The 3 Deadly Corrupting Powers of the Ring

Ralph Wood, author of The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth, identifies the three corrupting features associated with the ring:

(1) Power to overcome death—thus granting unending physical life.

Perhaps the chief idolatry of our time, the worship of health and longevity, whereas the naturally immortal elves, while understanding the full cosmic process, also envy men for their great blessing of death.

(2) Power to become invisible—thus granting magical disappearance.

Hence the ability to acquire goods without effort, whereas everything worth having is meant to be acquired slowly, not quickly and easily. Yet evil has a shadowy, unreal existence, lacking any creative power, able only to pervert our virtues and to destroy the good. It has no imaginative sympathy, only the flat, unpenetrating eye of Sauron.

(3) Power to coerce the will of others—making evil horribly addictive because it is not merely seductive but also bullying—as when Frodo’s will is finally overwhelmed in the end.

This is exactly the doctrine of Original Sin as a one-way street that cannot be cured by our own effort, but that can be healed only by a transcendent and redemptive power beyond it.

For those who are interested, the latest Christian contribution to the literature of Tolkieniana is Louis Markos’ On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis.