(avg. read time: 28–55 mins.)
I have tried to be fair to this movie by reckoning with its function as a biopic in the film medium rather than as a biography in the print medium. But given the source material that it is adapting, I think I have shown that this movie fails as a biopic representation of Tolkien by the criteria of good filmmaking and by the criteria of communicating its subject accurately and artistically. It is not uncommon for biopics to fail one of these two tests, but Tolkien fails both. And I have waited until now to discuss the primary flaw of this film’s treatment of its subject. As many other reviewers have noted, if you did not know beforehand that Tolkien was a Roman Catholic Christian, you would never know it by watching the movie. The only possible indications we have of such in the movie are his relationship to Fr. Morgan—which, given how little influence the movie gives him, need not imply that Tolkien was a Catholic by beliefs, practice, or self-identification—and a quick vision of a crucifix so brief that it is easy to miss.
As I have indicated at multiple points throughout this review, Tolkien’s Catholic faith was not a set of acts that he performed as empty ritual or a set of propositions that he affirmed; it was central and formative for his whole life and it had tangible impacts on many events in his life, even in his early days that this movie covers. Frankly, underplaying or ignoring Tolkien’s Catholic faith in a biopic of the man is as inexcusable as underplaying or ignoring C. S. Lewis’s faith in a biopic of him. The 1993 Lewis biopic Shadowlands is often recognized as a well-made film that distorts Lewis’s Christianity, but at least it presents it as something important to the story and its development. Tolkien does not even do that.
When I have mentioned this lack of clear Catholicism in the Tolkien biopic, plenty of people have said to me, “Well, that’s Hollywood for you.” But even that is not an adequate explanation for this case. Besides the aforementioned counterexample of Shadowlands, I would like to present the example of my favorite biopic: Longford. Longford is a short television film that was produced for Channel 4 in Britain in association with HBO, and it was directed and written by the wonderful team of Tom Hooper and Peter Morgan respectively. Neither of these people were religious in any way, but it was obvious even to them that they could not tell the story of Frank Pakenham, the Earl of Longford, and of his campaign for parole on behalf of Moors Murderer Myra Hindley without referencing his Catholic faith. It was clear to them that Pakenham’s faith animated what he did for Hindley and for the other inmates he visited as part of a prison ministry. They convey his faith in a variety of ways, including in his activities in visiting prisoners, conversations and correspondences, prayers (as well as exhortations to pray), interviews, and partaking of the Mass. Like any biopic, the movie still takes liberties with the real story, but it tells a compelling story in its own right and it does not do a massive disservice to its subject by ignoring a central aspect of his personality and history.
In the remainder of this review, I would like to highlight the severity of this failure by unpacking what we can know about how Tolkien’s Christianity shaped his life based on the historical evidence. I perform this task in two parts. One, I respond to what is thus far the most extensive defense of this movie’s approach to Tolkien’s Catholicism by the Orthodox archpriest Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick. Two, I present the evidence topically and chronologically, based on information in his biographies, his letters, and his other writings.
Response to Andrew Stephen Damick’s Defense
I will not address everything in Damick’s response, as I have no interest in addressing the more outlandish statements by some conservative reviewers, and I think my own review functions well enough to undermine them. I do also want to note some areas of agreement. First, I agree that I wanted to see Tolkien’s service at the altar, as this could have helped to signal Tolkien’s Catholic upbringing. Second, I agree that the movie was trying to do too many things, although I think that the solution to this would have been a combination of cutting some content out and an extended runtime to give this story some room to breathe. Third, despite the common thread in reviews I have read comparing the T.C.B.S. scenes to The Dead Poets Society, I agree with Damick that this comparison is not a good one to make, not least because that movie told its story better. Unfortunately, Damick’s more substantive statements are where we disagree more significantly.
His first argument that this movie communicates Christianity, even though it is not a Christian film per se, comes from how the movie treats the idea of the interweaving of language, legend, and culture. Of course, as I have illustrated, this idea is underexplored and simplified. The extent to which Damick has to stretch to make this connection is illustrated in his description of the idea:
The incarnated solidity of art and language as material things that offer a window into transcendence is central to historic Christianity. Christianity created civilization and was in its expressions influenced by civilization, and the sub-creative aspect of the making of culture reveals the Incarnation again — that God became man and dwelt among us with His own human body and soul means that materiality, including the materiality of cultural artifice, becomes the means of connection with the divine.
Notice how Damick has to use a dense collection of Christian terminology to make this point, not the slightest of which is in the actual movie. If the movie itself presented a Christian framework—as Tolkien’s own life did—this would be a fair point about how the movie communicates Christianity even when it is not explicit about doing so. However, if the movie is lacking in any generally religious or specifically Christian framework, this connection surely must be judged as forced. Similarly, his statement that the notion presented in simplified fashion in the movie of, “the insistence on the integrality of art and language to culture is a blow to the gnostic sensibility that much of our culture now embraces,” does not ring true for the purposes of his case either. Given the spreading concerns about cultural appropriation in the West, it does not seem to me that Damick’s cultural observation is accurate and this concern only further illustrates that it is possible to hold a version of this view without any explicit Christian framing. One can only make the connection if one assumes a Christian framework.
In this same vein, Damick attempts to argue that the moral universe of Tolkien conveys something of Tolkien’s Christianity. This argument essentially rests on how the movie treats the romantic relationship of Tolkien and Edith. After all, we never see them jump into bed together, not even after they’re married (although I would want to remind Damick that we never see them actually get married, it is only reasonably assumed that they did so). He says the moral universe of Tolkien is very much non-2019. And he’s right, but that does not in itself illustrate a Christian moral universe. As it stands, young people in our own day (including in 2019, when I first wrote this review) are reporting having less sex than youths ever have before in such surveys, but they are not necessarily becoming more Christian. This movie is non-2019 in that it respects its setting in Edwardian-era England and the consequences of that setting. One can only read this evidence as marking Tolkien’s Christianity if one assumes the Christian framework beforehand.
In rebuttal to reviews complaining about the lack of Tolkien’s Christianity in this movie, Damick claims that the reviewers, “are basically looking for a kind of culture-war approach in which we see explicitly ‘religious’ actions as the mark of what it means to portray Christianity.” I cannot speak for these other reviewers—and I am not entirely sure if I am reading the same ones that Damick has—but I must say that this is not accurate. As I illustrated from the example of Longford, there are multiple ways that filmmakers can use to signify that the subject is Christian. The problem is not that Tolkien never shows the boy or the young man attending Mass, confessing to a priest, reciting creeds, praying, or so on. The problem is that the movie does not use any way—no ritual, no pious action, no conversation, no correspondence, no speech/monologue, no direct statement of any kind—to convey that Tolkien is a Christian in general or a Roman Catholic in particular.
More directly, he says that those who look for Christian identity-markers in this film are misguided in that it, “covers a period which Tolkien himself identified as being very problematic for the practice of his faith.” To this end he quotes Letter #250, which Tolkien wrote in November of 1963 to Michael Tolkien at a time when his son was struggling with his faith. At the end of his address to him on this subject, he writes the following:
But I am one who came up out of Egypt, and pray God none of my seed shall return thither. I witnessed (half-comprehending) the heroic sufferings and early death in extreme poverty of my mother who brought me into the Church; and received the astonishing charity of Francis Morgan. But I fell in love with the Blessed Sacrament from the beginning – and by the mercy of God never have fallen out again: but alas! I indeed did not live up to it. I brought you all up ill and talked to you too little. Out of wickedness and sloth I almost ceased to practise my religion – especially at Leeds, and at 22 Northmoor Road. Not for me the Hound of Heaven, but the never-ceasing silent appeal of Tabernacle, and the sense of starving hunger. I regret those days bitterly (and suffer for them with such patience as I can be given); most of all because I failed as a father. Now I pray for you all, unceasingly, that the Healer (the Hælend as the Saviour was usually called in Old English) shall heal my defects, and that none of you shall ever cease to cry Benedictus qui venit in nomme Domini.
After quoting much of this passage, Damick argues,
His time at Leeds and Northmoor Road (which is in Oxford) is just about all the 1920s-40s, which is a big chunk of the period covered in the film. He would have been 28 at the beginning of the period in Leeds — only four years into his marriage with Edith — and in his mid-fifties by the time he moved away from Northmoor Road in 1947. Is it possible that his struggles with practicing his faith might have started earlier in his twenties? I don’t know, but it’s not unreasonable to wonder.
As he builds his case for Tolkien struggling with practicing his faith, he makes two basic errors. First, his claim is chronologically inaccurate, as the period he cites from Letter #250 spans from 1920 to 1930, but this movie skips over this time and the last five minutes take place shortly afterwards, around the time Tolkien began writing The Hobbit. (Furthermore, note that the period does not cover the 40s, as Tolkien specifically refers to the time at 22 Northmoor Road, which the Tolkiens moved out of in 1930 to move next door, where they lived from 1930 to 1947.) All but the last five minutes of the movie covers the period from 1904 to 1917 and so the historical relevance of this citation is questionable. Second, he bases his argument on meager evidence (which I correct in more detail below). He cites a portion of one letter, but he does not place this statement properly in biographical context, besides the chronological error. After all, it was during the period that Damick identifies that Edith vocalized her objections to Tolkien taking the children to confession and Mass. It was also during this period that Tolkien befriended C. S. Lewis and would argue with him about religion, which would come to its culmination in September of 1931. Furthermore, I have noted multiple occasions in which the filmmakers take an anachronistic approach to telling Tolkien’s story and so even if Tolkien was struggling with being explicitly Christian at this time, there does not seem to be any obstacle to the filmmakers anachronizing on this point to convey Tolkien’s faith in more developed form. As for this actual period, let me summarize the evidence for Tolkien’s Catholicism and Catholic environment that I have noted in the main review:
His mother, Mabel, converted to Catholicism in 1900 and instilled the Catholic faith in her sons before her death in 1904. Tolkien regarded her as a martyr for her faith and her legacy solidified his own devotion to Catholicism.
Tolkien was further raised in the faith by his legal guardian, Fr. Francis Xavier Morgan, who served in this capacity from 1904 to 1913.
Tolkien and his brother frequently served the Mass at Fr. Morgan’s Oratory.
A major cause for Fr. Morgan’s concern about Tolkien’s relationship with Edith the first time around (from 1909 to 1910) was that she was Anglican.
When the pair reunited in 1913, Tolkien insisted that Edith convert to Catholicism before they were married (in 1916), which she officially did in 1914. This process gave Tolkien even greater admiration for her, since she had to persevere in her conversion in the face of obstacles, much like his mother.
The Tolkiens were married in a Catholic church and later received the nuptial blessing, since their wedding occurred during Lent.
Tolkien saw the T.C.B.S. as a group that was given inspiration by God and that had the purpose of testifying for God and Truth.
There is probably more that we can infer about this time, but I will save a more extensive discussion for later. The movie shows no influence of any of these things on Tolkien’s personal faith.
Damick does also mention that Tolkien’s first year at Oxford was one in which Tolkien became slack in the observance of his religion. This point is true, as indicated in Letter #43, but that is one year—and not necessarily an entire year—out of the span covered in the movie. Given the evidence presented above and the evidence I present below, this statement by Damick in particular seems to have gone off the rails: “So I think that some of the reviewers who wanted to see a more Catholic Tolkien are probably expecting the older, more mature Tolkien in a film that is limited to portraying the younger one.” Actually, I would have been content to get a Tolkien that was as Catholic as the young one, but we did not even get that.
In any case, at the end of this particular argument, Damick quickly fires off a list of aspects of the movie that he sees as expressions of Christian themes: love, friendship, self-sacrifice, chastity, humility, diligence. Yet again, we meet a familiar motif: not one of these themes is specifically Christian. They certainly can be such with the right context and the right lens, but the film does not provide its audience with such. As these qualities are presented in the movie, they are simply generic, like much else in this story. At best, one can argue that these themes are present as the fruit of the era of Christendom, but not as the fruit of Christian faith per se.
Finally, Damick insists that the lack of overt Christian faith in this story gives it a properly Tolkienian atmosphere. Earlier, Damick had stated that he thought his interlocutors came to the movie with the wrong expectations, since “they would actually not find Middle-earth itself to be Christian enough because Jesus never steps out from behind an Ent somewhere to say hello. I mean, no one in Middle-earth even goes to church, and there is almost no prayer.” More fully, he notes that Tolkien’s Middle-earth is in no way explicitly Christian in the sense that he thinks his interlocutors wanted, “Yet it is one of the most deeply Christian stories of our time. Why would we fault the film-makers for a film that could be interpreted in essentially the same way? Certainly their achievement is not as monumental as Tolkien’s, which is the work of a profound genius, but my own sense of the film is that it is doing much of the same kind of work.” As I think I have demonstrated, one could only interpret the film this way by assuming a Christian framework and stretching to make it fit.
His claim that the lack of overt Christianity fits Tolkien’s approach to Middle-earth fails to take into account a crucial factor: genre. Tolkien is a biographical film, not a fantasy Secondary World set between the Fall and the Incarnation (Letter #297). The History of Middle-Earth series contains some elaboration on religion in Middle-earth, but Tolkien sought to avoid any explicit Christianity because this form of moral and religious truth exists in the Primary World, but the Secondary World of fantasy needs its own forms of such revelation. Such was his objection to the Arthurian legends, that this Secondary World also explicitly featured the Christian religion as it was known in the Primary World (see Letter #131 to Milton Waldman in late 1951). In other words, the appearance of these elements in the Arthurian legends makes them something of an amorphous hybrid that attempts to have its Secondary World cake and eat it in the Primary World. It is not truly part of either creation or sub-creation and therefore it has the inner consistency of neither. While all sub-creation is by nature derivative in some fashion, Tolkien thought that the Arthurian stories are too derivative because they draw too much on the explicit forms of the Primary World and do not pursue far enough the inner logic of sub-creation. He believed these unnamed moral and religious truths (or errors) to be true (or false) across Primary and Secondary Worlds, but a proper Secondary World does not have them appear explicitly in the same forms as they do in the Primary World if that world has the inner consistency of reality, in accordance with which there are proper forms for these truths (or errors) to appear. Tolkien also disliked the conscious and intentional allegorical approach to making myths and fantasy. This reasoning helps explain Tolkien’s criticism of Lewis’s theological approach in The Chronicles of Narnia, which he mistook for religious allegory and which he criticized for lacking the inner consistency of reality that he so emphasized in the construction of fantasy.
However, Tolkien did not mind writing in an explicitly Christian fashion in his letters, as I discuss below. One can see this in the “Beowulf” lecture I noted previously. His other famous lecture/essay “On Fairy-Stories,” is suffused with explicit Christian thought, especially in Tolkien’s disquisition on the eucatastrophe in fairy-stories. Incidentally, Tolkien wrote both of these during the era that Damick highlights. And while Tolkien may have criticized Lewis’s theological approach in Narnia, he did not likewise criticize his approach in the Space trilogy. In Letter #26 (written in March 1938) to Stanley Unwin, when the publisher asked for Tolkien’s opinion of the first book Out of the Silent Planet, Tolkien had this to say about the theological approach:
But I should have said that the story had for the more intelligent reader a great number of philosophical and mythical implications that enormously enhanced without detracting from the surface ‘adventure’. I found the blend of vera historia with mythos irresistible. There are of course certain satirical elements, inevitable in any such traveller’s tale, and also a spice of satire on other superficially similar works of ‘scientific’ fiction — such as the reference to the notion that higher intelligence will inevitably be combined with ruthlessness. The underlying myth is of course that of the Fall of the Angels (and the fall of man on this our silent planet); and the central point is the sculpture of the planets revealing the erasure of the sign of the Angel of this world. I cannot understand how any one can say this sticks in his gullet, unless (a) he thinks this particular myth ‘bunk’, that is not worth adult attention (even on a mythical plane); or (b) the use of it unjustified or perhaps unsuccessful.
In case one is wondering, Tolkien makes clear that he does not agree with either of these criticisms that he cites as possible reasons for another reader’s criticism of the book, to which he is responding in this letter. Given these points, it is hardly “Tolkienian” to be so covert about Tolkien’s Catholic faith as to bury virtually any trace of Christianity in the representation of the man’s biography.
An Overview of Tolkien’s Catholic Christianity
With all of this being said, what evidence do we have of Tolkien’s Catholicism from biographical reports on him and from his own letters and works? In what follows, I repeat some of the same evidence I have reviewed already in order to present a thoroughgoing picture of Tolkien’s Catholic faith. However, I will not be examining his fictional works for this purpose. While I think they are relevant, it would simply take too much space to explain all of the connections of the voluminous fantasies of his Secondary World with his faith in the Primary World (Tolkien himself does some measure of making these connections in Letters #131, #153, #165, #181, #183, #191, #192, #211, #212, #213, #246, #269, and #297). By the same token, I will not be examining the notes in the volumes of The History of Middle-earth, which may make some explicit theological connections as well. With those qualifications, let us look at the evidence of how Tolkien’s Catholic Christianity shaped his life.
First, I have already noted the evidence from Tolkien’s early life in the previous section, particularly as it concerns his mother’s Catholic faith that she instilled in Tolkien by her teaching and by her example, his relationship with Fr. Morgan, and his romantic relationship with Edith. His first year at Oxford was a time of laxness in the practice of his religion, but as a result he kept a diary in which recorded all his errors as he sought to renew the frequency of his religious praxis. But generally, when Tolkien looks back on his early years, he focuses on the aforementioned facts of his existence, especially the story of martyrdom that he tells of his mother. One may also glimpse how Tolkien processed the suffering caused by his losses early in life through the framework that he learned from his mother in a quote that Stephen Colbert has popularized through paraphrasing: “A divine ‘punishment’ is also a divine ‘gift’, if accepted, since its object is ultimate blessing, and the supreme inventiveness of the Creator will make ‘punishments’ (that is changes of design) produce a good not otherwise to be attained” (Letter #212 to Rhona Beare [unsent], October 1958). In the context of the letter, this directly addresses an aspect of Tolkien’s work of fantasy, but it is easy to see how he draws this idea from his life in the Primary World. Concerning his fantasy, he would say of LOTR in a letter to the Jesuit priest Robert Murray (Letter #142, December 1953), in response to his statement that he had a sense of the positive compatibility of Tolkien’s book with the order of grace,
The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism. However that is very clumsily put, and sounds more self-important than I felt. For as a matter of fact, I have consciously planned very little; and should chiefly be grateful for having been brought up (since I was eight) in a Faith that has nourished me and taught me all the little that I know; and that I owe to my mother, who clung to her conversion and died young, largely through the hardships of poverty resulting from it.
As Tolkien would say in another letter, “long narratives cannot be made out of nothing; and one cannot rearrange the primary matter in secondary patterns without indicating feelings and opinions about one’s material” (Letter #215 to Walter Allen, April 1959). As such, the religious elements of Tolkien’s own life have been absorbed implicitly in the sub-creation because they were so absorbed by the sub-creator. It is a fundamentally religious and Catholic work at its foundation because it is reflective of Primary Reality, particularly the transcendent qualities Tolkien knew in Catholicism, but it is so in that its Secondary Reality reflects the truth in its own way. This theological continuity fits the emphasis on continuity between the orders of nature and grace in Catholic thought. Otherwise, Tolkien sometimes mentioned to his correspondents that he was a Catholic as a way of shedding light on his stories and his perspective about them (Letters #195, #213).
Second, because of the example of his mother, Tolkien was all too aware of the anti-Catholic bias that was popular in his country. He noted this even in his friend C. S. Lewis and suspected it as being part of his conversion to the Church of England rather than to his Church of Rome. He apparently noted as much in his unpublished essay “The Ulsterior Motive,” wherein he observed the North Irish Protestant influence on Lewis in his critique of Lewis’s posthumously published Letters to Malcolm. Of course, he noted this in Lewis in his own Letter #83 (to Christopher Tolkien, October 1944) when he observed his interaction with Roy Campbell (who was the second Roy Campbell I ever heard of, after the one in Metal Gear Solid) because of the latter’s sympathy for Francisco Franco (whom Tolkien, like his fellow British Catholic Evelyn Waugh, had sympathy for because he perceived him as a champion of Catholicism against Communism). As a general point about this anti-Catholic bias in Lewis and England, he says, “But hatred of our church is after all the real only final foundation of the C of E – so deep laid that it remains even when all the superstructure seems removed (C.S.L. for instance reveres the Blessed Sacrament, and admires nuns!). Yet if a Lutheran is put in jail he is up in arms; but if Catholic priests are slaughtered – he disbelieves it (and I daresay really thinks they asked for it).” (As this support for Franco is one of Tolkien’s more controversial views and because I am not as interested in exploring Tolkien’s politics here, I refer the reader to this freely available article that appeared in Mallorn by José Manuel Ferrández Bru.)
Third, like any devout Catholic, Tolkien is notable for his observance of the Mass. As noted at multiple points already in the previous two parts, the Tolkien brothers served the Mass at Fr. Morgan’s Oratory in Birmingham as they grew up in his charge. Even when he was involved in WWI, Tolkien attended Mass at a portable altar, which the movie could have easily portrayed according to the precedent set in another WWI movie: Joyeux Noël. 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. Whatever interruptions there may have been to his practice at any point during 1920-1930, as noted above, he was still taking his children along frequently enough to Mass and to confession beforehand that Edith was voicing her objections by 1925 (otherwise, Tolkien wrote little in this period that was non-fictional, save for his Beowulf translation and commentary, which I address briefly below). 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 Tolkien’s references to the Mass in Letters #43 and #250, how he observed the transcendence of the Mass, and how it is the chief place where he found love. 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. While another of his sons, Christopher, was serving in WW2, he encouraged him to know by heart the Canon of the Mass, “for you can say this in your heart if ever hard circumstance keeps you from hearing Mass” (Letter #54, January 1944). In Letters #210 and #213 (both from 1958), he explicitly relates the lembas bread from LOTR to the Eucharist. 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.
Fourth, while Tolkien had no hang-ups about being critical of the Church, he nevertheless regularly recognized its necessity. He never seems to have identified as his day’s equivalent of “spiritual but not religious,” nor could he conceive of faith as an entirely private affair. In the aforementioned Letter #250, when his son expressed struggles with his faith because of problems he was having with the Church, Tolkien compared it to his old cynicism towards the academy:
The devotion to ‘learning’, as such and without reference to one’s own repute, is a high and even in a sense spiritual vocation; and since it is ‘high’ it is inevitably lowered by false brethren, by tired brethren, by the desire of money, and by pride: the folk who say ‘my subject’ & do not mean the one I am humbly engaged in, but the subject I adorn, or have ‘made my own’. Certainly this devotion is generally degraded and smirched in universities. But it is still there. And if you shut them down in disgust, it would perish from the land — until they were re-established, again to fall into corruption in due course. The far higher devotion to religion cannot possibly escape the same process. It is, of course, degraded in some degree by all ‘professionals’ (and by all professing Christians), and by some in different times and places outraged; and since the aim is higher the shortcoming seems (and is) far worse. But you cannot maintain a tradition of learning or true science without schools and universities, and that means schoolmasters and dons. And you cannot maintain a religion without a church and ministers; and that means professionals: priests and bishops — and also monks. The precious wine must (in this world) have a bottle, or some less worthy substitute. For myself, I find I become less cynical rather than more – remembering my own sins and follies; and realize that men's hearts are not often as bad as their acts, and very seldom as bad as their words. (Especially in our age, which is one of sneer and cynicism. We are freer from hypocrisy, since it does not ‘do’ to profess holiness or utter high sentiments; but it is one of inverted hypocrisy like the widely current inverted snobbery: men profess to be worse than they are.)
Tolkien knew the trouble that scandals of the Church could bring, but he concluded that such was not a sufficient basis for him to leave the Church:
I think I am as sensitive as you (or any other Christian) to the ‘scandals’, both of clergy and laity. I have suffered grievously in my life from stupid, tired, dimmed, and even bad priests; but I now know enough about myself to be aware that I should not leave the Church (which for me would mean leaving the allegiance of Our Lord) for any such reasons: I should leave because I did not believe, and should not believe any more, even if I had never met any one in orders who was not both wise and saintly. I should deny the Blessed Sacrament, that is: call Our Lord a fraud to His face.
Tolkien was a firm believer in the tradition of ex opere operato, that the power of the sacraments derived from the work of Christ, rather than from character of the human administrator (ex opere operantis). The power of the Eucharist could not be dimmed by his partaking of it with priests or with other people who might offend his sensibilities for one reason or another. It was precisely because of the Catholic tradition of making the Eucharist central to worship that Tolkien could not imagine leaving it for a Protestant tradition. He reiterated these same thoughts to Michael in Letter #267 a little more than a year later (January 1965). In another letter to Michael (Letter #306), Tolkien expressed his frustrations with certain changes the Church was going through (particularly the one I mentioned above), but he insisted that there was nowhere else to go. While he expressed appreciation for ecumenical efforts in his day, he still did not agree with the restorationist tendency among Protestants:
The ‘protestant’ search backwards for ‘simplicity’ and directness – which, of course, though it contains some good or at least intelligible motives, is mistaken and indeed vain. Because ‘primitive Christianity’ is now and in spite of all ‘research’ will ever remain largely unknown; because ‘primitiveness’ is no guarantee of value, and is and was in great part a reflection of ignorance. Grave abuses were as much an element in Christian ‘liturgical’ behaviour from the beginning as now. (St Paul's strictures on eucharistic behaviour are sufficient to show this!) Still more because ‘my church’ was not intended by Our Lord to be static or remain in perpetual childhood; but to be a living organism (likened to a plant), which develops and changes in externals by the interaction of its bequeathed divine life and history – the particular circumstances of the world into which it is set. There is no resemblance between the ‘mustard-seed’ and the full-grown tree. For those living in the days of its branching growth the Tree is the thing, for the history of a living thing is part of its life, and the history of a divine thing is sacred.
In these ways, Tolkien shows how thoroughly he has been shaped by Catholic ecclesiology.
Fifth, beyond Catholic ecclesiology, Tolkien also clearly knew Catholic Mariology. He affirmed Fr. Robert Murray’s connection of Galadriel with Mary (Letter #142) and he made such a connection to both Elbereth (or Varda) and Galadriel in other letters as well (Letters #213 and #320). In a long footnote to Letter #212, he compares certain treatments of death in his mythology to beliefs about the Assumption of Mary:
It was also the Elvish (and uncorrupted Númenórean) view that a ‘good’ Man would or should die voluntarily by surrender with trust before being compelled (as did Aragorn). This may have been the nature of unfallen Man; though compulsion would not threaten him: he would desire and ask to be allowed to ‘go on’ to a higher state. The Assumption of Mary, the only unfallen person, may be regarded as in some ways a simple regaining of unfallen grace and liberty: she asked to be received, and was, having no further function on Earth. Though, of course, even if unfallen she was not ‘pre-Fall’. Her destiny (in which she had cooperated) was far higher than that of any ‘Man’ would have been, had the Fall not occurred. It was also unthinkable that her body, the immediate source of Our Lord’s (without other physical intermediary) should have been disintegrated, or ‘corrupted’, nor could it surely be long separated from Him after the Ascension. There is of course no suggestion that Mary did not ‘age’ at the normal rate of her race; but certainly this process cannot have proceeded or been allowed to proceed to decrepitude or loss of vitality and comeliness. The Assumption was in any case as distinct from the Ascension as the raising of Lazarus from the (self) Resurrection.
This statement is a rather traditional expression of Catholic Mariology, wherein Mary is exalted by her relation to Christ and participation in the Incarnation. Additionally, Tolkien notes that when he was young, he came out of a background in which he knew nothing about Mary the Mother of Jesus, “who was never mentioned except as an object of wicked worship by the Romanists” (Letter #267). He obviously does not take such a view seriously any longer.
Sixth, Tolkien clearly had knowledge of the Scriptures. One can observe this knowledge at work in his commentary on Beowulf, which is presented in condensed form in his lecture on the same. At several points throughout the commentary, rather than follow the trend of his day to dismiss the explicitly Christian portions of Beowulf as later additions, he engaged with the links the Beowulf poet made with Scripture (especially the OT) and theological concerns. It was precisely because of the Christian framework in which the original poet operated that the monsters are a central concern of the story and that they function as forces of evil over which there will be final victory. I have not even attempted to index Scripture citations in Tolkien’s letters, but a cursory examination includes references to Genesis (#96, #102), the Psalms and Daniel (LXX; #310), the Gospels in general (#89), the Gospel of John in particular (#250), Acts (#156), 1 Corinthians (#191), and Revelation (#96). Furthermore, he translated the Book of Jonah for the original Jerusalem Bible.
Seventh, Tolkien was clearly a praying man. Prayer would naturally be part of his regular Mass attendance and as part of a prescription for his confessions that he gave before receiving the Eucharist. More concretely, one of his earliest letters (Letter #5), shows Tolkien’s prayerful response to the death of Robert Gilson and the threat to the existence of the T.C.B.S. as a whole. Aside from Letter #5, one can also find references to prayer in Tolkien’s correspondence in Letters #42 (January 1941), #45 (June 1941), #54 (January 1944), #64 (April 1944), #68 (May 1944), #89 (implicitly by reference to ritual; November 1944), #92 (December 1944), #96 (January 1945), #99 (May 1945), #113 (Septuagesima [January 25] 1948), #115 (June 1948), #191 (July 1956), #238 (July 1962), #250 (November 1963), #306 (October 1968), #310 (May 1969), #312 (November 1969), and #315 (January 1970). In Letter #54, he mentions a number of praises that he had learned and that he advised his son Christopher to learn while he was at war. Letter #113 also shows a keen attitude of repentance that comes from an experienced life of prayer and confession. Letter #191 specifically refers to the Lord’s Prayer. On that note, one particularly amusing case of Tolkien praying was in an event related by George Sayer (a frequent source of stories about Tolkien). Tolkien visited George and Moira Sayer in 1952 and George showed him a tape recorder, which was a piece of technology completely alien to Tolkien. When he heard that it could record and play back voices, he joked that it sounded like it was possessed. To perform an exorcism on it, he had Sayer record him saying the Lord’s Prayer in the dead language of Gothic, because why not? He also discusses the topic of prayer in his fantasy in Letters #153, #156, #246, and #297. Finally, he translated the Lord’s Prayer/Pater Noster into his invented language of Quenya, a piece called Átaremma (“Our Father”). This went through at least six versions, which are published in the forty-third issue of Vinyar Tengwar. The final version is as follows:
Átaremma i ëa han ëa [who art beyond the universe]
na aire esselya,
aranielya na Tuluva,
na kare indómelya
cemende tambe Erumande.
Ámen anta sira ilaurëa massamma,
ar ámen apsene úcaremmar
siv’ emme apsenet tien i úcarer emmen.
Álame tulya úsahtienna
Mal áme etelehta ulcullo.
Násië.
(One should also note that he wrote Quenya translations of Ave Maria [Aia María; four versions], the Litany of Loreto [incomplete translation in Loreto], Sub Tumm Praesidium [Ortírielyanna], Gloria Patri [Alcar i Ataren], Gloria in Excelsis Deo [Alcar mi tarmenel na Erun], and a Sindarin translation of the Lord’s Prayer [Ae Adar Nín].)
Eighth, Tolkien does not have much to say on the topic, but he has clearly thought through the subject of blasphemy. His son Christopher had written to him asking him about some expressions and whether or not they were blasphemous (he does not say what they are, but I am sure it is easy to imagine some of them). Tolkien responded (Letter #86, October 1944):
With regard to the blasphemy, one can only recall (when applicable) the words Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do – or say. And somehow I fancy that Our Lord actually is more pained by offences we commit against one another than those we commit against himself, esp. his incarnate person. And linguistically there is not a great deal of difference between a damn you, said without reflection or even knowledge of the terror and majesty of the One Judge, and the things you mention. Both the sexual and the sacred words have ceased to have any content except the ghost of past emotion. I don't mean 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.
Conversely, he expressed concern about a certain concept of C. S. Lewis’s as theologically blasphemous, namely the dualistic notion of the “Miserific Vision” as the contrast to the “Beatific Vision” (Letter #291, November 1966).
Ninth, he did, however, put much more thought into the subject of Christian marriage. His extensive Letter #43 to Michael demonstrates as much. His emphases on self-denial and the exercise of the will in marital love—as opposed to the common emphases on self-realization in marriage and in the feelings associated therewith—show the depth of Christian reflection he had engaged in on this subject. Likewise, despite his taste for medieval romance, he knows to distinguish it from truly Christian love:
There is in our Western culture the romantic chivalric tradition still strong, though as a product of Christendom (yet by no means the same as Christian ethics) the times are inimical to it. It idealizes ‘love’ — and as far as it goes can be very good, since it takes in far more than physical pleasure, and enjoins if not purity, at least fidelity, and so self-denial, ‘service’, courtesy, honour, and courage. Its weakness is, of course, that it began as an artificial courtly game, a way of enjoying love for its own sake without reference to (and indeed contrary to) matrimony. Its centre was not God, but imaginary Deities, Love and the Lady. It still tends to make the Lady a kind of guiding star or divinity – of the old-fashioned ‘his divinity’ = the woman he loves – the object or reason of noble conduct. This is, of course, false and at best make-believe. The woman is another fallen human-being with a soul in peril…. It takes, or at any rate has in the past taken, the young man's eye off women as they are, as companions in shipwreck not guiding stars. (One result is for observation of the actual to make the young man turn cynical.) To forget their desires, needs and temptations. It inculcates exaggerated notions of ‘true love’, as a fire from without, a permanent exaltation, unrelated to age, childbearing, and plain life, and unrelated to will and purpose. (One result of that is to make young folk look for a ‘love’ that will keep them always nice and warm in a cold world, without any effort of theirs; and the incurably romantic go on looking even in the squalor of the divorce courts).
In a draft written to C. S. Lewis (Letter #49, 1943), he pushes back strongly against Lewis’s idea that there should be two kinds of marriage: Christian marriages (which entail lifelong commitments) and State marriages (which have no such obligations).
Tenth, Tolkien discusses sermons in a few contexts. In Letter #63 to Christopher Tolkien (April 1944), he flatly states that most sermons are bad from any point of view, “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.” He also refers to a “stirring” sermon in which the priest categorically stated that God ought to wipe Oxford off the face of the earth (Letter #69, May 1944). More positively, he refers to a sermon given by the same priest on the story of Jairus’s daughter in the Synoptics that he regarded as one of the priest’s best (Letter #89, November 1944).
Eleventh, Tolkien observed the Catholic calendar. In addition to the major seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter, there are references to other commemorations and feasts. These days referenced in Tolkien’s letters include Rogation Days (Letter #69), St. Stephen’s Day (Letter #94), Septuagesima (Letter #113), and Santa Chiara’s feast (Letter #167). Also, in his short story “Farmer Giles of Ham,” he makes many references to Christian feasts, including: the feast of St. Michael, St. Nicholas’ Day, Christmas, St. John’s Day, Twelfthnight, Epiphany, the feast of St. Hilarius and St. Felix, the feast of Candlemas, and St. Matthias’ Day.
Twelfth, Tolkien took seriously the existence and action of angels. Although it is not clear how exactly he thought about angels designated as protectors of nations, he seems at least to allude to the belief regarding England in WW2 (Letter #53, December 1943). In a letter to Christopher while he was serving in WW2 (Letter #54), Tolkien gives his son some of his thought about guardian angels as he tells him to remember his own guardian angel,
But – at least this is my notion and feeling – : 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).
In another letter to Christopher written that same year (Letter #89), he tells of a vision he had before partaking of the Mass, in which he perceived the Light of God and a single mote suspended within it, shining by the ray in which it rests:
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…. As the love of the Father and Son (who are infinite and equal) is a Person [the Holy Spirit], 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.
Lastly, he sees guardian angels as having a special relationship with their charges, so that the guardian angel can explain better than an author how the author’s life might relate to the author’s work (Letter #213).
Thirteenth, Tolkien gave a summary of his ideas about the purpose of life in a letter to Camilla Unwin, the daughter of Rayner Unwin, the frequent reader of his work for Allen & Unwin (Letter #310, May 1969). After a relatively brief framing of the question of life’s purpose, he summarizes his thoughts, which should be familiar to any Christian at all familiar with Christian tradition:
So it may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis: Laudamus te, benedicamus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te, gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam. We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendour.
Probably the most well-known similar statement—though not from a Catholic source—comes from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, wherein it defines the chief end of humans: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”
Fourteenth, Tolkien believed in God’s direction of history, which is to say that he believed in divine providence. Indeed, as I have noted elsewhere, providence is one of the most pervasive, though understated, themes in LOTR. In Letter #246 he even refers to Frodo as “an instrument of Providence.” The theme is also present in The Hobbit to a lesser degree and in The Silmarillion to a greater and more explicit degree (not least because it is more likely in this story for Tolkien to name the instruments of providence). In cases in his letters when he might otherwise be inclined to despair about the course of history, he resorts to his trust in God’s providence, referring to it being in God’s hands (Letters #61 and #102). He also wishes for God’s guidance of Christopher’s ways (Letter #81). And, of course, he saw in retrospect God’s providence in guiding his own writing (Letters #142, #163, and #328).
Fifteenth, Tolkien’s Christian upbringing instilled in him both a stronger hope for redemption and a heavier sense of humility than many of his fellows in the time of WW2. This aspect of character is well illustrated by a trio of letters that he wrote to Christopher during the latter years of the war. In Letter #78, Tolkien draws on imagery from LOTR to speak about the Germans and the English:
There are no genuine Uruks, that is folk made bad by the intention of their maker; and not many who are so corrupted as to be irredeemable (though I fear it must be admitted that there are human creatures that seem irredeemable short of a special miracle, and 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).
(By this same token, he noted that his stories do not deal with “Absolute Evil,” because he does not believe that there is such a thing, which reflects his Catholic ontology [Letter #183].) Likewise, while emotions obviously ran high during the war and, as often happens, some people advocated for the total quarter-less destruction of the enemy, Tolkien pushed back against this tendency in Letter #81:
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…. 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.
Finally, in Letter #96 he responds with sadness to the news of the suffering of Germans in the closing months of the war:
Yet people gloat to hear of the endless lines, 40 miles long, of miserable refugees, women and children pouring West, dying on the way. There seem no bowels of mercy or compassion, no imagination, left in this dark diabolic hour…. We were supposed to have reached a stage of civilization in which it might still be necessary to execute a criminal, but not to gloat, or to hang his wife and child by him while the orc-crowd hooted. The destruction of Germany, be it 100 times merited, is one of the most appalling world-catastrophes. Well, well – you and I can do nothing about it. And that shd. be a measure of the amount of guilt that can justly be assumed to attach to any member of a country who is not a member of its actual Government.
As in his responses to criticisms of priests in the Catholic Church, he was not often eager to condemn. He had plenty of scorn for Hitler and Stalin, but not necessarily for the Germans and Russians over whom they ruled. He was all too aware of his own sin and powerlessness, as well as his obligations to the Lord to whom he was subservient.
Sixteenth, Tolkien had a hopeful vision of the ultimate future that was clearly informed by Christian eschatology. In the early days of the war he sent a letter to his son Michael in which he expresses his concern for him, but also his ultimate hope that, “There is a place called ‘heaven’ where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together yet” (Letter #45). This notion of the eschatological state as where the unfinished good in this life is completed also plays a role in Tolkien’s theology of sub-creation, wherein Tolkien believed that God would ultimately take up the works of sub-creation by his faithful ones and bring them to fulfillment. As I have reviewed both Letters #64 and #69 (both to Christopher) in my work on Tolkien’s philosophy of history, I briefly summarize the eschatological takeaways from those two letters. Tolkien obviously does not think that history progressively builds to its eschatological crescendo, but he does think that events in history give glimpses that offer foretastes of that crescendo in which the defeat of evil will be final and permanent. In both of these letters, he shows that it is too simplistic to call his view of history “pessimistic” (as some are in the habit of doing). It is a rather complicated and thoroughly Christian view of history, one which is all too aware of the intransigent problems of history at the individual, collective, and systemic levels, but which is all too hopeful of a delivering eschatological conclusion. In the same way, when Tolkien writes in Letter #195 that he does not expect history be anything but a “long defeat” with “some samples or glimpses of final victory,” one can see his Christian eschatology at work. It is precisely because Tolkien is Catholic that he does not believe that any human processes will lead to final victory. But it is also precisely because Tolkien is Catholic that he always accompanies such statements about the power of evil in human history with statements about final victory guaranteed by his Lord Jesus Christ. In Letter #96 he likewise expresses his hope for a future millennial reign of the saints, so that God’s will ultimately triumphs over any self-destructive endeavors of humanity. In the original text that this millennial reign comes from, the millennium takes place before the new creation, the latter of which is the ultimate hope that Tolkien expresses in his “On Fairy-Stories” as well as—in the Secondary World equivalent—in The Silmarillion (after the Second Music).
Seventeenth, Tolkien’s most distinct theological emphasis was his theology of sub-creation, which I have examined in much greater detail elsewhere. I can only briefly summarize this theology here. His first articulation of this theology was in his poem “Mythopoeia,” which he wrote for C. S. Lewis in September of 1931, based on a conversation they had (along with Hugo Dyson) that resulted in Lewis’s conversion. This work, and Tolkien’s more developed ideas about sub-creation, influenced Lewis’s own views about fantasy and it brought him into closer accord with the other members of the Inklings, who were also Christians. In “Mythopoeia” Tolkien articulates his ideas about myth-making through his focus on naming things as the quintessential action of myth-making, since it is invention about truth (in some way beholden to the truth of the thing named). This focus fits with his own myth-making process, as he begins with words and names and then crafts a world in which they make sense. In the act of naming, one sees the link between the origins of myth and the origins of language. The biblical narrative of Gen 2 also shows this naming action to be a basic human derivative of God’s creative action through Word in Gen 1. And the act of naming is only part of the larger project of sub-creation, which is itself part of the proper function of the human purpose of bearing the image of God the Creator. It is an exercise of a God-given capacity that fulfills its function when the sub-creator tells the truth creatively. The potentially infinite combinations that are possible within sub-creation are what they are because they are refractions of God’s truth and God’s true, underived creativity. Furthermore, myths and fantasies can serve to give people hope and provide them with some measure of deliverance from the current world order while gazing forward—by some angle or another—to that which will fulfill their hopes even as they pointed to true myth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The arrival of the new creation will not eradicate fragmented sub-creations either; rather, it will transform them and make them more beautiful than they ever could be in the present world.
In Tolkien’s famous “On Fairy Stories” (which Tolkien delivered as a lecture in 1939, published in 1947, and revised in 1964) he develops these ideas still further. He deals more extensively with what he had hinted at in “Mythopoeia” as the effects of fallenness on the sub-creative capacity (not least in how it is made to serve idolatrous ends), but he also further develops how humans, through fairy-stories in particular, imitate the manner of God’s creative action in how he forms, sustains, and designates functions/purposes for the objects and beings of his creation through the speech of his Word and Spirit. Fairy-stories do not properly provide a flight from reality per se, but rather a passage to deeper engagement with the world through the enchantment of language. They can do so because they are naturally explorative, searching out the possibilities of creation and discovering new dimensions to reality by presenting them to us as alien things. The truest form of sub-creation of which fairy-stories are capable is not only the sub-creation of individual things, but also sub-creation of a world with interrelationships, proper functions, and narrative logic that gives the individual things and features the context in which they make sense. This work, more thoroughly than any other, is where Tolkien pursues the importance of the inner consistency of reality for fairy-stories. It is also where he addresses most thoroughly the highest function of fantasy through its device of eucatastrophe, which he defines as:
the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially ‘escapist,’ nor ‘fugitive.’ In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief. [The Tolkien Reader, 86]
Eucatastrophes of fairy-stories anticipate the consummate fairy-story by which God redeems humans and thereby anticipate redemption. But the gospel is the consummate fairy-story because the features of fairy-story—including, most importantly, the ending—are raised from Secondary Reality when the Author of history writes them into Primary Reality, at which point, “the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation.”[88] In the grand story of history, Tolkien describes the Birth of Christ as the eucatastrophe of history and the resurrection as the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation, making it the eucatastrophe of a eucatastrophic story. It is thus a story with an inclusio of joy. And it achieves one of the primary goals of sub-creation in having the inner consistency of reality precisely because it has that quality by virtue of happening on the stage of creation and bringing the art of God’s action of creation to fulfillment in redemption. Indeed, as noted above, he sees an eschatological role in sub-creations, as God assumes them into the kingdom—inaugurated and later consummated via eucatastrophe—and thereby hallows them, redeems them, and makes them participatory in new creation:
But in God’s kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the “happy ending.” The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation. All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know.[89–90]
Just as Christ’s presence in the kingdom of God does not render the presence of people superfluous, neither should one expect that the fact of the gospel happening in the Primary World of creation should render the Secondary Worlds of sub-creation superfluous. Instead, the kingdom and the gospel make sub-creations hallowed (or sanctified) by virtue of their union and the divine vindication of their storylines insofar as they align with the divine will. If story-making, world-making, fantasy, and other such activities are part of being an image-bearer of God, then they would not wither away in the kingdom, but flourish in ways not possible before due to the lack of such union with the Creator.
While these two works represent his most concentrated reflections on the theology of sub-creation, we also see his reflections on the subject in Letters #17 (October 1937), #87 (October 1944), #89 (November 1944), #109 (July 1947), #113 (January 1948), #131 (late 1951), #142 (December 1953), #153 (September 1954), #163 (June 1955), #165 (June 1955) #181 (January or February 1956), #183 (1956), #192 (July 1956), #211 and #212 (October 1958), #269 (May 1965), and #328 (Autumn 1971). One can see that this was an important theological topic that he returned to in writing repeatedly over the course of forty years. Not only was it a distinct emphasis of his, but it was also an important topic for his thinking about his own role and vocation as an author, especially as an author of fantasy. As I try to illustrate in my own work, which I will be posting soon, Tolkien reveals here the theoretical foundations for the stories he wrote.
The preceding analysis is not a complete survey of Tolkien’s Christianity. There are other aspects of his thinking that one could argue were influenced by his Christian faith, such as his views of government, but I have tried to present a basic yet reasonably thorough picture. There were also surely many actions by Tolkien that were never recorded that could add further testimony to this. Some such things will never be known to others in the course of history. But what we do have available to us demonstrates how essential Tolkien’s Christian faith—and specifically his Catholic tradition—was to his life, to his thinking, and to his action. No biopic could possibly convey all of these aspects of Tolkien the Catholic, but what all of this evidence does indicate is that the filmmakers were incredibly negligent with their handling of Tolkien’s story. This negligence is, frankly, inexcusable if the story one wants to tell is the story of Tolkien. For this reason, more than any other, the movie fails in its basic task of telling that story.