The Notion of God in the Lord of the Rings

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The classic works of apocalyptic literature, such as the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation are inherently religious and centered around God. As a result, most later apocalyptic literature is also religiously centered, with God as the instrumental entity (Shaffer 142). Those who have read J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings remember most vividly the final great battle where evil is overcome in the apocalyptic ending of an age. Tolkien's bit of apocalyptic literature in The Lord of the Rings seems different from traditional religious notions of an apocalypse because the entire epic fantasy seems devoid of religion and any notion of God. Through recognition of the aural imagery in The Lord of the Rings and comparison with that of the most famous apocalyptic work, the Book of Revelation, Tolkien's apocalypse does show a god-like force operating behind the scenes. The armies in the final battle of the Age are agents of this god, conquering evil to complete the apocalypse.

In Tolkien's narrative, observance of religion or God seems to be completely omitted. As William Dowie comments, "In The Lord of the Rings, however, there is no talk of gods, mysticism, or religion" (Dowie 266). Dowie observes that "The stories evoke participation in a secular religion--that is, a religion in which all is sacred because all things, even the most natural, are related to one another and to a founding transcendence" (Dowie 267). Many critics agree with this line of thought that The Lord of the Rings has no explicitly mentioned religion aside from the respect of nature. Though Tolkien's later work, The Silmarillion, explicitly begins with an account of gods present in a creation story, the characters in the earlier written The Lord...

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...eated and destroyed. With these sounds, the apocalypse in The Lord of the Rings is completed successfully by a godlike figure acting through men, just as God acts through angels in the Book of Revelation.

Many critics have wondered where God is in Tolkien's fantasy masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings. They wonder how a fantasy classic about another world can have no notion of religion. The apocalyptic end to the tale seems to be devoid of religion, though an apocalypse is usually a religious concept. By looking at the aural imagery of the apocalypse at the culmination of the story, in conjunction with that in the Book of Revelation, one can see a way in which a notion of God acts in the apocalypse. Just as God acts through angels to complete the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelation, so a similar power is behind the actions of men in The Lord of the Rings.

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