tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post5609925583883463979..comments2024-03-29T08:26:06.759+00:00Comments on The Notion Club Papers - an Inklings blog: The Lord of the Rings is true, of course - but in what way?Bruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-5849157669635201302016-08-13T21:10:27.003+01:002016-08-13T21:10:27.003+01:00@ESoE - Nice comment. @ESoE - Nice comment. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-6475069461342015542016-08-13T18:14:05.008+01:002016-08-13T18:14:05.008+01:00The Lord of the Rings is indeed true, and I believ...The Lord of the Rings is indeed true, and I believe you are also right (and display remarkable self-awareness and humility in doing so) in grasping that your failure to understand how it is true points to incorrect or incomplete metaphysical understanding. May I be so bold as to take a crack at what is missing?<br /><br />The Lord of the Rings is true because truth exists, and it speaks truth. It is full of truth about the nature of man, God, sin, good and evil, death and life. Of course the Lord of the Rings is truer than just about any history textbook, because it teaches truly and profoundly about these deepest truths, that man most longs to know, indeed that he was created to know. Any man who still has enough purity of heart to hear and recognize and love the truth (cf. Matthew 5:8, Psalm 23:3-4) will be moved by the truth he hears in the Lord of the Rings.<br /><br />All things are true insofar as they reflect the one Truth, that is God, maker of all creation. Father Christmas is true in his gratuitous free giving of good things, which can only be appreciated and hoped for and believed in by children (cf. Mark 10:15). A thought experiment: Would Father Christmas remain true, or as true, if he visited us on a day that was not Christmas day? I submit that he would not – he would be a joke. His truth comes from the joyful anticipation of all creation for the advent of the Son of God, and the unfathomable gift of our redemption from slavery to sin and death.EomerSonOfEomundhttps://www.fanfiction.net/~eomersonofeomundnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-38952435282314879972016-06-15T05:45:37.723+01:002016-06-15T05:45:37.723+01:00@David - When Steiner is talking about Freedom he ...@David - When Steiner is talking about Freedom he is trying to explain how it is that Man can act from within himself - rather being merely some outcome of the environmnent and his inherited nature. <br /><br />My understanding of Tolkien's creativity is more like the second process you describe - the 'rightness' of the work only gradually becomes clear - not so much in the process, but by a kind of trial and error inner comparison of the artistic achievement with an intuition of the ideal/ true/ real. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-83870766947409920122016-06-15T05:00:26.110+01:002016-06-15T05:00:26.110+01:00How does the 'Freedom' manifest itself, he...How does the 'Freedom' manifest itself, here? Is there (for example) a freedom of 'invenio' in the sense of discovering 'what' is 'already there', and another distinct freedom of a sort of 'esemplastic invenio' of combining 'things discovered' into a possible but not necessary 'something new added'?<br /><br />And what might the 'composition history' of The Lord of the Rings be, in relation to that? The imagery of 'letting an image out of a block or marble by gradually chipping away everything that is not the image' occurs to me, to compare - but then, is there one 'pre-given' image to find and free, or more than one possibility, of which one is 'realized' in the process of planning and carving? <br /><br /><br />David Llewellyn DoddsAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com