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Issue 78 : J.R.R. Tolkien & Lord of the Rings

Originally published in 2003

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Table of Contents

J.R.R. Tolkien: Did You Know?

Windows on the life and work of J.R.R. Tolkien

Chris Armstrong and Steven Gertz
J.R.R. Tolkien: From the Editor - He Gave Us Back Myth and with it, Truth

Chris Armstrong
Meeting Professor Tolkien

An American professor spent a summer with Tolkien. He remembers the man, his faith, and his writings.

Clyde S. Kilby
Tolkien: Man Behind the Myth

At odds with his age, he created another.

Bradley J. Birzer
A Feeling for Language

Without philology, Middle-earth would never have exisited. But what is philology?

Tom Shippey
The Christian Humanists

Tolkien joined these authors in countering the decadence of a dark century.

Joseph Pearce
One Truth, Many Tales

How did Tolkien's approach to writing for a secularizing world compare with those of his Christian contemporaries?

David Mills
Sacramental Imagination

Catholicism anchored Tolkien's life and suffused his writings.

Thomas Howard
The Life and Times of J.R.R. Tolkien: Christian History Timeline
Good & Evil in Middle-earth

The characters are mythic, but the epic sweeps across a Christian moral landscape.

Ralph C. Wood
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Gallery - The Inklings

Tolkien relished his weekly meetings with this club of remarkable friends.

Jennifer Lynn Woodruff
Tollers & Jack

Tolkien and Lewis made an odd couple, but the contributed profoundly to each other's work.

Colin Duriez
Hobbits & Englishmen

His were small people surmounting impossible odds.

Humphrey Carpenter
Father of Epic Fantasy

Scores of authors have paid Tolkien the highest homage - imitation.

Aaron Belz
An Unexpected Party

Like Bilbo discovering one dwarf after another at his door, Tolkien found himself, in the 1960s, hosting a growing American fan club.

Michael Foster
Understanding Tolkien: Recommended Resources

From light romps to profound reads, a bumper crop of books tells us more about the maker of Middle-earth.

Steven Gertz and Chris Armstrong

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October 27, 625: Honorius I begins his reign as pope. His belief in Monothelitism (that Christ had only one will, not two), since condemned as heresy by the Roman Catholic Church, have long been a point of conflict for Catholic discussion of papal infallibility.

October 27, 1553: Michael Servetus is burned at the stake in Geneva for his heretical beliefs regarding the Trinity (see issue 12: John Calvin).

October 27, 1746: Scottish Presbyterian pastor and theologian William Tennant obtains a charter ...

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