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J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is a profoundly Christian book. Like the anonymous seventh-century author of Beowulf whose work he had mastered, Tolkien infuses his pre-Christian epic fantasy with Christian convictions and concerns.

He also confronts evils altogether as great as the horrors of our own time. Rather than fleeing oppressive evil, Tolkien enables his readers to escape into the freeing reality of Good.

The inhabitants of Middle-earth do not know God as triune, but they do know him as the One. In The Silmarillion, he is called Ilúvatar, the All-Father, and he has imbued the entire cosmos with his Spirit. There is nothing that does not bear Ilúvatar's creative imprint.

Just as in Genesis, Yahweh creates in concert with his heavenly court ("Let us make man in our image"), so does Ilúvatar employ his 15 valar in making the music of the cosmos. The valar are not polytheistic divinities but subordinate beings that Ilúvatar has created with the Flame Imperishable of his own Spirit.

As patrons over the various creative qualities and natural powers resident in the cosmos, the valar are pure spirits, having no natural bodily existence and thus no mortal limits. Yet they assume shape and gender, both masculine and feminine, in order that the Children of Ilúvatar might know and love them.

Beneath the valar are somewhat less powerful beings called the maiar. Lower still are the elves and perhaps the ents, then men and hobbits, and finally dwarves.

Yet this descending chain of being is neither static nor imprisoning: it is wondrously free and life-giving. Within every rank, there is immense room for movement—either up or down, toward life or toward death, toward good or toward evil. The lower creatures are meant to serve the higher, yet without being demeaned or diminished. So are the higher beings meant to care for the lower, yet without condescension or contempt. All the creatures of Ilúvatar are meant to dwell in lasting regard for each other. Everywhere in Tolkien's work, authentic existence is always communal. Fellowship and friendship, companionship and mutuality, lie at the heart of Tolkien's Christian vision.

Disobedience and rebellion—whether among valar or hobbits—are the main motives for sin in Tolkien's world. These evils are prompted by pride, the deadliest of the sins. And they usually entail a denial of the interdependence that the All-Father has made intrinsic to his universe.

One of the valar, named Melkor, like Lucifer in biblical tradition, comes to relish his solitude and to despise everything that he can not bring under his control. He refuses all communal reliance, even upon Ilúvatar. Resentful that Ilúvatar alone possesses the Light of creative action, Melkor seeks to make creatures that will serve only himself.

Melkor is most like Satan in forging for himself a crown of iron and according to himself a grandiose title, "King of the World."

Yet because Melkor rejects Ilúvatar's goodness, his iniquity has no real substance, no proper being. Though frighteningly actual, the demonic always remains shadowy and derivative; in the deepest sense, it is unreal.

Repeatedly Tolkien demonstrates that sin is a distortion and perversion of the Good. As their name indicates, the Ringwraiths—the nine men who have come totally under Sauron's sway—are ghostly figures who have been hideously twisted by their hatred.

Yet because evil has only a parasitic existence, it can never completely destroy or undo—though it can certainly mar and tarnish—the Good. The demonic Melkor is unable to create any original or free creatures. He can manufacture only parodies and counterfeits. In addition to the carnivorous trolls that he breeds in scorn for the tree-herding ents, he also makes the brutal orcs in mockery of the graceful elves.

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