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 between the Valar and "luck" on Middle-earth, writing that as in real life, "People ... do in sober reality recognise a strongly patterning force in the world around them" but that while this may be due to "Providence or the Valar", the force "does not affect free will and cannot be distinguished from the ordinary operations of nature" nor reduce the necessity of "heroic endeavour". He states that this exactly matches the Old English view of luck and personal courage, as Beowulfs "wyrd often spares the man who isn't doomed, as long as his courage holds."
In addition, the leapfrogging of the timeline by the multiple interlaced story threads in The Lord of the Rings allows Tolkien to make hidden connections that can only be grasped retrospectively, as the reader realises on reflection that certain events happened at the same time. Shippey gives as an instance the moment when Frodo sits on Amon Hen, the Seat of Seeing, puts on the One Ring, and feels the Eye of Sauron pressing towards him; at the same time, Frodo hears a voice urging him to take the Ring off, giving him just enough time to make up his mind and save the quest by complying. Interlace, West notes, can "show purpose or pattern behind change". This can appear, Shippey writes, as luck, where in daily life it is uncertain whether this is "something completely humdrum and practical or something mysterious and supernatural", just like wyrd. In this case, the reader has to wait from book 2, chapter 10 ("The Breaking of the Fellowship") until book 3, chapter 5 ("The White Rider") for Gandalf to reveal that the voice that Frodo heard was his.
The scholar of humanities Paul H. Kocher similarly discusses the role of providence, in the form of the intentions of the Valar or of the creator, in Bilbo's finding of the One Ring and Frodo's bearing of it; as Gandalf says, they were "meant" to have it, though it remained their choice to co-operate with this purpose.