Christianity is a central theme in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional works about Middle-earth, but always a hidden one. This allows the book to be read at different levels, and its meaning to be applied by the reader, rather than forcing a single meaning on the reader. J. R. R. Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic from boyhood, and he described The Lord of the Rings in particular as a "fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision". While he insisted it was not an allegory, it contains numerous themes from Christian theology. These include the battle of good versus evil, the triumph of humility over pride, and the activity of grace. A central theme is death and immortality, with light as a symbol of divine creation, but Tolkien's attitudes to mercy and pity, resurrection, the Eucharist, salvation, repentance, self-sacrifice, free will, justice, fellowship, authority and healing can also be detected. Divine providence appears indirectly as the will of the Valar, godlike immortals, expressed subtly enough to avoid compromising people's free will. There is no single Christ-figure comparable to C. S. Lewis's Aslan in his Narnia books, but the characters of Gandalf, Frodo, and Aragorn exemplify the threefold office, the prophetic, priestly, and kingly aspects of Christ respectively. Context: Tolkien's Catholicism J. R. R. Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic, although his family had once been Baptists. He described The Lord of the Rings as rich in Christian symbolism, as he explained in a letter to his close friend and Jesuit priest, Robert Murray: The Tolkien scholar Patrick Curry writes that Tolkien's statement however elides the paganism that pervades the work, and indeed the whole of his Middle-earth Legendarium; it may be fundamentally Christian, but on other levels it is another matter, with its pagan polytheism and animism, and many other features. In other words, Middle-earth is both Christian and pagan. The Tolkien scholar Paul H. Kocher comments that "having made the times pre-Christian, [Tolkien] has freed himself from the need to deal with them in a Christian context, which would be awkward if applied to elves, ents, dwarves, and the rest." Many theological themes underlie the narrative, including the battle of good versus evil, the triumph of humility over pride, and the activity of grace, as seen with Frodo's pity toward Gollum. The work includes the themes of death and immortality, mercy and