“Just as Adam could not be truly himself without Eve, so are all the Hebrew patriarchs and matriarchs called by God – not to live in solitary faithfulness, but to serve as the progenitors of his people Israel. In Christian tradition, faithfulness always requires “two or more.” Solitary fidelity is a contradiction in terms. Faithfulness is always communal. Jesus goes alone in the wilderness – just as Christian hermits still dwell in solitude – only for the sake of his community and Kingdom. Tolkien stands in full accord with this fundamental insistence that we become true persons only in engagement and community with other persons. He also discerns that pride, the deadliest of the cardinal sins, is usually a denial of our dependence on others. It is an attempt at pseudo-lordship – as if God himself were not a triune community of persons, as if he were not the God who refuses to be God without his people.”

From Ralph C. Wood, The Gospel According to Tolkien