Tolkien chat groups can be very nasty places.  (Many are not nasty, at all, but some are.)  I was defending the proposition that Tolkien’s imaginary world was constructed on a specifically Christian foundation (as he said it was) and trying to point out specific features of the story and its cosmos that show this to be true.  Pushback came from the Neopagans:  How dare anybody suggest their reading a pagan “spirituality” into the LOTR was illegitimate!  I was prepared to have that discussion.  It’s mot like I lack evidence. I can give you specific ways in which Middle Earth is not pagan or generically “spiritual” but explicitly Christian in its metaphysical foundations and philosophy of history.  But that was not a conversation anybody wanted to have. 

Dr. Williams (on tight) being his typical unreasonable self

We pick up the dialog at a point where I was starting to get into trouble for the horrible, disrespectful suggestion that it was possible for one interpretation to be more true to the text than another.

BEGINNING OF TRANSCRIPT

MEMBER:  You can read it as pagan and still be true to the book.

ME:  I’m with you right up to “still be true to the book.” It’s not a wax nose. Some readings are more faithful to it than others.

ADMIN:  Your comment comes off as dismissive and disrespectful. Please respect the viewpoints of those who read Tolkien through non-Christian contexts. As we would also ask people to respect those who view it through a fundamentally Christian lens.

ME:  No disrespect intended. Disagreement does not necessarily entail disrespect. But to me, your comment comes across as dismissive. It raises the following questions, to which I would sincerely like to know the answers.

So, the whole idea of a definitive meaning is off the table? All readings are equally valid just because someone makes them? The Text is not prior to whatever lens I bring to it? I don’t need to adjust my “lens” to the actual data of the text as it was written?  Persnal lenses are self-authenticating?   

Such theories of hermeneutics exist, of course. Is accepting them, or pretending to, the price of admission now? Just so we are clear.

 ADMIN:  You don’t have to believe in those avenues of study but you absolutely cannot dismiss them wholesale as not true because you don’t personally subscribe to those theories. Absolutely not one single person has seriously called for Tolkien to stop being viewed through a christian lens just to acknowledge there are many other lenses through which to view his work, and I’m frankly sick of disingenuous arguments to the contrary and also of people who want to put words in a dead man’s mouth to shout down anyone with a dissenting opinion with some misplaced sense of authority, because no one is currently being possessed by Tolkien’s ghost and therefore no one who is not buried in the ground can know with absolute certainty what was going on in his head.

It’s not disrespectful to ask someone to listen to other ideas. What is disrespectful is exactly what you’re doing here. If every time you posted your Christian take a bunch of people came in like “actually you’re wrong. I know for a fact. Here’s a link to my book where I talk about how you’re wrong. Your whole way of viewing the world is incorrect, in fact,” and never offered to even hear you out, you would be angry and rightfully so. So stop doing it to other people. Reading it as a Christian work is A way to read it, but not THE ONLY way. It might be the only way you can read it, but not the only way anyone can read it.

ME:  Frustrating? Perhaps. Exclusionary and isolating? Nonsense!  They are welcome to respond and participate. Let them try to make a better case for their reading, from the language, the structures, the contexts, and the background of the actual text, if they disagree with my reading. Nothing I have said even implies that they have no right to do so. Then our readers can decide for themselves who has made the better interpretation, more faithful to the text. That is now my antiquated “lens” tells me this is supposed to work.

ADMIN:  You comment has been deleted.

1Be Respectful and Kind

We seek to create a welcoming environment and to make sure everyone feels safe. Bullying of any kind isn’t allowed. Degrading comments about things such as race, religion, culture, sexual orientation, gender, ability, or identity will not be tolerated. Treat everyone with respect even while debating. 

END OF TRANSCRIPT

Well.  Which part of that rule did I violate to get that last comment deleted?  Which of those provisions did I violate anywhere else?  Nary a syllable of it, as far as I can tell.  The ADMIN wanted to have the last word, plain and simple—and had the power to ensure that such would happen.  If you can’t beat ‘em, delete ‘em!  And so the illusion was created that the levelling hermeneutic of “tolerance” is the last word on the subject.  And, yes, giving up the idea that a text can have a correct interpretation to which a reading can be more faithful or less is now the price of admission to the discussion on that site, enforced by raw and arbitrary power.

In fact, nobody had presented any evidence for their “pagan” readings other than that they wanted them to be true; they liked them.  I could hardly have refused to listen to what was not presented!  And my reading of Tolkien’s own words was dismissed on the grounds that nobody can know what he meant to say.  Of course, it is possible that I misunderstood him.  But if you think I misread him, you must show me evidence of that!  You can’t just dismiss my reading on the grounds that it committed the unpardonable sin of claiming to be right. 

It is a galling irony that I am the one who was dismissed—for being dismissive!  “Treat everyone with respect even while debating”?  But real debate is actually what is forbidden.  Everybody gets a trophy; everybody gets to be right.  No other rules or procedures are to be tolerated. 

This is not an isolated event.  It happens all the time.  And this is where we had come by the summer of the year of our Lord, 2022.

Donald T. Williams, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College.  He is the author of thirteen books, including Ninety-Five Theses for a New Reformation: A Road Map for Post-Evangelical Christianity (Semper Reformanda Publications, 2021). (His website is www.donaldtwilliams,com. He blogs at www.thefiveilgrims.com.