Biblical and Theological Commentary on Tolkien's Letters, Part 3
Letters #53, #54, #61, #63, #64, #69, #71, #81, #86, #87, #89, #94, #96, #102, and Mass in Tolkien's Letters
(avg. read time: 17–33 mins.)
To begin this part, I must comment on both Letters #53 (9 December 1943 to Christopher Tolkien) and #54 (8 January 1944 to Christopher Tolkien). The latter will require more comment, but I begin with treating both letters together because the only relevant portion of the first letter overlaps with a topic from the second. In both cases, Tolkien treats the subject of God’s providence and provision through reference to angels, particularly guardian angels. Of course, the matter of guardian angels is a teaching of tradition and not strictly from the Bible. Still, the idea is animated by biblical precedent. For example, Tolkien does not say much about the idea of angels serving as protectors of nations, but he at least alludes to this idea in referring to England’s “Cherub” and this idea has a partial basis in Dan 10 with its references to angelic beings connected to nations engaging in heavenly struggles that correspond in some way to earthly ones (likewise, this idea has roots in Michael being designated as Israel’s prince and protector in this chapter and in Dan 12:1). We also see angels serving similar designated functions of protection or of exercise of authority over different domains throughout the Book of Revelation. Of course, in the Deuterocanon, referred to as Scripture by the Roman Catholics, there is further precedent for the notion of guardian angels in the actions of Raphael in the Book of Tobit. But what is generally believed about guardian angels is based on tradition rather than these given texts. Indeed, Tolkien goes even further in Letter #54 to speak of his personal ideas, his “notion and feeling” regarding the guardian angel of his son and, by extension, others:
as souls with free-will we are, as it were, so placed as to face (or to be able to face) God. But God is (so to speak) also behind us, supporting, nourishing us (as being creatures). The bright point of power where that life-line, that spiritual umbilical cord touches: there is our Angel, facing two ways to God behind us in the direction we cannot see, and to us. But of course do not grow weary of facing God, in your free right and strength (both provided ‘from behind’ as I say).
The means by which Christopher is exhorted to continue facing God is through the habit of praises, including the various prayers I noted in Part 1 that were so meaningful to Tolkien that he had taken to producing Quenya translations of them. Reciting these prayers, along with others he enjoins, including one of the Sunday psalms, would do for him as they have done for the Church throughout the ages and would give him the words of joy even when he could not articulate them of his own accord. Likewise, he advises him to remember the Canon of Mass, reciting it even when he cannot hear the Mass. Such rhythms of worship allow him a sense of constancy, consistency, and continuation in fidelity, even as the circumstances around him threaten to disrupt such rhythms at every turn in favor of the idiosyncratic rhythms of training for war and war itself. Such are among the many values of internalizing liturgy.
This letter is also a reminder of how important the Mass was to Tolkien. He and his brother Hilary had served the Mass at Fr. Morgan’s Oratory in Birmingham as they grew up in his charge. Even when he was involved in WW1, Tolkien attended Mass at a portable altar. His typical practice over the years was to attend Mass daily, which in Oxford meant daily journeys early in the morning to the Oratory of St. Aloysius, which is still present today. He took his children along frequently enough to Mass and to confession beforehand that Edith was voicing her objections by 1925 as part of her long-tenured problems of how Tolkien had dealt with her transition to Catholicism. Tolkien also mentions attending Mass in Letters #55 (January 1944), #67 (May 1944), #73 (June 1944), #89 (November 1944), #99 (May 1945), #167 (August 1955), #243 (December 1962), and #251 (November 1963). I have already noted the importance Tolkien attaches to Mass in Letter #43, how he observed the transcendence of the Mass, and how it is the chief place where he found love. We will see these points and others arise again in Letter #250. In both of these cases, he wrote to Michael Tolkien and it seems that he especially wanted to pass on to his son loving adoration and joyful participation in the Mass, as he points to it in two rather different letters separated by twenty-two years. He may have also been motivated to return to the subject by his son’s struggles in the 60s, especially since his son was teaching in Catholic schools at this time. In Letters #210 and #213 (both from 1958), he relates the lembas bread from LOTR to the Eucharist (which we will return to later). Finally, it has often been noted that Tolkien objected to the change in the liturgy of the Mass introduced by the Second Vatican Council, because of which the Mass would be conducted in the vernacular rather than in Latin. Simon Tolkien, his grandson, has remarked that Tolkien would attend Mass and loudly give the responses in Latin while everyone else was doing them in English. Such was Tolkien’s commitment to the tradition in which he had been raised.
Letter #61 (18 April 1944 to Christopher Tolkien)
As will become clearer, the unifying thread of this part of the commentary is that all the letters featured are letters written to Christopher through to the end of WW2. This particular letter requires only brief comment. Towards the end of the letter, Tolkien entrusts himself, his son, and Britain to God’s providence saying, “We are in God’s hands. Our lot has fallen on evil days: but that cannot be by mere ill chance.” Tolkien penned this after he penned lines in LOTR about how that which some may call “chance” represents another ever-present power at work, and how it is the responsibility of people who live in dark times to decide what to do with the time they have received. As a man living through his second World War, he has certainly seen dark times in his world and his awareness would only become worse once matters like the horrors of the Holocaust were more fully known. But it is not simply some bad thing to find oneself in such times of evil. Rather, everyone is placed in the time that they are by God’s providence, and they are given the responsibility of deciding what to do with the time they have received. He, Christopher, and the others who found themselves in this time were made for it, even if they did not grasp yet for what purposes. Even Tolkien did not yet realize that he was at that very time in the process of writing one of the definitive works of the post-WW2 era, a work that would fulfill his vision of the fairy-story as consolation in this world. But such is what would happen with his work by the intricacies of God’s providence.
Letter #63 (24 April 1944 to Christopher Tolkien)
Naturally, in light of what we have seen already from Tolkien, he was keen to know about Christopher’s chances to attend church gatherings, especially during the time of Holy Week, as reported in this letter. This letter is also noteworthy for containing Tolkien’s most extensive reflections on sermons in general. He flatly states that most sermons are bad from any point of view, and this is due in no small part to preachers’ general lack of rhetorical ability. But of course, in addition to the need for rhetorical ability, preaching is further complicated by the fact that it is not only judged on an aesthetic level, but on the level of truth and purity in the preacher, lest the sermon be hindered by the appearance of vice or noticeable defects in the preacher. Ultimately, “Good sermons require some art, some virtue, some knowledge. Real sermons require some special grace which does not transcend art but arrives at it by instinct or ‘inspiration’; indeed the Holy Spirit seems sometimes to speak through a human mouth providing art, virtue and insight he does not himself possess: but the occasions are rare.” The last point in particular is a reminder to all preachers that, no matter how well they may master the arts of rhetoric, no matter how good their technique in presentation becomes, what makes preaching preaching, and what ultimately makes the truly great ones transcendent, is the work of the Holy Spirit. Without the Spirit at work, none of the other aspects matter. It has been so since the beginning of the Church at Pentecost, where we see the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is also the beginning of the Christian proclamation of the gospel after Jesus’s ascension.
Still, in all of this Tolkien does not ultimately end on a disparaging note about sermons. As an educated person, he knows his critical faculty and how active it is. But because he knows that, he also knows that the greatest benefit to derive from the sermon is to keep that critical faculty in order “by a constant endeavour to apply the truth (if any, even in cliché form, to oneself exclusively)!” Because, of course, the temptation in evaluating sermons so critically is to be dismissive of the ultimate message, the fundamental truth, that the sermon conveys if the sermon itself is not all that good. But this the faithful Christian, no matter how educated, simply cannot do. They cannot ignore the truth of a sermon and the call to action it entails anymore than anyone else.
Letter #64 (30 April 1944 to Christopher Tolkien)
This was a letter I have noted in my reflections on Tolkien’s philosophy of history. And it is indeed one of the most illuminating of his letters on that subject. This is also a letter in which he articulates his view of war. From his personal experience of two World Wars, one as a soldier and one as a civilian, he knew all too well the “utter stupid waste of war.” His response to it, however, is not some articulation of Just War Theory, despite that being a popular Catholic tradition (owing especially to the works of Augustine and Aquinas). Rather, he insists that the world being evil as it is makes war in some fashion and to some extent inevitable and even necessary to face, rather than ever being “right” per se.
The portion of his letter that I noted in my entry on his philosophy of history is also another indication of how important eschatology is to his overall thinking. Because despite the fact that the weight of human misery and evil perpetrated by humans is beyond reckoning, despite the fact that human anguish is so great that it would envelop the world if it were visible, he can still say, “All we do know, and that to a large extent by direct experience, is that evil labours with vast power and perpetual success – in vain: preparing only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in.” He says much the same through Eru Ilúvatar in his “Ainulindalë,” which serves to frame the whole course of history of Tolkien’s sub-created world:
Then Ilúvatar spoke, and he said: ‘Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my desire. For he that attempteth shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.’
This is indeed the portrayal of history presented in the mega-narrative of the Bible as a whole. It is presented most vividly in the Book of Revelation, wherein evil may appear at its most powerful and most severe, but the entire framework of Revelation shows that all of its labors are in vain for its own purposes, but instead ultimately contribute to God’s purposes. Likewise, the famous statement of Rom 8:28 memorably summarizes a similar idea about the ultimate direction of history in the midst of tribulation, following as it does a text comparing present sufferings with the glorious future of God’s promises: “Now we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to [his] purpose.” Such an eschatological outlook, secured as it is to the foundation of the eschatological-historical event of Jesus’s own resurrection, has the assurance of final victory, no matter how dark things become, for it is an outlook that fixes its eyes on the God who raises the dead. And knowing the end of the story affects how one looks on the progression of the present chapter in which one is involved. And what is more, it is a reminder that there may be foretastes of that hoped-for future even in the present time and that one ought to pray for such.
Letter #69 (14 May 1944 to Christopher Tolkien)
Tolkien makes similar points to these in a letter he sent to his son only two weeks later. He notes here how his priest gave a fiery sermon in which he declared that Oxford deserved to be wiped off the face of earth for the wickedness in which it had taken part and which it had perpetuated. That is certainly an attention-grabber, especially for someone like him who taught at Oxford. And he was not even inclined to disagree about Oxford’s participation in wickedness or that it would deserve retribution. But he was not so sure that it was somehow especially true now in a way that it was not in the past. Because of his knowledge of history, including beyond the bounds of what occupied his priest’s attention, he was all too cognizant of the immensity and perpetuity of human iniquity. It was too implacable, too intransigent, too persistent for him to think that things were somehow only intolerably horrible now. At the same time, knowledge of history reminds one that there is always good alongside the persistent evil:
much more hidden, much less clearly discerned, seldom breaking out into recognizable, visible, beauties of word or deed or face – not even when in fact sanctity, far greater than the visible advertised wickedness, is really there. But I fear that in the individual lives of all but a few, the balance is debit – we do so little that is positive good, even if we negatively avoid what is actively evil. It must be terrible to be a priest!
The last point is, of course, a reflection on general human sinfulness and the exception to this rule he most likely imagines are the ones specially designated as canonized saints by the Church, though in fact biblically all Christians are saints. Whether it is indeed the case that anyone’s ledger in terms sheerly of number of deeds is not debit on this account is merely Tolkien’s reflection on the course of history and quite beside the point of whether anyone can be deemed righteous and holy at the final judgment. As Tolkien knew from the gospel, none could be so declared apart from Christ and what he has done.
As for the former point, it is the character of evil and its effects that they tend to override our consciousness of the good in the course of history in the absence of cultivating awareness of the same. Or it could be that, unless lives go horribly awry, evil tends to seem more disruptive to life than the good and thus is perceived as more impactful (an example of the opposite would be someone finding a trustworthy friend after a lifetime of trauma built around not being able to trust anyone). But in any case, this reality still resonates with biblical teaching. In terms of the good that persists everywhere evil does, one is reminded of the teaching that God causes his sun to rise and shine and rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous, the just and the unjust (Matt 5:45). Indeed, such generally present good things are cited in favor of the fact that God has not left himself without a witness (Acts 14:17). Likewise, the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds reminds us that God allows for his purposes the good to grow alongside the evil and the wicked alongside the righteous, not allowing any ultimate separation between them until the final judgment (Matt 13:24–30, 36–43).
Letters #71 (25 May 1944 to Christopher Tolkien) and #78 (12 August 1944 to Christopher Tolkien)
I comment on these letters together, despite the gaps between them of time and situation, because they both treat the idea of Orcishness as something reflective of real life. In both cases, he makes the point that the line of good and evil passes through each individual and every side in a given war has some mixture of orc-like people in its midst. In the former letter, he notes that, in light of this fact, it matters whether the captains, the leaders, are orc-like. This resonates with the biblical story of Israel. Again and again across the times of the judges and the kings, the character of Israelite faith ebbs and flows to the rhythm of the leaders. There are exceptions, of course, such as the 7,000 who remain faithful in the Northern Kingdom during the reign of Ahab. But generally, the course of the faith of the people as a whole is affected by having no leader, a bad leader (by the standard of faithfulness to God), or a good leader (again, by the standard of faithfulness to God). The people are apparently faithful to God during the times of the judges, but as soon as they die the people go back to worshiping other gods and violating the covenant with God. In the case of bad leaders, there is never a majority resistance according to the covenantal faith; the majority once again follows the leader.
In the case of the second letter, he also clarifies that referring to Orcishness in real life is to use a figure of speech that should not be taken too far, for there are no genuine “Uruks,” which is to say people who were made bad from conception. As I have noted elsewhere, Tolkien is of the view in agreement with Catholic tradition that existence is fundamentally good and that nothing that exists can thus be deemed as absolute evil, for even the devil was not always evil. The closest one comes to finding such people are those who are practically or seemingly irredeemable apart from a special miracle. He thinks that “there are probably abnormally many of such creatures in Deutschland and Nippon – but certainly these unhappy countries have no monopoly: I have met them or thought so, in England’s green and pleasant land.” In fact, the next relevant letter for this commentary will at the least illustrate such an Orcish mentality.
Letter #81 (23-25 September 1944 to Christopher Tolkien)
As Tolkien comments on the state of the war and the state of things at home, he notes that though it was known that Hitler was a “vulgar and ignorant little cad,” many others have shown themselves to be vulgar and ignorant little cads in the course of the war, and they don’t even follow Hitler. As an example, he tells Christopher:
There was a solemn article in the local paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don’t know the difference between good and evil! (What of the writer?) The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done.
Nor, indeed, has such rhetoric been left in the days of WW2, as one can still find plenty of areas of popular discourse suggesting the enemy of the day—in the case of my own time, much of the Middle East, North Africa, and Russia—should simply be nuked. As with the writer of the article Tolkien mentioned, one can simply be grateful that such people have no decision-making power on this front and are only impotent little tough-talkers. Such people utterly convinced of their own righteousness and who treat the existence of others as a convenience or inconvenience to themselves have spent far too long staring into the abyss, forgetting that its emptiness reflects back at those who continue to stare into it.
Tolkien also notes, “You can’t fight the Enemy with his own Ring without turning into an Enemy; but unfortunately Gandalf’s wisdom seems long ago to have passed with him into the True West.” This was, in fact, one of the central points of Tolkien’s story, one of its basic premises. To have used the Ring against Sauron would have meant defeat, even if the wielder of the Ring should personally overcome Sauron, for that wielder would become a new, perhaps even more insufferable, Sauron in his place. But Gandalf knew this because he was aware of his own weaknesses, his own potential for evil. In the Primary World, we too must cultivate our awareness of our own sinfulness, our own potential for evil. This requires taking seriously the teaching of Jesus about judgment. We cannot be truly helpful and we cannot exercise proper moral discernment if we ignore our sinfulness, fixating on the speck in our brother’s eye while ignoring the log in our own (Matt 7:1–5).
Letter #86 (23 October 1944 to Christopher Tolkien)
Christopher had apparently written to his father expressing concerns about whether something he had heard constituted blasphemy. The words are not recorded, but it is not difficult for one to imagine what kind of language is concerning to the younger Tolkien. On this point, Tolkien cites the famous words of Luke 23:34: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” On the one hand, there are a variety of expressions that constitute similar sentiments that should inspire similar consideration, such as using the word “damn” against someone without reflection on the seriousness of what it would mean for the Judge to damn someone with all finality (conversely, one who uses that language with utmost reflection and seriousness has committed no meaningful offense of speech). On the other hand, Tolkien notes, “Both the sexual and the sacred words have ceased to have any content except the ghost of past emotion. I don’t think that it is not a bad thing, and it is certainly very wearisome, saddening and maddening, but it is at any rate not blasphemy in the full sense.” In other words, one may utter such language without reverence and so be irresponsible with one’s tongue, but this is not necessarily blasphemy proper. It is not on the level of, say, falsely attaching God’s name to what he did not say (such as in false prophecy) or attributing to the devil what is properly attributed to the Holy Spirit (i.e., blasphemy of the Spirit). These offenses are more audacious, expressing a revilement and dishonor that goes beyond looseness of speech.
Letter #87 (25 October 1944 to Christopher Tolkien)
This particular letter offers a singular point of interest. Tolkien relates to his son that a twelve-year-old from Pennsylvania named John Barrow had written him with praise for The Hobbit. He had read the book eleven times and thought of it as being beyond description. He then asks Tolkien to tell him if he had written any other books. Tolkien found such a response amusing and saddening. That his own fantasy could have such an effect on someone was, to Tolkien, also a demonstration of dearth in fantasy, myth, and the exercise of imagination that this boy had otherwise known in his life. And the boy was but one example of dearth in the impoverished field of modern humanity that made Tolkien say, “What thousands of grains of good human corn must fall on barren stony ground, if such a very small drop of water should be so intoxicating! But I suppose one should be grateful for the grace and fortune that have allowed me to provide even the drop.” Tolkien has made it clear that he regards fantasy, storytelling, and world-making as human necessities and in situations of necessity-deprivation even the slightest provision gives a refreshment that has the quality of deliverance. Hence, Tolkien sees his role as a fantasy writer in his time as being a recipient of divine grace in order to become a participant in the outpouring of divine grace for others. This is an example of carrying out the vocation of image-bearing so that one becomes a divine instrument through which God exercises grace.
Letter #89 (7–8 November 1944 to Christopher Tolkien)
This is one of the letters in which Tolkien references guardian angels, as he speaks of Christopher’s own guardian angel and how he is needed. He is ultimately inspired to relate to his son a vision or perhaps apperception turned pictorial that he had at St. Gregory’s prior to the serving of the Blessed Sacrament:
I perceived or thought of the Light of God and in it suspended one small mote (or millions of motes to only one of which was my small mind directed), glittering white because of the individual ray from the Light which both held and lit it. (Not that there were individual rays issuing from the Light, but the mere existence of the mote and its position in relation to the Light was in itself a line, and the line was Light). And the ray was the Guardian Angel of the mote: not a thing interposed between God and the creature, but God's very attention itself, personalized. And I do not mean ‘personified’, by a mere figure of speech according to the tendencies of human language, but a real (finite) person. Thinking of it since – for the whole thing was very immediate, and not recapturable in clumsy language, certainly not the great sense of joy that accompanied it and the realization that the shining poised mote was myself (or any other human person that I might think of with love) – it has occurred to me that (I speak diffidently and have no idea whether such a notion is legitimate: it is at any rate quite separate from the vision of the Light and the poised mote) this is a finite parallel to the Infinite. As the love of the Father and Son (who are infinite and equal) is a Person, so the love and attention of the Light to the Mote is a person (that is both with us and in Heaven): finite but divine: i.e. angelic.
The guardian angel is thus presented as an extension of the agency of God’s love. The angel is thus in turn presented as a finite parallel of the infinite. In this case, Tolkien refers to the Holy Spirit in that he thinks of the Spirit as the love of the Father and Son. I say “he thinks” simply to emphasize that this is something Tolkien accepts, not that it is an idea original to him. Far from it. The description of the Spirit as the bond of love between the Father and the Son was popularized by Augustine (see esp. Trin. 6.5.7; 7.3.6; 9.1–2; 9.12.17). It has also been reaffirmed by such influential figures as Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica 1.37). The guardian angel is thus the finite extension of the infinite One who is love, being the agent of the same, and who is still higher than us mortals in terms of being closer to God.
An even fainter glimmer of this light of God is seen in human love, for “we love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). This is why he describes his son as “poised and shining in the Light,” albeit with his face (and all humans’ faces) turned from it. Human love has its source in the fact that we bear the image of the Creator who is love. Yet human love is an imperfect reflection of God’s love, not only because of our limitations in contrast to his infinitude, but also because of our fallenness and sinfulness corrupting even our capacity of love and the expression of the same. Thus, our faces are represented as turned away from taking in the full light of God. But even so, we can see his radiance indirectly and imperfectly in this love he gives us to show one another.
This letter also describes a Sunday (the 5th of November) when Tolkien went to mass at St. Gregory’s with his daughter Priscilla. The sermon concerned the stories of the healing of Jairus’s daughter and of the woman with an issue of blood. The priest also mentioned three healings in more recent times, one of which especially drew Tolkien’s attention. This story was of a little boy (in 1927) with “tubercular [tuberculous] peritonitis” who was mortally ill and taken on a train by his parents, apparently to go die in peace. But as the train passed by a Marian grotto—apparently the one at Lourdes, judging by the context—he was suddenly well and went to play with a little girl on the train.
The suddenness of this turn produced an emotion he has associated peculiarly with eucatastrophe. It was a particular experience of what he had tried to describe analytically, “For it I coined the word ‘eucatastrophe’: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of the fairy-stories to produce).” This effect comes from the sudden glimpse of Truth, the truth that transcends typical perceptions of life bound in the chains of decay and death (which later in the letter he refers to as, “the apparent Anankê of our world”) and shows humans the truth of Primary Reality and their nature with a relief that is as if, “a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back.” No other eucatastrophe provides the relief and distinctive effect like the eucatastrophe of the fairy story that happened in the Primary World; namely, the resurrection of Jesus. In his description of the emotional effect the resurrection produces for those with Primary Belief, he gives his most poetic description of Christian joy, which “produces tears because it is qualitatively like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love.” Tolkien echoes this description in the celebration of the eucatastrophe of LOTR on the Field of Cormallen: “And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of the minstrel rose like silver and gold, and all men were hushed. And he sang to them, now in the Elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet word, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.” (VI/4) Similarly, he describes the proper Third Theme of the Ainulindalë—the music that intentionally followed Eru Ilúvatar’s direction rather than Melkor’s—as follows: “The one was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came.” Such is what happens when eucatastrophe meets dyscatastrophe, the true light of the world meets its characteristic deceptive darkness, and the delivering love of God meets a rebellious world. When the response to eucatastrophe is the joy of deliverance and Primary Belief, the result is a holistic redemption for the believer. The condition becomes a more permanent part of who the believer is and thus the mix of joy and sorrow characterizes the believer’s existence as they await the consummation of hope.
He also reiterates his point about the gospel of the risen Lord redeeming humans in a manner consonant with human nature by giving them a story that affects them in a way that fulfills the fairy-story (even as it fulfills the foreshadowing stories like the raising of Jairus’s daughter). It is fitting that God should do such for beings created to be divine image-bearers, that secondary authors who express hope for redemption in fairy-stories experience redemption through the story from the Primary Author. By God’s action of having the story of the Primary World climax with eucatastrophe in Jesus’s resurrection, God reveals the truth about the world that transcends empirical observation, a revelation God had anticipated by using fairy-stories (among other means) as instruments to reveal the salvation that comes from beyond the circles of the world.
Letter #94 (28 December 1944 to Christopher Tolkien)
The last letter Tolkien wrote to Christopher in 1944 begins with a response to the latter’s comments on the portions of LOTR he had received. In addition to his comments on the content itself, he found that even chapters like this with Frodo, Sam, and Gollum venturing into the lands of the Dark Lord’s dominion has made him even more homesick. Tolkien comments on this curious phenomenon with the following:
But if lit. teaches us anything at all, it is this: that we have in us an eternal element, free from care and fear, which can survey the things that in ‘life’ we call evil with serenity (that is not without appreciating their quality, but without any disturbance of our spiritual equilibrium). Not in the same way, but in some such way, we shall all doubtless survey our own story when we know it (and a great deal more of the Whole Story).
Tolkien is here advocating a traditional anthropology that I have stated my disagreements with elsewhere. But insofar as one can describe the “eternal element” as our capacity to be image-bearers of the eternal God, and not some distinct anthropological aspect or substance within us, the fundamental point remains agreeable. After all, our imagination, to which literature appeals and which excites this capacity, is part of our capacity of being image-bearers, which we have noted in the reflections on Tolkien’s theology of sub-creation. It is that capacity that allows us to transcend, in some fashion, the pressures and problems of our present circumstances and to look upon them in a new way, perhaps through the lens of analogies of a Secondary World, like Tolkien’s story. This capacity and connected ones will also have an eschatological role when the final judgment will lead us to look at our own stories in full in ways that we cannot now and in recognition of how they connect to the larger story that the Author has been composing from them all. Such is the story one finds of the final judgment in Daniel and Revelation, as both feature the multiple books opened for judgment, alongside the supreme book of life (Dan 7:10; 12:1; Rev 20:12; cf. Rev 3:5; 13:8; 17:8; 20:15; 21:27).
Letter #96 (30 January 1945 to Christopher Tolkien)
The occasion for Tolkien’s relevant remarks in this letter is unclear, except to say that his son had written to him something about the Eden story. Tolkien’s comments on the general (Western) Christian feelings about Genesis in the modern world remain relevant, as he says that most Christians, except those who have generally not engaged with academia or the products of the same in churches, have found ways to tuck away the story of Genesis as something of an embarrassment in the modern world. But in all of this treatment of Genesis, it has been easy to overlook the story itself and the beauty thereof. He notes that Lewis had defended the approach in an essay (“Myth Became Fact” in God in the Dock) that even those who are inclined to doubt that the Genesis story directly conveys history can still find something of lasting value in the beauty of the story, in line with conversations Lewis had had with Tolkien about the power of story and how God uses it.
For Tolkien himself, he insists that he does not feel ashamed or dubious about the Eden “myth”:
It has not of course, historicity of the same kind as the NT, which are virtually contemporary documents, while Genesis is separated by we do not know how many sad exiled generations from the Fall, but certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still soaked with the sense of ‘exile’.
This is a similar argument to that of Lewis and his notion that the deepest feeling of nostalgia (or rather, “longing”) ultimately has its roots in Eden and the sense of loss of peace and goodwill that suffuses so much of human thought ultimately stems from the exile from the same. Indeed, as I have noted in my series on resurrection in the OT, the Bible establishes a strong conceptual link between exile and death, as well as return and resurrection. Of course, in line with how Revelation ends, Tolkien’s expectation is not to return to Eden, “For that is not the way of repentance, which works spirally and not in a closed circle; we may recover something like it, but on a higher plane.” That is indeed how the New Jerusalem is described in Rev 21–22, as Eden fulfilled, not merely as Eden revived.
But even prior to that hope, Tolkien expects there will be a Millennium, per Rev 20, “the prophesied thousand-year rule of the Saints, i.e. those who have for all their imperfections never finally bowed heart and will to the world or the evil spirit (in modern but not universal terms: mechanism, ‘scientific’ materialism, Socialism in either of its factions now at war).” This is another way in which Tolkien was out of step with many in his generation, as I have noted in the entry on his philosophy of history. Many of his contemporaries bought into the myth of progress, including many Christian teachers who, since the Enlightenment era, often taught postmillennial ideas, that the millennial kingdom would be established and continue for 1,000 years, and only then would Christ return. Of course, such teachings did not survive WW1 intact. While postmillennialism still exists, it no longer takes on the forms that were popular in the days of Tolkien’s youth. In contrast to his context, he appears to have been premillennial.
Letter #102 (9 August 1945 to Christopher Tolkien)
The last letter of relevance for this part comes from the tail end of the war. On the day in which Tolkien wrote this letter, America had dropped its second atomic bomb on Nagasaki three days after it had dropped the first on Hiroshima. Tolkien, like many others, was stunned to hear of such bombs and the destructive power they and their makers had unleashed on the world. Indeed, these weapons turned out to be epoch-making, as the superpowers that remained standing after WW2 developed nuclear stockpiles that became capable of destroying the world in a flash. Tolkien does acknowledge one good thing to come out of this horrific destruction, and that was the long-awaited end of the war. But in any case, Tolkien once again reiterates his trust in God’s providence with his refrain of, “Well we’re in God’s hands,” but he is careful to note now, “He does not look kindly on Babel-builders.”