The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind The Lord of the Rings

by Peter Kreeft

But there is hope. After Sauron’s defeat Aragorn ushers in a new golden age. Yet this is only temporary. Every victory over evil is. Aragorn’s descendants gradually lose his nobility, and the pattern repeats. The pattern is free, yet it is cyclic: (1) divine blessings, (2) consequent human prosperity, (3) the fall into pride and laziness, (4) consequent decline, (5) disaster, which stirs (6) repentance, which brings as its result (1) divine blessings again. This is the repeated pattern of the history of Israel in the Bible, and it is the universal pattern for the history of all nations. For Israel, like Christ, is the rule as well as the exception, the key to universal history as well as the unique center of it.