Christian light in Tolkien's legendarium

J. R. R. Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, embodied Christianity in his legendarium, including The Lord of the Rings. Light is a major Christian symbol, denoting God and creation in the Old Testament, and the action of Christ in the New Testament.

In The Silmarillion, light is similarly important. It appears early on in the Years of the Lamps, with two enormous lamps atop mountain-sized pillars to light the world of Arda. When these are destroyed by the Dark Lord Melkor, they are replaced by the Two Trees of Valinor, which provide light for the new home of the Valar. When these too are destroyed, the Valar use their last fruit and their last flower to create the Sun and the Moon. A little of the light of the Two Trees is captured in the Silmarils, the crafted jewels that give the book its name. These are coveted by the Dark Lord, provoking war and the destruction of much of the world of Elves, Men, and Dwarves. A survivor, Eärendil, sails across the Great Sea to ask the Valar to intervene; they expel the Dark Lord, and Eärendil and his ship Vingilot sail the heavens as the Morning Star.

In The Lord of the Rings, the Elf-land of Lothlórien is portrayed as a land of light, its city lit by many lamps, in opposition to the darkening of the world outside by the Dark Lord Sauron. The elf-lady Galadriel prepares a crystal vial of water that shines with the light of Eärendil's star, to assist Frodo on his quest "when all other lights go out". This light, a small fragment of the created light passed on via the Two Trees of Valinor, proves vital to the quest.

The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger writes that Tolkien equated light with God and the ability to create. Further, she sees The Silmarillion as a progressive splintering of the created light as evil intervenes. |t each stage, in her view, the fragmentation increases and the power decreases. Thus the theme of light as Divine power, fragmented and refracted through the works of created beings, is central to the whole of Tolkien's mythology. Paul H. Kocher writes that the Galadriel perceives Sauron with Lothlórien's light, "but cannot be pierced by it in return". Elizabeth Danna comments that this echoes the phrase in the Gospel of John that "The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." Susan Robbins writes that light was associated in Tolkien's mind with the Christian themes of "holiness, goodness, knowledge, wisdom, grace, hope, and God's revelation". Robert Steed adds that in several places in The Silmarillion and in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien adapts the medieval tale of the Harrowing of Hell, in which Christ descends to Hell before his resurrection, setting the Devil's captives free with the irresistible power of his divine light.