Into the Wardrobe

Hi Taya! Welcome into the Wardrobe!

Have you taken a look at the menu at the top of the page here? (You've found the best Lewis site on the Internet, by the way - congratulations)

Try the "papers" section, "works" (scroll down to the Secondary works, i.e. not written by Lewis) and have a dip into each of the sections - it may give you some great thoughts, even if it doesn't exactly answer your questions.

As for the HP books, some people see religious significance in them, but I don't. Anyone with imagination can find some religious themes or parallels in literature or films.

I actually haven't read many books on this, though plenty have been written.

The ones I have read seem, as you say, are pretty basic. "Aslan is kinda like Jesus" stuff.

I wouldn't reccomend "Finding God in the Land of Narnia." Seems to me that he tries too hard to avoid the obvious, and goes too far with it.

Taya - have you included Lord of the Rings in your list of fantasy books with Christian/religious themes?

There are various and sundry resources available to expound the hidden meanings in the books. But trust me, it is oodles and oodles more fun digging them out on your own.

Tom Shippey, who followed JRR Tolkien at Oxford, and speaks some of the same diverse and mostly forgotten languages he did, has a great book for the serious Tolkien fan, The Road to Middle Earth. Among other things, he does a very good job exploring Tolkien's Christian themes within LOTR (and other works). It's particularly masterful how Tolkien wrote certain Christian paradoxes or mysteries into the universe of Middle Earth, as Shippey illustrates well.

Tolkien also had a well-developed theory of what he called the eucatastrophe in myth and fantasy stories - the miraculous turn of events at the darkest moment. He believed that this was something like a subconscious echoing of the victory of Jesus' Resurrection in real history. Tolkien's exposition of this idea to Lewis played a part in Lewis' conversion process from atheism to a type of theism to faith in Christ, as he describes in Surprised by Joy.

Nothing wrong with finding Christian themes in The Lord of the Rings. Just keep in mind what Tolkien himself wrote in the forward...

"As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorial nor topical ... I cordially dislike allegory in all of its manifestations, and have always done so since I grew old and weary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory' but one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."

No, you're quite right. I didn't mean Christian truths within LOTR as an allegory, but at a deeper level, built into the universe in which LOTR takes place. That is, Middle Earth reflects Tolkien's worldview, which is Biblical theism. But you're correct, it's not like Pilgrim's Progress, where each character and event is meant to represent something 1:1 in the life of a Christian.

Another book on the subject besides Shippey's book is "The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-Earth" by Ralph Wood.

I enjoy both books, though Wood's delves deeper than Shippey into the Christian themes.





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