaithful, ignorant rabble. We will give them no hearing and will hearken instead to velvet-tongued orators whose voices we find comforting.

Such modern-day Sarumans hold open a door, and from the door emanates a warm, inviting, and seductive light. But the door is only half open, and thus we cannot see that the light streaming towards us is not generated by the glory of the Son but by the fires of hell.

Avallónnë. Seventh Age. - One of the topics Bradley Birzer addresses in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth is Sauron’s corruption of men during the Second Age. This saga, which lies at the heart of Tolkien’s mythology, tells the story of the people who would be known as Númenóreans in the Third Age. Birzer explains,

Tolkien’s most explicit rendering of a fall - and in some ways most fascinating, if highly undeveloped - is that of Númenor in the Second Age, or, as Tolkien labeled it, the Akallabêth. As a reward to men - the Edain - who fought against Morgoth at the end of the First Age rather than succumbing to his perverted will, Ilúvatar blessed them with a realm of their own, Andor [Númenor]. In it, the Edain, now calling themselves the Númenóreans, lived long lives, created beautiful works of art, and became the greatest mariners the world had ever seen. . . .

Just as the earliest men had been tempted with knowledge, so too were the Númenóreans. Taken into the confidence of the Númenóreans, Sauron soon provided a Gnostic interpretation and reading of what was left of traditional Númenórean theology. . . . In Tolkien’s mythology, Sauron presents himself as the Gnostic savior, urging the Númenóreans away from the labyrinth of Ilúvator’s time and space and toward the ‘true god’ Melkor.

“Sauron slowly took advantage of Númenórean weaknesses and the disorder in their souls.”

I have a DVD produced by National Geographic entitled “Eternal Enemies: Lions and Hyenas” that follows a pride of lions and a pack of hyenas that share a common territory. The narrator of the documentary notes at one point that hyenas are masters at exploiting chaos and confusion. When I read that “Sauron slowly took advantage of Númenórean weaknesses and the disorder in their souls” or watch the hyenas at work, I’m struck by how both Sauron and the hyenas reflect the Enemy of our souls. They exploit weaknesses and disorder in the souls of their prey, even as Satan does.

It is a common tactic: he exploits the chaos, confusion, weaknesses, and disorder in the community of Christ and in individual believers’ lives. It is one of his primary back doors to disrupting and even corrupting our role in establishing God’s kingdom in His church and children.

That the Enemy preys upon our weaknesses is well known and often acknowledged, but how often do we recognize or think that he also exploits the disorder in our souls to gain a foothold and trip us on the path of righteousness? A disordered soul is a painful and troubling existence, made worse by him who seeks to devour us. It is through our disordered souls that he most often finds his greatest and most consistent success.

It is in subtlety and deception that Satan excels. Most of us, corporately and individually, are too astute and prepared for frontal assaults that are designed to exploit our weaknesses. But by appealing to our soul’s need for order, he makes attractive what we otherwise would eschew: he offers knowledge - gnosis - to help us order our thoughts and lives. His teaching is attractive to us and is only a slight, almost-imperceptible deviation from the truth of God. We follow and, like the proverbial boiled frog, realize too late how far we have strayed - not from the truth, but from our first love.

There is a back door in the lives of all of us, varying only in degrees of accessibility: it is the disorder in our souls. While we may never be able to overcome the disorder in this life, we must remain ever-vigilant lest the Enemy gain the advantage by exploiting this confusion within us.

Avallónnë. Fifth Age. - Stratford Caldecott, in his excellent work The Power of the Ring, explores “The Spiritual Vision Behind The Lord of the Rings.”

In his introduction, Caldecott explains not only Tolkien’s purposes for the book but also the Oxford professor’s feelings about the times in which he lived. It is to be remembered that Tolkien always denied his work was drawn from the events of the 20th century but was also quick to add that The Lord of the Rings had applicability to many times and settings. The times have not changed but only intensified in the thirty-plus years since Tolkien’s death, and what was applicable then is no less so now.

In the following quotations from Caldecott, all emphases are mine.

What the book celebrates - and mourns - is a world and a tradition that appears to be passing away in a great war, or series of wars. These wars are fought in a good cause, against an enemy that cannot be allowed to win. Yet the real danger is not that the free world might be defeated; it is that we might be corrupted, brutalized and degraded by the conflict itself, and in particular by the means employed to secure victory. . . .

“Our mistake in the great wars of our own time has been to accept the false idea that the end justifies the means, and that ‘if a thing can be done, it must be done’ (Letters, 186). For, as Tolkien wrote to his son in 1944, the Allies were attempting to defeat Sauron by using the Ring. The penalty would be to breed new Saurons, and to turn Men and Elves into Orcs - ‘Not that in real life things are as clear-cut as in a story, and we started with a great many Orcs on our side.’ (L, 66)

If Caldecott’s and Tolkien’s observations are important for the free countries of the world in which we now live, they are even more important for those of us who seek to reflect and represent the Kingdom of God to an unbelieving world. Even as the free peoples in Middle-earth were engaged in spiritual warfare against Evil, so Christians struggle against principalities and powers unseen but not unknown.

Orcs in the Pulpits and Pews

Our struggle is also to maintain holiness as we battle the Enemy. It is here that the statements above have application: we are prone to corruption, to justify unrighteous means, and do something simply because we can. The relentless attacks of the Enemy and the continual need to defend ourselves by putting on the armor of God can be wearying. The subtle, insidious temptation is to allow ourselves to be slowly and quietly diminished, robbed of joy and spiritual power, rather than edified and brought to maturity in Christ Jesus.

At the same time, a blindness to slight deviations from righteousness develops in full light of day, our sight dimmed by ignorance, introspection, isolation, or some other malady. Questionable practices, perhaps excused due to desperation or exasperation to evangelize the lost and edify the church, are allowed for the sake of achieving godly purposes.

Technology lures us in and shifts our focus from “what” and “whom” to “how” and “how much.” As we utilize media and sophisticated productions to reach the lost, we become almost addicted to and enslaved by it. The church’s version of “keeping up with the Joneses” - “keeping up with the Baptists”? “with the “Emergents”? “the Seeker friendlies”? - threatens us with shallowness. We have form but no substance.

The words of Faramir, the Dúnadan of Gondor, should cause all of us to examine our own means and methods in our ministries:

‘Yet now, if the Rohirrim are grown in some ways more like to us, enhanced in arts and gentleness, we too have become more like to them, and can scarce claim the title High. We are become Middle Men, of the Twilight, but with memory of other things. For as the Rohirrim do, we now love war and valour as things good in themselves, both a sport and an end; and though we still hold that a warrior should have more skills and knowledge than only the craft of weapons and slaying, we esteem a warrior, nonetheless, above men of other crafts.’”

Even as the men of Gondor were gradually lured from their holiness and righteousness, so we are drawn away from our first Love. It is not a sudden, abrupt change of course but a slow, imperceptible drift: the current is always present and should never be far from our hearts and minds.

The Church cannot allow herself to be corrupted, or afford to adapt the ways of the world in ministry, or do something simply because we can without regard for the need or effectiveness. God has told us not only what to do, but also how to do it.

We ignore this and will suffer for it. For to do God’s work in our own way is to not do God’s work at all.

Avallónnë. Fifth Age. - In a chapter entitled “Myth and Sub-creation” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth, Bradley Birzer explores Tolkien’s beliefs regarding myths, both pagan and true. “Tolkien mythologized nearly everything in his life,” Birzer writes. In more familiar and (I believe) accurate terms, it might be said that Tolkien saw the spiritual dimension in every area, aspect, and act of his life.

Birzer continues:

For Tolkien, mystery surrounds us. But modernity has deformed our perception of this reality. His mythologizing of the world, Tolkien believed, increased our ability to see the beauty and sacramentality of creation. . . .

Indeed, for Tolkien, myths expressed far greater truths than did historical facts or events. Sanctified myths, inspired by grace, served as an anamnesis, or a way for a people to recall encounters with transcendence that had helped to order their souls and their society. Myth, inherited or created, could also offer a ’sudden glimpse of Truth,’ that is, a brief view of heaven. At the very least, sanctified myth revealed the life humans were meant to have prior to the Fall.

Two fundamental aspects of Tolkien’s mythology must be stated from the outset. First, as every reader of Tolkien has found - either to his delight or to his chagrin - Tolkien created a world vastly complex and nuanced. . . .

“Tolkien believed his legendarium to be a single entity revealed to him over time. To him, The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings were a continuation of the same story, inseparable, and, when divided, incomprehensible.

The second aspect of Tolkien’s mythology that must be understood is his firm conviction that God authored the history of Middle-earth, in all its manifestations. Tolkien thought that he merely served as a scrivener of God’s myth. ‘I have long ceased to invent,’ Tolkien wrote in 1956. ‘I wait till I seem to know what really happened. Or till it writes itself. . . . The Other Power then took over: the Writer of the Story (by which I do not mean myself), “that one ever-present Person who is never absent and never named.”‘ . . .

“After all, both Tolkien and Lewis argued, God spoke through the minds of poets, ‘The story of Christ is simply a true myth,’ Lewis wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves. ‘One must be content to accept it in the same way, remember that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths, i.e., the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there.

Birzer argues that two essays by Tolkien - The Monsters and the Critics and On Fairy-Stories - reveal additional depth to Tolkien’s understanding of myth.

Tolkien’s examination of Beowulf, the subject of the first essay, has become a standard in the field of Beowulf criticism, and Anglo-Saxon scholars and critics typically either agree with it or abhor it. For Tolkien, who had committed to memory almost the entire poem, Beowulf represented one of the great moments in western history. . . .

“Beowulf, Tolkien had argued, is as important for the historian and the theologian as for the English teacher. Two things should immediately prove this, he thought. First, the story contains a dragon. Rarely in literature does one find them. Contrary to our popular memory of legends, no ‘wilderness of dragons’ abounded in medieval literature. Instead, when such a bestial worm does present itself, the critic should take its significance to the story and its symbolism seriously. Indeed, the appearance of a dragon signifies a number of things - most of them evil. A dragon personifies ‘malice, greed, destruction.’ Second, Tolkien noted that few authors would devote over 3,000 lines of high poetry to something ‘not worthy of serious attention.’ Instead, the ‘high tone, the sense of dignity, alone is evidence in Beowulf of the presence of a mind lofty and thoughtful.’

“Beowulf’s greatest strength, Tolkien believed, lay in the author’s understanding that the theme should be implicit rather than explicit.

For Tolkien, the Beowulf poet beautifully intertwined pagan virtues with Christian theology. . . . Most certainly a Christian, the author used the poem to demonstrate that not all pagan things should be dismissed by the new culture. Instead, the Christian should embrace and sanctify the most noble virtues to come out of the northern pagan mind: courage and raw will.

“Tolkien’s belief that the best of the pagan world should be sanctified reflects St. Augustine’s thinking. In his On Christian Duty, St. Augustine wrote, ‘[If philosophers] have said aught that is true and in harmony with our faith, we are not only not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use from those who have unlawful possession of it.’

Tolkien warned that fallen man can pervert fairy stories, fantasy, and myth, making them something for the promulgation of evil. Therefore, Tolkien concluded, one should leave fantasy to the mental imagination and to the written word. To take fantasy to the animated visual arts, such as with motion pictures or the theater, must result in either ’silliness or morbidity.’

“Indeed, as high art forms, fairy stories and fantasy offer much to human existence. First, fairy stories illuminate the vast inheritance our ancestors have bequeathed to us. Second, fairy stories give us a new sense of wonder about things we have taken for granted or which have become commonplace. . . . Fairy stories and fantasy allow one to see ‘things as we are (or were) meant to see them.’

Yet, because we are fallen, restless, and susceptible to pride, Tolkien argued, even the well-intentioned can pervert the high calling and gift of creativity. In such perversions, man turns art into power; adulterated by sin the prideful man uses his gifts not to exalt creation and the creator, but to serve himself. . . .

“With such religious implications and significance in its artistry, Tolkien concluded, the best fairy story and sub-creation provides the reader with what he labeled the euchatastrophe, the unexpected joy. . . . The ultimate fairy story, or true myth, then, is the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ. . . . ‘The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact,’ C.S. Lewis argued along Tolkienian lines. ‘The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history.’

“With the Incarnation of Christ, ‘art has been verified,’ Tolkien claimed. ‘God is the Lord, of angels, and of men - and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused’ with the arrival of God in Time, and man has been blessed beyond earthly comprehension.

The story, especially The Lord of the Rings, became much more than a myth for any one people or any one nation. It, instead, became a myth for the restoration of Christendom itself.”

Avallónnë. Fifth Age. - Professor Bradley Birzer explores Tolkien’s perspective on faerie (myth), truth, and man in his introduction to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth.

To enter faerie - that is, a sacramental and liturgical understanding of creation - is to open oneself to the gradual discovery of beauty, truth, and excellence. . . . To enter faerie is, paradoxically, both a humbling and exhilarating experience. This is what the Oxford don and scholar J.R.R. Tolkien firmly believed . . .”

The English Roman Catholic G.K. Chesterton, who served as a significant source of inspiration to Tolkien when he was a young man, once wrote that ‘he not only felt freer when he bent; he actually felt taller when he bowed.’ Likewise, Tolkien shows in ‘Smith of Wootton Major’ that it is an understanding of the transcendent that allows Smith to full become a man. This was a teaching to which Tolkien ascribed his entire life.

“For Tolkien, one of the best ways to understand the gift of grace was through faerie, which offered a glimpse of the way in which sacrament and liturgy infuse the natural law and the natural order. Faerie connects a person to his past and helps order his understanding of the moral universe. . . .

“Not only does faerie teach us higher truths; it also bonds us together in communities, of which there are two kinds: the one which is of this time and place, and the one which transcends all time and all places. . . .

“Myth, Tolkien thought, can convey the sort of profound truth that was intransigent to description or analysis in terms of facts and figures, and is therefore a more powerful weapon for cultural renewal than is modern rationalist science and technology.”

Tolkien believed that myth can teach men and women how to be fully and truly men and women, not mere cogs in the vast machine of modern technological society . . .

“Besides offering an essential path to the highest truths, myth plays a vital role in any culture because it binds together members of communities. ‘It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by a majority of the people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad,’ Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy.”

To the modernist, ‘myth,’ like religion, merely signifies a comfortable and entrenched lie. For the postmodernist, myth simply represents one story, one narrative among many; it is purely subjective, certainly signifying nothing of transcendent or any other kind of importance.

“For religious fundamentalists, myths also represent lies. Myths, the argument runs, constitute dangerous rivals to Christian truth and may lead the unwary astray, even into the very grip of hell. . . . It is likely, the fundamentalist concludes, that all myth comes from the devil and is an attempt to distract us from the truth of Christ . . .”

For Tolkien, however, even pagan myths attempted to express God’s greater truths. True myth has the power to revive us, to serve as an anamnesis, or way of bringing to conscious experience ancient experiences with transcendence. But, Tolkien admitted, myth could be dangerous, or ‘perilous,’ as he usually stated it, if it remained pagan. Therefore, Tolkien thought, one must sanctify it, that is, make it Christian and put it in God’s service. . . . This motif of ’sanctifying the pagan’ has been repeated throughout history by Christians in a multitude of ways, and was instrumental in contributing to the wildly successful spread of the faith.”

It is both fitting and worthwhile to recall the comments of C.S. Lewis in his review of The Lord of the Rings at this point:

The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity. The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savoury for having been dipped in a story; you might say that only then is it real meat. If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror. By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves. [Tolkien] applies the treatment not only to bread or apple but to good and evil, to our endless perils, our anguish and our joys. By dipping them in myth we see them more clearly. I do not think he could have done it in any other way.” (quoted in Colin Duriez’s Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings: A Guide to Middle-earth)