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Originally Posted by davem
It precisely 'refutes the religious aspect' (if I follow you). It does not 'refute' the spiritual aspect though. There is a spiritual aspect to the world & stories, & to the characters. What there isn't, it seems to me, is any 'religious' aspect - Tolkien specifically denies the presence of organised religion.
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Ah. So we are separating 'religious' from 'spiritual'? In that case, some of your arguments make some sense, since what shines through LOTR is spiritual rather than legalistic or dogmatic.
Yes, Tolkien stripped LOTR of organized religion, letting the spirituality shine through. This is the essence of myth.
If a person had grown up bound by the rules and regulations of 'christianity' without the spirituality, then the spirituality of LOTR would draw, for them, no parallels to anything truly or deeply Christian. I would argue that such a legalized 'christianity' is a bankrupt and dead shadow of the real thing.
Tolkien's Christianity was no hollow legalism; one need only to read his letters to realize this. For him it was all about spirituality; and the spirituality flowed from the one true myth. If you see the spirituality in LOTR, then where do you think it came from? He was neither Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, or anything else but a devout Catholic. He believed that every myth reflected or pointed to the One True Myth. That meant, to him, that every pagan myth that had a ring of truth, owed that ring of truth to the degree to which it reflected the One True Myth.
Every mythic unity insofar as it was true, was, for him, was rooted in that One True Myth.
So back to the focus of this thread-- while I wouldn't say that Tolkien "stole" his characters from the bible, I would certainly say that his myth is infused with, reflects, points to, and is in many other ways thoroughly involved in, a myriad of mythic unities all emanating from the One True Myth.