Tag Archives: Gandalf

Authors

Tim Keller, 72, Now with the Lord

Leave a comment

Yesterday, I read about a controversial figure from the 1950-60s who a thoughtful, serious man, not sticking to a party line because it was his party. His original faith group disowned him. The media hated him. At the end of his life, he was changing his mind on fundamental ideas, and because of that, some have said he was beginning to put his faith in Christ. The writer I was reading said we couldn’t know any of these things, which points to the importance of doing the Lord’s will “as long as it is called ‘today.” We have no guarantee of tomorrow.

By all accounts, Tim Keller made the most of every day. He called us to Christ our Lord and now has been called home, after three years of managing pancreatic cancer.

ByFaith magazine has a good obituary that ends with this, from Reformed Theological Seminary Chancellor Ligon Duncan: “[Tim] in the PCA was a little bit like Gandalf in the Shire. We think he’s just a guy that does fireworks at birthday parties, when he’s actually out there in the world slaying dragons and taking on evil wizards.”

Authors, Fiction, Reading, Religion

‘Reading report: The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien: The Rainbow Wizard

1 Comment

I finished reading The Fellowship of the Ring over the weekend. One can’t really review a work of this eminence. I can only write appreciations. One thing I noted was a detail I’d forgotten, one that was left out of the movies, and it’s  no mystery why. It’s when Gandalf meets with Saruman at Orthanc, and learns his former master’s perfidy:

‘”For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!”

‘I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.

‘”I liked white better,” I said.

‘”White!” he sneered. “It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.”

‘”In which case it is no longer white,” said I. “And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”’

This is an amazing passage. Saruman the White, whose white color had symbolized his supreme wisdom, has broken the white color down into its constituent prismatic hues.

He’s made it into a rainbow.

We see rainbows all the time today, in churches that believe they’ve “deconstructed” traditional morality and theology.

Was Tolkien an actual prophet? Did he foretell the future of the church?