The Eric Metaxas Show - Holly Ordway (Encore, continued)

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Holly Ordway joins to discuss the spirituality of J.R.R. Tolkien’s works (continued).

Folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxus show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m. Investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Metaxis show. I shouldn't tell you this, but Eric hired someone who sounds just like him to host today's show. But since I'm the announcer, they told me, so I'm telling you, don't be fooled. The real Eric's in jail. Hey there, folks. Welcome. If you've been listening to this show for months or years, you know that every now and again, we get really excited about doing something that's an unadulterated good. We often do it by partnering with CSI that's Christian Solidarity International, who do something, it's almost unthinkable. Slavery exists today. I'm not talking about quote-unquote slavery. I'm not just talking about, quote, unquote, slavery. I'm not just talking about.

sex trafficking. I'm talking about out and out, slavery, people who are enslaved, who live under slavery for years, whose children are born into slavery. It's horrifying stuff. So if we could do something good about it, imagine if we could do something about it. Imagine if we could free actual slaves. Well, we can. You can, which is why today I talked to our friend, Todd Chapman. He's with Christian Solidarity International. We are raising funds this month to free slaves. Todd, welcome back. Thanks, Eric. Always great to be with you. And can I just say thanks, first of all, to the Eric Metaxus audience. I was just going over a report of what you did during our last campaign at the end of 2023. And over 500 people from the Eric Metaxus audience participated.

and you gave enough money that we were able to free 800 slaves this past December. So that's amazing. Thank you so much. God bless you for being part of that. It's a staggering thing. I say the same thing over and over. I'm like a broken record. It's hard for me to believe on the one hand that this is real, but we know it's real.

You've given us details, and I want you to give us details today because a lot of new listeners or people who missed it last time. But I'm also staggered by the fact that we can do something about it. It's not just one of those things that you say, well, just pray about it. There's nothing you can do. You can pray about it and you can do other things. You can actually free slaves. This is why I get so excited.

It's why I get so excited telling my audience, please do this, folks, because you can't. It's an amazing, beautiful thing. CSI, you guys, you know, have been, you're the gold standard. We know that every penny we give to CSI is used well. and I want to reiterate what you were just saying to my audience. I have a great audience. I have people who do this out of the goodness of their heart. And folks, I always say it doesn't matter what you give.

It just matters that you give, that you understand. This is a teaching opportunity with your kids to tell them what's going on. And we get to use something that God has blessed us with to bless other people. So, Todd, lay it out. And let me just say, folks, go to metaxis talk.com. you'll see the banner at the top of the page. And there's a lot of information there when you click on the banner at metaxistok.com. But Todd, for folks who know nothing about this, lay it out.

What is CSI doing? What's the situation in Africa today? Yeah, so CSI actually does a lot of different things. We've been around since 1977. And we were founded as a religious and humanitarian rights organization, basically advocating and getting involved in ministering to, persecuted Christians and also were involved in disaster response. Right now, we're really actively engaged in trying to feed starving families throughout

Africa because of drought conditions there. But the thing that we're probably best known for, and this is our focus on the Eric Metaxa show and has been for years, is liberating slaves from Sudan. These are women and men, but mainly women that were taken captive back in the late 80s, actually, during the Sudanese Civil War. basically what happened was that Arab Muslims were empowered by the government at that time to basically enact religious cleansing. And they were allowed to run roughshod and burn villages of Christians in Sudan, take them captive. And it wasn't until 1995 that we were able actually to advocate and legislate and get legislation passed that stopped the taking of these slaves.

But there was no provision made to free the slaves that had already been. been captured. And so we've been engaged in this work, freeing these slaves. And there's, at one point in time, there were nearly 200,000 people we estimate that had been taken captive during those, those years. And so every year, thanks to the generosity of people like your listeners, we're able to free typically about 1,500 captives every year. We do that through a process of what we call slave liberation, where we have basically, we call them Arab Retrievers, but they're Arabs. They live in that region. They're sympathetic to what we're trying to. to do in freeing these slaves.

And they go and they negotiate with these slave owners and we're able to negotiate the freedom of slaves. And then we, about three or four times a year, we have a liberation march where we literally have to walk these slaves on foot, how else do you walk, I guess, but walk them down to South Sudan, which is a free, largely Christian nation. And we set them on a course to having a new life. We give them a bag of hope, which is all sorts of supplies, tents, blankets, tarps, cooking utensils. We provide them with food, a she goat so that they can get some milk and then

breed that goat. That becomes a micro enterprise for them. And whenever possible, we reunite them with their family back in South Sudan. And basically, we give them their life back. Eric, you know, think about it. I was thinking actually about this this morning, just kind of doing the math. Many of these women that were taken captive in the late 80s, they had slaves, or they had children, rather, while they were in captivity. And I was reading some stories people we just rescued in our most recent liberation. These are young women in their 20s. They were arguably born into slavery.

And so now, thanks to the generosity of your listeners, we're freeing children of slaves as well as the initial slaves. And that's just amazing. Well, the whole thing is stunning. I wanted to say, folks, this is real. These women are raped by the men who quote unquote own them. We also want to be clear. These are radical Muslims who believe in slavery.

So if you want to understand why Christianity is a wonderful thing, serious Christians led the abolition of slavery all around the world. We understand that it's an abomination, that it is evil. We're supposed to treat others as we would want them to treat us. And Christians have abolished slavery. But in the radical Muslim world, slavery is not abolish. And the fact of the matter is that this is happening in Sudan now while we're having this conversation. The good news is we who are Christian, and you don't need to be a Christian. My goodness, anybody who has grown up in the Christianized West understands slavery is evil.

And we can do something about it. So I want to say again, folks, go to metaxis talk.com. You'll see the banner. We want you to give generously. This is just a beautiful opportunity. it's an unadulterated good that we can do. And so many of you have done it in the past. If you've done it in the past, do it with us now.

If you haven't done it, this is your chance. Go to Metaxus Talk.com. If you click on the banner, you'll see all the details. But let's go, Todd Chapman, through some of the details. How much money is involved? If somebody gives a certain amount, we want to free a slave and set that person up in a free life in the future. So it's not just about the fact that they're freed. We now set them up with this money in a life of freedom.

You just said that. So what are the money amounts involved? Yeah, so it's $250 to free one slave. And obviously, just you can do multiples. And oftentimes we have Eric and Texas listeners that just you get so excited about this. You recognize the significance of this opportunity. And we've had people give $1,000, $5,000, $10,000, even $15,000. And I understand not everybody can do that, but certainly $250,000.

is what we would ask you to consider praying about. Or if you wanted to make a monthly gift, and maybe over the course of the year, you know, you give $50 a month and spread it out, and then you're freeing a couple of slaves over the course of the year. But whatever you can do, we all have different capacities. But Eric, as followers of Jesus, we do share the same calling, and that is to set captives free. I mean, Jesus himself said, harkening back to Isaiah, you know, the Spirit of Lord is is upon me, and I'm anointed to set captives free.

that same anointing and calling falls on us. And this is a great way that you can do it. We've got amazing stories of women's lives being given back to them, being transformed. They're reunited with their family that they haven't seen in decades. And they start a life that, frankly, they never thought that they would be able to enjoy because they've never known anything but slavery. And you can be a hand and a heart in making that story happen for even more women this year. Think about it, folks.

You can free a slave. if you can get your kids excited about this. So you go to metaxis talk.com. You'll see the banner. I hope everyone will get as excited about it as I am. This is just a beautiful, beautiful thing. It's an opportunity. Todd Chapman, thank you so much.

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We are today playing the audio of one of those sessions. If you want to see the video, you need to be signed up for Socrates Plus. But this is the audio of my conversation, spectacular conversation, with Holly Ordway on the spirituality, the faith of J.R.R. Tolkien. That's a big deal. The 20th century would be a lot poorer if these two men hadn't felt the confidence to do this and to become as little children, which is, I believe it was. was Oscar Wilde, who said you need to become as a little child. It's beautiful. Oscar Wilde,

of course, I was joking, but he of course also wrote fairy tales. And so to really talk about because it's woven into the spirituality, there's something about fairy tales, fairy stories that speak of another world. So they're a way for us to make real the other world so that it's not all abstract, enlightenment, rationalistic, boring. They both worked in those worlds. And the poem that Lewis wrote on Addison's walk,

it's what the bird said early in the year. It's so beautiful. But it speaks about that, that fairy tales are pointing. beyond this world to that other world which exists outside of time. So I can't remember because it's been a while since I read it, but on fairy stories, Tolkien obviously finds all of this very important.

So say a little bit about what he says in fairy stories, because it speaks to his whole life, really. Well, yeah. And, of course, it's a big, baggy kind of essay that lots of stuff in it. But for me, I think the most important part is in the second half. where he talks about the three functions of fantasy, which he says it can happen to any literature, but they work especially well in fantasy,

and their recovery, escape, and consolation. And so consolation we've talked about already. It's the consolation of the happy ending, the eucatrophy, escape. And he's very careful to disambiguate. I love that word. It's not escapism. It's as if we are trapped in a prison,

we should want to escape. And I always find helpful to think of, the fact that he served in the front lines of the First World War, he would have had in mind, what if I'm captured and become a prisoner of war, then it's my duty to try to escape. That's what he brings this idea of escape. If we're stuck in an enlightenment, rationalistic materials world, we should try to escape from that. Stories can help us do that.

And then there's recovery, which he says is the regaining of a clear vision, so we can read a story, get a vision of the world as it maybe could be, should be, might be, come back into our primary world and have a fresh vision. Well, when we think of fairy tales, one thing that is particularly interesting about Tolkien and, of course, Lewis, as well, is that here they are, in the middle of the 20th century, writing against the grain, not going along with the zeiteper. ice, which was modernist, and which sneered at the idea of happy endings, which embraced the bleakness of tragedy too much in a way, that they both had this outrageous self-confidence to say, no, no, we're going to write stories about common men, women, real people, hobbits, And we're going to dare to give our stories happy endings, which when you think of the 20th century, you know, the modernists all really somehow looked down on that as though everything that rhymed or had a happy ending or was in any way attractive or satisfying didn't do justice to the bleakness of the world, which they were convinced was at the heart of everything. Yeah, I mean, they are very countercultural.

And I think for Tolkien, the fact that he was Catholic helped. Because as a Catholic, being a Catholic in early to mid-20th century England was tough. You know, it was just a minority faith. There was a lot of discrimination. I mean, you write about that in the book. I mean, the fact that he is a Catholic in a world where everybody's Church of England. Exactly. And, I mean, there were even, you know, legal difficult, like there were legal penalties.

Full civil rights were not restored to Catholics until quite late. The last of the penal laws was not repealed until Tolkien's adult lifetime. So he's living in a culture in which his fate is literally a second-class citizen, you know, and then he has to commit to that and live it out. So just by being a Catholic, he's being countercultural. And Tolkien, he could easily have compartmentalized. hidden it, been a Catholic, you know, probably, okay, I'll go to Sunday Mass, but I'll just, but he wasn't. He was very present. He, and that was one of the most surprising things in my research for Tolkien's faith.

This is something people will not realize. He was very visible as an academic Catholic. He was a mentor for students. He was a role model. He was involved. Everybody knew Professor Tolkien was a Catholic. And that came at a cost socially, academically, you know, professionally for him. Well, that's what's interesting, is both he and Lewis, obviously Lewis was not a Catholic, but both of them were so deep in their faith and had such confidence and humility that they were willing to be very public about the things that someone less confident, more worried about what one's colleagues thought would hide. And both of them. I mean, the fact that Lewis, the fact that both of them wrote fairy stories, wrote things that became gigantically popular at a time when to be an academic at Oxford or Cambridge to write popular works was to be, you know, be on the pale. So, I mean, that's interesting. I keep saying I want to talk about Leaf by Niggle, but there was something you just said about his, the publicness of his faith.

I want to go back to, most people aren't aware of Tolkien's biography, much less his spiritual biography. Talk a little bit about how he grew up being an orphan and then the Catholic priest that adopts him. Well, he had a pretty eventful life, he was the first part of it. So he was actually born in South Africa and was baptized in the Church of England in Blomfonte, South Africa. And so when he was three, his mother, Mabel, took him his little brother, back to England for their health first time while their father, who was a bank manager, stayed in South Africa. But while they were in Birmingham in England, he died. And so they stayed in Birmingham. Four years later, his mother became a Catholic, not a popular move. Both sides of the family said,

this is terrible. I mean, that alone is extraordinary. His mother, a single mother in England, chooses to do this dramatically countercultural thing and become a Catholic in England, what precipitated that for her? We don't know for sure because we don't have many of her papers. Many of them were destroyed when Tolkien was a boy. We don't have a lot of details.

I was able to sort of trace a connection, I think, that it was the influence of John Henry Newman and the Oxford movement because we do know that she was sort of attracted by the Oxford movement. and she was a high church Anglican before she was a Catholic. Okay, so we're talking, this is the 1890s. So the Oxford movement is a big thing in Oxford, but she's in Birmingham, but it's still.

Yeah, so Newman had become a Catholic, and then the Birmingham connection is interesting because he had become a Catholic, come back to Birmingham and founded the oratory in Birmingham, the orator of St. Philippineary. Say who Newman was, for those who don't. know. So John Henry Newman, one of the most famous literary theological figures of the 20th century, he was vicar of St. Mary's Church, the University Church in Oxford, for instance. So very intellectual Anglican, and then as part of the Oxford movement, which was trying to sort of restore Catholicity to the Church of England, he eventually thought, no, I need to just become a Catholic. And not all

of his colleagues in the Oxford movement became Catholics, like Pusey stayed Anglican. They stayed friends. What year does Newman become a Catholic? I don't remember. Okay. Is 1845 too early? Well, he found the oratory in 1852, so that's in the

ballpark, I think. For some reason, I remember that he became Catholic, 1845, but maybe getting that wrong. But what amazes me, we'll carry on with Tolkien's biography. So his mother becomes a Catholic, at a great

cost at such a great cost that it probably costs her life. Yes, because it turns out that she was diabetic in a time before the invention of insulin and so basically a death sentence, but it could have been delayed if she had had proper food and care and rest and no stress. And her own family effectively disowns her because she's become a Catholic. Exactly, they do. They cut her off, they cut off financial support. So she's left impoverished with two boys to bring up.

And here is where the oratorians become real heroes because the congregation that Newman had founded is called the congregation of the oratory of St. Philip Neri. He brought it to England. In Birmingham. In Birmingham. And so there's all these priests there. Most of them are Catholic converts.

They were formerly Protestants who became Catholic, so they understand how difficult this is. And they had a special ministry to help convert women who were in difficulties. So they're able to help Mabel. And she's particularly befriended by Father Francis Morgan, who then becomes the guardian, the legal guardian of her sons when she dies. Hey, this is Eric Mettaxis. For years, I've told you about Nutrametics, a professional supplement brand trusted by doctors since 1993.

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Use promo code Eric or call 800-9783057. That's promo code Eric. 800-97830573057. Promocode Eric or go to MyPillow.com and use promo code Eric. She dies when her son is how old? He's 12. That's unbelievable. Now he had chosen.

a year earlier, brilliant young man, 11 years old, he chooses to become a Catholic. Exactly. He doesn't inherit it from his mother. Exactly. And that, I think, is not well known. He was eight when his mother became a Catholic, but that's above the age of reason. So he was not brought in with her. I mean, obviously she was bringing him up and his little brother in the faith, they're going to mass together, etc.

But his profession of faith of his own would have been when he made his first, Holy Communion and confirmation when he was 11. And so he had to make that choice. And his grandparents, his aunts and uncles, would have been thrilled if he had said, you know what, Mom, I don't want to do this. I'm old enough to decide. I'm going to go back to the Anglican faith of my father. And that would have been welcomed.

And he does this. And a year later, his mother dies. And he's adopted by Father Morgan. I was amazed in the book. They're beautiful photographs in the book. But to see a photo of Father Morgan with Cardinal Newman, I thought, whoa, like, because, you know, I guess I think of Cardinal Newman as existing in some mythical past. But here is a photo of Tolkien's adopted father, Father Morgan, with Newman. So that connection is very dramatic.

I mean, very immediate, I should say. That, I mean, that just startled me when I learned it, and to turn up that photo in the Oratory Archives, like, there he is. And he knew Newman well, and he was his last personal secretary. They had a close relationship. He was like father-son relationship. Wow. And he's then the second father, as Tolkien called him, of Tolkien.

I love all these connections. When you say was his last personal secretary, you remind me the only person that I have ever known who met Tolkien was the great Walter Hooper, whom I assume you've met at some point. Yes, I had the pleasure. And I interviewed Walter Hooper for Socrates in the city in 2015 in Oxford. And to meet someone who not only had met Lewis, but who knew Tolkien, I don't know why, but those are the kinds of things that light us up sometimes, this personal connection. Well, I mean, I spent about a third of the year in Oxford and have done every year for about 10 years, which was hugely helpful in writing this book because, I mean, it's where Tolkien spent his whole life, basically, or most of his life. And I just think you remember, you know, going to Mass at St. Aloysius, the Oxford Oratory, you know, Walter went to Mass there. And I remember one day just chatting with him after Mass in the forecourt.

And I suddenly realized he probably stood around talking to Tolkien after Mass right where we were chatting. And it gave me chills to realize this great man is. is in a way so close, you know, one generation of people away. It was moving. I went to Mass at the Oxford Oratory, and Priscilla Tolkien was there. You know, and you think, there's just something glorious about that I know that you knew her. She passed away a couple of years ago. We should talk about Leaf by Niggle, just because I don't want to neglect to talk about it.

What was it and what was it about? So it was a story that he wrote as he was working on Lord of the Rings. And unexpectedly, he just sat down and wrote it one day. He woke up with a story in his mind and he sat down and he wrote it, just so not typical of Tolkien. Even he admitted that. And it's what he called his purgatorial story. And he admits it's also allegorical.

Again, not typical of Tolkien. And it's about this painter, Nigel, who's trying to paint this great tree, but he never gets around to it. Nickle it's like it's it there are other names too that you just think it's so it's just right yeah but so so Nigel is a painter who sets out to paint a tree so say more about that because this is well he has a he has an epic vision he wants to paint this gorgeous tree with every leaf different every leaf distinct but he keeps getting distracted he has to look after his neighbor parish who's very annoying and and this this that happens he's only painted

one or two leaves, and then he, then he's summoned to go on a journey, which means that he dies, and he ends up in the workhouse, which in Tolkien's understanding is equivalent of purgatory, where he, it's sort of challenging for him, it's difficult, but also health-giving. He learns how to take up his work and put it down. He kind of learns to be more grounded, and eventually he's sort of released to go on to the next stage of purgatory, where it turns out that he has to cultivate a garden, and then his his neighbor perish turns up. And this time, now they've been healed of their faults in this first phase of purgatory,

they're able to collaborate. And it turns out that there's a living tree in this garden that they're working on. That's everything Nagle always imagined but never could do. It's now alive. And it's glorious. And it's something that could only be completed after death, in God's fullness of his redemption. But there it is, but it came from his imagination. That the thing in heaven, the thing in this other world, had its origin on the other side of death in this life through his creative work.

Exactly. He only imperfectly realized it in this life. He sees it perfectly realized in the next. And Tolkien said that Lord of the Rings was his own personal tree. So this story had great personal significance for him. because he saw the Lord of the Rings as this work he was just this great work he was trying to complete. But he's writing it during the war years and he has issues with his health and all sorts of things. And so it's difficult, but it's still, it's the work of his heart.

And I think we have the sense in Leaf by Nagel that God wants us to try to do this creative work. And if we do it to the best of our ability, he will bring it to completion in his. his own time and in his own way and in its fullness in the other life. And it's a beautiful affirmation, both of the genuine difficulties that Nigel and Tolkien had, you know, in trying to just live ordinary life. And yet also the importance of their artistic vocation. I want to go back for a moment. So many people who love Lewis have become Roman Catholics, eventually. Some of them have said that Lewis, had he lived, would have probably become a Catholic, which I always find slightly funny because I want to say yes, and Flannery O'Connor, had she lived,

would have become a Pentecostal, which is not, you know, true. But you say things in this book about Tolkien's faith that indicate that that's really not the case about Lewis, that Lewis was pretty confirmed in not wanting to swim the tiber. Talk a little bit about that, because the idea that these two men were such close friends, surely they would have talked about this kind of thing. And they did, and they did. And one of the, I think, beautiful things about their friendship

is that it really was ecumenical. You know, when Lewis became a Christian, undoubtedly Tolkien was hoping that he would take the step and go all the way as he would have seen it into the Catholic Church. But there's zero indication that he had any resentment or grievance that he didn't because his friend had become a Christian. And he was totally clear. And it's really interesting that Tolkien really anticipates the Second Vatican Council on this.

He's living the concepts of Second Vatican Council on humanism, you know, before they were fully articulated by the church. He recognizes his friend's a Christian. He loves the Lord Jesus Christ. He follows him. He wishes, for his friend's sake, that he could enjoy what he feels is the fullness of the faith, but it's no obstacle to their friendship or to recognition of Lewis's great gifts as, you know, as a Christianist. And they did talk about these things.

And, you know, Lewis had occasionally, you know, made remarks that to a somewhat over-sensitive person like Tolkien. and Tolkien could be oversensitive. He wasn't flawless. Lewis grew up in a very anti-Catholic area in Ireland and Ulster as a child, as a boy, and he picked up certain habits of maybe disparaging remarks, you know, about papists and whatnot, that I don't think Lewis ever meant anything by it, but he didn't realize that to a Catholic who had actually heard this kind of thing said insultingly, it would come across, you know, differently.

And so Tolkien was sometimes a little bit stung by like these sort of casual remarks. But he was also aware, Tolkien was aware, that Lewis had tried hard to overcome those prejudices. And then he had succeeded, that he had really become very fair-minded. And although he never became a Catholic or it was never really seriously interested in becoming a Catholic, he was so fair, so fair-minded. And in the inklings, you know, the inklings were a mix of Anglicans and Priamese. honest of Anglicans and Catholics. I think there's one Presbyterian in the mix. Well, I mean, even goes beyond that. Who is an anthroposophist?

Oh, yeah, Barfield. Yeah. Barfield was an, you know, I don't get, I don't get that at all. But so he was a Christian, but sort of. Barfiel was just odd. I mean, Charles Williams is odd, too. I mean, Charles Williams is like, you know, waiting around in occultic waters. It's, it's interesting. I mean, it speaks to the large-heartedness both of Tolkien and Lewis that they, you know, were hanging out with these people. And they talked about things. That was a really interesting thing, that they didn't just say politics and religion are off, you know, the menu. They talked about it. They argued, and then they had a drink. Yeah. And that, to me, is true friendship. They could talk about things.

They could disagree. Lewis sometimes would deliberately goad Tolkien, you know, which was probably not very nice. But we forget that side of Lewis because you just read his works, but when you hear more about him and what he was really like, you know, we forget how, I mean, they were so brilliant that they would be, that they would be thinking to some extent, well, that they would want to be argumentative deliberately to provoke a response or to provoke a deeper answer. to what they were asking. And I guess their ability to coexist as they did speaks to their deeper theology. Again, I said large-heartedness, ecumenism in the best way.

I don't want to forget, I read someplace where it's been brooded about in Lewis circles that Tolkien had a problem with Lewis's Narnia stories. because they were too on the nose. Obviously, Lord of the Rings, Tolkien's Oove is not at all. And talk a little bit about that, because I'm never sure what exactly was the case. Yeah, it's overstated how much Tolkien supposedly didn't like Narnia. He didn't care for it. It was too on the nose for his own personal tastes.

You know, I mean, Oslan is pretty clearly Jesus. And that just wasn't Tolkien's preference. And so he didn't care for it personally. But he recommended it to his grandchildren. He had the Chronicle's Narnia on his shelves for his grandchildren to read. And he was very attentive to his grandchildren's reading. So that's a huge vote of confidence that he had the Chronicles Narnia there for them. And he said in a letter, in a late letter, that the Chronicles were, I quote,

deservedly very popular. So he recognized their merit, even though he himself, he didn't care for him. Yeah. Was he the one that kind of was bothered by Lewis throwing Father Christmas into, no. Now is Roger Lanselain Green. Okay. And then we have to all, you know, live into the 21st century to find out from Michael Ward why Father Christmas is in the line the witch in the wardrobe.

And if you don't know why, I'm not going to tell you, you have to watch my interview with Michael Ward at Socrates and City. We just have a few minutes left. Why did Tolkien say that the Lord of the Rings was, I don't remember the adjective exactly, but that it was obviously or inescapably Catholic Christian that it pointed to his faith. How so? Well, I think it's fundamentally Christian, as he put it, the fundamentally. And I think it's because it's rooted in those concepts of, you know, God exists.

For instance, there was a, he had an interview once in which he got quite annoyed with the interview where we said, like, oh, there's no religion in the Lord of the Rings. He said, yes, there is. And the interview says, well, what's the God in it? Like, what God? It's like, well, it's the God, you know, the one God. So, Eruiluvitar, you know, the god of the Middle Earth is God. And so that idea of the creator of Providence, Providence is a fundamental.

fundamental theme, and then Christian values like mercy, pity, humility, all of these things, forgiveness, things which are not virtues in the North Sagas that were in influence. So the North Sagas are huge influence in Tolkien, but those are not virtues if you're a Viking, right? They're weaknesses. Right. So the fact that mercy, pity, forgiveness, those kinds of things are so important in Lord of the Rings are part of it being fundamentally Christian. Folks, if you're signed up for Socrates Plus, which you can do at Socrates in the city.com,

you have access to all of our Socrates in the studio sessions. We are today playing the audio of one of those sessions. If you want to see the video, you need to be signed up for Socrates Plus. But this is the audio of my conversation, spectacular conversation, with Holly Ordway on the spirituality, the faith of J.R.R. Tolkien. The goodness of goodness and the evilness of evil that are on display. I mean, you could argue that the world, the Western world has become so Christianized that it's unaware of these kinds of things.

I mean, for an interviewer to say that to him is only because that interviewer has been, you know, breathing the oxygen and not knowing it's oxygen of the Christian biblical worldview. But, yeah, I mean, the exultation of the humble, the nobable, the nobable. the nobility of humility. That's all Christian. I mean, I don't know how else you see it. Also, the ring of power, the idea that we are all, each of us,

susceptible to the will to power, the desire to, which is a satanic thing in each of us because of original sin. And that's at the heart of the whole saga. I mean, he even says in some of his letters at several points, he says that scene at Mount Doom where Frodo is, and ends up failing, doesn't voluntarily give up the ring. He says it's a meditation on the Lord's Prayer on that last line, you know, lead us not into temptation. Well, that is where Frodo's at.

He has been taken beyond the point where his will has broken. And that's where Providence has to come in. previous actions of mercy and pity are what enabled Galem to even be there and bring about the salvation of Middle Earth? I think we're out of time, Holly Ordway. It's amazing. We've covered a lot, but of course we've also just scratched the surface. Let me end by saying we have a lot more to talk about, but for now we'll just hit pause. I am, I think speaking for many, when I they thank you for writing the definitive book about Tolkien's faith. I think that until someone had written a book about Tolkien's faith, you really can't know Tolkien.

So thank you for doing that for all your work in writing about Tolkien and much else. Holly Ordway, thank you. Thank you. My pleasure. Hey, folks. Welcome back. Listen, have we bugged you enough about CSI? Have we told you about the opportunity. that God has put in front of us to literally free slaves in Sudan.

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