Introduction

Douglas Estes

Part I: Aman

Chapter 1: Freedom and Fidelity: Improvisation in the Ainulindalë

Bradley K. Broadhead

Chapter 2: "When Things Are in Danger, Someone Must Give Them Up": Redemption and Ecology in Tolkien's Legendarium

Alison Milbank

Chapter 3:Critiquing Tolkien's Theology

Austin M. Freeman

Chapter 4: In the Brilliant Darkness of a Hidden Silence: J.R.R. Tolkien's Apophatic Tendencies

Douglas Estes

Chapter 5: Gandalf, Sauron, Melian, and the Balrog as Angels: A Study of J.R.R. Tolkien's Maiar in the Context of Biblical Angelology

Charlie Trimm

Part II: Erebor

Chapter 6: The Marian Valkyrie: Tolkien's Theology of the Heroic Feminine

Lisa Coutras

Chapter 7: Songs of Light and Darkness: Theological Imagination and Metaphor in J.R.R. Tolkien

Beth M. Stovell

Chapter 8: Christianity and Paganism in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings: A Typology Based on Niebuhr's Christ and Culture

Allan M. de Novaes, Milton L. Torres, and João Fernando O. Barboza

Chapter 9: Perceiving the Material and Immaterial in Middle-earth

Adam B. Shaeffer

Chapter 10: A Chance for Metanarrative to Prove its Quality

Jeremy M. Rios

Part III: Ithilien

Chapter 11: "An Encouraging Thought": The Interplay of Providence and Free Will in Middle-earth

Devin Brown

Chapter 12: The Redemptive Power of Love: Arwen as the Anti-Eve in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings

Julie Loveland Swanstrom

Chapter 13: Spiritual Sloth and Diligence in Tolkien's Work

Martina Juri¿ková

Chapter 14:Evil and the Fall into Violence in Tolkien's Mythopoesis

John C. McDowell

Chapter 15: A Far Green Country: The Eschatology of Tolkien's Middle-earth

Donald T. Williams

About the Contributors