The lives of the characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's world of Middle-earth appear variously to be driven by luck or by fate. This is arranged in such a way that the characters' free will is never compromised; they must rely on their own courage, just like Old English heroes like Beowulf and figures from Norse mythology. The text of The Lord of the Rings, while never Christian on the surface, hints at the working of higher powers, which the cosmology in The Silmarillion presents as the angelic or godlike Valar, who in turn carry out the will of the creator, the one God Eru Ilúvatar. Context J. R. R. Tolkien was an English author and philologist of ancient Germanic languages, specialising in Old English; he spent much of his career as a professor at the University of Oxford. He is best known for his novels about his invented Middle-earth, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and for the posthumously published The Silmarillion which provides a more mythical narrative about earlier ages. A devout Roman Catholic, he described The Lord of the Rings as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work", rich in Christian symbolism. The cosmology of Middle-earth includes the Valar, who are "angelic powers" or "gods". They are subordinate to the one God, Eru Ilúvatar, who created the world as described in the Ainulindalë. Scholars have noted that the Valar resemble angels in Christianity, but that Tolkien presented them rather more like pagan gods, such as the Æsir in Norse mythology. Higher powers The Episcopal priest and Tolkien scholar Fleming Rutledge writes that in The Lord of the Rings, and especially at moments like the wizard Gandalf's explanation to Frodo in "The Shadow of the Past", there are clear hints of a higher power at work in events in Middle-earth: Rutledge writes that in this way, Tolkien repeatedly hints at a higher power "that controls even the Ring itself, even the maker of the Ring himself [her italics]", and asks who or what that power might be. Her reply is that at the surface level, it means the Valar, "a race of created beings (analogous to the late-biblical angels)". At a deeper level, as both Rutledge and the Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft write, it means "the One", Eru Ilúvatar, or in Christian terms, divine Providence. Luck, courage, and providence The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey discusses the connection