More on Tolkien and the "Long Defeat"

I learned from a blog post by Alan Jacobs today that not only did JRRT refer to history as "a long defeat" in his letters, but also that this is a quote from LOTR. (I found Jacob's entry through Rod Dreher's blog "The Crunchy Con.") Here is the Jacobs entry:

As I noted in a previous post: Tolkien says in Letter 195: "Actually I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect 'history' to be anything but a 'long defeat' - though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory."

In LOTR, Galadriel says to Frodo: "For the Lord of the Gladhrim is accounted the wisest of the Elves of Middle-Earth, and a giver of gifts beyond the power of kings. He has dwelt in the West since the days of dawn, and I have dwelt with him years uncounted; for ere the fall of Nargothrond or Gondolin I passed over the mountains, and together through the ages of the world we have fought the long defeat." (Mirror of Galadriel, LOTR)

An entire philosophy of history and indeed, a spirituality, is contained in this hauntingly beautiful phrase "the long defeat." In the saeculum - the period between the Ascension and the Glorious Return of our Lord - we live in a period in which the world continues under the usurpation of the Enemy even though Jesus Christ has been exalted to the right hand of the Father and is the rightful Lord of the world. In this time the faithful people of God live under the tyranny of the Enemy and despite all our efforts the lesson is re-learned over and over again that we cannot establish the Kingdom of God by our efforts and we cannot re-capture Eden by our wisdom or power. We fight and occasionally we triumph for a little while. Yet evil always rises again and can never be destroyed by human hands. Our experience of the long defeat inclines us to pray fervently "Thy will be done, Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven." We long for heaven but most of all we long for heaven to come to earth in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are gradually made first courageous, then humble, and finally hopeful.

Blessed is he who neither takes "history" too seriously or not seriously at all, but just seriously enough.