[aragornreborn]

Heh, heh, heh. These topics always seem to get people talking! As a side note from the future from which I have come back to edit my post, I have a few observations that have absolutely nothing to do with the topic. One, is that it scared me out of my wits to see that after I had posted I saw about ten posts that I didn't remember reading. Then as I looked at the times, I saw that there had been a flurry of postings which led me to mathematically figure that there has been, on average, a post every ten minutes on this thread. OK, to get back to topic...

I don't mean to offend anyone, I don't mean to suggest that Tolkien wrote allegory, I don't mean to suggest that Middle Earth is theologically equivalent to Christianity, and I don't mean to suggest that you have to be a Christian to enjoy Tolkien's works.

So what do I suggest? I suggest that Tolkien made up his own theology just as he made up his own universe. First of all, that makes sense. If you're going to make a new world, new language, etc, you might as well make a new religion, too. Second, I doubt Tolkien wanted to associate Middle Earth to any single religion. In his fantasy world, he would want to keep it just that - fantasy. Obviously you have to have a few non-fantastical elements to a story to make it understandable to your audience. But in order to write fantasy, it is best to have as few ties as possible to the real world. Third, as a Christian, Tolkien would have realized that an imperfect human could not re-create an accurate mirror of Christianity in Middle Earth. For, since man has a finite mind, he can not explain Christianity to the extent that would be needed as an omniscient creator/author of Middle Earth.

Yes, yes, I know that there are many parallels to Christianity in Middle Earth, but that can mean one of three things.

1) Tolkien wrote vague allegory. He denied it, so that's that.

2) He wrote veiled Christianity. Middle Earth has many non-Christian aspects to it, so that's not it.

3) Or... Tolkien took certain aspects of Christianity that he liked and wanted in his world and combined those aspects with aspects of other religions. Judaism and Norse mythology (as has been mentioned) come to mind.

Let's hear it for number three! Yay! Anyway, those are just my thoughts.

Oh, for the record, I am a Christian and do agree with you there.

[ February 06, 2003: Message edited by: aragornreborn ]