Like Lalaith, I voted 'yes'.
Tar-Palantir wrote:Does the fact that someone we admire such as Tolkien clearly believed in purposive evil, and thought about it a lot, count as evidence against the modern mainstream view that evil is merely accidental, or a negative failure to pursue good?
Well, I agree with Tolkien's worldview, personally, but I'm not sure I would use his views as 'evidence'.
LotR is not polemic.
Besides, I'm not a confrontational sort.
MithLuin wrote:I don't see why the demons would take sides in such conflicts, but rather just delight in the wholesale slaughter and mayhem that was going on, regardless of who was inducing it. In other words, on the side of the machete, whether it was in the hand of a Hutu or Tutsi, if that makes sense.
I agree, Mith. I don't pretend to understand much about 'demons', nor would I wish to, but I can't imagine that such beings would be very interested in humans as individuals ... more in destruction and mayhem for its own sake. Satan, in the story of Job in the Hebrew Bible, sees Job as a means to an end, of getting a dig in at God, or so it seems to me -- rather than having a personal vendetta against Job in particular.
I always thought it interesting (amusing? not quite the right word) that Lewis dedicated the Screwtape Letters to Tolkien. I wonder what drew him to do that? Lewis' conception is of course a bit Manichean, with 'Our Father Below' being almost a negative counterpart to God, not quite on equal footing, but still...not the traditional Christian view, either. I don't know how much Tolkien approved of Lewis' conception.
He didn't approve.
He refers to this, and what he saw as Lewis's tendency to Dualism (on occasion) in one of the Letters. (Sorry, can't remember which one, I am at work!)
Unlike Tolkien, I have no problem with Lewis, as a lay person, writing about theological matters. (Although he didn't have any theological training, it is true.
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Tar-Palantir wrote:The fact that such an intelligent, well educated, thoughtful and creative man had beliefs about evil that - just 40 years later - strike most intellectuals as absurd; now seems more likely to indicate to me that there is something very deeply wrong with modern life, than that there was something deeply wrong with Tolkien!
Tolkien's views were held to be pretty absurd by the intellectuals of his day, actually.
He and Lewis were often perceived to be a sort of Christian 'team', acting in tandem with each other. Both men were aware of this criticism, and they were amused and annoyed by it ... by the time LotR was published, and the first Narnia book, they were already estranged to some degree, so the context of the criticism was rather ironic.
I'm with Tolkien, when it comes to a general worldview, and am resigned to the fact that many people in the world would find that worldview 'contemptible or absurd, or both' (as some, according to Tolkien, found LotR).
P.S. Professor Tolkien would not have agreed with me about women priests though.
"Frodo undertook his quest out of love - to save the world he knew from disaster at his own expense, if he could ... "
Letter no. 246, The Collected Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
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