On this day September 2nd 1973 English philological scholar, novelist and devout Christian J.R.R. Tolkien died (b. 8 January 1892). So I thought what better to honor such a fine Christian honor than a bit of Tolkein trivia

Did You Know?
Windows on the l

ife and work of J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien: “I am in fact a Hobbit”

In 1958, Tolkien wrote the following in a letter to a fan, Deborah Webster: “I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much.”

A crucial test

In 1936, publisher Stanley Unwin was deciding whether to publish The Hobbit. To help assess its popularity with children, he gave the manuscript to his youngest son, Rayner, for his opinion. This he often did, paying Rayner a standard fee of one shilling per report. Douglas Anderson tells how, with “the superiority of a ten-year-old,” the boy wrote: “This book … is good and should appeal to all children between the ages of 5 and 9.” Rayner Unwin (1925-2000) went on to become Tolkien’s principal publisher.

Birth of a hobbit

The Hobbit was born one summer afternoon, likely in 1930. Tolkien, then a young professor, sat in his home office correcting examinations: “One of the candidates had mercifully left one of the pages with no writing on it, which is the best thing that can possibly happen to an examiner, and I wrote on it: ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.’ Names always generate a story in my mind: eventually I thought I’d better find out what hobbits were like.” (Seen here is Tolkien’s original cover.)

His most exacting critic

Christopher Tolkien once interrupted his father as he read a chapter of The Hobbit to the Tolkien children in his study: “Last time, you said Bilbo’s front door was blue, and you said Thorin had a golden tassel on his hood, but you’ve just said that Bilbo’s front door was green, and the tassel on Thorin’s hood was silver.” Their father let out an exasperated exclamation—but quickly strode across the room to make a note.

The original Sam Gamgee

Tolkien once received a letter from a man in London whose name was Sam Gamgee (the name of Frodo’s loyal hobbit companion in The Lord of the Rings). In his responding letter, Tolkien admitted that what he really dreaded was getting a communication from S. Gollum. In fact, he had picked up the name Sam Gamgee in Sarehole, his rural childhood home. There, a local man named Samson Gamgee had become a household name for a surgical dressing he had invented.

Nine-tenths of the law?

“Possession” is a unifying theme in Tolkien’s imagined world. The fallen Melkor wanted to have God’s power of creation. The pathetic Gollum was twisted by his possessive love of his “Precious.” No one epitomized this quality more than Smaug. The hobbit’s dwarf companion Thorin could not hide his contempt: “Dragons … guard their plunder … and never enjoy a brass ring of it. Indeed they hardly know a good bit of work from a bad, though they usually have a good notion of the current market value; and they can’t make a thing for themselves. …”

Middle-earth as Europe

Tolkien once told a reporter that hobbits were English, implying the Shire was England. When asked what was east of Rhun and south of Harad, Tolkien continued, “Rhun is the Elvish word for east. Asia, China, Japan, and all the things which people in the West regard as far away. And south of Harad is Africa, the hot countries.” The reporter probed, “That makes Middle-earth Europe, doesn’t it?” Tolkien answered, “Yes, of course—Northwestern Europe … where my imagination comes from.” (He later denied that he had said this.)

Alpine awe

At the age of 19, Tolkien took a trip to Switzerland with family friends. There he saw mountains, up close, for the first time. As his children later told it, the rock-falls and snowy crevasses of these Alpine ranges lodged themselves in his imagination, to reappear in various guises in his stories.

His fears about a film version

Tolkien anticipated his books might inspire a film adaption, and he stated his concerns in a letter he wrote in June 1958. “The failure of poor films is often precisely in exaggeration,” he explained, “and in the intrusion of unwarranted matter owing to not perceiving where the core of the original lies.” He objected to editors who “cut the parts of the story upon which its characteristic and peculiar tone principally depends, showing a preference for fights,” and said he would resent “perversion of the characters … even more than the spoiling of the plot and scenery.”

Wartime inspiration

Tolkien began creating the legends of Middle-earth on the front lines of World War I, where he served as an officer. He conceived The Silmarillion, he once said, in “grimy canteens, at lectures in cold fogs, in huts full of blasphemies, or by candle light in bell-tents, even some down in dugouts under shell fire.” Some of his early drafts of Middle-earth’s legends are on the backs of official military documents.

They got along swimmingly

Tolkien’s friendship with C. S. Lewis (see p. 36) was more than literary. “Tollers” joined “Jack” on at least one of the latter’s famous days-long walking tours. On a number of occasions the two swam together in a large pond in front of The Kilns, Lewis’s home from 1930. The two Oxford dons would paddle out to the pond’s middle in a small boat, tie it to a snag, and dive from it into the water.

Escape or truth?

Tolkien always bristled at the charge that his writings were escapist musings bearing no relationship to real life or scientific reason. Fantasy writing, he said, “does not destroy or even insult Reason. … On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured.”

So September is a huge month at Abiding Savior. We have Baseline kicking off… Sunday School launching… Confirmation beginning…. The Fall Pastor’s Conference… Midpoint starting… and that’s all along with normal and loved Preaching and Teaching still going on. Oh and It’s Emma Janes 2nd Birthday Horray! 

I can’t wait!!!!

I thought this was a thought provoking article from Timothy Larsen. I have it posted here for discussion.

“It is important to realize that Sunday schools were originally literally schools: they were places were poor children could learn to read. The Sunday school movement began in Britain in the 1780s. The Industrial Revolution had resulted in many children spending all week long working in factories. Christian philanthropists wanted to free these children from a life of illiteracy. Well into the 19th century, working hours were long. The first modest legislative restrictions came in 1802. This resulted in limiting the number of hours a child could work per day to 12! This limit was not lowered again until 1844. Moreover, Saturday was part of the regular work week. Sunday, therefore, was the only available time for these children to gain some education.

The English Anglican evangelical Robert Raikes (1725-1811) was the key promoter of the movement. It soon spread to America as well. Denominations and non-denominational organizations caught the vision and energetically began to create Sunday schools. Within decades, the movement had become extremely popular. By the mid-19th century, Sunday school attendance was a near universal aspect of childhood. Even parents who did not regularly attend church themselves generally insisted that their children go to Sunday school. Working-class families were grateful for this opportunity to receive an education. They also looked forward to annual highlights such as prize days, parades, and picnics, which came to mark the calendars of their lives as much as more traditional seasonal holidays.

Religious education was, of course, always also a core component. The Bible was the textbook used for learning to read. Likewise, many children learned to write by copying out passages from the Scriptures. A basic catechism was also taught, as were spiritual practices such as prayer and hymn-singing. Inculcating Christian morality and virtues was another goal of the movement. Sunday school pupils often graduated to become Sunday school teachers, thereby gaining an experience of leadership not to be found elsewhere in their lives. Even some Marxist historians have credited 19th-century Sunday schools with empowering the working classes.

In both Britain and America, universal, compulsory state education was established by the 1870s. After that, reading and writing were learned on weekdays at school and the Sunday school curriculum was limited to religious education. Nevertheless, many parents continued to believe that regular Sunday school attendance was an essential component of childhood. The trend for permissive parenting in the 1960s, however, meant that a widespread culture of insisting that children go to Sunday school whether they want to or not (especially when the parents were not themselves going to church) was abandoned.”

Timothy Larsen is the Carolyn and Fred McManis Chair of Christian Thought at Wheaton College and a member of the Christian History advisory board.

So what did the early church do in worhsip?

In his First Apology (155 A.D.), the second-century Christian Apologist Justin Martyr wrote an account of Christian worship and beliefs. Originally addressed to the Roman emperor in defense of Christianity, Justin’s description gives us a window into what early Christians actually did when they gathered together. Here is an excerpt taken with revision from Christian History Magazine Issue #37,Worship in the Early Church (currently out of print and what a shame might I add)

How we dedicated ourselves to God when we were made new through Christ I will explain, since it might seem to be unfair if I left this out from my exposition. Those who are persuaded and believe that the things we teach and say are true, and promise that they can live accordingly, are instructed to pray and beseech God with fasting for the remission of their past sins, while we pray and fast along with them. Then they are brought by us where there is water, and are reborn by the same manner of rebirth by which we ourselves were reborn; for they are then washed in the water in the name of God the Father and Master of all, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. For Christ said, “Unless you are born again you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.”

Now it is clear to all that those who have once come into being cannot enter the wombs of those who bore them. But as I quoted before, it was said through the prophet Isaiah how those who have sinned and repent shall escape from their sins. He said this: “Wash yourselves, be clean, take away wickedness from your souls, learn to do good, give judgment for the orphan and defend the cause of the widow, and come and let us reason together, says the Lord. And though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them as white as wool, and though they be as crimson, I will make them as white as snow.”…

After thus washing the one who has been convinced and signified his assent, [we] lead him to those who are called brethren, where they are assembled. They then earnestly offer common prayers for themselves and the one who has been illuminated and all others every where, that we may be made worthy, having learned the truth, to be found in deed good citizens and keepers of what is commanded, so that we may be saved with eternal salvation.

On finishing the prayers we greet each other with a kiss. Then bread and a cup of water and mixed wine are brought to the president of the brethren and he, taking them, sends up praise and glory to the Father of the universe through the name of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and offers thanksgiving at some length that we have been deemed worthy to receive these things from him. When he has finished the prayers and the thanksgiving, the whole congregation present assents, saying, “Amen.” “Amen” in the Hebrew language means, “So be it.” When the president has given thanks and the whole congregation has assented, those whom we call deacons give to each of those present a portion of the consecrated bread and wine and water, and they take it to the absent.

This food we call Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake except one who believes that the things we teach are true, and has received the washing for forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives as Christ handed down to us. For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Saviour being incarnate by God’s word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus. For the apostles in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, thus handed down what was commanded them: that Jesus, taking bread and having given thanks, said, “Do this for my memorial, this is my body”; and likewise taking the cup and giving thanks he said, “This is my blood”; and gave it to them alone….

After these [services] we constantly remind each other of these things. Those who have more come to the aid of those who lack, and we are constantly together. Over all that we receive we bless the Maker of all things through his Son Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit.

And on the day called Sunday there is a meeting in one place of those who live in cities or the country, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits. When the reader has finished, the president in a discourse urges and invites [us] to the imitation of these noble things. Then we all stand up together and offer prayers. And, as said before, when we have finished the prayer, bread is brought, and wine and water, and the president similarly sends up prayers and thanksgivings to the best of his ability, and the congregation assents, saying the Amen; the distribution, and reception of the consecrated [elements] by each one, takes place and they are sent to the absent by the deacons.

Those who prosper, and who so wish, contribute, each one as much as he chooses to. What is collected is deposited with the president, and he takes care of orphans and widows, and those who are in want on account of sickness or any other cause, and those who are in bonds, and the strangers who are sojourners among [us], and, briefly, he is the protector of all those in need.

We all hold this common gathering on Sunday, since it is the first day, on which God transforming darkness and matter made the universe, and Jesus Christ our Saviour rose from the dead on the same day. For they crucified him on the day before Saturday, and on the day after Saturday, he appeared to his apostles and disciples and taught them these things which I have passed on to you also for your serious consideration.”

So this is the Pre-Council of Nicea account of what Christian worship was according to Justin Martyr. What do think? Is their anything similar to what we do on Sunday in worship and what is different? Do you think it is an appropriate model for today or do you think it isn’t possible to do today?

I guess this is all to ask… What is Christian Worship?

A profound thing happened in Bible Study today. As we were talking about God’s work through His word someone in the class started quoting Luther’s Small Catechism (Instruction book for the Christian faith taken from Scripture) from memory. They were happy to recall the fact that though they were in their eighties those familiar words still came back to them as clear as ever. I thanked them for sharing with the class and mentioned how encouraging it was to hear the Catechism still quoted and useful in everyday life. We are about to begin Confirmation class here at Abiding Savior. In Confirmation we will study and memorize portions of Scripture and use the Catechism to aid in memory work and question and answers. I often hear today how antiquated the Catechism is and how ineffective it is for teaching. I got to kind of wondering then about what happened in Bible study today. It seems to me that the Catechism is still being used today in a most effective way. Again, I think this passage from Proverbs 22:6 has a lot to say to the subject: “Train up a child in the way they should go; even when they are old they will not depart from it.” So I put the question to you bloggers in our community: What is your impression of the Catechism in faith-education to youth today? Please share any personal experiences both good and bad. smallcatechism1

This is a written copy of the sermon I delievered on 7/27/2008 on the Gospel text for the day.  sermon7272008

Hey I just started this new page! I hope that we can have some good discussions. I will be posting on this site regularly.