The Gospel According to Tolkien

There's little doubt that Tolkien’s purpose was determinedly Christian. But Tolkien did not intend a Christian allegory. He strenuously resisted being read as some kind of theological encoder; as he wrote in a letter, “I don’t feel under any obligation to make my story fit with formalized Christian theology, though I actually intended it to be consonant with Christian thought and belief.”

Along with his good friend C. S. Lewis, Tolkien likely believed that thoughtful reasoning is inseparable from myth as a medium of truth. In 1931, Tolkien, writer of an epic myth, explained that "the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way."

We can look at Tolkien's epic myth to trace the way it is "consonant with Christian thought and belief.”

Tolkien sees the universe both as intrinsically hierarchical and intrinsically good. Some created beings are nobler than others, but all are good: wizards, high-elves, dwarves, hobbits. A hobbit is not a failed or faulty creation because he is not an elf or a man.

For Tolkien, as for St. Augustine, evil is not a positive reality, but a falling-away from the reality the creator planned for the creature. He speaks of evil as a marring of what was made, and as a shadow. All beings have been created good, even Sauron and his orcs. They fall away from their intended goodness by rejecting what their maker intended for them.

Rejecting one’s own created nature is the original sin.

Part of why the Ring tempts mortals so strongly is its promise to let them escape the physical mortality God has intended for them, which we'll get back to later.