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/lit/ - Literature

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23338358 No.23338358 [Reply] [Original]

How did a devout Catholic like Tolkien reconcile that his heroes didn't really worship the One True God of his setting?

>> No.23338362

>>23338358
Man shut your ass up

>> No.23338386

>>23338358
Eru Illúvatar?

>> No.23338422

>>23338362
fpbp

>> No.23338440
File: 66 KB, 601x323, Tolkien Wisdom.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
23338440

>> No.23338493

>>23338386
This. Tolkien's universe DOES have the One True God. The Valar and the Maiar are essentially angels doing God's will (or not doing it, in the case of Melkor, Sauron, the Balrogs, etc.).

>> No.23338826

>>23338440
>wagner for midwits

>> No.23338830

>>23338826
>implying

>> No.23339226

>>23338358
I've been looking for a thread to dump this in but here it goes. Orthodox Catholicism is not like any other religion in this world, not even close, and it is so unbelievably aggressive in its dogmatic claims that you need to wrap your head around how Tolkien views the world:
>Godliterally enters your soul via the Sacraments (Baptism, Eucharist, and Confirmation) and dwells in you unless you mortally sin
>You not only are permitted but required to eat God at least once per year
>Eating God is mandatorily free and charging for it is excommunication
>You receive total and equal forgiveness of any sin you commit in the confessional. ANY
>Jeffrey Dahmer and me watching Only Fans are held to the same standard of confidentiality by priests
>If a priest acknowledges they even heard your confession or acts on knowledge from the confessional to someone else they are excommunicated
>You cannot pull out, wear a condom, or orgasm anywhere but inside of a woman whom you have sworn to only orgasm into until one of you dies
>most people are destined for eternal torment and that is your justified fate naturally but God is merciful and you can be totally assured of His salvation if you accept it and also the salvation of all is possible
Worshipping, prayer, and otherwise are essential but the Catholic Church is far more intense than just some pious prayers.

>> No.23339257

>>23339226
The seal of confession is extremely important.

>> No.23339326

>>23338358
It's called having an imagination.

>> No.23339506

>>23338493
>>23338358
>>23339226

It is pantheistic setting in Tolkien's Arda, but think of Indian gods for example and the gods of the Vedas

It is my understanding that there are almost zero, or non-existant, amount of altars and temples dedicated to the Creator-God Brahma: he does not even proper "cult" with rites of worship etc. while Shiva (Destroyer) and Krishna (Preserver) have hundreds, maybe thousands, different offshoots, temples, avatars etc.

Eru in that sense reminds me of Brahma

>> No.23339575

>>23339506
Totally irrelevant to Tolkien; all the Hindu "gods" are all demons.

>> No.23339640

Same way Christ, the Church Fathers, the Churches, etc. reconciled it. You shouldn’t even have to ask this question. I bet you’re a Westerner too. It’s actually sad how little Western adults know about Christianity now…

Christians imagined that pagans could be virtuous even though they could not be Christians. Many Christians even believe that the virtuous pagans and righteous Jews were saved when in the Harrowing of Hades. The righteous Jews awaiting judgement there in Abraham’s bosom.

You’ll notice that there is not one instance in Lord of the Rings that sees a righteous character being idolatrous, which is the real problem with paganism for Christians. The issue is not that people who lived before Christ believed that the world was filled with “gods”. In fact, Christians agree. It is filled with “gods”. They just assert that these “gods” are not actually gods, that they are something like principalities, that they are not all benevolent (which no pagan disagreed with), and that they should not be worshipped. That’s it. Thus, the virtuous non-Christians in Tolkien’s stories are almost more likely to be saved by Christ than the non-Christian pagans who Christians assert really were saved by Christ because they never commit idolatry.

>> No.23339645

>>23338358
According to Tolkien, the only One True Church is the Catholic Church, so by adding (false) religions that exalted Eru over Christ, he would be betraying his own religion.

>> No.23339652

>>23339645
No. The narrative of his universe takes place in pre-history. It’s long before the birth of Christ. The people in the story are just pagans, who may be in error, but can nonetheless be virtuous, righteous people and thus have their place either among the saved or at least the not-condemned in Christian theology. The covenant is in effect written with Christ. The people who lived before the covenant are judged basically by their righteousness by Christ when he harrows hell.

>> No.23339653

>>23339226
I find the Catholic focus on dogma pretty weird. We are obviously very limited beings and yet people kill and excommunicate each other over autistic details of highly abstract points of dogma which no human can ever understand with any semblance of certainty anyway.

>> No.23339656

>>23339653
What exactly is your point? Prior to the Protestant reformation, Christians only killed other Christians for strictly political reasons. Even the Guelph and Ghibelline war was a politically motivated war, obviously. Dogma as the justification for war comes in with the Protestants, who are, from the Catholic perspective, dogmatically in error. So how is it weird for the Catholic Church that a people choose to take up dogma as a reason for resisting the church? It’s hardly the Church’s fault. And additionally, it’s perfectly aligned with Christian belief. These people have free will, even willing war with dogmatic disagreement as its justification. And the church’s job is to teach not what it thinks is good but what is literally true per God.

>> No.23339680

Melkor is the only one in the books that actually *REQUIRES* worship, even having temples (basically pyramid/ziggurat looking things is how they're described) built to conduct blood sacrifice rituals. Sauron was the High Priest of this orc religion.

Now who does this sound like in real life....? Blood sacrifices, temples, demands worship (unlike Eru, who doesn't).... oh gee this is a toughie...

>> No.23339689
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23339689

>>23339656
>Prior to the Protestant reformation, Christians only killed other Christians for strictly political reasons

So the church was just fine with heresies before 1517?

>> No.23339696

>>23339680
>the fervently catholic dude was actually a crypto-atheist because he wrote satan doing evil things
This post is so retarded I felt part of my essence leave upon finishing it. I have diminished and become a lesser thing because of your post. Fuck you.

>> No.23339707

>>23339689
So to be clear, I said killed when I should have said “waged war”. The Catholic Church at that time was the legal executive and it saw this not only as a role justified by Christian theology but the law itself as justified in a Christian theology. Thus cults could and should be persecuted to the full extent of the law, including executions if need be, but this is simple law enforcement rather than waging war. I fail to see how any of this can strike anyone as weird. It’s obviously justified from a Catholic perspective.

>> No.23339709

>>23339696
He was suggesting that they are an allegory for Jews retard.

>> No.23339727

>>23339709
All of those things apply to Catholics, though. Mass is their "evolution" of the blood sacrifices of the old religion. Also, Tolkien held nothing but admiration towards the Jews, so trying to spin it and say he didn't is a moot point.

>> No.23339742

>>23339696
>i don't actually have a legit rebuttal to your point, so i'm just going to act super outraged and say i "lost part of my essence" in an attempt to negate your point.

>>23339727
>Tolkien held nothing but admiration towards the Jews
sounds like he had all the information but still failed to make the mental connection between Melkor, blood sacrifices, and Old Testament religions. (after all, Jews weren't the only ones practicing blood sacrifices, they're literally just as pagan as the pagans)
"Eat my flesh and drink my blood and have ETERNAL LIFE"
"No, not like vampires! Totally different!"
That's exactly what a vampire serving Melkor would say

>> No.23339778

>>23339727
I swear you /pol/tards can’t read anything but shitty pomo philosophy. Why don’t you go read the Christian sources.the Christian religion is less of an evolution (or revolution for that matter) of the old world and more like a clarification. The difference between a pagan and a Christian is that the pagan imagined blood made the gears of the world turn while the Christian thinks the same and says “correct, but it’s the blood of Christ”. And this idea that J.R.R. Tolkien “held nothing but admiration for Jews” is a flat out lie. He was condemned as anti-Semitic because people believed he used the Jews as inspiration for dwarves and replied once to a German editor that he didn’t belong to “those gifted people” because he thought Nazism was completely retarded, not because he thought Jews were right or good.

>> No.23339814

>>23339707
The legal aspect is irrelevant to the initial comment.

>people kill and excommunicate each other over autistic details of highly abstract points of dogma

Whether the church had a legal justification or not, they were certainly willing to kill over theological disputes, either in the case of individuals or in larger groups.

>> No.23339822

>>23339506
>It is pantheistic setting in Tolkien's Arda
No, it's not.

>> No.23339827

>>23339645
That's not how it works. He's writing fiction.

>> No.23339863

>>23339778
(not him you're responding to)
>The difference between a pagan and a Christian is that the pagan imagined blood made the gears of the world turn while the Christian thinks the same and says “correct, but it’s the blood of Christ”
One theory is that Christ was a moral "revolution" against the old Melkorian religion of blood sacrifices, but done in such a way that "magically" refutes Melkor's laws in such a way that it allows for people to break free of Melkor. Let's not forget that all this takes place in a concept that Melkor controlled the physical world (the "hroa" as Tolkien called it), and that the Valar and elves, even Valinor itself, represented the spirit ("fea").

Finrod iirc was the first to get to befriend a human , one of the House of Beor. Tolkien writes this "discussion" in a chapter called "Athrabeth Finrod a Andreth", where we learn that the House of Beor and other humans besides, has a myth among themselves of humans once having had long lives like the Elves, but that they lost it when they were tricked into worshiping Melkor and engaging in "blood sacrifice" religion and other gruesome rituals.

This idea isn't entirely unique, the idea that the "physical world is bad" while the "spirit world is better" is a very familiar theme in both western and eastern religions and ancient philosophies. The only unique part is that Tolkien links together "practicing a blood sacrifice religion" and "Melkor and the physical world he infused with his essence", a mental nod to gnosticism, which was early branded heretical and slaughtered ("What Would Eru Do? WWED?).

That Tolkien was raised Catholic i have no doubt, but how do we known whether he had or hadn't researched into his own religion's originations? I have a feeling he's quite thoroughly educated on a lot of it (to include gnostic "heresies"), considering that you see evidence he was familiar with these historical events and ideas, because they keep cropping up in his notes.
And then he gets confronted with his books, his public face is always "oh yes, i'm a generic Catholic, hurray for Christianity!", but his writings are very un-Catholic-like. You don't see elves or even hobbits going to church to worship Eru.

If Tolkien's goal was to write "a True history" of the world, in some fashion, whether metaphorically or literally, then i think it's important to stay "true" to his books, and not to his "public face that he presents in letters to friends and colleagues". And his writings are very gnostic themed. Reincarnation, physical-vs-spirit, Demiurge/Melkor, the blood sacrifice temple cults of the orcs, etc.

>> No.23339882

>>23339827
Tolkien himself didn't make a distinction.

>> No.23340017

>>23338493
there is no Jesus in middle earth, the closest they can do is a Unitarian Islam-like God. closest anyone who is not a human on earth can come to the Catholic God. animals on earth would have no understanding that Jesus, a human, would be particularly important and neither any creature anyone else with no access to Jesus.

>> No.23340073

>>23339653
If dogma were meaningless then so would be excommunication.
>>23339814
>are willing to kill over theological disputes, either in the case of individuals or in larger groups.
Perhaps during a time for a specific purpose but death penalty heresies is ridiculously slim. The Church killed maybe 25-50K witches over 500 years in all of Europe. This is, relatively speaking, paltry and also this would be today's pedophile kabal of satanists or equivalent. Again, the Church on Earth is at war against Satan - you can certainly quibble over methods but ask yourself, would you go to war to not live in a Muslim country? What about a Hindu? War and inquisition are also very very different - heretics and apostates and heathens (read: if you aren't a Catholic in a state of grace God isn't in your soul and demons beat your will and logic every time) are literally, per Church teaching, enslaved to the devil and can only serve God by acts of good will but not in Truth. It's certainly worth dying for and it's very worth considering what a just war is but yes a predominantly Catholic or Christian society should never kill the unbelievers. The Pope condemned forceful conversions of human sacrificing Aztecs because from a dogmatic theology forceful conversions simply don't work.

>> No.23341781

>>23339822

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paganism_in_Middle-earth
>These include a pantheon of god-like beings, the Valar, who function like the Norse gods, the Æsir; the person of the wizard Gandalf, who Tolkien stated in a letter is an "Odinic wanderer"; Elbereth, the Elves' "Queen of the Stars", associated with Venus; animism, the way that the natural world seems to be alive; and a Beowulf-like "northern courage" which is determined to press on, no matter how bleak the outlook.

How does Eru differ from Brahma of the Hindu pantheon? He is somewhat distinct creator God that is not directly involved with creation and Manwe acts as his herald, similar to Hindu pantheon where the altars of Brahma are practically non-existant while other cults flourish actively

>> No.23341789

>>23339226
>>Jeffrey Dahmer and me watching Only Fans are held to the same standard of confidentiality by priests
So, just like as with your lawyer?

>> No.23341826

>>23339707
Still wrong, Catholic kingdoms literally fought multiple wars with Bohemia due to their different theology in the 15th century.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussite_Wars

>> No.23341839

>>23339863
I think you're taking elements of textbook Christianity and interpreting them as gnostic without good reason. Melkor isn't a demiurge but a corrupter of the material world, the Akallabeth is clearly elven mythology about the fall of Satan, men describing their fall from grace due to temptation by Melkor is obviously the fall from Eden, the material world isn't evil but will be restored by Eru at end, there's no gnostic concept of totally escaping the physical.

There's only ond reincarnation and it was Tolkien's autistic way to explain why two elf characters hundreds of years apart had the same name. He probably saw it akin to Elijah returning in the form of John the Baptist (Matthew 11:13-14).

>> No.23342272

>>23341789
>So, just like as with your lawyer?
Your lawyer can say, and I think is required to say, whom they represent but priests can't even say they heard your confession. It's also, from an American legal standpoint, that words said in the confessional are the same legal status as mental prayer - it cannot be tampered with or recorded or anything of the sort. If you threaten to kill and rape children in the confessional the priest cannot and will not report it. For example, a therapist is typically a mandatory reporter if they think you will kill someone and of child abuse in some states now but priests are not because priests don't rely on some fickle beaurucrat's assessment of "justice" but on an infinitely powerful force of mercy and love.

>> No.23342450

>>23340017
Because he hadn't incarnated yet.

>> No.23342470

>>23339653
Catholics agree we are very limited beings. But there is the Catholic belief that God has revealed the truth about our salvation to the Apostles.

>>23342272
There is nothing wrong with the confessional seal. Someone saying he is planning on commiting sins won't get absolution from his sins.

>> No.23342962

>>23341839
>I think you're taking elements of textbook Christianity and interpreting them as gnostic
i'm not talking at all about "textbook Christianity", since there isn't such a thing to begin with. I'm talking about Tolkien's books, more so the History of Middle Earth books that has a lot of the unpublished stuff, but which gives a much better understanding of Tolkien's ideas.

>Melkor isn't a demiurge, but a corrupter
In this case it doesn't actually matter. I get that such a distinction is "a big deal" in christian theology, but in Tolkien's view it doesn't amount to much, since by Melkor literally (per the books) "infusing his essence into the hroa/matter of Middle Earth" he corrupted it. It doesn't change the outcome, the physical world is now infused with evil, even though originally it wasn't so. It's also irreversible, and the plans of Eru for remedying this evil don't appear to involve re-using Middle Earth, but rather everyone just chilling out in Valinor/spirit-realm for eternity.

>The Akallabeth is clearly about the fall of Satan, men describing their fall from grace
lol, no. Maybe the fall of atlantis, but the "fall of mankind" happened much earlier. It sounds like you haven't bothered to read "Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth", where they discuss how humans once had longer lives than they did by the time the Noldor discovered them (longer lives than even the longest lived Numenorean). The Downfall happened when Melkor tricked them into worshiping him with blood sacrifices.

>there's no gnostic concept of totally escaping the physical.
yes, there is. Not in Silmarillion or LotR, but in the History of Middle Earth, it says just that. That the Valar (or Eru) literally separated Valinor from the confines of the physical world, this during the fall of numenor, and only spirit/fea could exist there. (It was for this reason that the Numenoreans weren't allowed to visit Valinor in the days of their friendship, not because of any form of elitism, but because it would quite literally kill them in the process since ONLY spirit can exist in Valinor, since all hroa/physical-matter had been corrupted by Melkor, and only uncorrupted fea/spirit could exist in Valinor.

>There's only one reincarnation
wrong, every Elf could reincarnate, in fact, almost all did, they mostly chose to reside in Valinor. Only Glorfindel being gung-ho and returning to Middle Earth. Feanor and his mother Miriel are two examples of Elves that never reincarnated though (Feanor as punishment for his angry spirit, and Miriel because she chose not to)

Do yourself a favor, read "Morgoth's Ring" and "The Peoples of Middle Earth". It's full of information. And that way you won't need to quote from the Bible in some bizarre and lame attempt to justify what you think Tolkien meant.

>> No.23343040

>>23338358
For the same reason, that he liked Azimov's Foundation (despite Azimov being an atheist) and hated Herbert's Dune.

He's less of a Catholic, and more of a le rationalist midwit. Attune to some rationally-beknown higher cosmic principle (regardless of whether it is the Music of Eru Iluvatar or Laws of Psychohistory), tip your fedora, and everything's chill.

>> No.23343543

>>23343040
>For the same reason, that he liked Azimov's Foundation (despite Azimov being an atheist)
>>23339640
>Many Christians even believe that the virtuous pagans and righteous Jews were saved when in the Harrowing of Hades
We wuzz noble pagans/atheists, and shieeet...

>> No.23343612

Incredible how retarded /lit/ is, specially whenever theology is mentioned.

>> No.23343615

Being a Catholic in England wasn't about actual belief. It was a status signal and intellectual pose for contrarian ball fanners. Same with the modern online tradcaths, but they have even less intellectual cred though.
See Evelyn Waugh and G.K. Chesterton

>> No.23343633

>>23343612
Whenever people disagree with me on /lit/ I just remember how outstandingly retarded the average /lit/ user is and realize I have to be right. If anyone ever agrees with me here, then I have to reconsider my decisions.

>> No.23343635

>>23339680
It always amazed me how much melkor and sauron behave exactly like how the abrahmic god is or the other way round
Arogant, can't except other forms of belief, destroys all other forms of worship, treats people badly for no reason whatsoever, really like niggers.

>> No.23345101

Such a retarded question. Obviously religion and worship was left out of his books for certain reasons, also you can find all of it in The Silmarillion.