“Tolkien” and Ancient Words
By Bror Erickson
“Remember this and stand firm,/ recall it to mind, you transgressors,/ remember the former things of old;/ for I am God, and there is no other;/I am God, and there is none like me,/ declaring the end from the beginning/ and from ancient times things not yet done,/ saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,/ and I will accomplish all my purpose,’ (Isaiah 46:8-10)
It is not often that an author’s life lives up to the legends he writes, and yet it is perhaps hard to imagine that someone could write a book so steeped in the virtues of friendship, loyalty, love and learning and adventure as “The Hobbit” and the “Lord of the Rings” if his own life had not also reflected these. “Tolkien,” the recently released biographical movie, shows how these elements played a role in Tolkien’s life long before he was able to write his most beloved stories. It also shows how his love of language was stoked by a life regulated with the rhythm of liturgical worship steeped in the ancient words of the Ancient of Days. Here, if nowhere else in the movie, the influence of Tolkien’s Christian faith comes to the fore.
Of course, there have been numerous reviews and spoilers that have come out bemoaning that once again Hollywood has marginalized the Christian faith by downplaying the obvious influence it had on J.R.R. Tolkien and his writing. Well, the movie does not show Tolkien going to church, or evangelizing his classmates. However, in defense of the director, Dome Karukoski, the faith of an individual can be a hard thing to portray in a movie especially when cuts have to be made to move the plot along. The plot of this movie is focused on Tolkien’s friendship, not his Christianity per se.
It is a great movie concerning the value of friendship. I suspect though that perhaps behind all this complaining is an audience that is more shocked that a man of such profound Christian faith could have lived his life and expressed his friendship in such masculine fashion. The friendship which the movie explores begins, as so many boyhood friendships do, with a fight. The Tea Club and Barrovian Society, (TCBS as they most often refer to themselves in the movie) then goes on to do the rest of the things that a Christian movie review website warns parents against, apart from the graphic depictions of war-time violence, there is fighting, drinking, “language” is used including ass and hell, and a couple dares to kiss! Nude paintings by one his friends are briefly displayed and admired by the characters along with sex talk, and let’s not forget drinking, the main character even gets his big Oxford break by becoming spectacularly drunk and waking all the professors. They also play billiards, which begins with b and rhymes with t, which stands for trouble. In other words, Tolkien was spectacularly weak on what American Christianity terms as sanctification, and yet through it all a fantastically faithful Christian and friend.
The problem is not that the movie downplays the role Christianity played in Tolkien’s life, the problem is that his Christian faith is too foreign a flavor for most to comprehend, and has about as much a focus on morality as the life of Samson recorded in Judges. Rather, the focus of his faith was on the word of God, the Ancient of Days, whose promises to us stand even when we fail, declaring from ancient times things not yet done.
It is a subtle line in the movie, and yet a rather powerful one. Father Francis Morgan, played by Colm Meany, speaks to Tolkien after he recovers from trench fever upon his return from World War I. Fr. Morgan discusses the dilemma he faces in trying to comfort bereaved parents in the wake of the brutal war that claimed so many young men. When Tolkien asks him what he tells the parents Fr. Morgan tells him that words, “modern words don’t offer any comfort, only ancient words can do that, I speak the liturgy to them.”
“Modern words don’t offer any comfort, only ancient words can do that, I speak the liturgy to them.”
Personally, as a life-long Lutheran and a Lutheran pastor today I can relate with what Father Morgan has to say here. I grew up with these ancient words embedded into the structure of worship that characterized Jesus Christ’s own Sabbath experience in the synagogues of Galilee, the divine worship that the church inherited from the Jews as Paul emphasizes in Romans 9: 4. My Sunday mornings were never as exciting as Ozzy Osborne in Milan on a Saturday night, but they were always profoundly more comforting and meaningful than I have ever found worship to be at a Petra concert or other settings. And at death? Nothing is more beautiful than the liturgy at a funeral, to hear again the comforting words of the Ancient of Days, the same words spoken over an infant at baptism, conveying the faith to be received by children, sustaining the Christian through the thick and thin of life, Christ blessing the good times, sanctifying the hardships and bringing life out of death with his resurrection. It was this worship and the use of words that were not only old but spoken by the Ancient One, the Alpha and Omega that shaped Tolkien’s Christian faith and instilled for him the love of language that found resonance in his writings, which to this day still inspire a love of reading, not to mention, a love of friendship and other Christian virtues.
It was this love of language found on every page of Tolkien, subtle themes of Christianity playing out in the books that made me fall in love with reading when I was thirteen and my parents sent me off to live at the lake cabin in Minnesota for the summer by myself. Tolkien was the only companion I brought with me when I hitched my ride from California. Those were good times relived as I read Tolkien by flashlight with my son evening after evening while camping and digging at Topaz Mt. in Utah, the dragon wind screaming through the desert canyon in the thunderstorm pelting our tent. Love for adventure and the value of friendship stole into our bond. We were looking for treasure and found it in words sourced from ancient springs, the voice of the Ancient one, the Alpha and Omega speaking through Gandalf and Tolkien’s pen. It was fun to watch this movie the themes of Tolkien’s orthodox faith played out in a life every bit as unorthodox as G. K. Chesterton’s.
