New LOTR vs. Narnia Poll

[Lucy Took]

None of us are saying that ether ether Eru or Aslan ARE God,only that they are a picture of God in another,ficticonal,world. The worlds are not real,therefore they are not real,and therefore not God. Whew.

Now,from what I understand,ME is far from an allagory,it's not a retelling of things that really happened. But,it does ilistrate lessons. These lesson were likely not intended to be there by the author,but they are there. Bravory,loyalty,faithfulness,kindness and justice(I think the "It is not for us to deside who desevers death..." conversation is a good example of that).

But CoN isn't an allagory ether,it's a supposal. Suppose God created another world? Suppose He gave His Son to die there in another way? Suppose...you get the point. Not allagory.

Now,I voted LotR,mostly for the hobbits,and because this is a Narnia site and LotR needed votes. If I were to vote on a Tolkien site,I would likely vote Narnia. Because I can't chose.

[Erucenindë]

hmm... well, neither are allegorical, that is correct. However, both have allegorical elements and themes within them. See the difference?

Out of the both, one could argue that LWW is more allegorical than anything. True. But when you compare them as a whole, they both have about the same amount of allegories. LOTR perhaps even more. I think maybe Narnia's allegorical terms are more "obvious" perhaps, but when you think about it, the later you get into the books, the less allegory you find.

Just a thought.

[Lucy Took]

With the exeption of VDT and LB. The LB is full of symbolism,and every island in the VDT holds a lesson. And Eruce,dear,you haven't read them,so you can't talk

[The Old Maid]

Lucy Took wrote:

None of us are saying that either Eru or Aslan ARE God,only that they are a picture of God in another, fictional world. The worlds are not real, therefore they [Eru, Aslan] are not real,and therefore not God.

Exactly. The characters are modeled on God-the-Father [Eru; the Emperor-Over-Sea], God-the Son [Aslan], and God-the-Holy-Spirit [The Secret Fire]. If a reader closed the book with a sigh and said, "I wish there was a REAL person like these characters," we could point them toward God and begin the conversation.

Dernhelm of Rohan wrote:
Any good story will have some element of the true story of history in it: the Bible. But no other story can claim to have characters who are God the Father, God the Son, or The Holy Spirit.

Apologies for any confusion, but it was Lewis who put the words in Aslan's mouth:

"I am [there, on Earth]. There I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name."

So to the extent that a fictional character can make such a claim, Aslan (through Lewis) seems to be doing so. It was only in that spirit that I make the references I did. I can tell the difference between truth and story.

Dernhelm of Rohan wrote:

Eru is not God, nor is he intended to be. Tolkien was not rewriting the Bible; he was writing a fictional story! Several examples of this are:

-Eru did not step in and send his son to save Middle-earth from either Morgoth or Sauron.

And God didn't send Christ at the time of Noah's Flood, though of course Christ existed at the time of Noah's Flood. Tolkien was writing a pre-Incarnational story, an "Old Testament story" in a fictional world. Probably the reason that more readers don't know that is simply that the story is set pre-Judaism as well. In fact it's almost certainly intended to be understood as pre-Noahide.

However, Christ's coming to earth (or to be strict, Eru's coming to Arda) was already prophesied before Beren (husband of Luthien) was born. Andreth, a human prophet (and Beren's great-aunt) discusses the prophecy with Finrod Felagund in Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth. Andreth is in a situation where, if she were in our world, we would say that she has heard of Isaiah 53, parts of the Minor Prophets, and parts of the Psalms that refer to Christ but has not heard the verse that describes the mechanism: Isaiah 7:14. She has not heard all of the prophecies. Without our more complete verses that say that Christ shall enter our world by way of being born of a virgin, Andreth can only guess at how Eru would enter her world. That is why she says, "would it not shatter Arda?" She thinks Eru will appear on the scene pavilioned in splendor and girded with praise, as our hymns have it. Finrod doesn't know the mechanism either, but he accepts the prophecy that Eru will enter the world somehow, someday, for the sake of Men, and that Eru can find a way to do it that will not shatter Arda.

But there can be no doubt: Men had heard within the first 300 years of their creation that Eru would enter their world for their sake. (Men awoke in Year One of the Sun; the First Age ended in Sun-year 572-ish, for all you trivia fans out there.)

-Eru created the Valar and the Maia, then let them create the world.

Eru did create the Ainur, but he also created the Great Music. It is worth noting that Eru created three themes, and that the Children were in the Third Theme, yet it is very explicitly stated that the Ainur had no part in the Children's creation. When Eru spoke into the Void the world "Ea! Let these things Be!", that is when matter, the universe came into being ex nihilo. The Ainur simply had the privilege of shaping that matter. You're right that this is a departure from Scripture, but it's not the kind of departure that people think. It's related to the points below.

-Manwe, Ulmo, Varda and Aule are the Valar most involved with the affairs of Elves and men and dwarves. The Valar, not Eru, are actually called "gods" by some men.

And Tolkien points out that Men are wrong to do so. Men made this mistake because (with about five exceptions) no Man ever met the beings for whom Valinor was named. Men heard about the Valar and Maiar from the Umanyar Elves, who heard about it from the Sindar, who heard about it from Thingol and the Noldor. Third-hand information, delivered to Men who were illiterate at that time, didn't always get kept straight.

The Valar, "the offspring of Eru's thought," are well-intentioned but not infallible. Not introducing themselves to Men, and largely leaving Men to fend for themselves in a brutal world, contributed to Men's misunderstandings, and even made Men eventually fear them.

-Gandalf seems to be a Maia, one of the beings like the Valar, but less powerful. We can also assume from what is hinted and said in the books that he was sent by Manwe, the chief Vala, not Eru.

-What angels are you talking about?

Manwe serves Eru; Gandalf serves Manwe. So far, so good. Here's the kicker. Gandalf is an angel.

Tolkien as a good Catholic Christian was a daily communicant (i.e. he went to mass/worship & took Eucharist/Communion every day), but he got in trouble repeatedly with other believers after his books were published. What was a Catholic "in good standing" doing, to write books with wizards, he was told. Stung, Tolkien retorted, "Gandalf is an angel." Thus all the other beings of Gandalf's kind are also angels.

Tolkien kept getting tagged with this complaint, so he kept saying it throughout his career.

Gandalf the Grey, Tolkien “privately admitted” to critic Edmond Fuller in 1962 that “ Gandalf is an angel.”

Also,

From "Letter 131" and "Letter 156" of "The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien:

"As for 'whose authority decides these things?' The immediate 'authorities' are the Valar (the Powers or Authorities): the 'gods'. But they are only created spirits - of high angelic order we should say, with their attendant lesser angels - reverend, therefore, but not worshipful; and though potently 'subcreative', and resident on Earth to which they are bound by love, having assisted in its making and ordering, they cannot by their own will alter any fundamental provision."
(Letter #131)

The 'attendant lesser angels' would be the Maiar.

"But G. is not, of course, a human being (Man or Hobbit). There are naturally no precise modern terms to say what he was. I wd. venture to say that he was an incarnate 'angel'-..."
Letter #156

"G." refers to Gandalf.

...

Okay. So if Gandalf is an angel, is he based on any particular real angel? Not so far as we can tell. Most Tolkien scholars assume that Manwe is based upon Michael the Archangel.

Ulmo doesn't seem to be based on one particular angel either. But in terms of his involvement with humans he would come closest to Gabriel, who makes most of the announcements to Biblical humans and shows them prophecies.

As a Catholic, Tolkien had a special regard for the Virgin Mary. In Arda there are two Marian-like figures, Elbereth the angel and Galadriel the high queen of the Noldorin Elves, though of course neither actually is Mary (in either the Catholic or the Protestant senses!) Elves call upon the angel Elbereth for intercession. Galadriel is the keeper of the lembas, which Tolkien has publicly stated to be a Eucharist/Holy Communion symbol. In her lament "Namarie," Galadriel implores Elbereth to let Frodo go to Valinor if he lives through his mission. A primary reason that Tolkien includes these Marian-like figures is that Mary, or rather her fictional equivalent, hasn't been born yet in Arda.

Again, these fictional angels aren't the real Michael and so forth. The fictional angels in Arda have spouses, for one thing. But they are intended to be more angelic than not.

Catholics and Eastern Orthodox inherited their understanding of angels and angel lore from Judaism. Protestants lost some of that during the Reformation, which in some sense was kind of like a divorce. (Who gets the property? Who gets the books? Who gets the friends? Who gets the memories?)

Anyhow, the original angel lore was that there are nine choirs of angels. When Tolkien wrote of the Valar shaping the formless matter into a habitable world, he was drawing on the lore about the orders of angels known as Thrones, Dominions, and Virtues.

So why do it? Well, partly because of the Catholic admiration for angels, and partly because Tolkien wanted to tell truly ancient stories, and he felt he couldn't do that with a Young Earth Creation scenario of an earth of 6,000 years. So he wrote about an ancient earth. Secular science claims that the earth is 4.6 billion years old. Tolkien let his fictional God-the-Father character create matter and the universe. Tolkien then let the Valar-angels do the detail-work on the fictional world called Arda. He saw that secular claims of Volcano Earth and Snowball Earth and Dry Earth and Poison Gas Earth, pretty much all of them, could be explained in fiction as the result of the endless wars between the Valar and Morgoth.

And then Tolkien had his God-the-Father character create Children, or people. No evolution for Tolkien! He had no problem with making a fictional world that was ancient, but he made sure that every reader knew that the people, all people, were Created beings and not evolved.

Tolkien scholars tend to agree that Tolkien's Third Age stories were set about 12,000 years ago (10,000 BC), during what secular science calls the last Interglacial. So in Tolkien's fictional world, Aragorn and Frodo lived about 12,000 years ago. Then the glaciers came back and scoured Gondor off the face of the earth. That's why we'll never find Gondor or Rohan or anyone or anything that lived in it.

Tolkien simply did it this way because he wanted to tell ancient stories and a 6,000-year-old earth was too young for the kinds of fantasy tales he wanted to tell.

-I don't recall any instances of the Secret Fire telling any of the character what to do. They make their moral decisions based on who their master is, and how it affects themselves and others.

Frodo and Sam frequently find themselves speaking in tongues, which in our world is a charism of the Holy Spirit. Frodo has studied a little bit of the Elven-tongues, Sam none of them. But in both cases Tolkien often says that "it was as if someone else was using his voice, speaking with his mouth." Additionally the characters who speak in tongues frequently find themselves calling out the name of Elbereth, the Marian-like angel who is allowed to some extent to intervene in their situation but only when asked. She must be asked before she can help; it's simply one of the rules. Aragorn adds that there is power in invoking her: "More deadly to them [the Ringwraiths] was the name of Elbereth." In Tolkien's story, the characters are given the ability to speak in tongues (a charism) and are inspired to speak the words that will permit a specific angel to intervene and aid them.

More than that, Tolkien told a lot of people that the Secret Fire was his fictional world's version of the Holy Spirit.

In Tolkien and The Silmarillion, Clyde S. Kilby refers to a discussion he had with Tolkien: "Professor Tolkien talked to me at some length about the use of the word 'holy' in The Silmarillion. Very specifically he told me that the 'Secret Fire sent to burn at the heart of the World' in the beginning was the Holy Spirit." (p. 59)

Are Tolkien's stories the Bible in fictional form? No, just as Lewis's stories are not the Bible in fictional form. Aslan empowers Peter to fight wars and blesses his worldly power as king; Jesus forbade Peter the apostle to do any of these things. But the two authors are using fiction to explore Christian issues. (Our own Dr.Elwin Ransom has a column on Christian fiction on his other website, Faith Fusion.)

You might like a book called J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth by Bradley J. Birzer. Birzer had a lot to say about how Tolkien's faith as a Catholic Christian was explored and revealed in Tolkien's books. It's actually not very long: it's almost half footnotes and documentation! And it includes some interesting sections on Aragorn and Tolkien's love of the "good king."

[Erucenindë]

Hey, I asked my brother, who has read them and that is what he said. So blame him.

Just because it is a "lesson" doesn't mean it is allegorical. LOTR is full of lessons (and symbols), if you want to put it that way. An allegory is a story that mirrors another story.

Symbolism is more or less the same as an allegory.

So are you saying that LB and VDT are the same or more allegorical than LWW? My brother seems to think that LWW is the most allegorical, opinion wise.

Realize, this is just debate, I am not putting down LOTR or Narnia, obviously, I prefer LOTR, but I'm just discussing.

EDIT: that was wonderful Old Maid. Well thought out, and I agree with you in every way.

[Lucy Took]

Wow,TOM,that made sence.

As a Baptist,I don't know much about Catholic teachings. Tecnicly,I'm not even a Protestant,the Baptists are older than the reformation,and therefor never got the Catholic teachings. But I shall not go into that. Long story short,thanks for the enlightenment.

Eruce,tell your brother that the VDT is full of symbolism. If he doesn't believe that,tell him to go re-read "The Adventures of Eustace". And the end of "The Magician's Book". And join NarniaWeb,and convince his sister to read the books for herself.

As a side note,anyone that looks at my graphic set knows I have nothing whatsoever against the Valar...

[redeemedqueen]

perhaps I'm just a little biased...but I say NARNIA!

[Dernhelm_of_Rohan]

There is no way any of us can't be biased in some way, redeemedqueen. But it's not a bad thing. Narnia is a series worth voting for!

And Lucy Took, cool graphics ( I am sooo jealous, but there isn't a face for that!) and good point about the symbolism in VDT. I especially like that garden scene up on the mountain, where Eustace gets "undragoned", as Edmund says.

Are Tolkien's stories the Bible in fictional form? No, just as Lewis's stories are not the Bible in fictional form. Aslan empowers Peter to fight wars and blesses his worldly power as king; Jesus forbade Peter the apostle to do any of these things. But the two authors are using fiction to explore Christian issues. (Our own Dr.Elwin Ransom has a column on Christian fiction on his other website, Faith Fusion.)

It seems I can't write short reply to save my life. Wow, are you a deep scholar! You make several good points; among them is that Tolkien called Gandalf an angel. I didn't know that and I apologize. Your last paragraph cleared up my objection that Tolkien (note I did not say Lewis) was not rewriting the Bible. I did remember that Aslan quote at the end of VDT, and the very end of LB, where it says that all worlds are on the Mountains of Aslan, and that he "no longer looked to them like a Lion".
You said that Peter the Apostle was forbidden to fight wars; I assume you're talking about when Jesus was arrested on Passover night. That does not mean that God does not call us to fight: the Israelites were told numerous times to wipe out entire groups of people, and in the New Testament, John the Baptist further clarifies it:

Some soldiers were questioning him [John], saying, "And what about us, what shall we do?" And he said to them "Do not take money from anyone by force, or accuse anyone falsely, and be content with your wages."
Luke 3:14, NASB

If being a soldier was wrong, he would have said, "Don't kill people", or "Quit your jobs". Jesus knew that it was God's plan for him to die and He rebuked Peter for resisting God's plan, not for the actual act of defending Him.

You might like a book called J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth by Bradley J. Birzer.

I'll check that out. Thanks!

[Lady of the Green Kirtle]

What a surprise that more people on NarniaWeb preferred the Chronicles of Narnia to The Lord of the Rings I chose Narnia as well; while I also loved Lord of the Rings, Narnia will always have the number one spot in my heart. I love all of the fantasy elements, the magic, the talking animals, the mythical creatures, etc. you just don't get that to the same extent in The Lord of the Rings.

[narnian_at_heart]

I'm not voting because I can't decide. They are both so awesome!

[Narnian_Warrior]

I voted LOTR. I just like the detail and the way it was written better. I love both Narnia and LOTR but to me LOTR is just a better work of fiction.

[narnian_at_heart]

Narnia doesn't have as much detail because C.S. Lewis meant for people to use their imaginations more.

[Dernhelm_of_Rohan]

Narnia doesn't have as much detail because C.S. Lewis meant for people to use their imaginations more.

Which doesn't make it better or worse than LOTR. It's just a different style. And, depending on my mood, I may want more of my own fill-ins than Tolkien's detailed, thought-out books.
I remember reading somewhere that C.S. Lewis once said (paraphrasing) that the many gaps left in the books were where our creativity should come in. That we should write the background stories. Like, whom did Rillian marry? What adventures did Tirian's grandfather have fighting off those outlaws? When the White Witch took over, did the last of Frank and Helen's descendants perish in battle, or did they flee with some of their people?
That's the mystery of Narnia.

[Lucy Took]

And the glory of good fanfiction!!!

OK,just had to say that...

[Erucenindë]

amidst all the bad fanfiction. For the last time, Eowyn is not marrying Aragorn and Melefarianuaslenteran is not magically coming to Middle-Earth, saving all from obvious desctruction, AND managing to make Legolas fall head over heels in love with her.

[Lucy Took]

I try to steer clear of all romance for that very reason...when it comes to ME I pretty much only read funny AUs by trusted authors.

Narnia on the other hand,I read pretty much anything (exept romance) from trusted authors,and stuff recomended by them.

Like I said,GOOD fanfiction. There's some good stuff amid the sea of rubbish,you just have to be careful.