Review of The Good News of the Return of the King
(avg. read time: 24–48 mins.)
Since I have reviewed Peter Kreeft’s book on The Philosophy of Tolkien this month, I will keep to that theme for my second Tolkien post for this month. This time, we will be looking at this much more recent book:
Jahosky, Michael T. The Good News of the Return of the King: The Gospel in Middle-earth. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2020.
Jahosky’s volume is an ambitious one for being under 200 pages (that is, before the dreaded convention of the endnotes; with those and the bibliography included, this volume is 215 pages). The ambition comes less in the extent to which he treats the works of Tolkien than in his incorporation of research from NT scholarship. Of course, that is not something I regard as a problem, as I am a NT scholar who writes about Tolkien (meaning I am something of a mirror to Jahosky, a humanities professor who writes about Tolkien while using insights from NT scholarship). It would only be a problem if the application of insights from NT scholarship hindered the insightfulness of the book. Unfortunately, I think that is exactly what has happened with this volume. In the attempt to argue that Tolkien’s fictional work is a Christian work, just as the man said, Jahosky has taken a road less traveled to reach that conclusion, and I think that road is less traveled for good reason.
Jahosky’s work is rather densely argued, but I think in this case that is ultimately to its detriment. There is much repetition and restatement, but it too often leads to confusion as opposed to illumination. This feature shows even in the statement of his thesis. Generally, the most consistent throughline of the book is the argument that Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is best read as a parable of the gospel (which he then argues for via a retrospective approach beginning with LOTR and then examining Tolkien’s earlier works), but even with some statements of the thesis, this central argument becomes muddled:
Somehow, The Lord of the Rings feels like an addition to the biblical epic. It expands the biblical story and can give us new insights. What do I mean by that? In this book, I argue that The Lord of the Rings functions like one of Jesus’s parables, a kind of mythical “what if?” of the gospel. (xii)
The Lord of the Rings is not a fictional version of the biblical story; it is a story about what the biblical story is about: the story of reality itself. (p. xiii)
In this book, I present Tolkien as an apologist, a ‘defender,’ of the Christian worldview. (xvii)
I will show in this book that Tolkien believed that the most effective apologetic combined mythos and its propositional counterpart logos, and that this belief was rooted in an intimate understanding and appreciation of the apologetic approach of Jesus and his parables. (xvii–xviii)
Instead, I will demonstrate how The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion contain the same mythos—the same story of reality—as the Bible, and that it is a story for everyone. Furthermore, I will show that Tolkien’s literary style was strongly influenced by the narrative art of Jesus’s parables. (7)
In conclusion, this book’s central thesis, that we can learn more about Christianity and reality from a fantasy book, does seem a bit of a stretch. (72)
The thesis of this book is that The Lord of the Rings, a fairy story, is analogous to a New Testament parable. (74)
According to the first statement, Tolkien’s story would be a “supposal” in the sense that C. S. Lewis’s Narnia story was, though it was often mistaken, even by Tolkien, for allegory, yet this would make Tolkien’s misunderstanding of Lewis even further off-base, so much so that he would be criticizing Lewis’s work despite doing the same thing he was doing. The second statement is not a particularly clear distinction, especially since he will describe parables on multiple occasions as “fiction,” and “a fictional version of the biblical story” would fit with both the “what if” nature of his first statement and with the many (misguided) correlations he will make between the two stories later in the book. The third and fourth statements are generally consistent with each other, but the element of “apologetics” recedes into the distance as we get further into the book, and it becomes more about making contorted biblical correlations than a narrative defense of the Christian worldview. Of course, the fourth statement does introduce something that appears in the fifth statement, which is also combined with the second statement. It is a curious thing, though, that for as much as he says Tolkien was strongly influenced by Jesus’s parables, and we know Tolkien knew Scripture, there is nothing we can draw on from Tolkien’s words to suggest such a strong influence of those parables (“parable” never even comes up in his own words in his 354 letters in the official collected volume, nor do I know of any direct references he makes to these parables in the letters). The sixth statement then returns to the content of the first statement, but then the seventh statement from just a couple pages later looks more like the fourth and fifth. But where the theses are not as clear, it is clear from the way the book is structured and from the sources he draws upon that his primary emphasis is on connecting the Tolkien’s work with Jesus’s parables and therefore arguing that LOTR is a parable of the gospel.
I will say that I appreciated Jahosky’s incorporation of worldview considerations (xvii–xviii; 6; 18). This should come as no surprise to any regular readers of this site or anyone who has perused my dissertation. He puts much emphasis on the narrative expression of worldviews, which is crucial, but I think that he overemphasizes this aspect to the neglect of the other worldview component functions (symbols, praxis, and answers to key worldview questions). That is certainly not surprising given his subject matter, but I think that he has overemphasized this point is of one piece with his misunderstanding of parables, which he draws largely from Sallie McFague and John Crossan (he does, of course, utilize Klyne Snodgrass’s volume, but his work and Blomberg’s, which is utilized even less, are less formative for Jahosky’s points). And because Jahosky misunderstands parables, his argument as a whole is undermined by the fundamental flaws in his understanding of parables as applicable to Tolkien’s work.
First, Jahosky overemphasizes the importance of Jesus’s parables. For example, he says, “Jesus’s parables, then, may be the closest we can get to authentic Christianity. Jesus primarily relied on parables to communicate the gospel, and so a Christian’s theology should be parable-centric” (xviii). Likewise, “Any understanding of the Christian worldview which fails to keep parables at its center must, I am convinced, be revised” (xix). He will even say of Tolkien’s approach later, “Why did Tolkien say that he kept all ‘allusions to the highest matters down to mere hints, perceptible only by the most attentive’? Perhaps he understood that that [sic.] this was the best way to speak authentically about Christ. Jesus said something quite similar when his disciples asked why he only spoke in parables (see Matt 13 and Mark 4)” (95–96). Furthermore, he says, “Since Jesus himself is the gospel in person, the best way we have of experiencing the concrete presence of the messiah today is through parable” (161). Finally, he posits, “Perhaps the real reason why Jesus kept his identity concealed was because he wanted people to discover that parables were the key to understanding it” (191). Parables were a key aspect of Jesus’s teaching, and they were more characteristic of him than of any subsequent Christian teacher, but they were hardly his exclusive mode of teaching (nor did they originate with him nor end with him). Thus, I guess Jesus himself missed this memo, as many of his teachings, including his predictions of the central gospel events, do not involve parables. Then his apostles missed the memo, as we do not see parables (or at least narrative parables) in the gospel proclamations of Acts, in the other NT summaries of the gospel, or in Paul’s, John’s, or others’ teachings. Then in Revelation, we get something that is consistent in overall message with these other teachings, but no parables as such. If not for the need to pay tribute to his influences and for the needs of his argument, I am not sure what could possess Jahosky to assign such significance to the parables that is beyond the significance assigned to them by the Bible.
Second, his understanding of what parables are is based on misguided arguments of NT scholars and theologians, the most influential of which for him are clearly Sallie McFague (primarily) and John Dominic Crossan (secondarily). Just before the first quote I gave for the previous point, he also quotes Robert Funk as one who has, “argued that the ‘gospel tends to make explicit what is only implicit in the parable; and thus violates the intention of what may be the dominant mode of discourse in which Jesus taught’” (xviii). This is not the only case where it is unclear if something is being smuggled in by Jahosky or if Jahosky is simply not reckoning with a significant aspect of this teaching:
Jesus spoke in parables because that was the only way of saying what needed to be said. Indeed, [citing McFague] “the only legitimate way of speaking of the incursion of the divine into history, or so it appears to this tradition, is metaphorically,” because “metaphor is proper to the subject-matter because God remains hidden.” (36)
In her recent book Short Stories by Jesus, Jewish New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine explains that “down through the centuries, starting with the Gospel writers themselves, the parables have been allegorized, moralized, Christologized, and otherwise tamed into either platitudes such as ‘God loves us’ or ‘Be nice’ or, worse, assurance that all is right with the world as long as we believe in Jesus.” In short, the parables of Jesus have been tamed and domesticated. (58)
According to McFague, that is why “any attempt to paraphrase a metaphor immediately reveals one of the primary characteristics of a good poetic metaphor: its inseparability from ‘what is being said.’” Parables simply cannot be stated non-parabolically. (66)
Salvation is a gift of grace bestowed on us by faith in Jesus now and later. That is why we must resist allegorizing the parables, for when we do, we reduce them to “earthly stories with heavenly meanings,” as Wright has commented. For the very same reason, we must decidedly not allegorize The Lord of the Rings. By allegorizing the parables, we turn them into otherworldly stories, not the beautiful, holistic stories that they are. (76)
[Building off of his support from Crossan’s work on pp. 79–80:] In conclusion, says Crossan, “challenge parables submit their destinies to their audiences. Jesus can hope and intend, to be sure, but ultimately he cedes control to his hearers.” (81)
The parable is the message. Jesus and Tolkien spoke in parables because there was no other way of saying what needed to be said. It is also impossible for any story to avoid gesturing beyond itself (Tolkien himself admitted to this). As we have learned, it is the extent to which an author intends the inevitable allegorical correspondences to be made that turns the story into a “conscious and intentional” allegory. Tolkien was also saying that his story should not be subjected to reductionism, as if it could be reduced to be about only something “religious” or “political.” (82)
Just as with Jesus’s parables, the parabolic form of The Lord of the Rings is the very content it wishes to communicate. (160)
Recall that one of the crucial differences in a parable is the shift between metaphorical and allegorical language, and the ultimate breakdown of the latter. We also argued earlier in the book that if we do not understand parables, we will not understand the incarnation. Again, parables are, in form, what they wish to say in content. So, when Tolkien wrote that there was ‘no embodiment of the creator’ anywhere in his mythology, he was not denying the presence of the incarnation in Middle-earth, he was denying an allegorical representation of it. (161)
This, as we have already learned, is a very significant comment because it means that the thing which Jesus wished to communicate—God becoming king—was inseparable from the way in which he said it—parables. (161)
What Jahosky does not tell the reader who is otherwise unfamiliar with parables scholarship is that the claims are built on the assumption, not a well-argued conclusion, that the explanations of parables that we see in the Gospels are later inventions by the early Church. In other words, the Gospel authors falsely attribute explanation to Jesus that he not only never said anything like, but never would say anything like, as that would fundamentally contradict the apparent intention of speaking in parables. Jahosky himself never says this explicitly, but one is left to wonder if this is how he thinks, since his argument rests squarely on this foundation, as he can only say what he says about parables by ignoring that Jesus did provide explanations in at least some cases (while in others it was clear enough from the context, as the Pharisees could recognize when they were part of the subject he was addressing). Unless Jahosky wishes to take this stand alongside these others that Jesus actually offered no explanation of his parables, since apparently the parables were for saying what could not be said any other way, then his notion of what parables are and how they function is in basic disagreement with Jesus himself. (For this and other issues related to parables, see my introductory series.)
(Of course, I should note here that Jahosky points out that he is not the first person to connect LOTR and Jesus’s parables. Besides Sallie McFague’s brief comments, Robert Murray [61], a priest Tolkien wrote letters to [#142, #156, and #209], also posited this idea. Though I have not read Murray’s presentation, based on what Jahosky quotes from him, Murray seems to have misunderstood parables as well, since he claims that Tolkien’s concept of the eucatastrophe connects fairy stories with Jesus’s parables. In the majority of cases in the narrative parables, there is no such eucatastrophe, as many of them have an ending that is cause for warning or is ambiguous in terms of it being good for some and not good for others, depending on where Jesus’s audience sits, or it simply involves no such sudden turn at all [Matt 13:24–30. 36–43; 18:23–35; 20:1–16; 21:33–46 // Mark 12:1–12 // Luke 20:9–19; Matt 22:1–14 // Luke 14:15–24; Matt 24:42–51 // Luke 12:41–48; Matt 25; Luke 12:13–21; 13:6–9; 15:11–32; 16:1–9, 19–31; 19:11–27].)
Third, Jahosky’s misunderstanding of the parables comes from a lack of understanding of the primary texts. He frequently describes parables as “incarnational narratives,” (e.g., 95) meaning:
That is precisely how the incarnation—the wonder of God becoming human—ought to be understood: a sacred unity of material and immaterial, concrete and abstract, type and antitype…. If everything in reality in some way points to Jesus Christ—the incarnation—then the best possible way to communicate that would be through a type of communication that is in form what it wants to say in content (incarnational). (4)
There is one letter [Letter #153] in which Tolkien seems to make an explicit connection between fairy story and parable. In the letter, Tolkien expresses that he wrote The Lord of the Rings for “the elucidation of truth, and the encouragement of good morals in the real world, by the ancient device of exemplifying them in unfamiliar embodiments, that may tend to ‘bring them home.’” The description here of the “ancient device” resonates with the biblical scholar’s understanding of a New Testament parable, for according to McFague, “parables are stories … that set the familiar in an unfamiliar context.” It would be quite difficult to deny the similarity of description between these two passages. (57)
Parables are a kind of indirect communication, “attempting to bring about new insight by framing the ordinary in an extraordinary context.” (59)
Parables—like “supposals”—invite the audience to suppose what reality would be like if God really did become human. They invite us to consider what the implications of living in a reality where that is the truth would be like. (59)
So, what are the features of fairy stories/parables that set them apart from ‘conscious and intentional’ allegories? What makes them such compelling narratives? For starters, they are suggestive, not explicit, about their meaning (we will explore exactly how this works later). We maintain that while it is impossible to avoid allegorical language completely, it is possible to use it judiciously. The kings, servants, shepherds, fathers, widows, judges, and others who inhabit Jesus’s parables are types that are suggestive of Jesus and the gospel. (59)
Jesus’s parables ought to be considered “short narrative fictions,” as Kreglinger has argued. We have learned that parables are narratives that contain both metaphorical and allegorical elements. (74)
Once again, Tolkien believed that we create stories because God is a storyteller. Our love of words, which is particularly evident through our dependence on metaphor and parable, springs from God’s decision to speak the world into existence. According to Ps 78:2, God says, “I will open my mouth with a parable; I will utter hidden things, things from of old.” This psalm tells us that parables are central to understanding reality itself. Stories are the key to understanding reality. Yet this is only the beginning of the story. Every story, we learned, has four parts: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, or alternatively, beginning, conflict, conflict resolution, and ending. (165–66)
Remember, the power of the challenge parable/fairy story is the recovery of some insight that has been lost or hidden by what Lewis called “the veil of familiarity.” (167)
There are a number of problems with such claims. One, while narrative parables would obviously be the best parallel for him to utilize, it is misleading to define parables as “narratives” full stop. I went over this point in more depth in Part 1 of my parables series. Two, Jahosky has gotten how parables can function when it comes to the unfamiliar exactly backwards, meaning his argument is upended. When you actually look at Jesus’s parables and how they function in terms of something being “like” something else, Jesus is rather presenting the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar, since the familiar gives some ground for comprehension of unfamiliar things like the kingdom of God/heaven, how it works, and what responses to it look like. I discuss more about how parables function in Part 2 of my parables series, particularly in bringing to bear scholarly insights on supposed distinctions between parables and other allegories and on whether or not parables would involve interpretations given by the teacher. Three, he misleadingly states (or he is at least misinformed) that McFague’s claim reflects “the biblical scholar’s understanding” when McFague was not a biblical scholar and there has been considerable controversy around parables so that one cannot accurately refer to the biblical scholar’s understanding. Four, the statement he makes about Ps 78 that “This psalm tells us that parables are central to understanding reality itself” is derived from a lack of engagement with the text itself. This is part of an opening of a psalm that recounts the story of Israel, not about how parables specifically are some key to reality. It refers to wisdom passed on, which is embodied in how this story serves to teach. When Jesus is said to fulfill this text by teaching in parables in Matt 13:35, it is another case of fulfilling a pattern, albeit in a climactic fashion befitting the one who is the awaited climax of Israel’s story. Indeed, as with the original text, Jesus’s parables are often related to Israel and its story, and the parables are emblematic of his ministry that serves as the climax of Israel’s story. In these multiple ways, it was fitting for Jesus to fulfill Scripture in how he taught, even as he fulfilled Scripture in so many other ways through his life, ministry, death, resurrection, and exaltation.
The misconstruing of parables also extends beyond these quotes. He thinks that Jesus’s parables are praeparatio evangelica, but this is a category mistake because they are part of Jesus’s proclamation of the gospel while the only thing they “prepare” for is the set of major gospel events at the climax of the Gospel narratives. (He is also wrong to say that “praeparatio evangelica typically refers to pagan, pre-Christian myths” [63], as that was never the primary reference in the early Church [most often, it referred to pre-Christian wisdom or philosophy, although it could refer to myths].) It is also rather strange that he describes parables in terms of narrative, but then says, “An excellent example of a parable which elicits the ‘dark interval’ [Crossan’s “pause between hearing and understanding”] can be found in Jesus’s riddle about the messiah from Matt 22:41–46” (79). Neither Matthew nor the other Gospel writers refer to this question as a parable, any more than they referred to the preceding questions in this exchange as parables. Finally, when he tries to correlate Jesus and Aragorn’s displays of parousia (which he says means “royal presence” [99]) and exousia, he claims, “The main point of many of Jesus’s parables—and the Gospels—is about his immediate royal presence, not his eventual return” (100). One would be hard-pressed to make this point from a detailed look at Jesus’s parables, particularly since parousia appears nowhere in the Gospels outside of Matt 24. And while the word can be used for the presence or arrival of a king or a god, it is problematic to say it simply means “royal presence” when one considers its use in 1 Cor 16:17; 2 Cor 7:6–7; 10:10; Phil 1:26; 2:12; and 2 Thess 2:9.
Fourth, as something of a culmination of these problems, he works with categories that become so broad that they are utterly unhelpful.
We speak in parables (stories) because we were made by a God who is himself a parable. When it came time to reveal himself to us, God did so in a way that was consistent with both his nature and our own. The incarnation—Jesus Christ himself—is the parable of God. (37) [It is curious why, for how apparently important this idea is, no one expressed it in this fashion in the NT or subsequently.]
The word “allegory” comes from the Greek word allegoria which means “to speak of another.” “In this sense,” according to Pearce, “every word we use is an allegory.” Every word is a symbol that signifies, or points to, something other. This is also very close to the definition of “metaphor” from the Greek metapherein, meaning “to carry over.” As John Dominic Crossan explains, “metaphors invite us to recognize the human necessity of ‘seeing as,’ the dangerous and vertiginous necessity to create the ground we stand on.” This means that there is technically no such thing as purely “literal” language. The Greek words allegoria and metapherein both mean to “speak of something as another,” or to see something as, but as we will learn later, there are slight differences between allegorical speech and metaphorical speech. Astoundingly, then, all language is intrinsically and inescapably allegorical/metaphorical.” (48) [This is to imply that by the sheer act of referencing something, you are engaging in metaphor and allegory. A category so broad is not particularly useful for literary or linguistic analysis.]
Regardless of which type of allegory one has in front of them, one thing is certain: neither allegorical composition nor allegorical interpretation can be completely avoided. (49) [If this category is so broad, it is no different from simply saying “neither composition nor interpretation can be completely avoided.” What does “allegorical” add if it has such broad significance?]
One strength of defining allegorical speech as working at a “substitionary [sic.] level” and metaphorical speech as “intrinsically suggestive in nature, refusing to be substituted” is clarity in discussing the difference between one allegory and another.” (p. 80)
First, as a parable, the incarnation is already a type of allegory. (p. 189)
By becoming a parable and speaking in parables, God was able to sneak “past those watchful dragons” which guard hardened hearts and minds. (p. 190) [It is unclear how, since Jesus was still crucified, and parables had a hardening effect on those who had no interest in listening further or responding more uprightly.]
We can also no longer accept the argument that the incarnation, death, and resurrection are missing from The Lord of the Rings. They are present in ways which defy how we think they ought to be, just like they are in Jesus’s parables. And like Jesus’s parables, they point to the historical reality of who Jesus is, what he did, what he is doing, and what he will one day finish doing.” (p. 191) [These events are only implicitly present in some of Jesus’s parables, such as the parable of the wicked tenants. Most of them are about the kingdom or response to the gospel.]
Related to such overstatement is Jahosky’s assertion, “Jesus is the ‘enfleshment’ of every truth-claim that every worldview has ever made” (38). This is going a step beyond his typical statement that Christianity unifies the fragments of truth from other worldviews. To say he embodies every truth claim, rather than every truth presented fragmentarily in other worldview expressions, is impossible in light of how many contradictory truth claims there are. But such are the excesses that stem from neither relying on conventional parameters of categories nor otherwise defining them in a helpful fashion. This, in turn, leads to an argument that excuses relying on thin comparison rather than thick comparison (another topic I explore in my dissertation and elsewhere on this site), but attempting to dress up the former in the language of “strong resemblance.” We will return to this point later.
Fifth, as a result of all of these misunderstandings, the use of the category of “parable” in application to Tolkien’s work has an obfuscating rather than illuminating effect. This includes his attempts to hear his words coming from Tolkien’s voice. For example, in response to the point I have already made about Tolkien showing no apparent proclivity for describing his work in terms of parable, he says:
Why didn’t Tolkien ever mention parable in his letters or essays? It appears to me that it would have been a violation of his belief that communication about the good news should be suggestive, allusive, and implicit, rather than preachy. Parables are indirect communication, and one of the most powerful qualities parables possess is their suggestiveness. (42–43)
Even Jesus would say when he was speaking in parables (though he would not always give an explicit signal). How then would the sheer act of Tolkien mentioning that his story is a parable undermine that purpose? Of course, he is also assuming an understanding of parable that Tolkien nowhere demonstrates but which Jahosky agrees with. We have no reason to think that Tolkien thought of parables in such a way as to dismiss the explanations of them as coming from someone other than Jesus or as representing a “domestication” of them by later authors.
In another case where he presumes to speak for Tolkien without relying on his words, he argues against the idea that Tolkien wrote of a “pre-Christian” time by saying, “On the Christian view of things, there is no such thing as a ‘pre-Christian’ time. History is God’s story and he is its Author” (65). I am afraid this is something Jahosky will need to take up with Tolkien. In Letter #165, he says the Third Age was not a Christian world and that Middle-earth was a “monotheistic world of ‘natural theology’. The odd fact that there are no churches, temples, or religious rites and ceremonies, is simply part of the historical climate depicted.” In Letter #183, he says of Middle-earth, “The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary.” Even more indicative is Letter #211, where he says, “I hope the, evidently long but undefined, gap in time between the Fall of Barad-dûr and our Days is sufficient for ‘literary credibility’, even for readers who are acquainted with what is known or surmised of ‘pre-history’.” In a footnote for this sentence, he states, “I imagine the gap to be about 6000 years : that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as S.A. and T.A. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh.” This previous one is the most devastating to Jahosky’s particular approach to biblical correlations for Tolkien (wherein Aragorn is the parabolic Incarnate One), but one can also add this remark from Letter #297, “The Fall of Man is in the past and off stage; the Redemption of Man in the far future. We are in a time when the One God, Eru, is known to exist by the wise, but is not approachable save by or through the Valar, though He is still remembered in (unspoken) prayer by those of Númenórean descent.”
Jahosky’s attempt to spin this last remark needs to be quoted in full:
Once again, Tolkien’s comment that ‘the Fall of Man is in the past and off stage; the Redemption of Man in the far future’ does not mean there is no incarnation in Middle-earth, it only means that there is nowhere any allegorical embodiment of the Creator in Middle-earth. Tolkien knew his theology. By referring to the redemption of man in ‘the far future,’ Tolkien is speaking of the final and ultimate redemption of man, which will only take place after the resurrection and final judgment at the end of history. Therefore, it is not implausible to suggest that the historical atmosphere of The Lord of the Rings resembles neither an explicitly Christian nor explicitly non-Christian period, making it analogous to Jesus’s parables. When Tolkien wrote of the historical atmosphere of Middle-earth, saying, ‘We are in a time when the One God, Eru, is known to exist by the wise, but is not approachable save by or through the Valar,’ Tolkien might have even been referring to the doctrine of general revelation, the notion that God’s existence can be inferred from the created universe. This does not mean, as most Tolkien scholars have argued, that Middle-earth is set literally during a pre-Christian period. It could refer to a pre-Christian time period, but it could just as easily be read as a description of the first century in which Jesus lived, which was a simultaneously Christian and non-Christian historical period. (178)
This is all quite confused. Letter #211 sufficiently refutes this contention, but there are some other points to note here. One, if Tolkien meant the ultimate redemption and not as a way of referring to the gospel events (which would otherwise fit with his use of the concept of redemption elsewhere in “On Fairy-Stories”), it makes his comment pointless. Of course it is still in the future from the perspective of both his story and the Primary World. Why would he need to say that in this context? Two, it is especially unfitting for him to say this considering that he was distinguishing his usage from later Christian language, such as the use of éarendel. In other words, he is saying that his story is set in a time after the Fall but before the Redemption (including the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and exaltation) that gave rise to such Christian references. Once again, the other way around, his statement would be pointless to make. Three, the spin he tries to put on Tolkien’s description of what he elsewhere called a “monotheistic world of natural theology” does not work either if the story of Israel is supposed to be parabolized in anticipation of Eru Ilúvatar’s incarnation in Aragorn. It is not just that it is pre-Christian.; it is pre-Israel as well.
This problem also includes his interpretations of Tolkien’s fiction. He frequently turns thin comparisons into “strong resemblances” by using the category of “parable” like pitch to cover over the many holes in his correlations. After all, parallels do not need to be exact in a parable, but apparently they do not need to be particularly close either. One wonders then what the limits are of this category. Presumably, anyone with enough imagination and flexibility can make anything and everything in the story parallel with Scripture in general or the gospel in particular and justify it with saying “it’s a parable.” I will only give twelve such examples of misguided “parabolic” links in Jahosky’s book.
One, he attempts to correlate the history of relationships between Jews and gentiles with what Tolkien does with the Dwarves and Elves, specifically through Gimli and Legolas, “Indeed, Aragorn’s return brings these two races back together, itself an indication that Aragorn resembles Jesus typologically. By including allusions to Israel’s story in the stories of elves and men in addition to the dwarves, Tolkien may have had Gal 3:28 in mind” (89). The problem? Gimli and Legolas represent a rather special friendship, so outstanding that Gimli alone of all the Dwarves is said to have been given a final resting place in the Undying Lands because of his bonds with Legolas and Galadriel. The Elves and Dwarves come to Minas Tirith to work on it, but this does not represent some sort of reunion or oneness for these races as a whole. They may not be as hostile as they once were, but they remain separate and not particularly close. He also tries to force this connection through referring to Dwarves as “the firstborn sons of Iluvatar” (157), although they are nowhere actually referred to in this fashion, as Tolkien reserves “Firstborn” for the Elves. The first Dwarves did emerge in history before the Elves, but they were made to sleep until after the Elves awakened.
Two, while Tolkien did acknowledge resemblances between Dwarves and Jews (Letter #176), and one can notice this in terms of the story of the exiles of Erebor, as well as their language sounding like Hebrew (but not actually operating like Hebrew), Jahosky gets rather confusing with the parallels. While he says the Dwarves most closely resemble Israel, he switches their role relative to Rom 11:11–12 after noting the story of their making (88). Likewise, he draws from nowhere in Tolkien this idea, which is just him transplanting an idea about Israel: “For the dwarves to fulfill their proper task of being a ‘light to the nations’ like Israel, they needed someone from outside their story to help them” (89; also see 111, 170). Literally, you will find nothing in all of Tolkien’s works that suggests such an idea.
Three, Jahosky tries to say again and again that Aragorn is not simply a Christ figure but is the parabolic incarnation of Ilúvatar. He says of the common account, “It is not a world still awaiting the incarnation of Iluvatar, as most Tolkien scholars have claimed, it is an age in which ‘he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.’ God has become king on earth as in heaven, evil and death have been disarmed, but there is still work to be done” (106). This has been rather strongly undermined by what has already been quoted from Tolkien. His major basis for such an argument is the link he claims but cannot actively demonstrate (the only link he provides is the reference to “hope,” which he takes as a reference to Aragorn’s name “Estel,” which means “hope” in Sindarin; 183–84) is the reference to the incarnation in “The Debate of Finrod and Andreth” in Morgoth’s Ring, which he thinks is actually referring to Aragorn. This is a text I will examine in detail another time, but Jahosky’s conclusion has already been undermined by what I have quoted from Tolkien. And if one needs further demonstration of how much he must torment the text to get it to confess what he wants, I offer this quote and ask if the reader can tell any better than I can how this logical entailment is clear:
It is also said that Manwe “was appointed to be, in the fullness of time, the first of all Kings: lord of the realm of Arda and ruler of all that dwell therein.” This passage reminds one of Gal 4:4, where Paul says, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” It also reminds us of Aragorn’s coronation when Gandalf proclaims, “May the thrones of the Valar endure!” There is a deep theological connection between Iluvatar, Manwe, and Aragorn. If Manwe is essentially an expression of Iluvatar’s immanence in the world, and the enthronement of Aragorn prompts Gandalf to make a connection between this Numenorean king and Manwe, then the conclusion is clear: Aragorn is Iluvatar become king. (174)
The conclusion is remarkably unclear, as it seems to come out of nowhere given the premises. This is also not what Gandalf says. He says, “Now come the days of the King, and may they be blessed while the thrones of the Valar endure” (VI/5). I am not sure what prompted Jahosky to change this quote, but it is not a good look for his argument. Also, the descriptions of the “fullness of time” have completely different referents for Manwë and Jesus, as it refers to the end of the initial formation of Arda for Manwë and to the eschatologically significant incarnation and life of Jesus. This is why it is important to do thick comparison and not simply settle for thin comparison.
Four, to this end, Jahosky strains himself to correlate events in Aragorn’s life with Jesus’s life. He says that Aragorn’s triumphant entry after Sauron is defeated resembles Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem (108), but this is only in the most superficial of senses. And it is undermined when he tries to claim, “Aragorn passes through the Paths of the Dead, which is clearly a parallel to Jesus’s death in the Gospels” (110). Of course, Aragorn does not die in this process, and it is before his triumphant entry, which makes his story structurally quite different from the gospel narrative. The attempt at correlation gets even more confusing when he discusses the White Tree, which also shows how he covers over holes in his argument by appeal to parable:
Immediately preceding the wedding of Aragorn and Arwen is Aragorn’s discovery of “a sapling of the line of Nimloth the fair … that was a seeding of Galathilion, and that a fruit of Telperion of many names, Eldest of Trees.” This event is heavily laden with biblical allusions. One could even suggest that the tree resembles the cross that is the means by which the messiah establishes the kingdom of heaven on earth. But doesn’t Aragorn walk the Paths of the Dead before his discovery of the sapling, and wouldn’t that event better resemble Jesus’s crucifixion? Yes and no. Yes, there is a resemblance between Aragorn’s journey along the Paths of the Dead and Jesus’s crucifixion and death, but there are no explicit, direct correspondences between one and the other. But no, because Aragorn does not die, per se, while walking the Paths of the Dead. And yet, yes again: Aragorn’s decision to take the Paths of the Dead eventually gives him command of the dead, just like Jesus himself. Back and forth, yes and no; this is how parables work. We get a glimpse of something that sounds familiar and just as we begin figure it out, there is a twist and the familiarity becomes ambiguity again. This parallel between the sapling and the cross is more credible than it may initially appear, however. This sapling is a descendent of Telperion, one of the Two Trees that bloomed on Valinor, home of the Valar, that was once visible in Middle-earth. Then, of course, there are the two trees from Eden that this event reminds us of [there are more than two trees in Eden and these Trees ought not to be correlated for the sheer fact that there are two mentioned], and how Rev 22:1–3 envisions a future when the Tree of Life will have leaves that bring “healing to the nations.” … These two events—the coronation of Aragorn and his subsequent discovery of a sapling of Nimloth the Fair—taken together clearly resemble the cross and the kingdom. (116–17)
Five, unfortunately, the forced parallels of Aragorn and Jesus do not end there. He attempts to cover the holes in his argument with the pitch of “parable,” while also creating new holes when he says, “Were we to allegorize Aragorn’s death, we would expect to see him rise from the dead three days after he willingly lays down his life, but this is not that kind of allegory. Significantly, Aragorn also does this in the sight of his bride—a symbol of Israel and the church throughout the Bible—Arwen” (110). He is so confident in this connection that he will say later, “We have already learned how Arwen resembles the ‘bride’ of Christ” (131). That is, we are supposed to take this conclusion for granted by the sheer fact that she is a bride. He does not provide any other reasoning for correlating Arwen in this fashion; it is only an extension of his notion that Aragorn is not only a Christ-like figure, but is himself Ilúvatar incarnate, and so his bride must be interpreted accordingly. He even tries to claim a Second Coming correlation: “And there is more than a hint of the possibility of the second coming in Aragorn’s final words to Arwen: ‘We are not bound forever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory. Farewell!’ All of these parallels, however, are reflected in Middle-earth the way that they are hinted at in Jesus’s parables” (110–11; see also 116). That last sentence is indicative of his approach, but the fact that he takes this sentence as providing “more than a hint” of the Second Coming is a blatant misreading of a way Tolkien describes in his works the fate of Men as leading them ultimately beyond the circles of the world after death (this is particularly clear in The Silmarillion).
Six, following on a correlation he made in a previous quote, he claims, “Valinor’s resemblance to Eden and humanity’s exile from it are poignant” (117). Men were never exiled from Valinor because they were not allowed in Valinor in the first place. There was no issue of taking from one of the Two Trees by Elves or Men, as Melkor and Ungoliant ruined them by draining them of their life and light and poisoning them. Furthermore, he says, “Quite obviously there is also the fact that there are two tress in Valinor and two trees in Eden” (173). What is quite obvious is that there are more than two trees in Eden (Gen 2:9, 16–17), and these two trees are completely different in function from the two central trees in Eden, as there is no equivalent of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that humans are not supposed to take from among Telperion and Laurelin, nor are either of them the tree of life, since the Undying Lands are already populated by immortals.
Seven, after noting the references in John to Jesus’s “hour,” he says,
There are several important moments in the novel when Aragorn speaks of his “hour” or “the hour,” which refers to his destiny to return to the throne of Minas Tirith. As we have already seen, the path to the throne takes Aragorn through death itself. In fact, it is quite interesting that references to Aragorn’s “hour” begin at the Council of Elrond, right before Anduril is reforged and the Fellowship of the Ring sets out on its quest on December 25. (122)
Of course, one wonders what construction of time reference would not have been taken as suggestive here. I am not sure what the non-clunky alternative would be that would not be considered suggestive. In both cases, it is simply a term for a long-expected time coming to pass. No more significance need be attached to it than that. And the fact that this is only referenced beginning with the Council of Elrond (which I have not confirmed myself) is not particularly notable either, since it is unclear when would have been a more suitable time beforehand to mention it or why Jahosky attributes significance to this when he would have found other ways of adjusting his parabolic interpretation to attempt to make the correlation fit if it happened at another time. This much is obvious from how he stretches to make his other correlations.
Eight, there are a number of confusing elements surrounding his correlations of Thorin, which I group here together. One such confusing element is this supposed logical entailment that I am still trying to figure out, “If Israel is reflected in all Iluvatar’s children, then it also logically follows that we can and should understand Thorin as a prefiguration of Aragorn/Christ, even though Thorin and Aragorn are quite different. This is no different from comparing the resemblances between David and Jesus in the Bible” (128). How does the conclusion follow from the premise? And there are quite a few differences between comparing Thorin and Aragorn and comparing David and Jesus, particularly since Aragorn is not descended from Thorin and he is only indirectly related to him by means of providence seen in retrospect, rather than as forming a long-expected “Son of David” or simply “David” figure. He only adds further confusion by saying this, “Thorin is not living in a world where the rightful king of all the children of Iluvatar sits on the throne” (136). Again, Jahosky got the idea that Aragorn is the rightful king of all the children of Ilúvatar from nothing that Tolkien actually wrote. Aragorn’s kingdom covers much of Middle-earth, but he is not the king of Rohan; he is not the king of the Drúadan Forest (since he cedes that to those who live there); he is not the king of the Shire; he is not the king of any part of Eriador outside of the old boundaries of Arnor; he is not the king of Dale; he is not the king of Erebor or the Iron Hills; and he is not the king of the Woodland Realm, Lothlórien, or East Lórien (which is established after the people of Lothlórien overthrow Dol Guldur). The Free Peoples of these realms are his friends and allies, but they are not his subjects. Jahosky even goes so far to say, apropos of nothing, that the prophecies of the return of the king under the mountain are, “in retrospect, poetic prefigurations of Aragorn rather than predictions of the kind of king Thorin would prove to be” (149). It is as if Daín Ironfoot is no longer significant, although the prophecies were said to come true in his reign.
Nine, in an attempt to uphold the idea that Aragorn is a parabolic Christ, Jahosky feels compelled to argue that Gilraen is a parabolic Mary (130). I must assume that he felt compelled because it is not a natural conclusion, as Tolkien never mentioned Gilraen as a Marian figure (unlike Varda/Elbereth and Galadriel). The sloppiness of this connection is well encapsulated by this sentence, “Both Mary and Gilraen predict, or are told, that their sons will suffer greatly in their lives” (132). The difference between predicting for oneself and being told is not an insignificant one, but he acts as if these are more or less interchangeable. Likewise, he tries to make this odd correlation:
As the New Adam, Jesus must “undo the effects of the Fall of Adam and Eve.” Similarly, Aragorn must undo the corruption which the One Ring caused in his ancestor, Isildur. Gilraen, like Mary, is the New Eve, whose son will bring about the “new heaven and new earth” and “Arda Remade,” which Rev 21:1 and “The Debate of Finrod and Andreth” both speak of. Mary and Gilraen, then, are women who herald the beginning of the new creation. (131)
You get no points for guessing that there is no connection between “Arda Remade” and Aragorn in Tolkien’s own work. Aragorn is certainly important, but he is not as important as Jahosky’s argument needs him to be.
Ten, because Jahosky is taken with the work of Michael Heiser, he unnecessarily insists, “the Valar are (in this author’s opinion) not angels or archangels, but members of Iluvatar’s ‘divine council’” (153; also see 162–64). Again, this is something he will need to take up with Tolkien:
Letter #131: The cycles begin with a cosmogonical myth: the Music of the Ainur. God and the Valar (or powers: Englished as gods) are revealed. These latter are as we should say angelic powers, whose function is to exercise delegated authority in their spheres (of rule and government, not creation, making or re-making).
Nowhere is the place or nature of ‘the Wizards’ made fully explicit. Their name, as related to Wise, is an Englishing of their Elvish name, and is used throughout as utterly distinct from Sorcerer or Magician. It appears finally that they were as one might say the near equivalent in the mode of these tales of Angels, guardian Angels.
Letter #153: The immediate ‘authorities’ are the Valar (the Powers or Authorities): the ‘gods’. But they are only created spirits – of high angelic order we should say, with their attendant lesser angels – reverend, therefore, but not worshipful
Letter #156: He was sent by a mere prudent plan of the angelic Valar or governors; but Authority had taken up this plan and enlarged it, at the moment of its failure.
There is only one ‘god’: God, Eru Ilúvatar. There are the first creations, angelic beings, or which those most concerned in the Cosmogony reside (of love and choice) inside the World, as Valar or gods, or governors; and there are incarnate rational creatures. Elves and Men, of similar but different status and natures.
Letter #183: In my story Sauron represents as near an approach to the wholly evil will as is possible. He had gone the way of all tyrants: beginning well, at least on the level that while desiring to order all things according to his own wisdom he still at first considered
the (economic) well-being of other inhabitants of the Earth. But he went further than human tyrants in pride and the lust for domination, being in origin an immortal (angelic) spirit.
Letter #268: Gandalf was not ‘dying’, or going by a special grace to the Western Land, before passing on ‘beyond the circles of the World’: he was going home, being plainly one of the ‘immortals’, an angelic emissary of the angelic governors (Valar) of the Earth.
Letter #286: There are no 'Gods', properly so-called, in the mythological background in my stories. Their place is taken by the persons referred to as the Valar (or Powers): angelic created beings appointed to the government of the world. The Elves naturally believed in them as they lived with them, But to explain all this would simply hinder my getting on with publishing it in proper form.
Letter #320: I think it is true that I owe much of this character to Christian and Catholic teaching and imagination about Mary, but actually Galadriel was a penitent: in her youth a leader in the rebellion against the Valar (the angelic guardians).
Letter #325: The angelic immortals (incarnate only at their own will), the Valar or regents under God, and others of the same order but less power and majesty (such as Olórin = Gandalf) needed no transport, unless they for a time remained incarnate, and they could, if allowed or commanded, return.
Eleven, he attempts to make some convoluted connections between Manwë, Aragorn, and Jesus. I already noted a quote from p. 174 above that shows the intense stretching Jahosky’s argument requires, but that is not all there is to it. He claims that “Manwe’s destiny to be ‘first of all Kings’ of Arda is fulfilled through the return of the kings to Minas Tirith” (175), which makes no sense because he is acknowledged as King of Arda before Men ever exist, and his “fullness of time” has already come in terms of him becoming King. But there is also the odd attempt to connect him with Jesus by claiming that Jesus is “the most unique member of the divine council” (179; which Jahosky does not mean in a heretical fashion, but it is obviously going to sound questionable) and because of Manwë’s apparent similarities with the Angel of YHWH (178–79), which is particularly odd because I thought Manwë and the other Valar were not supposed to be angels. Finally, he tries to connect Manwë and Aragorn again by saying, “In the Gospels, God is incarnate through a king from the House of David. Through Manwe, Iluvatar can enter his story through the promised Numenorean king while still remaining the ‘Author without’” (185). Manwë is in no way related to Aragorn in a way comparable to David’s relation to Jesus.
Twelve, in the process of his review of “The Debate of Finrod and Andreth,” he uses “inaugurated eschatology” in a rather confused fashion:
Finrod then says something that once again gives us a glimpse of Tolkien’s eschatological views: “For that Arda Healed shall not be Arda Unmarred, but a third thing and greater, and yet the same.” Nowhere in Tolkien’s entire mythology is there such a clear example of inaugurated eschatology, sometimes expressed in biblical scholarship by the phrase “already, but not yet.” (183)
How in the world has eschatology been inaugurated in this context? What is the already of the eschaton? Aragorn, who Jahosky mistakenly thinks this text refers to when articulating its sense of hope, will not be born for thousands of years after this. There is no eschatological element that is “already” in this text. Inaugurated eschatology needs inauguration by eschatological events, and there is no eschatological event in the present tense of this conversation.
I could go on, but I do not wish to belabor the point further. There are also the more minor, technical errors concerning Tolkien’s story that I note in every review of this kind, so this is not a special problem of Jahosky’s. One, he says that Númenóreans are “half elf and half man” (117) when that was only true of Elros, the first king. Two, he seems chronologically confused when talking about the lead-up to the Battle of the Five Armies as he writes, “Not all the wealth of Erebor belonged to the dwarves; some of it belonged to the people of Laketown, who were led by Bard (the man who would go on to slay Smaug)” (142). Bard would not “go on” to slay Smaug; by this point in the story, he had already done it. Three, he contradicts himself in how he sets “The Debate of Finrod and Andreth,” “The dialogue between Finrod and Andreth took place in the First Age of Arda during the Siege of Angband, Morgoth’s fortress. There was a total of six major battles between the children of Iluvatar and Morgoth during the First Age, and this debate took place during the third battle, the Dagor Aglareb (‘Glorious Battle’)” (179). If this conversation was during the Siege of Angband, it could not have happened during the Dagor Aglareb, since the Elves’ victory in that battle is what marked the beginning of the Siege of Angband (and Men would not come into Beleriand until the fourth century of the First Age, around 250 years into the Siege of Angband).
I was quite disappointed with this book and that should be rather clear from the whole of this review. But I do not want to act as if it is all bad. Though the note may appear small compared to what has come before, I would prefer to end on a positive note for a book that I did expect more from. As I said, I do appreciate his appeal to worldviews in his analysis. And I do think this point is spot-on, even if I disagree with much of the book as it is framed:
The reason why Tolkien felt so confidence in including Finnish, French, Old English, Middle English, Norse, Germanic, Slavic, Greek, and Celtic elements in his stories was precisely because of this understanding of Christianity that we have discussed thus far. In fact, I argue that it is because Tolkien understood the Christian myth as the story of reality that he included these other cultures and myths in his books to illustrate how the Christian myth “unifies and transcends” the “fragmentary and imperfect insights” of other myths. (14)
This absolutely fits Tolkien’s famous conversation with Lewis and part of his argument in “On Fairy-Stories.” Finally, this note particularly resonated with me, “By creating an intertextuality with his books, Tolkien has created a resemblance to the intertextuality of the biblical writings” (85). Again, I think this is exactly correct, and I think it is a point that needs emphasizing more often. In fact, my next Tolkien project on Substack will involve exploring the connections between LOTR and The Silmarillion.