Monday, December 22, 2014

Hobbits and Christ: The worldview of J.R.R. Tolkien

World Mag
Martin Freeman, left, and John Callen in a scene from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
Martin Freeman, left, and John Callen in a scene from The Desolation of Smaug
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... "Where do you find a Christian worldview in The Hobbit Look at Tolkien’s contemporaries and what were they saying about life. You don’t have to be an English major to know his contemporaries were people like [Jean-Paul] Sartre, [Albert] Camus, and [Samuel] Beckett, who said there’s no purpose to life, there’s no meaning to life, there’s no such thing as truth. In The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, we find all those things. There’s a distinct reason why Gandalf chose Bilbo, and it’s a particularly Christian reason. It’s going to be good for Bilbo, but also good for the world, and the believers in your audience will know that that’s how God works in our lives.  … So we see a providence, we see a purpose, and we absolutely see a moral universe where there’s absolutely a clear right and wrong, and Tolkien’s contemporaries rejected all of those things[.]"

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