Theology and Tolkien

Constructive Theology

Buch | Hardcover

354 Seiten

2024
Lexington Books/Fortress Academic (Verlag)
978-1-9787-1263-8 (ISBN)

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J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epics are imbued with a deep sense of the spiritual from which readers discern aspects of his beliefs about God, life, good, and evil. In this book, an international group of scholars explore and build on numerous theological ideas that percolate through Tolkien’s works.

The Lord of the Rings and other works of J.R.R. Tolkien have had a far-reaching impact on culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In print and on film, Tolkien’s works seem to be incredible epics, but religious aspects are less obvious. Yet Tolkien himself stated in his letters that the chief conflicts of his epic works were “about God, and His sole right to divine Honour,” and whether Sauron can wrest and destroy all that is good in Middle-earth. It is from this that readers awaken to the theological truths that imbue Tolkien’s works. In Theology and Tolkien: Constructive Theology, an international group of scholars consider how Tolkien’s works (and Jackson’s interpretations) can help us build better theologies for use in our world today. From essays on the music of creation in the Ainulindalë, to angels, demons, and Balrogs, to Tolkien’s theology of God, providence, evil, and love, to the eschatology of the Final Chord of the Great Music, this book invites the reader to journey through Middle-earth as the contributors engage the theology of Tolkien’s works and its impact on the world.

Douglas Estes is associate professor of Religion at New College of Florida.

Introduction
Douglas Estes
Part I: Aman
Chapter 1: Freedom and Fidelity: Improvisation in the Ainulindalë
Bradley K. Broadhead
Chapter 2: “When Things Are in Danger, Someone Must Give Them Up”: Redemption and Ecology in Tolkien’s Legendarium
Alison Milbank
Chapter 3:Critiquing Tolkien’s Theology
Austin M. Freeman
Chapter 4: In the Brilliant Darkness of a Hidden Silence: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Apophatic Tendencies
Douglas Estes
Chapter 5: Gandalf, Sauron, Melian, and the Balrog as Angels: A Study of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Maiar in the Context of Biblical Angelology
Charlie Trimm
Part II: Erebor
Chapter 6: The Marian Valkyrie: Tolkien’s Theology of the Heroic Feminine
Lisa Coutras
Chapter 7: Songs of Light and Darkness: Theological Imagination and Metaphor in J.R.R. Tolkien
Beth M. Stovell
Chapter 8: Christianity and Paganism in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings: A Typology Based on Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture
Allan M. de Novaes, Milton L. Torres, and João Fernando O. Barboza
Chapter 9: Perceiving the Material and Immaterial in Middle-earth
Adam B. Shaeffer
Chapter 10: A Chance for Metanarrative to Prove its Quality
Jeremy M. Rios
Part III: Ithilien
Chapter 11: “An Encouraging Thought”: The Interplay of Providence and Free Will in Middle-earth
Devin Brown
Chapter 12: The Redemptive Power of Love: Arwen as the Anti-Eve in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings
Julie Loveland Swanstrom
Chapter 13: Spiritual Sloth and Diligence in Tolkien’s Work
Martina Juricková
Chapter 14:Evil and the Fall into Violence in Tolkien’s Mythopoesis
John C. McDowell
Chapter 15: A Far Green Country: The Eschatology of Tolkien’s Middle-earth
Donald T. Williams
About the Contributors

Erscheinungsdatum	16.08.2024
Co-Autor	João Fernando O. Barboza, Bradley K. Broadhead, Devin Brown, Lisa Coutras
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 235 mm
Gewicht	649 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie
ISBN-10	1-9787-1263-4 / 1978712634
ISBN-13	978-1-9787-1263-8 / 9781978712638
Zustand	Neuware