Good and evil

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Sir Kohran

I find this lack of religion very strange, especially considering Tolkien's Christian point of view and the very Christian themes in his work. Could someone shed some more light on this?

I think Tolkien's representation of Eru Illuvatar is much in keeping with the Old Testament Yahweh, right down to god speaking through intermediaries rather than directly to man (in Tolkien's case it is the Valar who mediate, in Yahweh's it is the angel Metatron who is mentioned as the voice of God in Talmudic studies, and is the voice of the burning bush that speaks to Moses). The vengeful destruction of Numenor is not much different than the flood brought down by Yahweh (if anything, Yahweh was much more violent in his methods).

On the general lack of direct religious content, Tolkien eschewed such overt mention of religion much the same way he would, as an Anglo-Saxon scholar, attempt to strip the patina of Christianity off of Beowulf to derive the true source material. Per his letters, any religious symbolism is subsumed in the narrative. This is a good thing from the perspective of myth-making, and, whether consciously or not, it allowed for a much wider readership of Tolkien's work. This sublimation offers the reader a variety of interpretations of the text, and therefore it does not delve into the cloying allegory Lewis presented in the Narnia Chronicles, which would certainly have lessened the innate power of Tolkien's presentation.