Fellowship & Fairydust

      Many of us are aware that the literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien were strongly influenced by his deep Catholic spirituality. Although Tolkien famously denied that his work was an allegory of religion, nonetheless he admitted that his religion was a principal motivator of his writing: “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work” (Letter 142). Moreover, throughout the whole history of Middle Earth there is abundant evidence of an intensely Catholic instinct, which Tolkien inherited from an age-old tradition of spirituality, theology, and philosophy. Steven Greydanus has demonstrated in an excellent article the strong underlying currents of Catholic belief running through Middle Earth, which can be found on DecentFilms.com

    Among many instances of Tolkien’s Catholicism influencing his work, there is a certain understanding of the nature and relationship of good and evil which is foundational to traditional Catholic doctrine. Tolkien treats of evil as a privation of the good in a manner corresponding to the well known doctrine of St. Augustine and Boethius as well as countless others in that tradition.

    St. Augustine’s own personal history is helpful in providing some context for understanding this doctrine as he taught it. Before he found his place in the Catholic Church, St. Augustine had at one time been captivated by the heretical doctrine of Manichaeism. This doctrine held, among other things, that there were two forces equal but opposed to each other, eternally in conflict, which together were the source of all conflict in the world. These were the forces of good and evil. Each had being of its own. The chances of either force triumphing the other in the end were always 50/50.

    St. Augustine himself initially embraced this doctrine. But in the process of finding his way into the Catholic Church, he concluded that this was a deeply flawed description of the relationship of good and evil. He eventually formulated an expression of what he believed to be the truth on the matter. In his Confessions, he writes:

    “It was obvious to me that things which are liable to corruption are good. If they were the supreme goods, or if they were not good at all, they could not be corrupted. For if they were supreme goods, they would be incorruptible. If there were no good in them, there would be nothing capable of being corrupted. Corruption does harm and unless it diminishes the good, no harm is done. Therefore either corruption does not harm, which cannot be the case, or (which is wholly certain) all things that are corrupted suffer privation of some good. If they were to be deprived of all good, they would not exist at all. (Confessions, VII).”

   This doctrine appears throughout many of Augustine’s works, another notable example being the City of God. St. Augustine, in continuity with his Platonic inclinations, believes that the good is transcendental– that is, that everything that exists is good, insofar as it exists. To rob something of its proper good is thus in some way to rob it of its being. But as long as it still exists, it retains some measure of its good and is not entirely evil. To be entirely evil would be to fall completely out of existence. Boethius reaches a similar conclusion in The Consolation of Philosophy. There is a section of dialogue in which Lady Philosophy guides Boethius to the conclusion that evil is nothing:

    “No one can doubt that God is almighty,” Philosophy began.

    “Certainly not, unless he is mad,” I answered.

    “But nothing is impossible for one who is almighty.”

    “Nothing.”

    “Then can God do evil?”

    “No, of course not.”

    “Then evil is nothing, since God, who can do all things, cannot do evil.”

(The Consolation of Philosophy, III, 12).

   This conclusion serves as a premise for a further argument in which Lady Philosophy demonstrates the surprising conclusion that the evil man, as evil, does not exist. “For, if our earlier conclusion that evil is nothing still stands, it is clear that the wicked can do nothing since they can do only evil” (IV, 2). Thus, the wicked are, in the end, utterly powerless; the true power belongs to the virtuous.

    John Ronald Ruel Tolkien, a devout Catholic and a learned scholar, must have been deeply impressed with this very traditional understanding of good and evil. This is evidenced quite strongly in all of his works. In The Return of the King, there is a profound passage relating a brief discussion between Frodo and Sam, after Sam has discovered Frodo captured in the tower of Cirith Ungol. Sam, desiring some food with which to sustain the both of them, wonders whether there is any possibility of finding decent food in a den of orcs. He muses, “Don’t orcs eat, and don’t they drink? Or do they just live on foul air and poison?” Frodo’s reply could almost have been lifted from the Confessions of Augustine:

    “No, they eat and drink, Sam. The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own. I don’t think it gave life to the orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them; and if they are to live at all, they have to live like other living creatures. Foul waters and foul meats they’ll take, if they can get no better, but not poison. They’ve fed me, and so I’m better off than you. There must be food and water somewhere in this place. (The Return of the King, VI,1).”

    This passage demonstrates a profound recognition of the essential goodness of all things simply insofar as they have being. Evil has had only the effect of robbing them of some of their being, twisting and ruining them, but it could never have produced them, created them. The good is naturally prior to evil, for evil is only the privation of the good. It has no existence of its own, nor could it be the source of real existence.

    This is manifested, moreover, in the fact that Tolkien’s orcs had once belonged to the higher race of elves. Thus, although the Shadow had corrupted and mangled them into the wicked creatures that they were, they remained fundamentally good to the extent – however little that was – that they retained their original nature as elves. An analogous fact may be observed of many of the principal figures of evil in Tolkien’s narrative.

    Morgoth in The Silmarillion, as well as his servant Sauron, the Dark Lord of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, were essentially fallen members of the Valar. The evil wizard Saruman was a fallen Istari, who were likely of Valinorean descent. The nine Nazgul were originally men, fallen so far that the very sense of their nothingness instilled the greatest terror in the hearts of men. All of these examples and probably more show amply that evil, in Tolkien’s understanding, was not a kind of being in its own right, but a corruption or privation of the good. In the words of the wise Elrond, “nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so” (The Fellowship of the Ring, II, 2).

     Steven Greydanus rightly connects this understanding of evil in Tolkien’s work to the hopeful recognition of the fact that, unlike what the Manichees would teach, the chances of either good or evil triumphing over the other are not merely 50/50; rather, the good must necessarily triumph in the end no matter how great the evils which press us in the present. For evil is merely nothing, and nothing cannot win a battle.

    This recognition gives the characters of Tolkien’s story a reason to hope for the better as when Sam, whilst standing in the middle of a land overrun by darkness and despair, beholds in the smoke-filled sky the faint but beauteous light of a single star. “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 beauty for ever beyond its reach” (The Return of the King, VI, 2).