The Lord of the Rings-The Steward and the King

Inspired by this post (and ready to take a break from my thesis), my wife and I watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy again this weekend and I was once more impressed by Peter Jackson’s films. He didn’t get everything right (it kills me that he left out the scouring of the Shire, though Return of the King was certainly long enough without it!), but he really captured the beauty and grandeur of Tolkien’s epic.

Still, one aspect of the storyline especially really doesn't get the full treatment Tolkien intended. Flipping back through the books again, I can’t shake the brilliance of Tolkien's presentation of Aragorn's rise to kingship. Unlike Narnia, The Lord of the Rings is no allegory (Gandalf, Frodo—even Boromir in his own way—are each as much Christ figures as Aragorn is), but Tolkien’s depiction of Aragorn’s rise to kingship gives a masterful retelling of the incarnation, and actually fits with my reading of John even better than I had recalled.

In Tolkien’s vision, the Stewards are charged with the governance of the kingdom until the true king might reclaim his throne. Thus their duty, from the beginning, was intended to be temporary and provisional. But as the return of the king was long delayed, this perception changed. Arnor, the northern half of the kingdom, from which Aragorn derives, has long lost its grandeur and been reduced to humility. The Dúnedain (Elvish for “Men of the West”) are indeed the descendents of the kings from across the sea, but now most only know them as “rangers,” and see them as little more than vagrants. Few know of their long efforts to protect the free peoples of the North, and fewer still looked to their numbers for the return of the king.

Thus when the hobbits first meet Aragorn they have no idea of his true identity. He calls himself “Strider” and willingly risks his life to save them from the Nazgûl, without ever demanding their allegiance or even hinting at his lineage. But Tolkien himself hints at it. In fact, the quote on my sidebar is actually from Bilbo’s description of Aragorn, first seen in a letter Gandalf left for the hobbits:

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

So it is throughout the trilogy, as Aragorn repeatedly puts aside his kingly rights to serve others. He is humble and weather-worn, hardly the picture of a king and lord of old. Thus when he does finally turn towards Minus Tirith, the very "city of the king," we find that not all welcome, or even recognize, his coming. For the Stewards of Gondor (the southern half of the kingdom) are failing in their charge. Denethor has long overreached his authority as Steward, insisting: "the rule of Gondor… is mine and no other man’s, unless the king should come again." Yet when the armies of Mordor close in and Denethor’s only remaining son and heir, Faramir, lays poisoned and dying, Denethor chooses rather to burn on a pyre with his son than take up his duty as Steward:

"I say to thee, Gandalf Mithrandir, I will not be thy tool! I am Steward of the House of Anárion. I will not step down to be the dotard chamberlain of an upstart. Even were his claim proved to me, still he comes but of the line of Isildur. I will not bow to such a one, last of a ragged house long bereft of lordship and dignity."

"What then would you have," said Gandalf, "if your will could have its way?"

"I would have things as they were in all the days of my life," answered Denethor, "and in the days of my long-fathers before me: to be the Lord of this city in peace, and leave my chair to a son after me, who would be his own master and no wizard’s pupil. But if doom denies this to me, then I will have naught: neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated."

"To me it would not seem that a Steward who faithfully surrenders his charge is diminished in love or in honour," said Gandalf. "And at the least, you shall not rob your son of his choice while his death is still in doubt.”

In the end, however, Denethor takes his own life, a traitor and an upstart, but his abuse of the Stewardship is by no means Tolkien’s last word on the matter. For after defeating the army that Denethor so feared, Aragorn does enter Minus Tirith, not (at first) as its king, but in secret. Thus he goes to the houses of healing and takes up the care of Faramir himself (along with that of Éowyn and Merry, stricken after killing the king of the Nazgûl). And when Faramir is healed by his king, he does take his father’s place as Steward, and at the climax of The Return of the King (a role sadly cut from the film) it is Faramir who oversees Aragorn’s coronation. In a chapter titled “The Steward and the King,” Faramir meets Aragorn at the gate of Minus Tirith, kneels before him and says:

"The last Steward of Gondor begs leave to surrender his office." And he held out a white rod; but Aragorn took the rod and gave it back, saying: "That office is not ended, and it shall be thine and thy heirs’ as long as my line shall last. Do now thy office!"

Then Faramir stood up and spoke in a clear voice: "Men of Gondor, hear now the Steward of this Realm! Behold! One has come to claim the kingship at last. Here is Aragorn son of Arathorn, chieftain of the Dúnedain of Arnor, Captain of the Host of the West, bearer of the Star of the North, wielder of the Sword Reforged, victorious in battle, whose hands bring healing, the Elfstone, Elessar of the line of Valandil, Isildur’s son, Elendil’s son of Númenor. Shall he be king and enter into the City and dwell there?"

And all the host and all the people cried yea with one voice.

Faramir remained Steward even after the return of his king, and as such, he became the primary witness to Aragorn's true identity. Yet far from a reduction in his role, Faramir was given yet greater honor, and made Prince of Ithilien (the land on the other side of the river, where he first met Frodo and Sam and “proved his quality” by overcoming the temptation of the Ring), and so he lived there with Lady Éowyn, always within sight of the city he loved and the king who had healed them.

And this, I think, is how John also understood the institutions of Judaism. His well-known vitriol against the leaders of “the Jews,” is not to be understood as a rejection of Judaism at all. It is rather to be explained by his deep sense of betrayal. As John understands them, Moses and his Torah, the Temple and its festivals and priesthood, these were all meant to be “witnesses” to Jesus, "stewards" if you will, who prepared the way for Israel’s true king. But Like Denethor, many of who currently held Jewish leadership rejected Jesus and so, from John’s perspective, failed their charge. Nevertheless, their status as witnesses was not undone either by Jesus’ coming or by their faithlessness. Indeed, John insists that even when the high priest himself conspires to kill Jesus, he cannot help but fulfill his duty as witness:

Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, "You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish."

He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. (11:49-52)

And so when we get to the crucifixion narrative, John (even more than the other Gospel writers), emphasizes that Jesus died as King of the Jews (19:18-22). In a Gospel that uses that phrase fully 25 times, mostly to refer to the Jewish institutions whose significance John has repeatedly claimed point to Jesus, the expression could not help but carry deep significance: In taking his rightful kingship, Jesus fulfills the "witness" of these figures and institutions, whose “stewardship” had prepared for his coming. Yet “stewards” they remain (like all the rest of us), and in that role they are not “replaced” by the king but “re-placed”--given a new and fuller role. The return of Israel's king is thus not the end of her stewardship but its culmination.

Greydanus on Hellboy, Christianity and Supernatural Fiction

Steven Greydanus has an excellent article up at Christianity Today on the way the supernatural is presented in films like Hellboy II, particularly how demons tend to get more play than angels or God, and how Christian symbols and objects (like the Cross, a Rosary, Holy Water, etc.) become weapons to defeat evil:

Why is there so much hell and so little heaven in these movies? Partly, perhaps, it's because filmmakers simply don't know what to do with God—not just theologically, but for the sheer dramatic difficulty posed by omnipotence. It's the Superman dilemma times infinity: Against that much power, how do you make the enemy a credible threat? Even Gandalf's power was ultimately too intimidating for Peter Jackson and company; once it became clear the wizard could drive off the flying Nazgul, the filmmakers feared the enemy might seem too diminished. (This was the rationale for the problematic scene in which the Witch-King shatters Gandalf's staff.)

Another reason for the neglect of heaven is simply that heaven is harder to do. C. S. Lewis noted this point in his preface to The Screwtape Letters, in which he regretted being unable to offset Screwtape's diabolical perspective with a parallel heavenly correspondence presenting "arch-angelical advice to the patient's guardian angel." While the task of twisting his mind into a hellish perspective was for Lewis oppressive but not difficult, assuming an angelic voice seemed to him all but unachievable.

While Lewis did later achieve some success in dramatically depicting the outskirts of heaven in The Great Divorce, the general disparity of depicting heaven and hell in art and drama has been felt by many. It's not hard to see why. Beauty is more elusive an effect than grotesquerie; misery and wretchedness are far easier to inflict, and therefore to imagine and express, than joy and beatitude are to bestow or evoke. Even biblical or cultural images of hell (unquenchable flames, demons with pitchforks) are more immediately persuasive than biblical or cultural images of heaven (thrones and crowns, halos and harps). Every sinful impulse in us is hell in miniature, while our best impulses fall infinitely short of the glory of heaven. In a word, God's absence is easier to imagine than the fullness of his presence.

Like the familiar narrative dilemma of the colorful villain who makes the hero look pale by comparison—think of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, Dorothy and the Wicked Witch, Clarisse Starling and Hannibal Lecter—the remoteness of heaven versus the imminence of hell seems a not unnatural creative side effect of our limited perspective as finite and fallen creatures.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Prince Caspian Review

I have something of a strange relationship with books and film. I’ve been an avid reader for as long as I can remember, but I’m simultaneously a product of our visual culture. This means that whenever I read a good novel, I find myself wishing I could see it on screen, yet whenever I see a film based on a book I’ve read, I’m almost always disappointed at what it leaves out. The first PG-13 movie I ever saw was Jurassic Park; I was 11 but my dad took me to see it as a reward for just having finished reading the book (I did say I was an avid reader, right?). I hated it. All I could think about was how they had butchered the characters and left so much out. It wasn’t until I saw the movie again years later, when the book had become a distant memory, that I could really enjoy it as a movie, rather than see it as a poor representation of the book.

So when my wife and I had the opportunity to see The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian last night, I chose not to reread the book first. In fact, it’s been a few years since I’ve done so, and I’m glad of that, because it allowed me to enjoy the film on its own merits before worrying about how it compared to its source. By most measures, this second Narnia far surpasses the first. I’d even go so far as to say that it was nearly as entertaining, though not quite as grand, as any of the Lord of the Rings films. But as I’ve thought about it further, it’s hard to ignore all the changes it made to Lewis’ book. That being the case, if you're anything like me, you may want to see the movie itself before reading on, especially if you hate spoilers (I should also note that I have no idea how this movie got a PG rating. It is quite violent, including an improbable degree of bloodless death and even a decapitation; it should definitely have been rated PG-13).

Prince Caspian follows the four Pevensie children’s return to Narnia, called back when Prince Caspian (the rightful heir to the throne, but currently hiding from his murderous uncle Miraz) blows the magical horn that was given to Susan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. As they attempt to win back Caspian’s throne and free Narnia from Miraz’ oppression, we are treated to a film which is at once better acted, more humorous, and much more exciting than its predecessor. This is because, while the first Narnia was careful to keep the themes and plot of C.S. Lewis’ book intact, this film almost completely abandons the attempt.

On the positive side, this meant the addition or modification of several scenes which, I thought, greatly enhanced the plot. For instance, I appreciated the way they modified the first act of the story: The intentionally ambiguous significance of the birth with which the film begins was clever and revealed the threat to Caspian’s life in a concise and interesting manner. Then, when they parallel the Pevensies trying to adjust to life as children again (a nice addition, in my opinion), with Caspian’s flight from Miraz, I found it a much more engaging introduction than the way Lewis described this sequence of events. More substantially, they add an entire battle in which the Narnians attempt to capture Miraz’s castle, which not only adds interest, excitement and some important emotional depth, but also makes better sense of the events which follow than the original book did. I also liked the expanded scene involving the White Witch, which I was shocked to see in the previews, but think worked very well.

If most of the additions are good, however, there are also a number of unfortunate omissions. Much has been made of the fact that Lewis’ book centered on the triumph of faith over skepticism, while the film totally obliterates this theme. The story takes place 1300 years after the events of the first film (though only one year later for the four children); the great castle they once ruled lies in ruins and Aslan seems long absent. The film almost completely leaves out the fact that few Narnians still believe in Aslan or the old stories. In the book, this is seen especially in the dwarf Trumpkin, who is a convinced skeptic who only slowly comes to recognize Aslan’s reality and authority. In the film, this arc is substantially diminished, as Trumpkin (who is played with a lot of humor) never really disbelieves that the old stories are true; he only doubts their present value.

But, personally, I’m not as troubled by this as others have been, as I think real faith has a lot more to do with trust than with belief anyway. Thus Trumpkin’s (and others, including Peter’s and Caspian’s) lack of trust in Aslan is actually a more realistic, and troubling, form of doubt than his simple disbelief in the book. If the movie gives less ground than Lewis’ original for letting us cheer the comeuppance of the disbelieving materialists, it provides a more nuanced exploration of the danger of lack of trust - in each other and in Aslan - among the “faithful.” To me, this seems of greater value in our postmodern context than the attack on modernism that Lewis intended.

A much less fortanate change was the diminished portrait of genuine faith. The strange thing is that this actually made for a worse movie, not only thematically, but also narratively. In the book, we have an extended sequence in which Lucy alone is able to see Aslan while the others only slowly and painfully come to trust that she knows what she’s doing in following his lead. Though this element is not completely omitted, it is passed over very quickly in the film, which then leaves out entirely the fact that Aslan also appeared to the rest of them - one by one, as they come to trust him - during the course of the story.

In place of this, we get a nice exchange between Susan and Peter where it is asked why Aslan hasn’t proven himself to them, and suggested that perhaps they are the ones who need to prove themselves to him. This does add emphasis to the need to trust even when Aslan seems absent (that is, when God seems absent, though the film subtly diminishes Aslan’s divinity). But in doing so it modifies Lewis’ point that faith precedes sight, and leaves a substantial plot hole which is never adequately filled. Despite what the review I quoted in my last post claimed, the fact that Aslan doesn’t really appear until the end (except in a dream to Lucy) does make him more like a dues ex machina than he should have been.

In the book, Aslan’s appearance in the last battle is but the culmination of a series of previous ones, so it not only brings closure to all conflict but also enables the realization that he had actually been with them all along. In the movie, however, his sudden arrival feels forced and out of place. Though Lucy facing an army with naught but a dagger and a lion is cute, the audience hasn’t been adequately prepared for the significance of this event. And if this is true of Aslan, it is even more so of the tree spirits and (especially) the water god which he brings with him to fight for the Narnians. To suddenly see a great river god attack Miraz’ army, when (unlike in the book) we’ve never even been given a hint that such a being exists, is as clear a case of dues ex machina as you’re likely to find. The result is an otherwise entertaining film which suddenly falls flat at its climax.

Holy Week without Jesus’ Death and Resurrection?

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Apparently, the Christian publisher First Look has actually removed all references to Jesus’ death and resurrection from its preschool age Sunday School curriculum (HT: Mere Comments). Their explanation sounds like something straight out of The Wittenburg Door:

In order to be sensitive to the physical, intellectual, and emotional development of preschoolers, First Look has chosen not to include the Easter story in our curriculum. Instead, we are focusing on the Last Supper, when Jesus shared a meal and spent time with the people He loved. We have made this choice because the crucifixion is simply too violent for preschoolers. And if we skip the crucifixion and go straight to the resurrection, then preschoolers would be confused....

However, we know that some of you use First Look in your five-year-old and kindergarten classrooms. To accommodate your needs, we have included an alternative ending to the Bible story that tells a simple version of the Easter story.

My first reaction to this was mild shock. I mean, it’s not as though Easter were the reason we teach Sunday School to begin with. No, it might frighten or confuse the children so we’ll relegate it to an “alternative ending!”

But after mulling it over, I have a hard time feeling enraged about this. Perhaps they are wrong. Perhaps they have bought into the self-esteem myth and ignored the fact that many three and four year-olds can indeed understand Jesus’ death and resurrection. But many preschoolers are not capable of understanding this, and it makes sense to save the story until they can. It is not as though First Look is proposing that we don’t teach Easter at all, merely that we wait until elementary school, when it will make more sense.

The way they have approached this seems ill-advised (an “alternative ending,” really?) but I actually rather appreciate the sentiment. Personally, I have known about Jesus’ death and resurrection for as long as I can remember. One of my very earliest memories was “praying the prayer” with my mother when I was five years old. I certainly thought I knew Jesus, but it was only many years later that I really did.

It wasn’t until late elementary school – when the first of my great-grandmothers died – that I even understood the concept of death in any real way, and even then I don’t recall connecting that to Jesus. I certainly didn’t live any differently because of it. I was a terror in elementary school, the kid Sunday School teachers feared and other parents told their kids to avoid. It wasn't until Middle School that I first realized the meaning of the Gospel, and it came from reading Tolkien.

My dad had read The Hobbit to my brothers and I as kids, and that story always stuck with me. So in 6th grade when my English class allowed us to choose what book to read, I ambitiously choose The Lord of the Rings. I still remember reading the first few chapters of The Two Towers for the first time, certain (like Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas and the rest) that Gandalf was dead, and experiencing the fear and confusion surrounding his unexpected appearances (of which, unlike in the movies, there are several). Suddenly realizing that Gandalf had been restored to life, only then did I finally understand what it must have been like for Jesus’ first disciples. To know that Jesus, their hope, was dead, and then suddenly and unexpectedly to discover that, beyond all hope, he was alive!

I thank God for Tolkien, but it frustrates me that it took a work of fantasy for me to really hear the Gospel for the first time, when I had in fact been hearing the story my whole life. The problem, I think, is precisely that I had been hearing it my whole life. By pounding these stories into our children from such an early age (long before they can have any conception of its meaning), we seem to be numbing them to its power. At least, that’s what happened to me, and I doubt I am alone.

Of course our kids need to hear about Easter! Tolkien’s take on the event would not have had the impact that it did on me if I hadn’t been so familiar with the Gospel first. But does it need to be so early? I’m not sure. Easter can hardly seem like Good News, if it doesn’t seem like News.

Harry Potter and the Christian Story

To many of us post-moderns, the Christian story seems rather a mundane thing. Residing in the back of our collective consciousness, it’s just familiar enough to seem unremarkable, yet just unknown enough to be misunderstood. Even Sunday school can be like a vaccine, providing just enough theology to leave us immune to the deep drama of the faith.

It was into just such a situation that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien wrote their works of fantasy. Their goal was to create fiction that could cut through that cultural immunity, and allow a modern audience to hear the Christian story as though for the first time. As Lewis put it:

I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons?

It was an admirable goal, but only partially accomplished. Both Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia and Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings would eventually become exceedingly popular, but only long after their intentions were respectively too well-known and entirley missed. Thus, for many readers, the Christian themes of Narnia were a bit too obvious, a bit too early, to evade "those watchful dragons," while the imaginative mythology of Lord of the Rings quickly obscured its own Christian trajectory. Don't get me wrong, both series are outstanding in their own ways, but it remains unclear just how well they fulfilled their intentions.

It was with this background in mind that I finally read J.K. Rowling’s epic Harry Potter series this past month (now you know why my blogging has been so much lighter!). Though I had seen (and enjoyed) a couple of the movies, reading the series all at once proved far more satisfying than I ever expected. Having studiously avoided reading anyone else's views on the series, I was most surprized by just how well Rowling (a practicing member of the Church of Scotland) had managed to accomplish precisely the goal that Lewis and Tolkien set themselves. On the one hand, she managed to build an absolutely unprecedented readership who adored the series without yet knowing where it was headed (according to some reports, the series had sold over 300 million copies before the final book was released!). On the other hand, by the end of the Deathly Hallows she had succeeded in retelling the Christian story in a way that is at once freshly engaging, deeply nostalgic, and hardly mistakable.

Though lacking the poetic beauty of Lord of the Rings, and obscuring some of Narnia's theological distinctions, Harry Potter pulls together countless imaginative story-lines involving dozens of well-developed characters, while seamlessly interweaving a host of important themes: from coming of age and facing death, to love and friendship, trust and loyalty, and redemption and sacrifice, to courage and betrayal, good and evil, and much else. That entire books were written decrying the series' “anti-Christian” message (I haven’t read them, but I can't imagine anyone writing one now), indicates just how well she has accomplished her goal.

So as not to spoil them for anyone who hasn’t yet read the books (you really should!), I wont go into any details, but suffice it to say that Rowling has admirably lived up to her forebears in Lewis and Tolkien, not least because she allowed her Christian themes to build to a fitting climax, rather than airing them out too early. In the end, Harry Potter proves much more explicitly Christian than The Lord of the Rings, yet much less obtrusive than The Chronicles of Narnia. I really cannot recommend it highly enough; I only wish I had another month to reread it, now that I know how it all comes together!

If anyone else here has read the series, what are your reactions?

UPDATE: If you've come to this post directly and want a more detailed account of Harry Potter's Christian nature, don't miss Mark Shea's "Harry Potter and the Christian Critics" (Spoiler Warning).