A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18

by Joseph Loconte

“My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself.”

It was this encroachment of technological life into rural England that Tolkien came to resent.

Although there is a notion that some British officers went into battle with The Iliad in their backpacks and the rage of Achilles in their hearts, Lewis was not one of them.

Thus, for Lewis, Christianity was “one mythology among many”—and as false as all the others. “All religions, that is, all mythologies to give them their proper name are merely man’s own invention—Christ as much as Loki.” Great men came to be regarded by their followers as gods, Lewis explained, around whom a cult emerged.

“I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought,” he once explained.55 Thus he set out “to restore to the English an epic tradition and present them with a mythology of their own.”56

This is the question that lies behind the famous late-night debate between C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien in September 1931. It was a remarkable moment: a probing discussion of ancient myths and an ancient faith, it nonetheless speaks to the mystery of the modern predicament. Their exchange—an encounter between intensely creative minds over the meaning of Christianity—should be ranked as one of the most transformative conversations of the twentieth century.

Lewis described one of their exchanges: “I was up till 2:30 on Monday, talking to the Anglo Saxon professor Tolkien, who came back with me to College from a society and sat discoursing of the gods and giants of Asgard for three hours,

Although Tolkien’s work appears to lack a religious framework—there are no prayers or acts of worship, for example—its characters are conscious of a Moral Law, a source of Goodness to which they must give account.

One doesnt only come from the other