J. R. R. Tolkien

While I grew up reading the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, it has only been in recent years that I became more of a devoted Tolkien fan. When I had a research leave in 2016, I decided that one of my projects would be to read everything Tolkien wrote related to Middle-earth. I did not realize how vast this project would be! But the journey has been very rewarding and fun. My first writing on Tolkien was a series of blog posts on Tolkien’s idea of the long defeat.

Reflections on Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Part One: The Long Defeat (Talbot Good Book Blog)

Reflections on Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Part Two: The Long Defeat and the Old Testament (Talbot Good Book Blog)

The Long Defeat and an Unfinished Sequel to Lord of the Rings (Talbot Good Book Blog)

As part of a later sabbatical in 2019, I had the chance to present a paper at a Tolkien conference in the town he grew up in: Birmingham, England. The picture above is from the Plough and Harrow Hotel, where we stayed during the conference. This paper was on an obscure part of Tolkien’s early writings and the disappearance of a war god. While some scholars have suggested a kind of editorial purpose behind this, I proposed that it was rather the result of the summation process that the work went through: the later Silmarillion is a summary of the earlier and longer stories, and so some parts had to be cut out.

“Tolkien’s War Gods: Studying Tolkien’s View of War through the Characterization of Makar and Tulkas,” in Proceedings of Tolkien 2019 (forthcoming)

A Tolkien group has started at the Evangelical Theological Society, and I had the opportunity to present a paper there in 2020 (virtually) on the connection between angels and deities in Middle-earth as compared to the Old Testament. This paper focused on Tolkien’s explicit plan to incorporate the pagan deities he loved from his beloved myths into his created Middle-earth as angels. Instead of seeing this as a desperate tactic to be explained away, it actually matches the Old Testament vision of the patron deities of other countries.

“Gods or Angels? Blurring the Distinction in Tolkien’s Middle-earth and the Old Testament” (2020 ETS National Meeting)

I am also writing a contribution to a book on Tolkien’s theology. My article will compare and contrasts biblical angels with the Maiar of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, including such beings as Gandalf, Saruman, Sauron, and the Balrogs.

Finally, I am working on some material addressing Tolkien’s orc problem: why is every orc evil, apparently without any hope of redemption?