in search of areté

Everybody needs a wizard in their life.

Bilbo had Gandalf, as did Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and a host of others in Middle-earth. We all need one.

By wizard I mean this: someone who sees things more clearly, more eternally, more profoundly than you. Someone who knows God in ways you don’t know Him, and is able to inspire you to know Him better than you do.

I was blessed enough to be introduced to the preaching of Haddon Robinson more than three decades ago. When I first heard him, it was via the tape ministry of Believers Chapel in Dallas while Robinson was teaching preaching at Dallas Theological Seminary. When he moved to Denver Seminary to become president of that institution, I went there to study him and be influenced by him.

As I wrote on my other blog, I only talked with Haddon once. But that had nothing to do with how God used him in my life. I went to Denver because I knew that Robinson knew God in ways I did not know God, and I wanted to be around him. I was not disappointed.

Haddon Robinson has been my Gandalf. The wizard’s job, it is to be remembered, is not to do the work or fighting for others, but to awaken and encourage them to do what they must. The wizard instructs and corrects, but he primarily inspires. Gandalf’s impact is seen in the likes of Faramir who, although only vaguely familiar with the wizard personally, nevertheless reminded others of the wizard.

Faramir followed in the footsteps and character of Gandalf, the angel of Eru. Hopefully, in some small but significant way I have followed Haddon Robinson as he has followed Christ.

At the age of 77, Tolkien was asked by his publisher’s daughter about the meaning of life. In a letter postmarked May 20, 1969, he said (in part):

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:

‘. . . 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.’”

- Letters, p 400

It is difficult at times, as a Christian, to know how to think about the Law. Paul makes clear that the Law is not sin and yet knowledge of the Law resulted in him sinning:

What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COVET.’
But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead.
I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died;
and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me;
for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.” – Rom 7.7-11

So the Law is not sin but the Law results in sin. How does that work?

My understanding – or at least harmonization – of this is helped by no less a theologian than Samwise Gamgee. In discussion with Faramir, Sam tries to explain the Lady Galadriel to him; Faramir has just called her “perilously fair”:

‘I don’t know about perilous,’ said Sam. ‘It strikes me that folk takes their peril with them into Lórien, and finds it there because they’ve brought it. But perhaps you could call her perilous, because she’s so strong in herself. You, you could dash yourself to pieces on her, like a ship on a rock; or drownd yourself, like a hobbit in a river. But neither rock nor river would be to blame.’”

This explains the nature of the Law to me as clearly as anything. It demonstrates the inevitable sin, peril, and power of the Law upon the individual but also finds great value, beauty, and holiness in the Law.

So Paul can say,

So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” – Rom 7.12

. . . and we can say, “Amen.”

Matthew Dickerson, in his first chapter of Following Gandalf (FG), defends J.R.R. Tolkien from the curious – not to mention spurious – charge that the author glorfies war in his history of Middle-earth and especially in the War of the Ring. In this post, I will summarizes Dickerson’s arguments – which sufficiently refute the accusation – but also discuss Tolkien’s philosophy on war as reflected in The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) and his other writings. As a veteran of World War I, Tolkien had first-hand knowledge of the horrors: several friends died in unnamed trenches in Europe during that war. Just over three decades later, as a father of two sons involved in World War II, he suffered through the long nights of a parent wondering about the well-being of his children. Thus, as a soldier and as a parent, Tolkien knew war far too well.

Undoubtedly some of my own thoughts, influenced as they especially have been of late by Tolkien, will find their way into the discussion (most of my own ideas, however, will be the subject of a subsequent post). Since I believe many Christians have an incorrect, inadequate, or incomplete understanding of war – I would include myself in this group for most of my Christian life – working through this issue is critical. Trying to come to a biblical perspective on war has been a pursuit of mine for more than three decades. I have tried to keep in mind my own personal biases and not be blindly affected by my experiences during the time of the Vietnam War; my goal in this, as in everything, is the impossible one of trying to discover the mind of God on this matter.

Hobbits and War

To effectively rebut the charge that Tolkien glorifies war, Dickerson looks at significant battles recorded by the author in The Hobbit(TH) and the LOTR. There are five battles that are considered, beginning with the Battle of Five Armies at the conclusion of TH and continuing on to the Skirmish with the Southrons, the Battle of Helm’s Deep, the Battle of Pelennor Fields, and the Battle at the Black Gate.

Dickerson identifies two keys to understanding Tolkien’s view of war: the first is the perspective of hobbits; the second is the nature of the battle itself.

A hobbit is present at four of the five battles (there is no hobbit present at Helm’s Deep) and it is from the hobbits’ thoughts that we see Tolkien’s own attitudes come to the surface. Bilbo, of course, is present at the first battle but Tolkien does not provide the reader with much in-depth detail of the fighting nor even allow the reluctant hero to witness, much less enjoy, the victory that takes place. He does the former by a literary shift and the latter by a clever incident in the plot. Dickerson notes,
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