Tolkien's Creation Story

Creation in JRR Tolkien's The Silmarillion

JRR Tolkien is most famous for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The world he created is rich, complex, and meaningful. It is common for a reader of Tolkien to have the experience that they are actually leaving reality to put his books down, rather than the other way around. It’s a fascinating experience to be entranced in one of his books.

This universe has other tales, though, some that Tolkien wrote himself, and others that his son compiled and completed from his notes. One of the often forgotten works is one that Tolkien completed and published within his own lifetime. It is called The Silmarillion. It is really a compilation of stories from older periods of Middle Earth. Within its pages, though, a creation story is featured that is fascinating and allows for deep theological reflection.

The creation story featured here gives us a beautiful way of thinking about God’s action within history and how we can understand the problem of evil. In this remarkable story, Tolkien has found a narrative way of showing us the whole of human history in a few pages. In this article, I will summarize the creation story offered in The Silmarillion and comment on what we can learn from it.

The Music of the Ainur

Tolkien’s world has a similar structure to the Christian understanding. This is not surprising, because Tolkien was a devout Catholic. In fact, his purpose for writing these books was to try to make the faith appealing to the day that he lived in. They were, in a sense, evangelical works.

God, in Tolkien’s mythos, is called Eru Iluvatar (the One). Like the Christian doctrine of God, Iluvatar is One, Supreme, Transcendent, the Creator, and on a completely different register of existence as everything else, even the different angel-like creatures that exist in Tolkien’s mythos. These creatures, in Tolkien’s tale, are called Ainur.

Ainur are creatures. They are created through the thought of Iluvatar. They get broken into different categories in their creation of earth, depending on their contribution. Some become Maiar, others become Valar. The Ainur are invited by Iluvatar to participate in a symphony. The music that they make is something like an imagined creation. A shared world building in imagination or thought.

One of the Ainur, Melkor, seeks to create his own melody. He rejects the will of Eru Iluvatar in an act of defiance. His independent melody sows discord into the grand harmony of the Ainur.

Iluvatar, though, enters the symphony and weaves the discord sewn by Melkor into the original symphony. Once this order is restored, Eru Iluvatar reveals to the Ainur the world that they have thought of. Upon seeing it, Iluvatar gives it actual being. In this moment, the world of Middle Earth is actually created.

Some of the Ainur then enter the creation. Some enter with the specific task of preparing the world for Elves and Men. These are Valar. It is interesting to note that the creation of Elves and Men is left to Iluvatar alone. These creatures are called The Children of Iluvatar, mirroring the biblical language of Imago Dei.

Melkor too enters the world and becomes the first Dark Lord. He seeks to control the world and to corrupt it. Creation for Tolkien, then, becomes a reflection on the balance between maintaining harmony, and fighting off disharmony and corruption.

How Tolkien’s Creation Story Pertains to Us

I think that these few pages within Tolkien’s little known Silmarillion actually tell us a lot about the human condition and our world. First, it reveals to us the nature of good and evil. Second, it reveals God’s preferred mode of dealing with evil. Third, it reveals the dignity of the human being. Let’s look at each point in some detail.

The Nature of Good and Evil

Tolkien’s story reveals creation as an act of harmony. By creating through musical imagery, the idea of creativity, melody, and beauty are all relevant. Goodness seems to be united in a deep way with reality (truth), unity, beauty, and existence. This is not surprising because it maps on to the ancient Christian doctrine of the transcendentals. I’ve summarized this doctrine here. The idea is that because God is simple, or not made up of parts, these different aspects are really united. On our end they seem diverse, but in God, they are all unified.

This also allows for us to view into an ancient Christian conception of evil. Evil, for the Christian tradition, is not a real thing in itself. Rather, evil is always parasitic on the goodness that exists within things. A classic image is of blindness. Blindness only exists because of what it takes away from the right order of things. Evil is a privation of goodness, to use the philosophical language. I’ve written a little bit on this here.

The image of Melkor sowing discord into a harmony is a great image for making this point. The symphony is good. Musical harmony is good, in a rich metaphysical sense. Undercutting this harmony with discord, or corrupted musical notes, beautifully captures this conception of evil. Melkor’s evil is a result of his free will. He is seeking to create independently of the symphony that Iluvatar has made. He is seeking self-expression and his own dominion. Yet, this act of evil is totally derivative on the goodness that already exists within the symphony. In the same way, evil is only possible because it is corrupting the goodness that exists within the real world.

Tolkien’s story gives powerful glances into the actual nature of good and evil. He expresses goodness as tied irrevocably with being, beauty, harmony, unity. The image of a symphony is just a remarkably clear way to do this. He expresses evil as a sowing of discord into an existing unity. Evil is not an additional thing added to the goodness of creation, it is a corruption of the goodness that is already there, and ought to be there.

One of the main antagonists of Tolkien’s work: Gollum (Schmeagol) is another helpful image of this. Gollum is a small creature that is severely bent over. Rather than standing up tall, he is turned in on himself. This is an image of the selfishness of sin, and evil. Sin, of course, can be understood as a corruption in the sense that a person’s desires are fixed on goods that are beneath them. Their will, or heart, is corrupted to wanting lesser things. Gollum also splits his personality. He talks to himself as a we. This points to his loss of identity (again, a corruption). So, Gollum is another great image within Tolkien to understand evil that is worth reflecting on.

The Problem of Evil

I think the most profound thing that we can pull from this creation story is the beginning of an answer to the problem of evil. Even though this ancient Christian tradition that Tolkien is reformulating has a rich metaphysical account of evil, it still needs explained. Why does Iluvatar (God) allow evil? God is certainly powerful enough to not allow evil to exist.

I think it is helpful to start with the biblical perspective on this question. The Book of Job is a rich theodicy that reflects on this question. The basic answer that that book gives is that human beings are not on a metaphysical level to understand the answer to the problem of evil. God is above us, and we are not really in a position to know why God allows evil.

Some modern Christians have tried to get at the problem of evil by saying that evil is just a casualty of human beings having free will. If God were to prevent all evil, then human beings would probably not have the rich degree of freedom that we have with the allowance of evil. The ancient tradition that Tolkien is drawing from is not sympathetic to this perspective. As I’ve described here, this is really a corrupt sense of freedom that we have in the modern world.

The answer that Tolkien points to in this story is a helpful place for starting to answer the problem of evil. As we see in the story, Iluvatar is able to use the evil that is introduced into his harmony in a way that actually enriches the harmony. The harmony is made fuller because it wove in this discord. We can look at God’s action in our world in a similar light.

First, just like Iluvatar intervenes to reintroduce harmony, God has intervened in a stark way in our world. He has sent his Son to take on human flesh and to suffer, die, and rise to reintroduce order and the possibility of union with God in our dispensation. In his providence he breaks into our lives here and now to reorient us through grace as well. Just like Iluvatar, God is not a silent spectator on the sidelines. He cares and intervenes in dramatic ways.

Second, Iluvatar is able to build a greater good out of the evil that was sown, than was available beforehand. The symphony got more rich, thematic, and incorporated more harmonies to incorporate the discord added by Melkor. In a similar way, with the introduction of evil into our dispensation (Adam and Eve), we are revealed a lot more about God, ourselves, and our destiny. Because of the fall of Adam and Eve, we have been given much more that they did not have access to. Even just in what God has revealed about himself. Would Adam and Eve have been aware of the depth of God’s love for them, as much as we are today? It seems to me that only a person who lives after the death and resurrection of Christ can see just to what depth God loves the human race.

So, Tolkien doesn’t give a comprehensive answer to the problem of evil, but his story fits in line with the rich Christian tradition’s perspective on this issue. We are not in a position to know why God allows any particular evil. At least to the full extent. But, we do know that God brings good out of evil, and that God does intervene to reintroduce order after evil is introduced. Tolkien’s image of reordering a messy symphony is such a simple and beatiful image of this.

The Dignity of the Human Being

The last thing that I want to point out about what we can learn from Tolkien’s creation story is just how dignified the human being is. I think this can be seen in two ways. First, in how clear the text is that the human being is created directly by Iluvatar, not by the Ainur. In the same way, the human being is made in the image of God. An image is a reflection of the original. It is not the same thing as the thing reflected, but does reflect it in a clear way. The human being, as the image of God, reflects God to the degree that we use our immaterial powers of intellect and will. To the degree that we know and love, we reflect God.

Second, I think Tolkien as the author of these incredible stories is an image of this. Tolkien has a deep understanding of what it is to create. In giving us a rich creation story, he reveals to us the glory of the human being that is capable of great artistic feats, much like he accomplished in his literary career.