J.R.R. TOLKIEN ON THE DEAD END OF PROTESTANTISM
I read this letter in the years leading up to my conversion. As I discovered, not only was Tolkien right about the mistaken search for “primitive” purity in the Church (read Scripture—it never existed), but the primitive church—to the extent we have artifacts of it in documents, archaeology, etc.—was very Catholic in its beliefs and practices. What I had been told my whole life were “medieval accretions” were widespread in the ancient Church, and defended from both Scripture, and the constant practice of the Church since the Apostolic age. The protestant claim to have restored the ancient Faith was, I discovered, completely false.
To this day, I have not yet found anything uniquely protestant in the ancient Catholic Church, except (I am sad to say) the heresies. All of them—no matter how different their doctrines from one another (and virtually none of them resembled protestantism)—ultimately relied on a novel/erroneous interpretation of Scripture (including subtracting or adding to its canon), coupled with a rejection of the authority of the Church. In this, each of them resembled protestantism. It was very sobering to realize that the Church Fathers’ descriptions of how heresy and heretics operated was disturbingly similar to how my native protestantism had operated since the 16th century.
TOLKIEN’S LETTER
The 'protestant' search backwards for 'simplicity' and directness—which, of course, though it contains some good or at least intelligible motives, is mistaken and indeed vain. Because 'primitive Christianity' is now and in spite of all 'research' will ever remain largely unknown; because 'primitiveness' is no guarantee of value, and is, and was in great a reflection of ignorance. Grave abuses were as much an element in Christian liturgical behavior from the beginning as now. (St Paul's strictures on Eucharistic behavior are sufficient to show this!)
Still more because 'my church' was not intended by Our Lord to be static or remain in perpetual childhood; but to be a living organism (likened to a plant), which develops and changes in externals by the interaction of its bequeathed divine life and history—the particular circumstances of the world into which it is set.
There is no resemblance between the 'mustard-seed' and the full-grown tree. For those living in the days of its branching growth, the Tree is the thing, for the history of a living thing is part of its life, and the history of a divine thing is sacred.
The wise may know that it began with a seed, but it is vain to try and dig it up, for it no longer exists, and the virtue and powers that it had now reside in the Tree…But they will certainly do harm if they are obsessed with the desire of going back to the seed or even to the first youth when it was (as they imagine) pretty and unafflicted by evils.
J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter to his son Michael (August 25, 1967)