Echoes of Truth
Christianity in the Lord of the Rings
Tolkien once wrote “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” Echoes of Truth: Christianity in The Lord of the Rings is a comprehensive work that honors this statement by Tolkien and addresses the Christian themes in his work, focusing specifically on the Christian ethos and Christian typology in Tolkien’s famous work.
Using the definition of ethos as the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology, the first half of the book deals with how The Lord of the Rings demonstrates many of the guiding beliefs within Christianity. The second part is about the Christian typology in Tolkien’s work. The author spends several chapters writing about how characters, places and events in The Lord of the Rings are like types found in the Bible. Tolkien envisioned his world as a fictional pre-history of our world. Using this as basis of validity for discussing typology, this section of the books starts with the formal definition of typology, which interprets the people, events, or statements of the Old Testament as types that pre-figure and point to the person, life, and events of Christ and His revelation as revealed in the New Testament, and apply a similar view to Tolkien’s work. However, it expands upon this definition and also draws attention to multiple types in The Lord of the Rings that point to other people (aside from Christ), events and places in both the Old and New Testaments.