I just recently re-read LOTR, and found a sort of study guide that shows how the elements of God are present in LOTR. I found that to be facinating and it opened my eyes to what Tolkien really wanted his readers to see behind the story.

What do you guys think? Can some elements of God be found in LOTR? And if so what elements?

Ps: ^^ The above question sounded like something from and essay o.o my bad. It was not intended to sound as such.

Oh yes! Lots, I think. I've seen that book, and heard some of the things people parallel. Tolkien allowed his worldview to seep into the story, he just didn't purpose to write a story about Christ, Christians, or Salvation. Some of the things people say are a bit of a stretch, though, I think. For instance, I do not think the elves represent the guardian angels that surround us.

Good one. I've heard before that some believe that Legolas was the resemblance of Christ while Gandalf was God himself. What do you thing?

How did Legolas represent Christ? *scratches head trying to think back over the book *

I've heard people talk about Frodo's struggle with the ring being representative of man's struggle with sin, which I think is an excellent parallel. I’ve also heard people say that Frodo is like Christ, which I think is not so stellar of a parallel.

I think that is a good parallel too. However, would you consider Sam to be the true hero of the story and therefor a representation of the Holy Spirit? Seeing as he was the level headed one and the most loyal and a comforter just as Christ says "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever" ~John 14:16

I'd tell you without blinking an eye that Sam was the real hero, but I adore Sam.

I think that that is a reasonable parallel. I'd have to reread Sam's parts to be able to say for sure if I'd link him with a member of the Trinity, but off the top of my head I think that that sounds like a parallel that could be drawn.

In the context of the world, Gandalf was basically an angel of Middle-earth, so I don't think he was supposed to be a representation of God... If anyone was to be a representative of Christ, I'd think it would be Aragorn though, given that he was a king in secret who suffered a metaphorical death (walking the paths of the dead) before being able to crush the enemy.

Course Tolkien said many times that LOTR was not supposed to be an allegory, but...

A lot of the people in LotR posses Christian or God-like qualities, and we can mix and match and learn from things that Tolkien writes. However, not everyone will notice the parallels and I don't think it's necessary to.

That comparison of Sam to the Holy Spirit is quite interesting.

I suppose it depends on how you see it Rea. I thought of Aragon as a representation of Christ as well

I agree.

Its nice to think about though in regards to parallels even if that is not what Tolkien intended for us to do.

I also agree to that. *laughs * I'm in such an agreeable mood today.

yesh you are

Is that bad?

No. o.o

Oh! You stuck your tongue out and had a sad face, so I wasn't sure.

oh! okay

As Aratrea said, Tolkien insisted that he wasn't writing an allegory or even what C.S. Lewis called a "supposal." So I think any correlations drawn between LOTR and Christianity are subjective. He wasn't even intending to write a "Christian" story with purposefully placed underlying themes, which is evidenced by reading his preface to the 2nd edition (I think ). Any parallels that are present seeped into his writing of their own accord, I think, because his faith was intrinsic in his life so as to not help but shine through.

In terms of representations, I've heard plenty. Some of them Tolkien flat out debunked, but others are more ambiguous.

Frodo as a picture of Christ - This works to some extent because the Ring could be correlated to the burden of sin Christ bore, and also because it was Frodo's task to save the world. Anything beyond that doesn't hold much water in my opinion.

Gandalf as a picture of Christ - This one makes sense. He battled the Balrog and fell into darkness, was killed, and then resurrected. But Tolkien specifically said Gandalf was a sort of archangel incarnate in the world of Middle-earth.

God anywhere - This one doesn't apply to LOTR, because it never showed up, but in other writings of Tolkien, there was a supreme Diety, God, named Iluvatar, who created the world. So in that sense, Middle-earth (not directly LOTR) had a represnetation of God. But at the same time, Tolkien also had lesser gods, more based on the Greek pantheon if I'm not mistaken. So he was combining Greek mythology with Chrisitian mythology.

Aragorn and Sam as types of Christ - Aragorn works better, since he's a king coming to reclaim the throne and as Aratrea said, (figuratively) passed through the gates of death when entering the Dimholt before riding on to victory. Sam not so much.

The elves - I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the elves were Tolkien's representation of humans perfected, but I could be wrong.

Thanks Tarin! I also heard that Gandalf's white horse can be seen as the chariot of fire that took Elijah into Heaven, but I;m not too sure about that one.

You'd need to really use your imagination to reach that conclusion.

Yeah. I find these theories quite intriguing, though...

JRR Tolkien did not want anyone to try and find allegory in his work, and neither did he put it in there. He disapproved of C S Lewis's writing, actually. He believed that people would find things that were applicable to other things (people struggling with sin can relate to Frodo for instance), however there are no correlations he was trying to make.

No one was a representation of God, because God existed. If anyone was a representation of god, it was in the same sense that a lion is, or Corrie Ten Boom was, or a sunset is. Do you see what I mean?

Elves were far from perfect, and they were the Elder children, while men were the younger.

@Kidh Like I mentioned before, it may not have been what Tolkien intended for man to do, however, the Christian mind can correlate certain people with certain situations as you mentioned. I just wanted to see what you all thought of the claims that are being put out.

As do I Rea.


You'd need to really use your imagination to reach that conclusion. [/quote]

That's the same thing I said!

Exactly. It's fun.

Do you mean that God existed in Middle-earth in the form of Iluvatar?

That's a good question. did he?

At a foundational level, yes. Iluvatar was the God of Middle-earth, being it's creator as told in the beginning of the Silmarillion. I was just wondering what Juliet meant by that statement.

Oh I didn't know that.

Yesh Juliet what did you mean by the above statement in question?

Yes, I meant that a God existed in Middle earth. And yes, his name was Iluvatar. He was not mentioned often in everyday lives, however I believe that was because Middle earth had a different approach to spiritual matters than some other worlds. Everyone knew the truth instinctively, if you will. The bad people did bad things, but they knew they were bad, and the good people did good things because they knew they were good. In a way the world sort of existed inside JRR Tolkien himself, and his beliefs.

At least that's what I think.

Nice thought process.

Very thoughtful, Juliet. Good points.

There is so much more to this mystery than that.

It appears from the Silmarillion, Hobbit and the LOTR that Tolkien had borrowed the Biblical mythology. He intended the myth. He filled in the history gaps because the Bible is not mainly a history. Common belief is Tolkien focusd on the history of the angels as he himself associated them to the Eldar. Long story short, this is how I heard it:
Illuvatar = God the Creator
Valar = the fruit of the Spirit; characteristic of God
Maiar = lesser fruit
Eldar = pure angelic race
Elves = earthly angelic race
Dwarves = Abraham's son Ismael's line
Men = God's chosen People Isaac's line
Hobbits = baby Christians (or country churches)
Gandalf = Counselor
Sarrowman the Wise = King Solomon
Samwise Gamgee = Christian (gets land heritage for his family)
Aowen = Bride of Christ (the Church)
Stewards of Gondor = the remnant (prayer warriors/watchmen)
Legolas = Guardian angel
Gimili = God's goodness in the Dwarves
Aragorn = The Messiah
Frodo = Pilgrim (from Pilgrim's Progress) a new Christian dealing with sin choosing to end it in their world. (inherited secret sin from Bilbo)
Bilbo = a scarred/corrupted Christian (by a secret sin)
Rohan = sheep without a shepherd (or Jesus's disciples or chariots of fire)
King of Rohan = the lost sheep (inherits corupt counsel from Sarrowman in the line of kings)
Balrogs = ancient demons
Orcs = fallen angels
Goblins = demon race
Urukai = warrior demon race
The Way thru the Mountain = death; grave
Ring Wraiths = evil spirits of sinful men
The cursed Dead = holy people who live only to fulfill their vow (extremely powerful witnesses)

The connections run deeper than most know.

I agree with Tarin:

Critics during Tolkien's lifetime claimed that The Lord of the Rings was an "allegory" (in the common misuse of that term), a deliberately symbolic story (even a roman a clef), etc., each finding a set of parallels that (to exaggerate somewhat) was incompatible with what every other such critic came up with and also failed to account for other important elements of the novel that it would have had to to make any sense. In the preface Tarin mentioned, Tolkien explicitly rejects such claims; because of his upbringing, the idea of writing that kind of story was detestable to him.


Thus far, you're right. He created Middle Earth as a supposed-history of some period of Earth's history in the deep past.


If this is "common belief," how come I, who have grown up listening to people discuss The Lord of the Rings over and over and, to a lesser extent, reading criticism myself, have never heard that before?


Remember, Tolkien was a Roman Catholic; the Valar are very much like the Roman Catholic conception of the saints. While Tolkien explicitly rejected the idea that he was writing what he (mistakenly) called "allegory," i.e. any system of symbols or didactic parallels, he designed his "sub-creation" by drawing on what he believed about our world---and arguably the most obvious (probably unintentional) cosmological parallel is Elbereth with Mary.

And the Maiar are clearly the equivalent of angels, being sent to Middle-Earth for particular tasks (Gandalf is the Enemy of Sauron, for example).


Umm ... the Eldar are the Elves. (See, for example, this.)


The main problem with this is that while Tolkien's work talks about "the race of Men," it also depicts a situation that's far more complicated than that. The Numenoreans/Dunedain as "God's chosen people," I could see if I squint. But "the race of Men" includes both the Dunedain, the Rohirrim, the Sothrons, and any number of other groups, and if one is going to try to make up an extensive system of correspondences and symbols, those groups are something that any such system is going to have to account for.


The one parallel that, as far as I know, Tolkien ever admitted between Middle-Earth and our world is that the Shire is drawn on rural England and that he was "a hobbit in all but height."


That is actually one of the only two pieces (the other being Ilutvar as God the Creator) of this whole list (I hesitate to call it a "system," since it's anything but systematic) that makes any sense to me, and it's canonical: the Ringwraiths are Men---specific Men---who accepted their Rings from Sauron and became his slaves, "neither living nor dead."

Remember that the Dead linger in the Paths of the Dead, waiting for Aragorn, because they broke their oath thousands of years earlier.


What I see here is that you if you go looking for patterns where there are none and refuse to "there are none" for an answer, you'll eventually find something.

kingjon, I apologize that it took me so long to return from my journey to review this topic and post in HW again.

Thank you for your time and careful analysis of my post. Have you read any of Tolkien's letters to people? I'm certain you have. In the one included with a recent reprinting of The Sim. Tolkien responds to similar questions and does himself make SOME (not all of mine) connections to angels and biblical peoples. He acknowledged his is a Creation story influenced by the Creation story.

In my mind, Tolkien flies right past "there are none" and "allegory" and simply states outright that the elves are angels. It's there story first because they were created by God first. Men come into their story but in the epochs of creation angels have a real history before men did.

This led me to assume that Tolkien's great genius is that he may have been attempting to piece together a real actual timeline of the history of God's universe.

According to the Bible:
God is first.
He created the angels and then there was war in heaven.
Satan the choir director (so there was a Creation song) and leader of angels assaults God's throne and falls like lightening to earth with a full third of the legions of angels with him.
The First Judgement of God passed doom on those who fell.
Hell was created for the devil and his angels.
Chains are forged in hell and gloomy dungeons.
(Umm... any of this sound like Sim.???)
Men are created in Eden.
Men disobey and are sent away.
Angels on earth take wives among Men.
Men fully corrupt serving darkness and seeking the Tree of Life
God's great Flood wipes out all created beings.
That's just the first Age in a nutshell.

(The biblical list coincides closely with the Sim.)

Perhaps if Tolkien fans were as big as fans of Scripture, they too could see it and argue more honestly that there is a solid case here far more than circumstantial evidence.

I trust you will not arrive at your original conclusion again.

Thank you, sir.

kingjon,

Also, read Genesis about Abraham creating Ishmael before God fulfills His promise to give Abraham a son. It fits with the creation of the Dwarfs.

The connections are clever and clear.

Again, thank you.

Yes, this one is tricky but it still works. Read Romans 7 into 8.

The term "carnal" Christian means a struggling believer like the apostle Paul in Romans 7 at the end. He could not do what he wanted to do. He agreed with God but found sin at work in his heart fighting against God.

Paul needed an answer. (The simple explanation is Ezekiel 36:25-27) Romans 8 and 12 Paul found that dying to Self and sin allowing God to take out the heart of stone and give him a new heart and fill him with the Holy Spirit gave him great power to live above sin.

Like the Dead- Paul made an oath to follow Christ. He failed in his own strength. Sin sprang to life and Paul died. Christ descended into the depths and made a way out of hell for all. He conquered death and the grave and found a way to give new life to Paul (and everyone else) Because Paul is dead to sin and Self - he like the Army of the Dead was more than a conqueror over the forces of evil.

If you can believe and accept what I am saying about Paul, you too can see the connection to the Dead.

Again, thank you.

This discussion is why I love that CS Lewis quote about "the essence of a myth." It doesn't matter what Tolkien's intentions were. His world-view and faith cannot help but be reflected in his writing. And one of us sees an allegorical reference here while another sees an allegorical reference there...

Myself, the way the elves wander in the Silmarillion has always reminded me of the Israelite's 40 years in the desert. And the way the kings of Númenor could die makes me think of Luke 23:46