J.R.R. Tolkien, a man of faith
By Theresa Pihl, Mercator.
Book Review:
Modernity has flattened and fractured our cultural understanding of the human person. Dr Holly Ordway, Word on Fire’s Cardinal Francis George Professor of Faith and Culture, offers a refreshing counterpoint to this decline in her recent book, Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography. Laying out meticulously researched evidence, she presents J.R.R. Tolkien as a whole man, a man whose faith enlightened his mind and his relations, a man fully alive.
Several notable biographies explore the life and works of the famous author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Humphrey Carpenter’s authorized edition, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, first appeared in 1977, four years after Tolkien’s death. It benefits from immediacy, capturing a personality still in living memory. John Garth’s Tolkien and the Great War (2003) examines a pivotal period in Tolkien’s life. Raymond Edwards’ Tolkien (2020) focuses primarily on his academic career.
But despite their merits, these biographies are incomplete. Garth intentionally limits his scope to a few years, and Carpenter and Edwards ignore a major influence in the life of this complex man: Tolkien’s Christian faith. Carpenter dismisses Tolkien’s faith as an emotional attachment related to his mother, while Edwards relegates it to an appendix. Joseph Pearce’s Tolkien: Man and Myth (2001) engages Tolkien’s Chrisitan worldview more directly from the perspective of a literary critic, but it is Holly Ordway who adds a “whole new dimension” to our understanding of the integrality of Tolkien’s faith as “co-inherent”—to borrow a phrase from his friend and fellow Inkling Charles Williams—to all aspects of his life.
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