“After his sober greeting at the door, I found him immediately friendly as we sat down. Tolkien was a most genial man with a steady twinkle in his eyes and a great curiosity––the sort of person one instinctively likes."
Clyde S. Kilby
🧵 When we confess that God is Simple, we, in accord with our Puritan, Reformed Scholastic, and Medieval Scholastic forbears, have a precise intended definition in mind. We say God is "without body, parts, or passions."
What does that mean?
"quicquid est in Deo, Deum esse."
Girolamo Zanchi 1577
"For every and all the Attributes are the divine Essence itself; according to that received Proposition, whatsoever is in God, is God."
Norton 1654
Q. What is Simplicity?
A. It is God; one meer and perfect act without all composition.
John Norton A Brief and Excellent Treatise Containing the Doctrine of Godliness, 11.
🧵"Obj. To be a Mediator, implyeth inferiority. But Christ is God, being then God (that is the Divine Nature subsisting in relation to the Son) and man in one person: God is not inferior to any: the Persons are equal.
Therefore we must necessarily come at last to some first mover, which is moved of no other, and that is God. This was the common argument of Plato, Aristotle, and all the best Philosophers."
Leigh, A Body of Divinity, 129-130
"There are no 'Gods', properly so-called, in the mythological background in my stories. Their place is taken by the persons referred to as the Valar (or Powers): angelic created beings appointed to the government of the world."
J. R. R. Tolkien Letter 286 27 April 1966
because they are 'other' and wholly independent of the enquiring mind, a spirit coeval with the rational mind, and entirely unconcerned with 'doing' anything with the knowledge: Zoology and Botany not Cattle-breeding or Agriculture."
J. R. R. Tolkien Letter 153
🧵The Ring has no power over Tom Bombadil
"[Tom Bombadil] is then an 'allegory', or an exemplar, a particular embodying of pure (real) natural science: the spirit that desires knowledge of other things, their history and nature,
“...to have a right idea of providence, we must consider those divine perfections which it presupposes. A full consideration of these perfections helps us to a true notion of providence & gradually leads to a more exact understanding of it."
RGL Providence Ch 7 Divine Simplicity
"There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."
Thorin Oakenshield's Farewell to Bilbo
Art by Daniel Sweet