Tolkien And The Eucharist In "The Lord Of The Rings" | Prof. Peter Kreeft

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2019

⏱️ 95 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This lecture was given by Prof. Peter Kreeft (Boston College) at Rutgers University on 8 October 2019.

Dr. Peter Kreeft is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and teaches philosophy courses at King’s College. Kreeft is a popular writer of Christian philosophy, theology and apologetics and the author of dozens of books, two of which include The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind the Lord of the Rings and Symbol or Substance: A Dialogue on the Eucharist with C. S. Lewis, Billy Graham and J. R. R. Tolkien.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It is always a joy and the privilege for me to talk about the Lord of the Rings.
0:08.3	And since Tolkien is a much better authority on Tolkien than I am, or anybody else in this room is,
0:14.7	I'll be doing a lot of quoting from it.
0:17.0	If you want to know what an author meant, the first rule is ask him.
0:21.6	And especially if he's written a lot of letters about his work, as Tolkien has.
0:27.5	So I'm going to quote from Tolkien's collection of letters quite copiously.
0:35.7	The title I've been asked to talk about is the relation between the Lord of the Rings and Tolkien's Catholic faith.
0:44.9	And probably the most direct statement that Tolkien makes in general about this is in letter 142, where he says,
0:53.0	The Lord of the Rings is, of course, a fundamentally religious and Catholic work.
1:00.7	Unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.
1:05.5	That is why I have not put in and have cut out practically all references to anything like religion to cults
1:14.1	or practices in my imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story
1:20.7	and the symbolism. There are a number of Native American tribes that have no word for religion.
1:28.3	They're very religious.
1:30.3	And the reason why they have no word for religion is they're very religious.
1:33.3	Everything is religious.
1:35.3	The fish have no word for the sea.
1:38.3	There's another letter that I want to quote in general before I go into my numbered points.
1:48.0	I have 18 of them.
1:50.0	Each will take only a minute or so.
1:53.0	I hope to finish by 9 o'clock so we can have a long Q&A session.
1:59.0	I have ADD.
	...

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