Ethics

"Tolkien's classical Christian theology avoids two opposite errors, two oversimplifications. One is a Rouseauian optimism: the denial, or ignoring of evil's reality and power, and consequently a kind of spiritual pacifism, the denial of spiritual warfare. The other would be the Manichean error, the idea that evil has the same kind of reality as goodness, equally powerful and equally substantial...."

-Peter J. Kreeft, The Philosophy of Tolkien