TOLKIEN'S WISDOM

By David Beilstein

JOHN RONALD REUEL TOLKIEN once wrote,

“But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.”

The Hobbit’s release on December 12, 2012, by Lord of The Rings Trilogy director Peter Jackson is occasion to reflect on Tolkien and his professorial pipe visage - gone since 1973 - upon our tabescent cultural scene en vogue once again. One cannot escape Tolkien’s religious affiliation - as a Roman Catholic - combined with his scholarly understanding of literature that creates for those interested a window to glimpse issues pertaining to Christianity and culture. 

Looking back, I was perhaps early to CS Lewis, but late to Tolkien. These migrations of life and moment have a way of working themselves out. So my regrets are few. Still, to reach back to Professor Tolkien’s essay published in The Lord Of The Rings, denouncing allegory is worth a peek-a-boo. Equally relevant, however, is Tolkien’s own claim The Lord of The Rings was a fundamentally religious and Catholic work. At first Tolkien says, it was merely subconscious but became more concrete during revisions of Rings. Tolkien confessed these Christian dimensions of his fictional creation in a letter to English Jesuit Father, Robert Murray.

Success, then, has many fathers. That is, when a piece of literature is adopted by the culture as a generational statement - widely loved and celebrated too - whatever was pertinent to its parturition takes on mythic proportions. People see everything they want to see within the confines of the piece of artistic work (or literature). Since too, the Christian religion is a religion of apologia and evangelism, it thus makes sense there would be a desire to claim Tolkien’s creation as uniquely Christian.

Being Presbyterian, I take issue with this kind of slush. Not in defiance of Christianity, but because of what Christianity is, and less importantly, what literature and cinema/movies happen to be as a dramatic medium. To conflate the two, is in my humble opinion, to weaken the purposes to which both have been created for. Such conflation brings war between nature and grace, rather than realise the distinctions of both nature and grace thereby affording one an understanding of their complementary relationship. 

In so many ways, Tolkien’s creation contains nothing Holy Scripture says belongs uniquely to the Christian saint - this standard being a far better standard for calling something Christian or secular. There is much history here. In the second half of the 20^th century, Christianity in many forms became obsessed with being culturally relevant - winning back the cultural territory it lost with the collapse of the mainline denominations. Gone were the dualistic tensions between the Sacred and secular - accelerated in part by Karl Barth’s all encompassing Christological neo-orthodoxy fad. Within this cultural milieu, Christian voices created the idea that CS Lewis’ Narnia was a ‘Christian' allegory - less so than Tolkien some claimed, but sociologically, evangelical Christians tried to make that case, too. Tolkien scholars, also, though in error, tried to claim Middle Earth was not allegorical, unlike Lewis' Narnia. But CS Lewis said that Narnia was not allegorical, enumerating, he could not write like that. 

Suffice to say, I tried to make the case last time I wrote on dominium that movies in particular, could not be Christian - echoing my past sentiments that literature could not be either. But what is equally important to understand is such a stance does not mean literature and movies are out of reach of symbolism and the right ordering of the universe by the Christian writing secular work we do in fact live in. Such a reality, it seems to me, is far different than using a dramatic medium to convince people to become Christian; it assumes, wrongly too, man the imago dei creature decides to be Christian - rather than it being the consequence of supernatural gratia by God alone.

The writer who is Christian, should in theory be able to reckon the world rightly; it’s glory, it’s brokenness - it’s immense vagaries, which exist within all of life at all times. In the opposite direction, which sadly consumes the Christian popular "culture",  is bare evangelism in artistic endeavours. While quite right and Biblical in matters of faith and practise, it is my suggestion this paradigm is outside the means of the dramatic medium inherent in dramatic art. As stated in previous blogs, stories do not inform the audience in the main; they dramatise for the audience life’s general experience within a dramatic framework. A story confirms what the audience knows to be true generally - meaning belief in life’s full sweep of existential realities: sadness, joy, love, strength and weakness; lust and hate, birth & death, etc. This dramatic exigency, therefore, creates a dramatic framework to process the way such experiential minutia situates itself.

Professor Tolkien deserves his due; meaning, he ought to be read,

I much prefer history, true or feigned, with it’s varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’; but one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

Tolkien, quietly, reveals in this quote why so called “Christian” movies, novels, etc., evangelistically mired, break down. They make no sense; demand no reflection on what exactly is the purpose of drama in the aggregate. Tolkien then, realises here, the central importance, understanding fictional storytelling is feigned history - history being descriptive. Drama, like history, is dramatically descriptive. Evangelism and its method and means; the ministry of Christ’s Church, etc. - including apologetics - is prescriptive. And so, the Christian who demands “Christian” movies and novels is trying to force the natural design of drama as descriptive art form, to become unnaturally prescriptive.

When we watch a movie or read a novel, we are glimpsing (more than likely) feigned history. Our appetite is conditioned to experience the story descriptively, and not prescriptively. It’s why propaganda unsettles our minds. 

We also come to the notion of truth. "Christian" movies, literature, lack truth. They do not reflect the world seen, but a censored world for comfort and propaganda's sake. Holy Scripture does nothing of the sort we might come to realise. Thus, “Christian” movies, literature, depict a world far removed from the source of its religious affections: Holy Scripture. The Holy Bible contains an assortment of ugliness and violence “Christian” movies and literature cannot even begin to ponder producing, not without sturdy rebuke - a questioning from outraged pietists that some Christian saint could depict the world so realistically. Dare I say, that says something pretty bad about Christians. We desire a faith that accounts for all of life, except when it makes us uncomfortable or becomes contrary to our slushy pious moralisms. Ugh. Christian faith is based upon Holy Scripture. Likewise, anything true in a dramatic story presupposes the triune God of Biblical, redemptive-historical reality. The ignoring of the real world in order to sell Christian faith evangelically is a denouncement of the sovereignty of God and the world He has determined for His eternal Glory.

Have we not remembered Samson’s desire for the Philistine woman was from Jehovah? Have we truly believed Sacred Scripture’s testimony that God desired to bring Absalom to destruction (and did), on top of decreeing Absalom would lie with his father’s concubines?  

These Biblical texts are just as clear as the warm and fuzzy ones (John 3:16 comes to mind) eeevangelicals like to man handle out of Biblical context. Further, when was the last time a movie claiming to be Christian depicted a character committing adultery, murder, and after such acts, being described as a man after God’s own heart? 

We know the answer if we are honest. Thus, “Christian” movies do not depict the world Jehovah has ordained; it’s that simple. They do not dare to; for God's world He has been pleased to decree is too beautiful, too meaningful, too offensive and ugly; too unclean, for their myopic vision. But it is the world Jehovah God decreed nonetheless, for His purposes; whether man in his foolishness likes or dislikes it. St Paul spent many pages of Scripture outlining such truth. 

And here Professor Tolkien's wisdom refreshes. The professor of literature understood more than evangelicals an accurate depiction of the world God has ordained would be sterner, more religiously pious admission for an artist confessing himself to be Christian.  Likewise, Tolkien understood the tension of this age and the age to come - a peculiar double-mindedness reverberates throughout his fictional worlds. Tolkien's hobbits are a resounding illustration of this. 

Further, Tolkien comprehended it is not the job of art or fiction to do the work of the Christ’s Church and the preaching of the Holy Gospel. Art doesn’t do that, the professor of Middle Earth wisely realised. There needs to be a clarion call: back to Middle Earth Christian saints; ladies and gentlemen. 

We come and should then admit Tolkien’s Middle Earth  not being allegorical - not being "Christian" best defends the world God has ordained for his glory. In essence, it is the beautiful sweep - of the all things earthy and human, that best describes the good things of this world Christianity fulfils perfectly in the world to come, that so defines Tolkien's sweeping vision. 

We should not be confused that the world Tolkien depicts is only intelligible when presupposing his own Christian faith; a universe that says something more true about existential realities than all the “Christian” art done in generations upon generations.