Yes, with respect to the Elves and Humans (and the half-elven) I agree with you completely.What I was going for was the idea that what he was describing in these created being was just, well....marriage. Which is a very normal, human part of his (and everyone else's) religion.
Yes, I agree with this too. I only brought them to point out that they are depicted as male, not male and female both.As for the Nephilim, I think that Tolkien would accept them as an attempt to give divine origin to heroes ...
Um ... let me come at this a different way. It's not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing ... I'm just thinking about the Valar from a different pespective.Surely, the Valier would count. But they are so like the goddesses of other pagan religions (Celtic, Norse, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, etc), that they are really just a pantheon subject to monotheism. But they did not inspire those comments in this thread, anyway.
I would think Melian and Goldberry would be better candidates - they really aren't Elves or Men, and they are 'real' characters within the story (and within Middle Earth). They aren't removed in any way.
Voronwë expressed surprise that Tolkien would fashion the Valar as male and female this way, and it felt startling to me, too. It is not what I would expect to find if I thought he were writing a mythology intended to be consistent with his own religion. Male and female angels, performing complementary functions and cohabiting ... and when the Children of Ilúvatar awoke they thought that the Valar were gods ... That's all very ... Hindu. It really isn't Catholic at all. That's why I was surprised to hear you say that you found it consistent with Catholicism.
Now, I agree with you when you said: "I am suggesting that his characters are not in conflict with his faith." I don't think that Tolkien wrote anything that would directly contradict his faith. But I also don't think that he wrote the Sil intending it to be explainable within a Catholic framework or consistent with a Catholic ... legendarium, if I may use that word. (I don't know what the belief requirements are for Catholics where angelic beings are concerned.)
The whole Myth for England thing that propelled him to this work, his impatience with the Christianization of the Arthurian legends, what I perceive to be a deliberate avoidance of formal Christ-symbols as such (though not of the notion of self-sacrifice) ... all this suggests to me an almost opposite view: that Tolkien took pains to remove his characters far enough from Judeo-Christian legend so that they could not be yoked to it as Arthur had been.
After LotR gained such popularity but the Sil was not published, Tolkien was pressed to publicly reconcile this peculiar world he had created with his Catholicism, and so he placed LotR 'after the Fall but before the Redemption.' He can't have meant that literally, of course (with all the Elves running around) but if I understand him to mean, "Think of it that way, rather than trying to figure out why my characters are not Christians," then I understand him perfectly well.
But really, on further thought, not only can he not have meant it literally, he can't even have meant it in the most abstract sense. The Sil begins with the first music, with the 'angels,' with the creation of the world, with the awakening of the children of Ilúvatar. This is given to us as a continuous story, and there is no Fall in it.
Rather, there are many falls, many characters who embody the sin of Adam. It is a story thoroughly consistent with Tolkien's own beliefs about the nature of Man and the nature of the first sin, but yet a thoroughly different story. No shoehorn can make this story fit inside Genesis somewhere and I don't think Tolkien ever intended for that to be done with it. It is not supposed to be a Christian story, not in the sense that its mythological elements have parallels in Christianity or can be made to reflect Christian mythology in the right light; but it is intended to be consistent with what Christianity says about the nature of God and the nature of Man and the nature of evil.
Now, that being said, one cannot read it without knowing immediately that it is written from within a Christian theology. The nature of Melkor's sin (pride) and Fëanor's sin (pride) and the oath of the Noldor (pride), and the hair by which Fëanor's choice hangs (self-sacrifice), and the importance of free will, the dilemma of the valar whether to interfere, the concern with fate versus free will, the way doom turns upon individual choices ... only a Christian could have written this, you see. It is so not a pagan perspective on anything.
We had occassion to talk about this on TORC in the Moral Universe Thread. While discussing the Rohirrim, Wilko brought up the interest of Tolkien and Lewis in 'pagan morality,' and suggested that all of the characters in LotR are intended to reflect Tolkien's understanding of a pagan notion of morality. My response was that if these characters are pagan, they are pagans who behave an awful lot like Judeo-Christians! There is really no non-Christian perspective on ethics to be found anywhere in these books. But the vehicles by which these ideas are brought to light and developed have no parallels in Christianity.
It is indelibly Christian because it's author is so, but has none of the elements we associate with the Christian mythos. It is, I would say, a story from 'before the Fall and after the Redemption,' rather than the reverse, if that makes sense.
All IMO, of course.
Regarding specific female characters of the demi-divine persuasion ...
Goldberry and Melian strike me as the two of the most astonishing characters of all. They also represent ... ideas ... that are, imo, completely outside the Christian mythos; that is, one sees nothing like them or like the roles they play anywhere else in Christian tale-telling.
But ... eep ... I find it is much later than I thought, and my thoughts about Melian are not well-formed. So I won't say any more about her right now.
Jn
But even he had eucatastrophic moments...in his way. Brighton Rock comes to mind, Or even Our Man in Havana.