#lotrproject

I passed 20,000 words on my #lotrproject. Here is a snippet in celebration.

Jesus is the main character in the Christian narrative. Everything hinges upon Him. The whole story of creation, redemption, and judgment depends upon Jesus. Every other story within the Scriptures finds its fulfillment and ultimate meaning in the Jesus event: His incarnation, life, suffering, death, resurrection, ascension, and return.

As a student of Christian theology, I came across this helpful term: typology. A familiar example for many would be the relationship between Jonah and Jesus. Jonah was in the belly of a great fish for three days. Jesus was in the belly of the earth (if you will) for three days. Then Jonah was vomited into shore. Likewise Jesus left the belly of the earth and rose to new life. Jonah’s life was a foreshadowing of the life of Jesus. It would be accurate to say that Jonah was a “type” of Jesus. Jesus would then be called the “anti-type.”

For those who know the story, Jonah and Jesus were obviously not similar on all accounts. Jonah was a reluctant prophet who did not want to do what God asked him to do. Jesus was a willing servant of God who did exactly what His Father asked. Jonah complains to God because God chose to save the people of Nineveh. Jesus pleads that God would forgive the people who were at that very moment crucifying Jesus.

Jonah and Jesus are not the same person, but rather, Jesus is a fuller, better, greater version of Jonah. Jonah is merely a type in that one way: that he was in the belly of a fish for three days and then was vomited out.

As I seek to share the abundance of applicability I mentioned in the Foreword, I label this applicability as mythical typology. In typology, the Old Testament characters, events, and themes were all pointing forward to Jesus. They all found their ultimate fulfillment in Him. In mythical typology, Tolkien (and any other authors for that matter) points sideways, out of their fictional world to the real world, out of their fictional story to the biblical narrative.

If we view Tolkien’s characters, events, and themes as mythical typology, we see a correspondence to Jesus and His work; furthermore, we see Jesus is a fuller, more complete version of each of these characters. Just as Jesus is the greater version of Old Testament characters like Moses and Melchizedek, Jonah and Joshua, so too is Jesus the greater version of several Tolkien characters including Gandalf and Galadriel, Frodo and Aragorn.

Here Tolkien showcases his faithfulness to Jesus, daring not to attempt to create a character as perfect and holy as the Savior Himself. Tolkien’s work (for this reader) points sideways to the work Jesus.

There is no point in reading "Of Beleriand and its realms" (Chapter 14 of The Silmarillion) without Karen Wynn Fonstad's Atlas of Middle Earth at hand.