{"id":26336,"date":"2002-09-16T13:29:52","date_gmt":"2002-09-16T18:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2002\/09\/16\/birzers-sanctifying-myth-book-review-2\/"},"modified":"2002-09-16T13:29:52","modified_gmt":"2002-09-16T18:29:52","slug":"birzers-sanctifying-myth-book-review-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2002\/09\/16\/26336-birzers-sanctifying-myth-book-review-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Birzer&#8217;s &#8216;Sanctifying Myth&#8217; Book Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"intro\">The folks from <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.ala.org\/booklist\/index.html\" TARGET=NEW>ALA Booklist Magazine<\/a> send along a review of Bradley J. Birzer&#8217;s latest book &#8216;<a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/1882926846\/qid=1032200638\/theoneringnet\" TARGET=NEW>J. R. R. Tolkien&#8217;s Sanctifying Myth<\/a>&#8216; (due out in stores mid-October). Take a look and <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/1882926846\/qid=1032200638\/theoneringnet\" TARGET=NEW>pre-order your own copy at Amazon.com today!<\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>Birzer, Bradley J. J. R. R. Tolkien&#146;s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-Earth. Oct. 2002. 156p. index. ISI, $24.95 (1-882926-84-6). 823.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Tolkien said that The Lord of the Rings is a Catholic book, but commentators have shied away from writing about its Catholicism. After all, he also said it wasn&#146;t an allegory, so you don&#146;t need to know the Catholicism to understand it&#150;&#150;right? Perhaps, but Tolkien hoped the book would prove a stealth evangelizer, arguing a Catholic worldview in its setting, characterizations, and plot. Birzer reveals The Lord&#146;s Catholicism in five riveting chapters. Middle-earth is a subcreation, he says, resembling real creation so that a salvific myth of heroic virtue triumphing over dire evil may be played out in it. The sapient beings (hobbits, elves, etc.) in it form a hierarchy surmounted by God, and evil in it is, as in classical Christianity, the result of willful separation from God. When evil is finally vanquished, Middle-earth will be paradisiacal, but as God&#146;s handiwork, it is already profoundly good, and its pastoralism rebukes the secularism, centralization, industrialism, and mechanization (only the evil build machines in Middle-earth) that Tolkien despised. Essential reading for all Tolkien enthusiasts. &#150;&#150;<i>Ray Olson<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The folks from ALA Booklist Magazine send along a review of Bradley J. Birzer&#8217;s latest book &#8216;J. R&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-old-special-reports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tLoH-6QM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}