Peter Kreeft on Philosophy of Tolkien with John Haas

[Music] hello and welcome to our series redeeming culture fireside chats at Ivy Hall my name is John Haase and I'm president of the International Institute for culture which is housed here in this magnificent old mansion and we are very fortunate to have with us today for our chat a very famous Catholic apologist author dr. Peter Christ from Boston College in Boston's dr. Craven welcome it's good to have you with you I'm very fortunate to be here well you are fortunate but we're even more fortunate that you're here no I'm more fortunate than you are sorry no I'm more aware more course it's good and we'll get into those but you spent some time here in Philadelphia your Boston College now but you had taught both at Villanova and at Haverford College yes and Rosemont and a few other places lighting all here in that Gillis exit yeah oh good well we're going to talk about a blockbuster movie based on a blockbuster book and that's Lord of the Rings and many many people have seen this film and have been moved by it and probably as many have read the book even though it's quite a long book but before we get into a discussion of the books and and of the film I wanted to have a little background conversation of some broader themes our Institute was established to evangelize culture now there was a group of intellectuals in England in the early part of the 20th century who were also very concerned about reaching out to the culture that they were living in and they were called the Inklings is that name familiar to yes yes Lewis and Tolkien and Charles Williams sometimes TS Eliot joined the group Dorothy Sayers it was not an institute like this it was just a bunch of friends and there they were all intellectuals or academics yes yes how did they come up with the name Inklings it was just an inkling I say and they dealt with pen and ink they didn't have computers or typewriters no it was a double entendre uh-huh and where would they normally meet in the burden baby that is the eagle and child a pub in Oxford and sometimes in Lewis's rooms Louis was the one stable there he was at meaning Tolkien was most of them they read their books to each other actually Louis a space trilogy and the Lord of the Rings were written at the same time and they read their books to each other so there's some influence at least a lot of Tolkien's influence on Louis not so much the other way around now both Lewis and Tolkien were academics right yes yes what was the assist Lewis's field was he trained in philosophy but he got a job in English literature he wrote the the definitive book in the series Oxford history of English literature in the I believe 16th century Tolkien got a professorship in medieval English in Old English I had a teacher at Calvin College who was one of Tolkien's students and he said he was a delightfully eccentric you could hardly hear him the first day of the course he brought in a wagon piled with all the books for the course and he said these books are out there now at the end of this course they will be in your heart and the last day of the course he brought the same books in a wagon and he dumped them out and said there they are now superfluous so but he had to prepare lectures too I mean yes it's didn't spend all this time sitting around writing oh no and he had to tutor students now this this great movie the Lord of the Rings is based on rather large books that he wrote in fact we've got a copy of it right here those voidlings which Ford the small book poles chose as the greatest book of the century really in fact everyone in the world except the critics thinks this is the greatest book of the 20th century would why do you think that is well there's an incredible gap in our culture between the mind molders and the students a values gap a religious gap a philosophy gap ordinary people are still ordinary common sensical fairly wise and fairly religious and the critics are not all right that's true no the critics hated the book now we know dr. Christ we live in such a secularized society and England itself is a frightfully secularized society I mean very few people even go to church anymore you and and yet from this society this culture has come this great literature is how is this possible and and what promise does it hold maybe for the secular right society we live in it's possible because people like Lewis and Tolkien didn't pay much attention in newspapers they read great books that his old books they struck deep roots down into their past and into human nature rather than living on the shallow surface of fashionable ideologies and they reacted on their society as best they could they each did their own kind of evangelism naturally and intuitively Louis wrote what he was best at debated Tolkien wrote what he was best at it wasn't a conscious program now do you think people read less today than they did in talking's and Louis's day I think so they don't read as well that's for sure even in the 40 years of teaching that I've done I see a decline in reading ability so do you think maybe the the movie is is a way of achieving God's purposes that might not have been reached as effectively well certainly the movie will make more people read the book that's true - that's true - and the movie is a magnificent movie but the book is even better mm-hmm but so this is a way that God has chosen perhaps to to bring his message that he was already delivering through Tolkien to a broader audience than would have been possible otherwise yes and Tolkien himself is one of these wonderful spies who can creep past the watchful dragons of familiarity and and duty and and evangelize the imagination first now Tolkien and Louis were both committed Christians yes but Louis was Protestant right Anglican yep and and Tolkien Catholic yeah now were they really concerned about trying to spread the Christian message through their literature was that one of their their objectives to be a Christian is to be concerned with spreading Christianity in every possible way and since that was their work they of course were concerned with that they were not professional evangelists they didn't usually write allegories they didn't vandalize in a way although occasionally Louis would preach CSS also I mean he wrote mere christianity I mean he seemed to write more books that were direct apologetics yes but Tolkien made very clear that this was a fundamentally a religious and Catholic book the Lord the Lord of the Rings even though the religion was not on the surface but it was very deep in the depths now there's there's some discussion about the approaches of Lewis and Tolkien and whether there was a radical difference in approach there's a term from literature called allegory the key tell us what an allegory is an allegory is a parable or a piece of symbolism that has one and only one proper meaning children's progress is the most famous one each figure in the fantasy has a meaning in the real world John is the Christian the Giant is despair Promised Land is heaven and so on now it suggested the CS Lewis used allegory pretty directly in in the tales of Narnia for example that Aslan the lion is supposed to represent Christ that's a misunderstanding is it as long as not a human being he's a lion and he's not on earth he's in Narnia he performs a Christ function he's a Christ figure but he's not Christ what makes him a Christ figure well he does what Christ does he's the son of the great emperor over the city he saves Narnia by his death Louis himself described Narnia as a work of the imagination in answer to the question what would have happened if there were another world and if Christ entered that other world but not as the human person Jesus Christ but as another figure a lion so it's a sort of a second incarnation is Tolkien's approach in the Lord of the Rings as similar as Louis's is and trying to say what would have happened No tokine explicitly says in the beginning he's not writing anything like allegory the book is what he called topical that is the universal principles in the book are applicable to many different times in places and situations in this world but not just one when the book was written came out shortly after World War two a lot of people thought that so Ranas hitler and the ring is the atom bomb and more towards germany and so on and Tolkien said absolutely not that it's not my purpose but he didn't write it during the war years yes yes there's a deep influence there the book is filled with battles and warfare and he himself served in World War one as did Louis so he pulls on his own experiences but it's not an allegory its symbolism the difference between a symbol and an allegory is that a symbol has an infinity of possible meanings there's no one limit to what you can get out of a symbol so Lord of the Rings that would be more symbolic than yes and and therefore in a certain sense almost richer I mean what can be done with it and in trying to actually even in trying to get the Christian message across yeah I think well it for instance it has three Christ figures in it Frodo Aragorn and Gandalf sort of the Prophet and the priest and the King and each of them in a different way die and rise again alpha literally Aragorn through the paths of the Dead and Frodo through his submission to the ring and there's a certainly a parallel between what Frodo does what Christ did the crack of doom was Calvary and the ring is something like sin now is just before we leave the Inklings in this segment we're talking and Lois friends with it was there tension at all between the two of them did they support one another in their writing they were immensely supportive if it weren't for CS Lewis we would never read this book because it was refused by publishers for something like five or ten years and only Lewis's encouragement pushing talking to keep trying and trying got talking to do it he was a he was a niggler he was a perfectionist he was a procrastinator and he was a pessimist so he never thought it would see the light of day today that's remarkable it took five years to get it to a publisher and the net and and now it turns out to be well by the by the libraries and lights of many the greatest book of the 20th century yes well it certainly says a lot for persistence toking kept badgering Lois to come all the way to become a Catholic oh really and that was the one topic Lewis did not want to talk about publicly when he talked about it privately with Tolkien well on one occasion according to Lewis a student Christopher Derek and his CS Lewis in the Church of Rome at one point Lewis said to talking stop talking about this you couldn't possibly understand you weren't born in Belfast in weather words the Northern Irish Protestant has such deep-seated prejudices that it's impossible impossible to overcome but I think this is just my suspicion that God is in his providence prevented Lewis from becoming a Catholic he had every possible reason to do so he was very sympathetic to things Catholic just so that he could be a kind of a a mediator between Protestants and Catholics I'm kind of greasing the the slide so many evangelical Protestants have become much more Catholic because of Louis he's safe he's not a Roman Catholic so he's embraceable well you say you say safe he's not a Roman Catholic well I think that strikes me about the Lord of the Rings is a lot of people pick that up thinking it's safe I mean I remember when I was a young man and the books were coming out there were a lot of how shall I put it you know young people who were countercultural and on the margins you know the last thing they would have wanted to have done was to have embraced something of the Catholic faith but they they were drawn into these books in remarkable ways well that's not surprising the Catholic faith itself is countercultural and on the margins were in the diaspora until until the end of time that's true well the what do you think that had the particular appeal to those you those people in that that first were drawn to the books I think the fact that God and not Hollywood designed the human heart has something to do with it the good the true and the beautiful just shine through so perfectly in the book that young people who are not influenced by whatever fashionable ideologies happen to reign in their society are naturally attracted the book who do you think is the strongest figure in the book we're gonna discuss a elements Sam Sam Sam Sam is the real hero okay good forty-two Tolkien himself oh really yeah we do know that the Lord of the Rings is what is called fantasy literature what is that kind of literature what's covered by a term like fantasy literature it's a rather vague term it's not clearly defined but it's highly imaginative literature the storyline is something that we don't see happening in our world talking defined fantasy by the word magic some sort of magical element has to be present in it and he described the Lord of the Rings as a kind of conflict between two magics one is the magic of the Ring which is a magic of power and domination the other is the magic of the elves which is enchantment and the two are so different that they form in a sense the fundamental philosophical conflict of the book The Fellowship are enchanted by the good and the true and the beautiful and that magic is a spiritual magic over their soul now the hollow ship are the good guys I think I got hobbits and the elves and the Wizards the bad guys Sauron in his orcs have the kind of forceful magic the kind of prideful magic that the ring represents something like Adam's apple control over even divine providence now the narnia of CS lewis is also fantasy literature with that how would that compare to something like lord of the right it's more fantasy in that Narnia is another world entirely it's not middle-earth middle-earth is just a name for this planet so Tolkien's fantasy is a time fantasy he imagines what may have happened in probably times before the flood and in alluvion times whereas Lewis's fantasy is well first of all he wrote three space travel novels out of the silent planet peril and ruin that hideous strength so that's a fantasy in space and in Narnia it's another universe you can't get there by a rocketship you get there through kind of magic through the Wardrobe or through a picture yes I remember walking through that Wardrobe whatever do I you walked through it too first time I saw it I locked myself in it and felt the coats and I couldn't get into Narnia so I got out and if I fight Clyde kill me who was there then said you know that's what every 12 year old does that's right it's got to be back there you know the other world there's another fantasy series of books that have been very popular of late Harry Potter weeks how would they come how would Harry Potter compared to these other types of fantasy literature that we've talked about well I think they're largely harmless fun except for people who take them so seriously that they get into the black arts but Harry Potter is a good guy and there's a basic moral tone to the books but it's a much cruder magic it's just a magic of doing things like Elizabeth Montgomery did on the old TV sitcom bewitched it's a magic of physical power over forces in the earth there's not that much enchantment in it I think but little Harry wants to do good though - oh yeah yeah yeah and it's it's a it's a good guys versus bad guys and good wins over evil so I think it's a pretty good thing and it's well done but there's certainly no underlying Christian message that one would hope to get it that that author hoped to get across the way no Louis may you know and it's not as it's not as deep it doesn't move you it it's it's worth reading twice but the Lord of the Rings is worth reading twenty times one things amazes me about Harry Potter is how children have just devoured it who otherwise wouldn't even pick up the book well I think our society starves the imagination and starves magic and fantasy so children naturally gravitate towards it well I do probably have had little experience with video games because your children are older but III think that's one way of trying to feed an imagination but not in a wholesome money well I think most video games are not very imaginative they're their wish fulfillment dreams as if you could be this great wrestler or this racecar driver they're very earthy mm-hmm but true fantasy gives you another dimension such a higher thing yeah not just bigger quantity but bigger quality the elves for instance the elves are halfway to angels there are other species that's an interesting point I mean that how many species we've got orcs and we've we've got L what incredible creativity not only does he invent a whole world with it with its complete history but but new species and once he invents them there they are hobbits everyone knows what hobbits are and will till the end of time that's why they're big hairy feet and and look at those elves I mean plenty of people have written about elves but they're not convincing even Shakespeare his elves are just cute little fairy sprites these elves are formidable these are really delves really remem you remember them and you believe in them now he even developed the language didn't he he that's how it started he taught language he's a philologist which means a lover of words a lover of language and he invented a language elvish and then he had to invent the species that spoke it and then he had to invent their history so he wrote The Silmarillion which is the book of the history of middle-earth long before the events in the Lord of the Rings first and the Lord of the Rings was a spin-off out of that what would ever possess or lead a man to make up a language well he himself says that in 1917 I guess or 1918 when he was in the trenches in World War 1 he did it to preserve his sanity because here was a beautiful ordered world that he could at least create an answer to this horrible disorder oh how interesting I didn't know that that's and from that came the ELSA marillion and now it's it hasn't been quite as as popular as the Lord of the Rings no it's more severe it doesn't have the the leafy charms of The Hobbit it's like a tree in winter but the Hobbit was a book that he wrote there was another cause to that he was marking term papers and they were very dull so he scrolled in the margin the words in a hole in the ground lives a hobbit and he said why did I write that what's a hobbit how am I going to find out the only way I can find out what that word means is to write a story about one so he did and thus emerged The Hobbit which was very successful I think it was published in 1937 and we have a hobbit here with this as well this is the Hobbit you know and this preceded the Lord of the Rings but the Hobbit is just a children's story a very well-constructed children's story but the publisher wanted a longer Hobbit and that's how he got started on the Lord of the Rings did he write it in stages would he complete a section and then sort of take a break he was a niggler he was a perfectionist it took him all his life to write The Silmarillion which wasn't even completed yet at his death oh really it took him something like 20 or 25 years to write the Lord of the Rings remarkable yeah now the the films have been tremendously popular they've received acclaim from the critics perhaps in some ways in which the books haven't I mean there are different kinds of critics I suppose you're very critics and film critics how faithful are these films to the books Peter Jackson the director tried to be very faithful and in most things I think he was I'd give the film's an a-minus I think they're absolutely wonderful that's remarkable and in terms of a film made from a piece of great literature yeah all the technological details are are exquisitely perfect the swords the costumes the sets the setting the choice of New Zealand is the setting is perfect the acting is well done the casting is well done and of course Tolkien went into great detail in describing people individuals the costumes they wore and so forth so in a sense they had a lot to work well I would argue that never in the history of the world has a movie had better special effects than the Lord of the Rings the battle scenes are the best battle scenes ever finished oh yeah they're absolute who were martyred well you don't want the spirit so that it can then come back to save the day it's incredible how they did that the of the three films which do you think was the best the third one Jackson himself said that Tolkien fans will like the third one the best the second one the least because it changes the book the most the first one is good Hobbiton which is hard to do is very well done I don't think the elves are quite successful nobody could really do elves they're not quite ethereal enough mm-hmm so Rivendell is not that well done but the hobbit holes are great Mordor is is great whoever did those sets is is the best set designer I've ever seen there they're archetypes they're there in the collective unconscious of the human spirit and then you see them yes that's exactly what I imagined it to be now with the third film being the most faithful do you think was most faithful to the book you said that you thought was guess so yes but even even there I'd have quibbles there's there's things that were taken out for no reason sorry for instance at the at the most crucial point of all the crack of doom where Frodo finally completes the task the task of destroying the Ring One Ring to be destroyed in the only place that it can he can't do that the ring has too much power over him and it takes golem to do it now golem misses golem is this wretched little creature who used to be a hobbit like Frodo but has been totally corrupted by the ring Frodo understands gone because Frodo is humble and sees Gollum it's sort of as his own dark side there but for the grace of God go I so Frodo spares Gollum on a couple of occasions and so does Sam so Gollum is the one who completes the task against his own will by biting the ring off of Frodo finger now Tolkien says at that scene Gollum stepped too far over the brink and fell it's a perfect example of pride or hubris like a Greek tragedy in the movie Frodo pushes him there's no need to do that and the point that frodo and sam sparing Gollum saved the world the the great virtue of mercy or pity this could have been brought out more clearly yeah right and it's it's rather lost there yes it's depicted in that final scene yeah the the as they go off at the end of the film I mean this is depicting eternal life and well that could have been better done to the the hobbits home is untouched by war they just go back as if nothing has changed they're sitting there in this tavern holding Stein's and smiling lamely at each other for a few minutes their transformation is not shown from aha the book there the the village had gone through some hard times it's oh yes yes the war ends right at the door of Bag End Frodo's home and and but the enemy was defeated there as well but they were the town was not left unscathed the price that a victory costs was not shown as well I think in the film is in the book Tolkien was not a simple good guys versus bad guys but will defeat evil black versus white optimist he was he was deeply pessimistic and he believed that there's always a price to pay for victory and he showed that well in the book yes well of course our Christian faith shows that as well the price was incredible yes yes unspeakable yes the murder of God himself if you will yes that's right so the so that was a disappointment to you yeah but you can't have everything it was it was ten times better than I thought the movie establishing would possibly do it well the one thing that did seem to come out at the end of the book was was that you know Frodo couldn't have done it now in other words we can't ultimately save ourselves from the clutches of evil that unlike most fantasy this was not pelagianism this was not I can do it without divine grace all of the characters are flawed Eve everyone doubt it's a biblical epic instead of a Greek epic it even Gandalf the great wizard who had given his life and came back in a sense remarkably transformed but even so he was wise enough not to take the ring when Frodo offered it to him he knew his limits some of the characters I mean there are now names that are coming part of our common parlance I mean Frodo Sam Gandalf a lot of people have thought that these figures represented a Christ figure the Blessed Virgin Mary like there was the elf Galadriel some of mushiya peers to Frodo and he's in great need that that this represents the the Blessed Virgin do you do you see these the this kind of correspondence between those figures and and the figures in there yes and no the figures represent something they point beyond themselves but they're not allegorical representations they don't just represent one thing for instance Gandalf the wizard he's an archetype that is in in most myths there's an old wizard a wise old man there's something Universal about it we all have in our imagination something like the image of a wizard many works of great literature have three heroes one is the intellectual like the wizard like Gandalf like mr. Spock in Star Trek or Oh Ivan Karamazov often The Brothers Karamazov and one is the leader the practical man that would be Aragorn the king and that would be Captain Kirk in Star Trek and that be Dimitry Karma's off and then there's the the sort of the priests figure the the humble one who sacrifices himself which is Frodo and Alyosha Karamazov and someone like dr. bones McCoy in Star Trek so these these do represent something in the human psyche we all have a Gandalf in us and an Aragorn in us and maybe we also have an elf and a dwarf in us which is something like body and soul or the the angel and the earthy one so they represent something but not just one thing now who is your favorite character my favorite character is Sam he was Tolkien's favorite character too for the very simple reason that Sam is the most saintly Sam is is is humble and and loving and he's he represents something like st. Teresa's little way mm-hmm you just fall in love with Sam he's even more saintly than Frodo I guess most people identify with throat I was the central protagonist know whom do you identify with I'll give you a surprising answer to that question I sound really oh I'll tell you why look at the book it's entitled the Lord of the Rings who is the Lord of the Rings Sauron he is the most important character in the book he is the only one you never see you never see his face yeah why not well perhaps through fantasy talking and showing us something about ourselves maybe here is a face of ourselves that we never see now I don't believe for a moment that most people like Sauron or admire him unless you're a neo-nazi or something but what's the connection between Sauron on the ring the ring is the central thing in the book it moves middle-earth well Sauron forged to the ring why people because he put his power into it he externalized his power and if it worked it would have been terribly successful he would have conquered all middle-earth in fact it didn't it was his downfall have we done something like that does the ring perhaps represent not just science or technology but the abuse of it the faith in it why is it that we feel more impotent and weak individually now that we have such tremendous power over nature than we ever did in the past maybe we have done what Sauron has done but you don't I mean you're not you're not a technologist yourself I mean you haven't forged great technologies nobody lies that way so why don't why would you identify with them because I and everyone else rely on them okay if there were a catastrophe a nuclear war how many of us would survive the Boy Scouts and and the farmers maybe that's it we just don't know how to stand on our own feet what actually do you think the ring stands for in power dome power power now in the corruption of power okay but isn't more the corruption of power I mean it it's yes there's a you could you couldn't help but think of the power of sin over us of temptation the allure of our own weakness in the face of sin when you're but it's it's its original sin rather than actual sin it's something inherent in our psyche nobody in middle-earth is powerful enough to avoid the the destruction that the ring would would carry over them it's it's addiction so it's too much power mm-hmm but its power over everything even over death it gives you a kind of artificial immortality so talking about the the ethical implications of it if if our scientists ever do what they promised or threatened to do namely use the genome project in breaking the genetic code to manipulate our very genetics and give us artificial immortality that would be hell on earth yeah that Larry run what the ring represents uh-huh yeah and and ultimately they didn't control it I mean you know destroyed you know they had to be they had to be saved they'd be pulled out of it by in in this sense it was it was something behind the scene it wasn't power that defeated power because the fellowship the good guys don't have that much power everything had to conspire together if any one of a hundred different events hadn't happened rightly middle-earth would have gone down the drain so Tolkien himself defined the theme of the story in terms of divine grace he wrote a letter to the father Marie and he replied I know exactly what you mean by the order of grace and by your reference to our lady upon whom all my small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded the Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work oh this quite pointed quite pointed yeah um why do you think there were nine rings forge do you have any idea what did that represented anything well as a Bostonian I like to think that's the Boston Red Sox and the nine nazgul in the New York Yankees but I don't have that in mind I don't know the numbers there's some mystical significance to the numbers the fact that the elves have only three the smallest number means that they're sort of off the highest on the hierarchy they have the most magic and once the One Ring is destroyed they have to sacrifice themselves leave middle-earth their magic is gone mm-hmm I say which i think is Tolkien's explanation of the fact that our world doesn't have much magic in it anymore whereas the ancient world seemed to have much more uh-huh well if if Tolkien himself says that this is a religious book a sort of Catholic book without being explicitly Catholic what does the book tell us about the world you know the that we wouldn't get from other sources maybe that it's a wonderful and terrible place of place of striking beauty and danger at the same time and that God hides himself behind different kinds of magic enchantment and and divine providence and strange coincidences and that it's a sacramental world that the concrete material things happened is nothing Gnostic or platonic about this in fact in your spirit I mean oh yeah no they have to fight even Gandalf the wizard who was a kind of archangel he has to fight physically the most striking passage in in Tolkien's letters is this he's complaining to his son Christopher about how much of a pessimist he is and how hard his life has been and he says out of the darkness of my life so much frustrated I put before you the one great thing to love on earth the Blessed Sacrament there you will find romance glory honor fidelity and the true way of all your loves upon earth and more than that death by the divine paradox that which ends life and demands the surrender of all yet only by the foretaste of this death can what you seek in your earthly relationships be maintained that's magnificent isn't that yeah that's one the most beautiful then and and concise peons songs of praise to the Eucharist I think I heard yeah well what does the book tell us about the human person like most great classics it opens us up to two dimensions our inner heavens and hell's like like a giant he stretches us on the one hand into into possibilities of heroism that we never saw in ourselves the hobbits after all are our bourgeois ordinary materialists like Americans and they become heroes on the other hand the potentialities for for destruction look at look what they could be they could be Gollum they could be Frodo and the wizard could be Gandalf or he could be Saruman the corrupted wizard how would you see the theme of evil playing itself out in the book on the one hand Tull Cain takes evil very very seriously and even when good wins over evil there's always a price on the other hand good inevitably wins over evil it's it's a metaphysical necessity evil is self-destructive so Sauron like Satan in our world destroys himself if Satan had held back and not inspired Judas and Pontius Pilate and Herod to crucify Christ will help would we have so he defeated himself defeats himself yeah but you know yes all you do is step back and help your enemy to defeat himself now the curious thing about the book though when you know we are saved by Jesus Christ who was the great warrior when the battlefield of the cross and as you say outsmarted Satan Satan outsmarted himself if you will but the redemption in the Lord of the Ring seems to come about accidentally Gollum slipping off the cliff and falling into the pit of fire that seems to lack stuff from the secular point of view of the crucifixion seemed to happen that accidentally here was just a some old guy in some hick town some wandering rabbi who happened to bother the establishment and get himself crucified Christ could have incarnated himself in Rome and become the Emperor or a great warrior instead he becomes something like a little Hobbit so do you see in the books the action of divine providence going on all the time behind the scenes even when it's not all the time the almost the very first thing that happens as soon as Frodo takes the ring and leaves Hobbiton for some reason that he can't explain he wants to hide beside the road a black rider comes at that point if he hadn't hidden the black rider would have gotten the ring returned it to Sauron end of story things like that have happened at least Oh dozens of times in the book until the ending so even even golems plunging into the fire this didn't just happen accidentally oh no no it's all predestined it's free but it's also predestined and you see that in the Bible stories too if if many of the events in Old Testament history hadn't happened the the setup for the incarnation wouldn't have wouldn't have happened for instance if if it hadn't been for that one cheap Egyptian tailor who wove Joseph's mantel in Egypt all the Jews would have been extinct long ago because only because of that mantel which was circumstantial evidence against Joseph did Potiphar's wife get him put in prison only because he was in prison could he interpret Pharaoh's dreams only because he did that did he get up there in Egypt to persuade Pharaoh to buy the seven years of grain and his seventy relatives are saved if none of that had happened no Jew alive on earth so it ought to be a source even the book ought to be a source of great comfort to us in terms of inciting in us confidence trust faith and if there's any one Bible verse that's illustrated by the Lord of the Rings Romans 8:28 all things work together for good even the worst things which is not always seen it's the eye that's the eye of faith is this happening who do you think is the man it's greatest faith in the book greatest faith then we'll work out things nobody has faith that it's going to work out it's it's it's desperate hope very little hope there's no guarantee there's just struggling ahead and doing your thing and let the chips fall where they may it's not utilitarians not calculating it's not we have enough chances you just do your thing I did want to bring up something you had said to me earlier dr. Craig that you had said that that one of the purposes of fantasy according to Kohl tokine what wasn't related to the fantasy world but rather to this one how did he put that Tom Howard put it nicely in an article entitled myth of the flight to reality others are a fantasy or a myth can plunge us into reality much more effectively than a realistic story because in a realistic story were we're for armed against what the author wants to show us we know ahead of time what he's going to say in a fantasy we relax oh this is only fantasy it's harmless so he hits us in the imagination and we can't help believing it yes okay that's wonderful the the the the way in which it helps us come to grips more effectively with the very real world within which really it's a little more like music than most literature is you can't argue with music it deeply influences your soul we've had to find that marvelous passage that that you might share with us now from Lord of the Rings this is far from fantasy the the principles that obtain in this world middle-earth this so-called fantasy world are I think utterly realistic here's a little exchange it wasn't put into the movie I don't know why when the writers of Rohan challenged Aragorn and he tells them apparently fantastic stories and the writer says it's hard to be sure of anything among so many Marvel's the world is all grown strange an elf and a dwarf in company walk in our daily fields and folk speak with the lady of the wood and yet live and the sword comes back to war that was broken in the long ages ere the fathers of our fathers wrote into the mark how shall a man judge what to do in such times that regards answer is as he has ever judged good and ill have not changed since yesterday nor are they one thing among elves and dwarves another among men it is a man's part to discern them as much in the golden wood as in an own house a ring declaration of a universal morality a natural law yes and so and played out so magnificently throughout the whole story yes is the dictates of the moral law and and even what transcends the moral law taking us back to the Redeemer the creator and Redeemer himself yes which which shows us ultimately what the significance of the natural law is Tolkien himself said that this was a deeply religious work and that's why he took all references to religion out of the text and put them underground as if they were like the earth itself and the story is just the the top layer of soil do you think that if he hadn't done that you you and I both know that there there are some who are part of what might be called the cultural elite chattering classes chattering classes as soon as they hear anything about religion of course it's like sprinkling holy water on a possessed man or a cross held up or vampire I mean you know the the reaction to it is so profound and visceral that they can't even contemplate it but the tokine tricks them he lures them me and and has them contemplating these profound transcendent truth it's not really a trick he's not injecting religion into the story and the story is religious because the world is religious so he just tells it like it is but he subtracts it from the surface so if they don't trick themselves so that trick themselves yeah now I think I know your answer to this question but do you think the book do you think the films can become effective tools for the evangelization of culture for bringing the gospel to the society within which we live very powerful tools because if we're not in love with something if our imagination and our love of beauty doesn't click in it's very difficult for a purely intellectual and a purely volitional and moral commitment to do very much so you wouldn't you would encourage a Catholic to read the Lord of the Rings to go see these movies absolutely I think in our culture we've done a very good job in in in theology in the intellectual realm we've done a very good job in the moral realm we've done a rather bad job in the aesthetic realm compared to the Middle Ages Catholic art in the 20th century is moribund and here is a great exception to it but not necessarily produced by Catholics well this is the kind of kami tokine was yes I gotta gave the movie and of course the the people who did the movies couldn't have done it without the creation of the Pope and and they even though they weren't Catholic they were honest and often faithful enough to the book that most of it comes through so so this is a great word this are Jaffa Cathedral among books that's a marvelous way of putting it the that sort of like the touch on the the three theological virtues faith hope and charity and we can't be saved without them our culture is not going to be redeemed without them and I was wondering how you might see those three maybe we could just take them one at a time played up with in the book of represented in the book and in the movies I mean the theological virtue of faith for example faith here I think is mostly fidelity and friendship to each other MF in in Hebrew they're true to their promises and they're true to each other it's the fellowship is the friendship that that is the strongest for us when we do that in the communion of saints exactly the communion of saints at the Council of Elrond where the nine members the fellowship are chosen the four hobbits are included including merry and pippin who are at that point almost comic relief yes they remain throughout the movie the movie doesn't really show how much they grow and Gandalf says I think it is wise to trust a friendship right and of course with fidelity I mean God remains faithful to us in terms of redeeming us and divine providence working through this story there there is that unseen friend if you will behind us the scenes that is going to bring them to and even though there's notion God there in a sense he is of course because if God doesn't exist why is it wrong to play God and use the ring but even though God is not a character still Frodo's faithfulness and Sam's faithfulness to the tasks which is a divine task and absolute this was absolutely necessary they have a thousand reasons for giving up and they didn't well and the awareness that there is a guiding hand behind all of this is clearly pointing against Providence yes what about hope the illogical virtue of hope I think the hope that good will triumph over evil is very strong and very clear hope that they will be successful is not very strong and very clear they clearly distinguish hope in a rational calculating sense which is almost totally God their chances are incredibly slim from a fundamental hope the most beautiful passage in the whole book seems to me is the one where we're Sam in the middle of Mordor with almost no hope at all looks in the middle of the night and sees a symbol of Hope simply a star there peeping among the cloud rack above a dark tor high up in the mountain the Sam saw a single white star twinkle for a while the beauty of it smote his heart as he looked up out of the Forsaken land and hope returned to him for like a shaft clear and cold the thought pierced him that in the end the shadow was only a small and passing thing there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach that's beautiful a great passage well you you went right through the passage on hope there at least that beautifully formulates that in the novel's what about the the greatest of these a hope and charity and the greatest being love or charity well I Lord define charity in terms of martyrdom or self-sacrifice this is love that you give yourself for another and everybody in the fellowship in a sense gifts themselves Gandalf gives his life although he resurrects Frodo gives him whole his whole self in fact he gives his life there's a passage at the end which is faithfully preserved in the movie where he has to leave the Shire the ring is has too much power over him and all his friends say this is tragic and he says well it must always beat this way I tried to save the Shire but not for myself my life for yours that well it's curious too as they're going off at the end he's taking his uncle Bilbo yeah yeah Bilbo who's an old man now and who had the ring the ring and he's unaware of what you know what it got on and transpired he leans against fro don't sit sorry I go I've lost it must've lost it somewhere and it's just like the whole the sin is always there any right to the end the the spiritual writers always tell us that we must be aware of the allure of sin to the very end st. Agustin asked what are the four cardinal virtues required humility humility humility humility and every one of the characters has the humility to recognize their limits so tell me are you somewhat hopeful that let me ask you this you probably somewhat help hopeful that this movie and leading particularly people to read the books will have a leavening effect on our society and and and it's bound to or it's sound too but I think that's the wrong kind of thinking instead of saying I'm going to calculate what's going to do the most good to my society that's my end all right here's a means the Lord of the Rings alright let me calculate now how much good that means can accomplish towards that end that's not what they do in the Lord of the Rings they do their duty mm-hmm they do what what divine providence and grace inspires them to do and then they let the chips fall where they may mmm so we have to do well I remember hearing Archbishop Kohana give a paper at a conference actually that I had organized and and it was on the question of conscience but he was talking about the tough choices that human beings have to make and and he referred to the that the children of God escaping from the Egyptians and they come to the Red Sea and the waters in front of them and the Egyptian hordes are closing in from behind and he said what do you do in a case like that and he's you go forward yeah yeah right they didn't know there was no calculation exactly you know they didn't say well by the time you set your foot in why the water's going to start parting no you just go ahead and you don't see and in a sense that was our Lord even in in the garden and his passion yes he wanted the cup to be removed he didn't want to go on then it must have been a moment of apparent despair which you see over and over again frankly in these books in fact without that apparent despair without that dark night of not there's the soul but but the mind I don't think faith can be perfected you have to you have to not see in order to totally trust was there an it was an element in the books that that you think magnificently articulated what we're talking about here this this utter trust in God and the willingness to surrender self to help transform well to be faithful which would not a calculating sense but it's going to bring about the transformation of ecology but was there any that was missed in the movie that you did you yes in your heart oh oh there were many such great lines for instance when Frodo and Sam and Gollum approached the Black Gate to Mordor there are thousands of orcs in front of them and there's no possibility that they can sneak in and at this point Frodo and Sam doesn't don't know that there's another way in so Frodo is about to march forward and and Sam argues you can't do that mr. Frodo well he says I am command to go I know of no other way and therefore I shall go and at that point Gollum says no you can sneak in this other way in feeds of - he loved but I am commanded to go therefore I will go period and and this is a message to us and that wasn't in the movie I think we're we Americans are so pragmatic and so calculating if you ask a simple question like why are we sending out missionaries or why do we pray we usually give a reason well to get these results but the reason should be we are commanded to do so period and we're commanded to go and you know and we're commanded to go I'll preach the good news of Angela's culture and show God's love in the world in which we live and so I want to thank dr. Craig very much for being here us to help us and her more deeply into this rich literature and magnificent moving films so thank you very much your exact engraved and we look forward to having you with us again for another series part of our series redeeming culture fireside chats thank you very much

Channel: International Institute for Culture

Views: 20,660

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Id: BseCe18zk8Y

Length: 51min 28sec (3088 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 30 2018