For Tolkien, a deeply committed Christian, man is not simply homo sapiens, a label for humanity that was only invented in the early nineteenth century and has since become synonymous with what might be termed “Darwinian man”—man as simply a “naked ape,” the most intelligent of the primates. Countering such a view, Christianity sees man as a creature made in the image of God in a manner that distinguishes him radically from the rest of the animals. To reiterate Tolkien’s words, “[T]here is a part of man which is not ‘Nature’” and is, therefore, “wholly unsatisfied by it.”4 A better name for man
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