Eru's role

Gandalf's death and "resurrection" represents IMO some sort of an afterthought of Tolkien, in the drafts Gandalf doesn't die and it is not entirely clear when Tolkien changed his mind in that issue

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Tolkien was aware that this is a 'defect' in the story, it was called cheating by critics, and Tolkien is at great pains to explain it (again to Father Robert Murray, the Jesuit) in his letter #156 (of which Thorondor quoted a small part in his previous post).

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But the situation became so much the worse by the fall of Saruman, that the 'good' were obliged to greater effort and sacrifice. Thus Gandalf faced and suffered death; and came back or was sent back, as he says, with enhanced power. But though one may be in this reminded of the Gospels, it is not really the same thing at all. The Incarnation of God is an infinitely greater thing than anything I would dare to write. Here I am only concerned with Death as part of the nature, physical and spiritual, of Man, and with Hope without guarantees.

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I think the way in which Gandalf's return is presented is a defect, and one other critic, as much under the spell as yourself, curiously used the same expression: 'cheating'. That is partly due to the ever-present compulsions of narrative technique. He must return at that point, and such explanations of his survival as are explicitly set out must be given there – but the narrative is urgent, and must not be held up for elaborate discussions involving the whole 'mythological' setting. It is a little impeded even so, though I have severely cut G's account of himself. I might perhaps have made more clear the later remarks in Vol. II (and Vol. III) which refer to or are made by Gandalf, but I have purposely kept all allusions to the highest matters down to mere hints, perceptible only by the most attentive, or kept them under unexplained symbolic forms. So God and the 'angelic' gods, the Lords or Powers of the West, only peep through in such places as Gandalf's conversation with Frodo: 'behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker's' ; or in Faramir's Númenórean grace at dinner.
Gandalf really 'died', and was changed: for that seems to me the only real cheating, to represent anything that can be called 'death' as making no difference. 'I am G. the White, who has returned from death'. Probably he should rather have said to Wormtongue: 'I have not passed through death (not 'fire and flood') to bandy crooked words with a serving-man'. And so on. I might say much more, but it would only be in (perhaps tedious) elucidation of the 'mythological' ideas in my mind; it would not, I fear, get rid of the fact that the return of G. is as presented in this book a 'defect', and one I was aware of, and probably did not work hard enough to mend

Letters #156

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Helcaraxë said:

Oh, of course! I never said that Eru doesn't resemble God. But I think it is a result of Tolkien trying to make his world similar to ours, only more wondrous and in an imaginary time. However, Tolkien had many influences, only one of them being his religion. Though J.R.R. often referred to Eru as "God" in his letters, I think this can be easily misinterpreted. Tolkien did not mean Eru to be the God that led the Jews out of Egypt, father of Jesus Christ, etc. Rather, in the mythology, he sees Eru as the God that (he believed) is the necessary consequence of existence, and a necessary part of his imagined world. Eru is no more the Christian God in Tolkien's works than the mountains are Christian mountains, or the sky a Christian sky.

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