To Men He Gave Strange Powers

Pauli asked me to comment on this post he made a while ago. Men are a unique character in the LOTR. I heard Joseph Pearce (author of Tolkien: Man and Myth) talk at Franciscan University of Steubenville where I finished my MA in Theology last year, and he in the Q&A section he addressed the question of why there is no religion in the LOTR. His answer was that, being as Tolkien's work was trying to paint a more strictly mythic picture, the scope of the work was really "before" the Incarnation (I would probably tend to use a more temporal word like "outside") and thus the only religion which would have been appropriate would have been paganism; and thus it is a good thing there was no religion. This applies more directly to the LOTR, since in the Silmarillion you do have a place in Numenor that is very much like a place of worship and becomes , but I believe the same tenet holds true in for the most part even here. Most all of what takes place, the battles etc, are more "physical" in nature ... with the spiritual content being "symbolized" rather than directly "present" in the story. I agree with this, and furthermore it is not just that I think the things I am about to suggest do not "cause problems" for Pearce's view, it is more that I think they are very congruous with it (albeit maybe in the way the Chesterton would speak of congruity within a paradox) and that the two taken together provide a much fuller view of what Tolkien was doing. I would be hard pressed however, especially in the space of a single post (or even maybe many posts .. it might take a graduate paper with footnotes and all that jazz), to give a detailed and adequate defense of the congruity and complementariness and who they produce th richer view. So I will just say what I think of men and elves. The Main Response (finally!) Many different things are represented by the elves, men, Maia and Valar, but with regards to men and elves I think that the most prominent pairing represented is man before the Incarnation and man from the new perspective of the Incarnation. In fact, I have always thought of the Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings as, respectively, the Old Testament and the New Testament of Tolkien: The history of a people's struggle (the elves struggle with Morgoth and Israel's struggle with Egypt, Canaan and then "the nations" ... and in all 3 cases the struggle against worshipping their idols), and then the Parable (Christ taught by way of many parables, and His life death and resurrection might be called THE parable, so important of a parable it was also made into historical fact ... cf C. S. Lewis' essay "Myth Become Fact" which can be found in God in the Dock.) What is central in Tolkien's Incarnational man is the same thing as is central in THE Incarnational man (to quote Pilate: "Ecce Homo! [behold the Man]) ... the ability to accept death in hopes of another world. This means completely outside of Arda ... like Sheol in the Old Testament, Aman and the halls of Mandos are within the region of the earth. "Abraham's Bosom" may be paradise, but it is not yet Heaven. Another interesting thing to note, which will play prominently in an essay I hope to write and hopefully have some way to publish here, is that, at least in the LOTR, courtly love is centered in mortality (the hobbits are mortal, as their histories indicate). Of the six people who "fall in love" and get married in the LOTR, Arwen is the only immortal and she becomes mortal for the sake of her love for Aragorn. Even in the Silmarillion precursors of Aragorn and Arwen (such as Beren and Luthien, who function with regards to the final couple much like Old Testament "types" function with regards to New Testament realities) the immortal foregoes immortality for the sake of the mortal. Even in the case of Thingol (the elf) and Melian (the Maia), Thingol never goes to Valinor with Melian, she remains in Middle Earth with him. One of the central tenets of the essay I hope to write notes that Tolkien follows very strongly in the path set by medieval literature, where courtly love is symbolic of Grace. The fact that his instances of courtly love are restricted to mortals, combined with his recurring references in the Silmarillion to death as a "gift" [keeping in mind that the original meaning of "Grace" is "gift"] support the idea that for him love and death are tied to Grace. Men are sort of a different model. Elves and Maia are much more economical. Like Pauli said, having a certain amount of power to "invest" and get "returns" on. I think this is Sauron's failing: he attempted to incarnate but maintain his original level of power. Gandalf, who would originally have had the same powers as Sauron since both were maia, did become incarnate but gave up a large degree of his power in doing so, in order to become a counselor rather than a ruler. Like Voldemort with his horcruxes, Sauron tried to ensure his continued bodily reign by pouring "part/parts" of himself into the ring. It is not drawn out in "black and white" but it seems the "returns" of men are based solely in the virtues they practice in their actions. NOTE: A quick response to the question of how what I have said can be true and it simultaneously be the case that Tolkien's story happens "outside" the Incarnation: I would say that Tolkien is NOT writing an allegory of the Bible, OR a story in a "Christian setting." He is writing his own story - really his own "morality tale" in the line of medieval morality tales such as Gawain and the Green Knight, which he translated and on which he wrote an essay. The translation is still in print but the essay is in a book entitled The Monsters and the Critics, which is not in print but which one might find from a used book seller, as I did. The charteristic of Tolkien's morality tale, however, is based in the Biblical "mode" as it were; it would take me a long time to explain exactly what I mean by that, but hopefully it helps one "get a feel" or "hint" of what I'm saying.