Freeman Tolkien Dogmatics

Theology through Mythology with the Maker of Middle-earth
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68359-668-4
Verlag: Lexham Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 432 Seiten

Theology through mythology J. R. R. Tolkien was many things: English Catholic, father and husband, survivor of two world wars, Oxford professor, and author. But he was also a theologian. Tolkien's writings exhibit a coherent theology of God and his works, but Tolkien did not present his views with systematic arguments. Rather, he expressed theology through story. In Tolkien Dogmatics, Austin M. Freeman inspects Tolkien's entire corpus-The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and beyond-as a window into his theology. In his stories, lectures, and letters, Tolkien creatively and carefully engaged with his Christian faith. Tolkien Dogmatics is a comprehensive manual of Tolkien's theological thought arranged in traditional systematic theology categories, with sections on God, revelation, creation, evil, Christ and salvation, the church, and last things. Through Tolkien's imagination, we reencounter our faith.

Austin M. Freeman (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is a lecturer at Houston Baptist University and a classical school teacher.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Freeman, Austin M.

Leseproben

I

GOD

Theology is the study of God and all things in relation to God, so it is fitting that our study of Tolkien’s theology begins with the doctrine of God proper. But, before moving into these topics, it is usual to address the issue of the knowledge of God—that is, whether and how humans can know him.

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Within this section we include the questions of whether God exists, whether his existence can be demonstrated, and whether his existence is discoverable apart from the special revelation in Scripture and in Jesus Christ.

Tolkien does engage with the question of God’s existence, but not for any doubt as to its answer.1 Instead, he argues that the human mind looks to the universe and asks how it came to be. The appearance of design and pattern shifts the “how” to “why.” But to him, such a question about purposes and motives can only be answered by appeal to a mind.2 We are almost immediately, therefore, drawn to the question of God’s existence by our contemplation of the universe around us. If one does not believe in a personal Creator God—a Mind” who has made ours and from which our own thought processes are derived—it is no use asking about a purpose for life. There is nobody there to answer you. The best one could do is accept the brute fact of existence.3

But if this is the case, and in fact the gods do not exist at all, then we invented them, and their stories need explanations. The most common is that ancient humans ascribed personalities to natural phenomena that inspired awe and wonder. If all we have, then, are stories arrayed around objects such as stars and waterfalls, it remains the case that they can only be given personal significance by a person.4 So those personal figures that adorn the myths of every culture do not simply appear, but they originate from universal human impulses. This was the crux of the famous debate between Tolkien and C. S. Lewis on Addison’s Walk. Lewis, at that time an ardent atheist, believed myths to be “lies breathed through silver.”5 Not so, said Tolkien. This universal impulse toward mythmaking and the construction of gods and heroes instead illuminates the existence of the true God. In the poem he writes to Lewis to epitomize his argument, he declares that our hearts draw wisdom from God and still reflect him, despite our simple wish-fulfillments and attempts to escape the dull materialist universe. Whence did the wish we want fulfilled come, and why? Whence came our notion of beauty and ugliness, or our imaginative desires?6 Why, if materialism is truly the way things are, do we feel such a need for things to be otherwise—to be good and beautiful and personal as well? Yes, the gods may derive their glory from nature, but it was human beings who saw glory in nature in the first place and were able to abstract it from mere existence. This mental element, this intimation of divinity, comes not from the visible world but from the invisible and supernatural one.7 So it remains the case that, even if humans worship false gods and construct false mythologies, something higher about ultimate truth sometimes shines through these mythologies.

Tolkien, an avid disciple of the older myths and tales, refuses to believe that they are simple fabrications devoid of deeper meaning; he also refuses to believe that one must simply abandon myth in favor of Christianity. Christianity is rather the fulfillment of myth—the True Myth. In the well-told tale, the human being glimpses divinity—which Tolkien defines as not only the possession of power but the right to such power, and to worship. In fact, says Tolkien, this is a glimpse of religion as such.8 The great themes of sacrifice, heroism, love, and death affect us on a fundamental level because we are fundamentally storied creatures. We make according to the laws of our own making, Tolkien tells Lewis.9 The story of the resurrection affects us so deeply because it bears all the hallmarks of both truth and mythology. Because its source is God, the supreme Author and Artist, this myth is actually true in the real world under the sun.10 This is not surprising. Man, as storytellers, ought to be redeemed by a moving story; such a situation is most fitting to his nature.11 Perhaps myth and religion, far from becoming slowly entangled with each other, were instead once the same thing, and only now begin to heal their deep fracture.12 In what Tolkien calls the “Primary Miracle” of the resurrection (and in all other miracles) we can see not simply the truth that underlies the apparent vicissitudes of fate, but also a glimpse of light through the cracks of the visible universe.13

Sometimes, though, the knowledge of God is akin more to an immediate conviction than a process of reasoning. Tolkien describes the experience of once being bowled over with the obviousness of Christianity while riding his bicycle. Despite the sudden clarity of rational conviction, he could not reproduce a chain of argumentation. He theorizes that this may be due to a direct apprehension by the mind, standing momentarily outside of time. One perceives the truth apart from the sequential form of argumentation we must adopt in our temporality.14

However one is convinced, the train of reasoning must stop with God himself. To answer otherwise would require a complete knowledge of God, something patently impossible.15 We cannot answer why God decided to create humanity, for example.16 But despite being unable to go further back than God’s own will, we still have an answer to the meaning of life: God himself. According to Tolkien, the chief purpose of life is to increase our knowledge of God as much as possible, according to our individual capacities, and in turn to respond to this knowledge with praise and thanksgiving.17

MIDDLE-EARTH AS MONOTHEISTIC WORLD

Tolkien engaged more extensively with the question of the knowledge of God outside of the church and the Bible. Theologians, working from the early chapters of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, have held that all people possess a basic intuitive knowledge of God, though this knowledge is often suppressed by sin and self-deception. This “natural” (from nature alone) theology may demonstrate God’s existence, power, and rulership over the world, but it cannot offer salvation. This requires a special grace of God over and above the common grace given to all humankind. Tolkien, too, separates God’s general revelation in nature and a special revelation addressed both to universal humanity and to specific individuals.18 His views on the knowledge of God in the primal state of humanity, apart from the special revelation given in Scripture, may be gleaned from his fiction. He is very clear that Middle-earth is a monotheistic world in which the knowledge of God is limited to what can be gleaned by this natural theology.19

The decent and wholesome society of the Shire is based on a sort of natural law, and hobbits are examples of such natural philosophy and theology, Tolkien writes.20 God is known by the enlightened and occupies a central place in history but has no organized religion, worship, or holy site. Tolkien’s monotheists deny worship to any creature and especially to the devil, but they have not advanced to any positive faith.21 The fact that only the supreme God Eru is worthy of worship, and monotheism is seen as the default state of humankind, is an insight that corresponds to the accounts in Genesis and Romans but which conflicts with much of modern anthropology and sociology.22 The standard tale has been that humans rose from a primitive superstitious animism and a multiplicity of gods into philosophical monotheism. Tolkien, when given free rein to invent a history, adopts the biblical view instead. Here, the true knowledge of God is attained immediately, and there is rather a fall away from true worship into idolatry and polytheism. “Good pagans” might retain a sense of the ultimacy of God but, due to their very reverence, remain distant from him and eventually succumb to the temptation to worship more visible powers as false gods.23

THE BEING OF GOD

Tolkien’s God is the supreme Being, which is to say that he is the only one to whom the term “Being” can be adequately and unreservedly applied. God has no cause or dependency but instead creates and sustains all other things. This is called by theologians the aseity of God, from the Latin a se, meaning “of itself.” All other things depend on something else in order to exist, whether on their maker to bring them into existence, on their environment to sustain them, or on time to continue to endure. But God stands before all other makers, worlds, and times. At the back of everything is the single, ultimate fact of God. He is the “Prime Being.”24 Tolkien even notes that the Elvish word for “exist” does not properly apply to God, since one must distinguish the Creator’s mode of existence from his creation’s.25

God is so fundamental that of himself he can simply assert, “I AM THAT I AM” (Exod 3:14). When God identifies himself, he speaks in the first person, indicating his absolute oneness.26 “The One” is the primary name of God in the legendarium. The oneness of God requires no...