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I]f you live today you breathe in nihilism. In or out of the Church it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now
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Ralph C. Wood |
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to shrink the circle of intimate community to the smallest possible circumference. This is the spoiling of faithful friendship.
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Ralph C. Wood |
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Tolkien reveals that our personalities take on the quality of our acts. Outward behavior manifests inward convictions, whether for good or ill. "The good man out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil man out of his evil treasure produces evil; for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks" (Luke 6:45)."
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Ralph C. Wood |
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Tolkien understands the odd danger posed by virtue cut off from the Good. Over and again, he demonstrates his fundamental conviction that evil preys upon our virtues far more than our vices. Our very strengths and assets-whether intelligence or bravery, diligence or loyalty or beauty, but especially righteousness-may dispose us either to scorn those who lack such virtues, or else to employ our gifts for our own selfish ends.
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Ralph C. Wood |
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Here Tolkien states, in indirect form, one of the deepest of Christian truths: all love that is not ordered to the love of God turns into hatred.
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Ralph C. Wood |
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To console Pippin about the treachery of Gollum, Gandalf reminds him that "a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend" (3.89)."
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Ralph C. Wood |
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What makes Galadriel such a remarkable figure is her serenity amidst the coming defeat of her realm and her people. Far from resigning herself to any sort of fatalism, she desires only that the ought shall become the is: "Yet if you [Frodo] succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlorien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and..
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Ralph C. Wood |
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Sam Gamgee is the ultimate hero of The Lord of the Rings because he is the ultimate servant.
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Ralph C. Wood |
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satirical against those who called him an escapist for creating the fantastic world of Middle-earth: "The notion that motor-cars are more `alive' than, say, centaurs or dragons is curious; that they are more `real' than, say, horses is pathetically absurd. How real, how startlingly alive is a factory chimney compared with an elm-tree: poor obsolete thing, insubstantial dream of an escapist!" (MC, 149)."
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Ralph C. Wood |