Christianity in Middle-earth

A central theme is death and immortality, with light as a symbol of divine creation, but Tolkien's attitudes as to mercy and pity, resurrection, the Eucharist, salvation, repentance, self-sacrifice, free will, justice, fellowship, authority and healing can also be detected.

The Silmarillion embodies a detailed narrative of the splintering of the original created light, and of the fall of man in the shape of several incidents including the Akallabêth (The Downfall of Númenor).

There is no single Christ-figure comparable to C. S. Lewis's Aslan in his Narnia books, but the characters of Gandalf, Frodo, and Aragorn exemplify the threefold office, the prophetic, priestly, and kingly aspects of Christ respectively.

"[4] Many theological themes underlie the narrative, including the battle of good versus evil, the triumph of humility over pride, and the activity of grace, as seen with Frodo's pity toward Gollum.

The work includes the themes of death and immortality, mercy and pity, resurrection, salvation, repentance, self-sacrifice, free will, justice, fellowship, authority and healing.

[T 6] The "natural religion" of the book is, she argues, based on matters such as the Elves and their longing for the sea, creating a "religious feeling ... curiously compatible with a secular cosmology".

Hence, what The Lord of the Rings offers is not a supernatural hope, but what Tolkien called "recovery", the reawakening of the senses, an unmediated attention to the present, as when Sam looks up into the night sky in Mordor, and is struck by the beauty of a star.

[12] He notes, too, that Tolkien deliberately "approach[ed] to the edge of Christian reference"[13] by placing the destruction of the Ring and the fall of Sauron on 25 March, the traditional Anglo-Saxon date of the crucifixion of Christ and of the annunciation, and of the last day of the Genesis creation.

[17] Paul Kocher, in his book Master of Middle-earth, writes that "having made the times pre-Christian, [Tolkien] has freed himself from the need to deal with them in a Christian context, which would be awkward if applied to elves, ents, dwarves, and the rest.

[20] The scholar of theology and literature Ralph C. Wood, in his 2003 book The Gospel According to Tolkien, concludes "Christians are called to be hobbit-like servants of the King and his Kingdom.

[9] Wood notes, too, that the elves' lembas waybread is "reminiscent of the eucharistic wafer: its airy lightness gives strength in direct disproportion to its weight".

[22] Pat Pinsent, in A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien, states that "his own devout adherence to Catholicism is in fact reflected throughout his writing, to the extent that ... his faith was the driving force behind his literary endeavors".

"[T 9]The scholar Verlyn Flieger writes that Tolkien's fantasy "has no explicit Christianity", unlike the medieval Arthurian legends "with their miracles, pious hermits, heavy-handed symbolism, and allegorical preachiness".

[T 1]The philosopher Peter Kreeft, like Tolkien a Roman Catholic, observes that there is no one complete, concrete, visible Christ figure in The Lord of the Rings comparable to Aslan in C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia series.

While Chausse found "facets of the personality of Jesus" in them, Kreeft wrote that "they exemplify the Old Testament threefold Messianic symbolism of prophet (Gandalf), priest (Frodo), and king (Aragorn)".

Rutledge suggests that if this does symbolise baptism, then the fountain's water should protect against Sauron's evil will "to penetrate the defences even of the wise", such as Galadriel's guarding of her Elf-realm of Lothlórien.

She notes that the return of Moses from Mount Sinai, his face shining too bright to look at with the reflected light of God, could be a closer parallel, as Aragorn comments that his sight had been "veiled".

"[43] In a different way, Boromir atones for his assault on Frodo by single-handedly but vainly defending Merry and Pippin from orcs,[17] which illustrates another significant Christian theme: immortality of the soul and the importance of good intention, especially at the point of death.

[46] Tolkien rarely[47] breaks his rule to avoid explicit religion of any kind, but when Frodo and Sam have dinner with Faramir in his hidden fastness of Henneth Annûn, all the Men turn towards the west in a brief silence.

[47]She comments that while the mention of Númenor could be a romantic nostalgia, there is also an echo of the Christian identity exiled from the Garden of Eden, and always seeking its true home.

[52] Shippey notes that a pair of references to the Christian year, rarely picked up by readers, is that Tolkien chose dates of symbolic importance for the quest to destroy the Ring.

Though all the crannies of the world we filled with elves and goblins, though we dared to build gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right (used or misused).

[T 15] Flieger writes that by this, Tolkien meant that an author's ability to create fantasy fiction, or in his terms "subcreation", was derived from and could be seen as a small splinter of the Divine Light, the "single White" of the poem.

Rutledge comments that while there is no direct correspondence between any Lord of the Rings character and any biblical figure, Elbereth does resemble the Virgin Mary in one sense, in that she can grant favours and come to the help of people in need.

as he faces off with Shelob in the darkness of her lair, holding aloft the Phial of Galadriel, which blazes with (in Tolkien's words) an "intolerable light" as if "'his indomitable spirit' had activated it".

The divine will remains almost entirely beneath the surface in the story, as she believes it does in the real world; but Tolkien gives hints throughout the text, most often in the form of statements in the passive voice about the causes of events which might appear to be luck or chance.

[64] Tolkien stated that The Downfall of Númenor (Akallabêth) was effectively a second fall of man, with "its central theme .. (inevitably, I think, in a story of Men) a Ban, or Prohibition".

[65] The temptation for the Númenoreans was the desire for immortality, and the ban that they broke was not to sail towards the Undying Lands of Aman, parallelling the Biblical prohibition on eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

[67][68] Tolkien mentions also "the 'Fall' of the High-elves" in a letter, giving as the cause "a strange case of an Elf (Míriel mother of Fëanor) that tried to die, which had disastrous results"; he discusses it in the context of the Fall of Man.

[70] Tolkien's personal war experience was Manichean: evil seemed at least as powerful as good, and could easily have been victorious, a strand which Shippey notes can also be seen in Middle-earth.