This article examines the nature of evil in Tolkien's work in light of Tom Shippey's well-known assertion that Tolkien struggled between two poles: a ‘Manichaean’ or dualist position and the Catholic Augustinian or ‘Boethian’ position which views evil as an absence. After noting that subsequent respondents to Shippey take this distinction for granted and often seem to misread Shippey himself, the author argues that in fact the whole discussion is ill-founded. New frameworks for reading Tolkien's views on evil should be sought. The article then presents a new proposal: dividing Tolkien's evils into the tripartite distinction of flesh, world, and devil long present in theological discussions.

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I argue that, because God is the author of history and has a purpose for his creation, evolution has a plot and can be analyzed with tools drawn from literary criticism. This necessitates engagement with the "epic of evolution" genre of scientific literature. I survey several prominent versions of the epic and distinguish between a purely naturalistic epic of evolution and a goal-oriented Christian epic of evolution (CEE). In dealing with CEE, I use the thought of J. R. R. Tolkien, along with Kevin Vanhoozer and Dorothy Sayers, to discuss the ways in which we can theologically legitimate speaking of God as the "author" of evolutionary history.

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