Wood is a serious Tolkien scholar who has pioneered much of the field of Tolkien studies. This book could have benefited from a better editor. There are some frustrating errors in grammar towards the end of the volume that speak of lazy editorship. Wood also makes the mistake of describing Boromir's funeral held by "Aragorn and the two young hobbits" (pg. 155) when it was Gimli the Dwarf and Legolas the Elf who assisted Aragorn.
Wood's term "hobbitic" when describing Hobbit kind and behavior is odd. I think Tolkien would have used the word hobbitish. It is a cozier word for Shire folk.

10/10 WOULD RECOMMEND TO EVERY CHRISTIAN WHO HAS READ LOTR OMG THIS IS SUCH AN AMAZING AND THOUGHT-PROVOKING BOOK PLS READ ASAP

but seriously. this book made me think harder than most of the things I have read recently. It analyzes The Lord of the Rings using a Christian lens, showing it to be a Christian work (BUT NOT AN ALLEGORY THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO NOTE).

anyways, read it. that is all.

Anyone who is a fan of the Lord of the Rings--the novels and the films--and who also thinks theologically is bound to love this book. It is a scholarly work though it should be accessible to those who don't usually explore theological works. It's wonderful. I read it slowly, a few pages each morning, and I'm very impressed by the insights of the author.

Rather than being a shallow and moralistic paralleling between the fiction of Tolkien and the Christian gospel, Wood’s book was an enriching and enlightening reveal of the Christian virtues and doctrine richly interwoven within Tolkien’s work. An excellent book, highly recommended for lovers of both Christ and Tolkien.

Woods description of why Frodo needs to understand pity for Gollum is worth the price of admission alone. Listening immediately again.
Tolkien obviously an Augustinian and Thomist.
As usual for a good book I want a hardcopy.

Love continuous confirmation that lord of the rings is the Best Ever

Wonderful look at how the Biblical narrative is woven into Tolkien's fantasy world! There are as many surprises in these pages as there are in his adventures.

This is a hard book to put in a category ~ a theological reflection of fantasy!
There is much to bring to a discussion after reading this book. His class must have been amazing!
Adds another level of depth to Lord of the Rings, though many of Tolkien's writings are also included.

More aptly titled "Christianity according to Tolkien" or "Christian themes of Tolkien".
I enjoyed this book. It helped frame Middle Earth and Tolkien's personality well.

Aragorn is a Christ figure and Gandalf is a Christ figure and Frodo is a Christ figure and Sam is a Christ figure and

No one could seriously deny that Tolkien’s Middle-earth resonates with the message and values of Christianity. Not only was Tolkien himself a devout Roman Catholic, but he was steeped in Old and Middle English literature, one of the oldest works of which, Crist, contains the lines that became the first inspiration for the world he, to use his own term, sub-created:

éala Éarendel, engla beorhtast,
ofer middangeard monnum sended


Hail Earendel, brightest of angels,
Sent over middle-earth to men.

These words embedded within a poem about Christ were, for Tolkien, a powerful evocation of an earlier pagan story, now lost, ‘something very remote and strange and beautiful…if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English’ (Carpenter, Tolkien, 64). Far more than the legendary ‘In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit’, with which so many are familiar, the words ‘éala Éarendel’ sparked the invention of a vast body of tales that have become in a very real sense a mythology many would wish to call their own, a mythology in which pagan and Christian resonate with each other. (Perhaps there’s a larger lesson to be learned there.) For, as Tolkien saw it and wrote it, all myths contain truth because they echo the Evangelium, the myth that was true.

The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the “happy ending.” The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed.’ (On Fairy-stories, ¶ 103)

On this showing we should expect to find that the ‘pagan’ or ‘non-Christian’ world of Middle-earth exists in harmonious counterpoint with the world of Christianity, with its perspectives and its values. This is especially so since Middle-earth is our world. The events of the legendarium took place in a ‘historical period [that] is imaginary’ (Letters, no. 183), a time so long ago that only snatches of the memory of those days, like the Éarendel of Crist, remain.


Professor Wood does a good job of detailing for us the ways in which we may find those perspectives and values woven into fabric of Tolkien’s tales. His is a worthy endeavor that provides the reader with much to think on, and it is important to bear in mind that he has ‘undertake[n] not a scholarly study so much as a theological meditation on The Lord of the Rings.’ For there are moments where Professor Wood seems to push the limits of applicability much too far, as when he says that in describing the relationship of Saruman and Wormtongue Tolkien is stating ‘one of the deepest of Christian truths: all love that is not ordered to the love of God turns to hatred.’ Now their relationship certainly ended in hatred, but I see no evidence that love of any kind ever existed between the two. Wood also at times mars the credibility of his own arguments by getting his facts wrong. He claims, for example, that Frodo sees ‘Sauron himself’ when he sees the Eye in Galadriel’s mirror. Not so, except perhaps in a metaphysical sense. The giant flaming eyeballs of filmdom aside, ‘Sauron himself’ has a physical form. Gollum says he has only ‘four fingers on the Black Hand, but they are enough’, and Pippin’s description of what he saw in the palantír points towards a human appearance. Wood also confuses the Witch-king with the Mouth of Sauron, and gets the ages of the four hobbits wrong while making a point precisely about their ages.


Where Professor Wood’s understanding of the facts of Middle-earth most fails the needs of his meditation is in his mistaken belief that Middle-earth and our world are not the same. In his final chapter he discusses The Athrabeth Finrod a Andreth, or, The Debate of Finrod and Andreth, which, among other things, raises the possibility that one day Ilúvatar himself will become incarnate within Arda in order to heal the harm that evil has done. Because of his misunderstanding, Wood does not see that Tolkien is talking about The Incarnation, not just an incarnation. But Middle-earth is not a parallel world like Narnia, with a unique incarnation of its own. The incarnation Finrod and Andreth anticipate is the evangelium itself.

A very entertaining listen, this book has helped me to see the world of Tolkien in new and interesting ways. The author tends to draw more allegorical connections that I agree with, and Tolkien was very clear that no allegory was intended in his writings. This is not to say no connections can be made between Tolkien's world and our own, and there is much to be learned from studying his literature. Many things pertaining to the Christian life were made clearer to me and I feel that I grasp more of what it means to live the Christian life than I did before I listened to this book. One disappointing thing about this recording is that the narrator mispronounces many of the names of characters and places, but this is a small matter considering the scope of the entire work and one need not even endure this if one chooses to read the book rather than listen to it. All in all, a good read and something I would encourage anyone who enjoys Tolkien studies to investigate.