Tolkien's good and evil races reflect Christian eschatology

[Justin Swanton]

To set the stage, here is a definition of eschatology:

The part of theology concerned with death, judgement, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind.​

In the (Tolkienian = Catholic) Christian context, all sentient beings (humans and angels) end up in one of two final states: in heaven with the blessed or in hell with the damned. Once in those states, they do not change: the will is irrevocably fixed in good or evil.

Whilst on Earth, however, humans can be either good or evil, and transition from one state to the other and back again, eventually fixing on one or the other at the moment of death. The angels started out not definitively fixed, but were given the ability to choose one side or the other - once, after which they remained either angels (good) or became demons (bad).

One sees all this in Tolkien's Middle Earth, which is inhabited by races who haven't yet committed to their final state and races who have.

Elves, humans, dwarves and hobbits are the in-betweeners, capable of being either good or evil and changing from good to evil and vice-versa.

Orcs, trolls, wargs, balrogs, ringwraiths and the Dark Lords Sauron and Morgoth are damned: fixed in evil and unable ever to choose good again.

Are there any races that are definitively good? I can think of two: eagles and ents. Nothing in LOTR suggests that any eagle or ent ever went bad (unless you include Old Man Willow and he doesn't seem to have been an ent). What is interesting about them is that whenever they encounter evil races in battle they make mincemeat of them. Good is always inherently more powerful than evil.

Comments?

 

[Starbrow]

I agree with your assessment of Tolkien's characters and that some of them are inherently evil.
However, I disagree with your statement that humans can be either good or evil. Humans are at the same time, both good and evil, (or saints and sinners, as I was taught). Whether you go to heaven or hell is not determined by whether you are good or evil, since all of us sin, but whether you believe that Jesus has saved you from your sins.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son. That whoever believed in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16

 

[Justin Swanton]

I agree with your assessment of Tolkien's characters and that some of them are inherently evil.
However, I disagree with your statement that humans can be either good or evil. Humans are at the same time, both good and evil, (or saints and sinners, as I was taught). Whether you go to heaven or hell is not determined by whether you are good or evil, since all of us sin, but whether you believe that Jesus has saved you from your sins.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son. That whoever believed in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16

This I believe is the Lutheran brand of soterology. It's probably better to avoid getting into a discussion about it here, and examine rather the extent to which Tolkien's brand of soterology (= Catholicism) fits LOTR. For Tolkien, choosing good or evil in LOTR and in consequence becoming good or evil does not depend on faith, at least not in the world of Middle Earth (notice the curious fact that the main protagonists in LOTR do not practise a religion) but on whether what they desire conforms to their sense of right and wrong or goes against it. This choosing can waver between the two options: Boromir starts out good, becomes bad when he craves the ring, and becomes good again when he repents of what he has done before he dies. Gollum at the beginning of the book is bad, starts to become good again when he binds himself to help Frodo and genuinely loves him, and becomes bad again when he betrays him. This is portrayed very well in the film version.