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Originally Posted by alatar
And if I walked up to you, asked you to put on a blindfold, get in a box and said that I was going to have you shipped 'somewhere,' via courier, would you take my offer? There's a prize waiting at the end...  |
alatar's question here gets back to my initial quandary over Tolkien's choice of word to describe death, a gift. In part this is related to some of the issues which have arisen on
Fordim's "Is Eru God?" thread.
Let me, for the sake of those of you who aren't Catholic, provide a link to at least a basic statement of the Catholic attitude towards death as something very much to be feared, from the online Catholic Encyclopedia.
Preparation for Death, Catholic Encyclopedia
A short few quotations, in case the link gets lost:
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Originally Posted by Catholic Encyclopedia, Preparation for Death
No matter how carefully conformed to the law of God and the precepts of the Church one's life may have been, no Christian will want to enter eternity without some immediate forearming against the terrors of that last passage.
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We shall deal first with the case of those to whom the dread summons comes after an illness which has not bereft them of consciousness.
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It is, as far as may be, the conscious, deliberate employment of prayer; the forming or deepening of a special temper of soul and acceptance of such sacramental help as will fit the human spirit to appear with some confidence before its Judge.
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Of these the principal one seems to be the getting rid of that spiritual torpor and weakness which are the baneful output of actual sin, and which would be such a serious handicap in this supreme moment. From the viewpoint of the Christian, the struggle to be maintained with the devil is now more formidable than ever, and a special endowment of heaven-sent strength is necessary for the soul's final victory.
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As the hour of the agony approaches, . . . .
(bolding is mine)
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Now, how do these words of fear and terror suit Tolkien's concept of death as a gift, which normally is presumed to be positively connoted? Was Tolkien attempting to provide a reimagining of the concept of death, not as a fearful summons to a harsh judge, but as something more in keeping with a positive sense of life's journey? Was Tokien aware of pagan attitudes towards death sufficiently that he would integrate them into his Legendarium? Or, in fact, had Tolkien not conceived of the theological consequences of this giftedness until, as
davem suggests on [b]Fordim[/b']s thread, he was questioned about the canonicity of his ideas with his faith?