Biblical and Theological Commentary on Tolkien's Letters, Part 4
Letters #109, #113, #131, #142, #144, #153, and #154
(avg. read time: 18–37 mins.)
Letter #109 (31 July 1947 to Sir Stanley Unwin)
In this letter Tolkien responds to Rayner Unwin’s comments on Book I of LOTR via a letter to his father the publisher. Rayner Unwin had noted that the number of events happening all at once was almost overpowering and that the struggle of darkness and light had become much more intense relative to The Hobbit. Of course, Book I was also the most comical of the six—as one would expect from a narrative spending so much time in the Shire and featuring Tom Bombadil—and it provided some levity while Tolkien was still trying to figure out the character of this story.1 At the same time, Tolkien saw it as his task to balance the comedy with the growing sense of darkness, especially in the chapters “The Shadow of the Past,” “Fog on the Barrow-Downs,” “A Knife in the Dark,” and “Flight to the Ford” (not to mention the several other scattered intimations and near-encounters). Again, just as contrasting colors make each more vivid, comedy and darkness (against which comedy arises) complement each other in storytelling. Tolkien saw this contrast as reflective of real life. As Tolkien has stated several times, having this inner consistency of reality is essential to the project of true sub-creation. This concern comes through in his description of the circumstances the hobbits have faced: “But I have failed if it does not seem possible that mere mundane hobbits could cope with such things. I think that there is no horror conceivable that such creatures cannot surmount, by grace (here appearing in mythological forms) combined with a refusal of their nature and reason at the last pinch to compromise or submit.”
Rayner had remarked that the intensity of the struggle of light and darkness is of such character that he suspected that Tolkien had taken detours into the realm of Allegory rather than following the logic of the story. Here Tolkien insists that Book I has been realistic in the perils the hobbits have experienced and overcome. Their appearance belies their indomitable nature, as does the typical simplicity and ease of hobbit life. But Tolkien notes in the Prologue of his magnum opus, “Nonetheless, ease and peace had left these people still curiously tough. They were, if it came to it, difficult to daunt or to kill; and they were, perhaps, so unwearyingly fond of good things not least because they could, when put to it, do without them, and could survive rough handling by grief, foe, or weather in a way that astonished those who did not know them well and looked no further than their bellies and their well-fed faces.” Gandalf similarly praises Bilbo’s durability as an exemplar of something he alone among the Wise knows about hobbits, “Soft as butter they can be, and yet sometimes as tough as old tree-roots. I think it is likely that some would resist the Ring far longer than most of the Wise would believe.”2 Furthermore, he writes when Frodo is in the Barrow-Downs, “There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid hobbit, waiting for some final and desperate danger to make it grow.”3 These statements crystallize one of Tolkien’s themes throughout the story, perhaps most succinctly stated by Elrond, “This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”4 These characteristics of hobbits give the story and their actions within it plausibility and inner consistency of reality.5
While the hobbits have a nature that enables them to be curiously well-suited for a quest as Tolkien describes, the other element that enables them to surmount the challenges is grace. The actions that Tolkien refers to here as grace have what he considers more mythological appellations in LOTR, such as chance, fate (or, sometimes, doom), fortune, and other ambiguous names for providence.6 In these means by which the never-named but never-absent One is at work empowering, providing, sustaining, ordering, purposing, governing, and delivering the inhabitants of Eä and Arda specifically (and Middle-earth even more specifically in the scope of the story), Tolkien is sub-creatively imitating—as best he can—the mysterious workings of divine providence in the Primary World.7 And even these means are only exemplifications and notable points in a whole artwork providentially arranged and ordered. At the same time, because Tolkien is writing about the actions of the one God on a sub-creative level, he draws attention to the actual ways of providence in the Primary World. Indeed, providence is one of the primary elements that lends Tolkien’s work the inner consistency of reality if God similarly exercises grace in the Primary World.
These elements of inner consistency lead him to his typical eschewal of classifying his work as allegory. There is a moral point—or multiple such points—to it in that it is a worthwhile story. There are universals in the particular characters—because all people/characters instantiate universals to varying degrees—but they do not simply represent those universals (such as darkness and light). Characteristics of allegory—like other stories—derive from reality because they are ways of presenting truth. By extension, the stories that have an inner consistency of reality will have some perceived or intended allegory to them. Story and allegory converge, or come close to converging, in that, “the better and more consistent an allegory is the more easily can it be read ‘just as a story’; and the better and more closely woven a story is the more easily can those so minded find allegory in it.” Tolkien’s own project is definitely the latter and that is why there have often been impressions of allegory attached to his story. But such is a by-product of the story he tells. One can conceive of it as an allegory of, “the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power.” But it is so only because Tolkien’s story has that inner consistency of reality that would lead to certain definite consequences if something like the One Ring existed in a world populated by the wise and simple, the powerful and the weak, the exalted and the humble (though the story focuses on particular characters that have varying measures of these characteristics and others, not to mention that these characters include products of fantasy such as the Istari, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and so on).
Letter #113 (Septuagesima 1948 to C.S. Lewis)
I have discussed this letter previously in entries on both Tolkien’s theology of sub-creation and his thoughts on criticism. I will combine those reflections here. The precise circumstances for this letter are unclear, but the general impression of what led to it is that Tolkien had criticized some work of Lewis’s in a meeting of the Inklings. Afterwards, Tolkien gets the impression that he has been in some way hurtful towards Lewis with his criticisms. This whole situation, and Lewis’s response to it (which is indicated as him making some good out of it), leads Tolkien to write reflectively on his fault in the process along with how he thinks God in his providence can use it for good (a theme that is crucial in Tolkien’s work and reflective of his thoughts inspired by his own life):
I have been possessed on occasions (few, happily) with a sort of furor scribendi, in which the pen finds the words rather than head or heart; and this was one of them. But nothing in your speech or manner gave me any reason to suppose that you felt ‘offended’. Yet I could see that you felt – you would have been hardly human otherwise –, and your letter shows how much. I daresay under grace that will do good rather than harm, but that is between you and God. It is one of the mysteries of pain that it is, for the sufferer, an opportunity for good, a path of ascent however hard. But it remains an ‘evil’, and it must dismay any conscience to have caused it carelessly, or in excess, let alone willfully. And even under necessity or privilege, as of a father or master in punishment, or even of a man beating a dog, it is the rod of God only to be wielded with trepidation. There may have been one or two of my comments that were just or valid, but I should have limited myself to them, and expressed them differently. He is a savage physician who coats a not wholly unpalatable pill with a covering of gall!
The rest of the letter continues his thoughts along this line of human responsibility and God’s ways of making good out of evil, recalling again texts like Rom 8:28, which I have noted elsewhere as being resonant in Tolkien’s thought. This would include in the exercise of the faculty of forgiveness as members of Christ, remembering the Lord’s Prayer in forgiving our debtors as we ask for God to forgive our debts.
But Tolkien’s ultimate point is derived from his reflections on correspondence between G. M. Hopkins (an English poet and Jesuit priest) and Canon [Richard Watson] Dixon, the latter of whom wrote a History of the Church of England that the former expressed appreciation for (much to Dixon’s surprise). Hopkins also passed on the words of Edward Burne-Jones (an English artist) to the effect that “one works really for the one man who may rise to understand one.” But Tolkien agrees with Hopkins’ response that, “Burne-Jones’ hope can also in this world be frustrated, as easily as general fame: a painter (like Niggle) may work for what the burning of his picture, or an accident of death to the admirer, may wholly destroy. He summed up: The only just literary critic is Christ, who admires more than does any man the gifts He Himself has bestowed.” Niggle’s story—written almost a decade and published a few years prior to this letter—represents Tolkien’s own experience with sub-creation with its interminable labor, his obsessive attention to detail, the endless duties and distractions that take him away from the work, and the looming “trip” for which he has not prepared. Tolkien thus knows in a personal way—which has become more and more apparent as he has spent around thirty years working on The Silmarillion off-and-on to this point while working on LOTR for around a decade—what it means to have such a dream constantly deferred. Instead, he quotes Hopkins to see the value in what is higher than any human evaluation. While people make many criticisms about art that are right and wrong, just and unjust (as well as criticisms that are neither here nor there), the only critic that can fully appreciate works of literary art—particularly sub-creative art—is the one from whom the gifts for it come. At once, Tolkien describes sub-creation as the exercise of a divine gift and thus as a gift for which Christ has a unique appreciation, since Christ is the one through whom the world and its ages came to be (John 1:3; 1 Cor 8:6; Col 1:16–17; Heb 1:2). The Word through whom the Father speaks into existence, orders, sustains, purposes, reveals, redeems, and renews has the greatest appreciation for the gift of language, its sub-creative power, and its many uses.
Letter #131 (late 1951 to Milton Waldman)
One of the letters richest in sub-creation theology is this one written to Milton Waldman, an editor of Collins. Tolkien wrote this letter at a time when he had broken off a professional relationship with Allen & Unwin—as of April 1950—because they were hesitant to publish The Silmarillion along with LOTR (despite their long-standing interest in the latter). Waldman had expressed interest in publishing both works, especially since he had read part of the unfinished Silmarillion. However, negotiations on the actual publishing process thereafter became stagnant and confusing. Late in 1951, Tolkien wrote a letter around ten thousand words in length to Waldman outlining the story of his sub-creation including The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and LOTR in order to show the interdependence of the first and third works in particular. It was one long demonstration that they belong together in conception, writing, and publication. In the process, he also gave insight into the nature of his sub-creative work and how he thought about it.8
One of his passions in myth-making and fairy-story-making (initially) was to give to the English what they lacked but the Greeks, Celts, Romans, Germans, Scandinavians, and Finnish already had: high-quality myths of their own concerning their own lands in their own languages with their own heroes. The closest the English had beforehand was the Arthurian stories. But Tolkien thought of them as not being of a high enough quality, belonging to the land of Britain, but not quite English enough. Its elements of “faerie” actually work against the goal of the inner consistency of reality, as does the explicit presence of Christian religion on the level of the Secondary World. In his evaluation, “For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal. Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‘real’ world.” In other words, the appearance of these elements in the Arthurian legends makes them something of an amorphous hybrid which attempts to have its Secondary World cake and eat it in the Primary World. It is not truly part of either creation or sub-creation and therefore it has the inner consistency of neither. While all sub-creation is by nature derivative in some fashion, Tolkien seems to think that the Arthurian stories are both too derivative—drawing too much on the explicit forms of the Primary World—and not derivative enough—not pursuing far enough the inner logic of sub-creation. He believes these unnamed moral and religious truths (or errors) to be true (or false) across Primary and Secondary Worlds, but a proper Secondary World does not have them appear explicitly in the same forms as they do in the Primary World if that world has the inner consistency of reality, in accordance with which there are proper forms for these truths (or errors) to appear. Tolkien even states that these forms and their stories that make up his Secondary World have a curious relationship to his mind. For he says, “yet always I had the sense of recording what was already ‘there’, somewhere: not of ‘inventing’.”
Tolkien himself dislikes intentional allegory, but he recognizes that the use of its language is indispensable when addressing the purpose of myth or fairy-story. His mythology fundamentally relates and addresses the problem of the relationship between Art (and sub-creation) and Primary Reality. He divides this fundamental concern into three categories of problems: Fall, Mortality, and Machine. Of these three issues he says:
With Fall inevitably, and that motive occurs in several modes. With Mortality, especially as it affects art and the creative (or as I should say, sub-creative) desire which seems to have no biological function, and to be apart from the satisfactions of plain ordinary biological life, with which, in our world, it is indeed usually at strife. This desire is at once wedded to a passionate love of the real primary world, and hence filled with the sense of mortality, and yet unsatisfied by it. It has various opportunities of ‘Fall’. It may become possessive, clinging to the things made as its own, the sub-creator wishes to be the Lord and God of his private creation. He will rebel against the laws of the Creator – especially against mortality. Both of these (alone or together) will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective, - and so the Machine (or Magic). By the last I intend all use of external plans or devices (apparatus) instead of developments of the inherent inner powers or talents – or even the use of these talents with the corrupted motive of dominating: bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills. The Machine is our more obvious modern form though more closely related to Magic than is usually recognised.
The element of Fall happens at several levels in Tolkien’s mythology and it happens sometimes through the realization of personal mortality—in the case of Men—or of the mortality of the world (to which the lives of Elves are tied), but every time it is in encounter with limitation deemed unacceptable. The angst that leads to the Fall often explicitly arises from corrupted sub-creative concerns (with varying degrees of concern for the good). The primary Fall is Melkor’s, who, though a sub-creator among the Ainur, desired to usurp the Ainulindalë of Eru Ilúvatar and to harness the creative power of the Flame Imperishable (making his Fall different from the Fall of the Primary World in that his discordance was written into Eä rather than subsequent to the world’s coming into existence). His part in the grand story is one of destruction or corruption of creation and sub-creation, which is all in service to his primary desire to be served and worshiped as Creator, like the devil himself that he was written to resemble. He even wins some of the Ainur to his cause, most importantly Sauron (once known as Mairon), who himself has a corrupted sub-creative desire that turns into the desire for power, domination, and worship, wills and desires he instills in the One Ring. A near-Fall happens for Aulë, the craftsman of the Valar, when he makes the Dwarves (though Ilúvatar hallows them and makes part of his creation). While Melkor sowed seeds of deceit and dissatisfaction among the Noldor—the Eldar who have the strongest inclination to make, shape, and form and thus have the strongest inclination to learn from Melkor’s instruction—Fëanor reaps the harvest of bringing about their rebellion against the Valar after he had already experienced his own Fall born out of pride in his crafts. A Fall of sorts came about for Celebrimbor and other Elves in the Second Age as Sauron deceived them in their ring-making craft by taking advantage of their desire to enrich the world and to preserve things in their beauty against the entropy of time. The Fall of the Númenóreans was especially focused on mortality, though it was also egged on by the desires to explore, to know, and to continue in their other delights. These Falls and others illustrate some or all of the elements Tolkien cites above about the ways of a Fall. The desire for power—the effective influence of the will—is among the chief forms of corrupt sub-creative urges and faculties as it becomes desire for domination over other sub-creators and arrogant usurpation of the Creator, thereby embodying the Fall in Eden.9
Despite what he writes of Magic and Machine, he does not use the former consistently, even in his mythology. In fact, he wrote this point into LOTR in the mouth of Galadriel as she speaks to Sam, “For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe; though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy.”10 In his thought, there is not a proper word for what the Elves do as opposed to what Melkor, Sauron, and their allies do in re-shaping creation according to their wills. What the Elves do is closer to art, though, “delivered from many of its human limitations: more effortless, more quick, more complete (product, and vision in unflawed correspondence).” Such is the spell of sub-creation to which Tolkien referred in “On Fairy-Stories.” It is the good and proper form from which the parasitic evil of domination through magic and machines arises. In fact, the more powerful the magic and machines are and the greater the desire to change the world for the benefit of others, the more hastily one rushes headlong down the mountain of sub-creation, not realizing that they will eventually fall from a cliff.11
Two other points about this letter require comment for our purposes. First, Tolkien writes in a footnote about the nature of the Wizards. Their name is related to their being wise, as well as to their appearance as old sages. But their nature is that of the equivalent of angels, specifically guardian angels. In that capacity, “Their powers are directed primarily to the encouragement of the enemies of evil, to cause them to use their own wits and valour, to unite and endure.” Such befits their proper role as executors of the will of the One, empowering and enlivening the wills of others to follow his, rather than using others as their own tools, working coercion upon them. That was the way of the Enemy, and it was especially signified in his Ring. This could not be the way of those who were to be servants of the One helping other servants of the One (even if it did, in fact, become the way of Saruman).
Second, Tolkien comments on a recurrent theme of LOTR:
But through Hobbits, not Men so-called because the last Tale is to exemplify most clearly a recurrent theme: the place in ‘world politics’ of the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts of will, and deeds of virtue of the apparently small, ungreat, forgotten in the place of the Wise and Great (good as well as evil). A moral of the whole (after the primary symbolism of the Ring, as the will to mere power, seeking to make itself objective by physical force and mechanism, and so also inevitably by lies) is the obvious one that without the high and noble the simple and vulgar is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless.
A related recurrent point appears throughout the Bible, most explicitly in the NT. It is a key theme of Mary’s Magnificat, reflecting both her own situation and the expectations of the coming eschatological future (Luke 1:46–55). One is also reminded of Jesus’s praise of the Father that he has hidden the things of the kingdom from the wise and learned, instead revealing them to little children, the opposite of what many might have expected, and all the more remarkable because of how lowly children were held in this regard (Matt 11:25–26 // Luke 10:21). Likewise, Paul reminds the Corinthians that the message of the cross is considered utter foolishness to those who ignore it, and yet through this message and through those who have accepted it, God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and the weak things of the world to shame the strong (1 Cor 1:18–31). Tolkien himself states this point at multiple junctures in LOTR, and we will be returning to it in the commentary on that book.
Letter #142 (2 December 1953 to Robert Murray, S.J.)
At least one part of this letter is well known to anyone familiar with interpretations and analyses of LOTR that focus on Christian or biblical elements. This is the letter in which Tolkien wrote what each and every one of those interpretations and analyses quotes at least in part, that LOTR is, “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world.” He penned these words in response to Robert Murray’s remark that what he had read of LOTR seemed to have, “a positive compatibility with the order of Grace.” One should expect as much from a devout Catholic such as Tolkien, given the theology of sub-creation laid out elsewhere. As in the letter cited above, it works best for the inner consistency of Secondary Reality if the explicit forms of religion in Primary Reality do not appear as such. While there are more clearly religious elements of ritual and practice appearing in manuscripts documented in The History of Middle-earth and a few trace elements in LOTR and The Silmarillion, explicit religion is generally absent. Indeed, he sees the religious element absorbed into the structure, characters, and other elements of the story and the symbolism contained therein. The elements were not apparent to Tolkien at first because he was not conscious in inscribing them. The transcendent nature of Primary Reality comes through in Tolkien’s Secondary Reality because he had lived by the Catholic faith for decades at this point in his life.12 As such, the religious elements have been absorbed implicitly in the sub-creation because they were so absorbed by the sub-creator. It is a fundamentally religious and Catholic work at its foundation because it is reflective of Primary Reality, particularly the transcendent qualities Tolkien knew in Catholicism, but it is so in that its Secondary Reality reflects the truth in its own way, so that there is, again, a continuity of nature and grace that characterizes Catholic theology.
Letter #144 (25 April 1954 to Naomi Mitchison)
What is of most interest in this letter is a collection of comments that Tolkien makes about the character Tom Bombadil (some of which is also reiterated in Letter #153, so we will skip commenting on those portions below). As he says, Bombadil represents something like a monastic way of life or that of some special order:
The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on; but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control. but [sic.] if you have, as it were taken ‘a vow of poverty’, renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself, watching, observing, and to some extent knowing, then the question of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless. It is a natural pacifist view, which always arises in the mind when there is a war. But the view of Rivendell seems to be that it is an excellent thing to have represented, but that there are in fact things with which it cannot cope; and upon which its existence nonetheless depends. Ultimately only the victory of the West will allow Bombadil to continue, or even to survive. Nothing would be left for him in the world of Sauron.
This kind of thinking is why Tolkien, for all his revulsion of war, could never be a pacifist. There is something worthy in this life of renouncement, as the Church has recognized for many centuries concerning the monastic orders and various individuals whose piety led them to deny themselves beyond what was required and who had no desire for power to use even for good. Such people have been martyrs throughout history and their testimony resonates long after their deaths at the hands of those in power. But in a situation like Tolkien’s story, this way of life cannot survive without depending on something else, on the protection of others. After all, in Sauron’s world, this way of life would not ultimately be allowed to continue unmolested.
Letter #153 (draft: September 1954 to Peter Hastings)
This unsent draft to Peter Hastings provides among the most extensive epistolary expositions of his thoughts on sub-creation. Hastings was a manager of the Newman Bookshop in Oxford and while he was enthusiastic about LOTR, he expressed several metaphysical concerns to Tolkien. Among the problems he found inconsistent with a Catholic worldview were the apparent notion—which he took from Treebeard—that the Dark Lord could create beings (or that there could be any tendency to good in such creatures), the metaphysical character of Tom Bombadil (which Hastings thought treated him as God), and (especially) the reincarnation of Elves. To Hastings, all of these elements detracted from—though he does not use the phrase—the inner consistency of reality because Tolkien had been, “over-stepping the bounds of a writer’s job.” Tolkien never sent this response because, “It seemed to be taking myself too importantly.” Even so, no other correspondence to a reader does more to clarify Tolkien’s concern for reflecting Primary Reality and having an inner consistency of Secondary Reality in his theology of sub-creation and how it works in his own sub-creation.
It seems that in the case of readers like Hastings, Tolkien’s spell of sub-creation has worked. They treat it seriously to the point that Tolkien wonders if they have treated it too seriously. Each reader who has corresponded with Tolkien has treated it particularly seriously according to their different interests and thus at times have criticized for being unrealistic or vague, “Its economics, science, artefacts, religion, and philosophy are defective, or at least sketchy.” But the fact that readers have examined these aspects of Tolkien’s world—and continue to do so in essays, books, online articles, lectures, and so on—is a testament to Tolkien’s success in casting a spell of historical depth and three-dimensionality.
He reiterates what he has written in Letter #131 that the whole mythology fundamentally concerns the relation of creation to sub-creation (though he explicitly notes this time that a subsidiary matter is that of mortality). It is entirely possible for aspects of the sub-creation to be wrong in relation to the Primary World of creation, but as such it is incoherent to say they are wrong in relation to the Secondary World. Even when properly understood—and Hastings has made errors in interpretation—these aspects simply are part of the sub-creation and how it is made.
The divergence between Hastings’s concerns and Tolkien’s beliefs about his sub-creation stems from the fundamental difference in how they view the relationship between sub-creation and creation. While Hastings seems—from this limited evidence—to resemble something close to the Arthurian perspective that attempts to be both overly derivative and not derivative enough (by imitating the logic of creation in sub-creation but in its own secondary form), Tolkien insists that,
liberation ‘from the channels the creator is known to have used already’ is the fundamental function of ‘sub-creation’, a tribute to the infinity of His potential variety, one of the ways in which indeed it is exhibited, as indeed I said in the Essay. I am not a metaphysician; but I should have thought it a curious metaphysic – there is not one but many, indeed potentially innumerable ones – that declared the channels known (in such a finite corner as we have any inkling of) to have been used, are the only possible ones, or efficacious, or possibly acceptable to and by Him!
This statement is reminiscent of what Tolkien wrote more than twenty years prior in “Mythopoeia,” “man, sub-creator, the refracted light / through whom is splintered from a single White / to many hues, and endlessly combined / in living shapes that move from mind to mind.”13 It is the duty of the sub-creator to be explorative, to draw out the possibilities of what could have been if the Creator had created differently and how it could have been. It is a way of bearing the finite image of the infinitely creative One. Given a particular disposition, such exploration could be a form of worship (which, if humans are image-bearers of God, would be the fulfillment of the sub-creative faculty). It declares that God was not limited to the actual—Primary—channels of creativity, but actively chose those channels to serve particular purposes that other channels, for one reason or another, did not serve. The Creator upholds this variety by endowing humans with the gift of imagination and by hallowing the sub-creation (in anticipation, in Tolkien’s view, of the eschatological kingdom in which Secondary Worlds will have an ontological character that it is not possible for them to have now). But if the Creator does such, it is not proper to reject its logic out-of-hand before trying to understand it (though there is of course place for naming incoherence through criticism).14 Indeed, for Tolkien it has taken on such a life of its own that some parts seemed revealed through him than by him. Even then, just as the God who creates and reveals has left many things a mystery, Tolkien leaves mysteries about his sub-creation when he knows the answers (such as, in LOTR, what the wizards are and where they came from).
While there are similarities between the human (or Elvish or Ainurean) act of sub-creation and the divine act of creation, the fact remains that the former is imitative of, derivative from, and of a lower order than the latter. Tolkien affirmed this point in both the Primary World and the Secondary World. Even in his sub-creation, only Eru Ilúvatar creates, but others can make. It is thus important that Treebeard—in the alluded passage—does not say that the Dark Lord “created” anything. Rather, he says that the Dark Lord “made” the Trolls in counterfeit.15 But Tolkien only says that this statement is possible and half-true in that the Orcs were not made in counterfeit, but are corrupted rational incarnate creatures, comparable perhaps to some humans one might meet.16
Tolkien admits that his world is not entirely coherent as he struggles to explain how counterfeits like Trolls can have the power of speech. But even Primary Reality does not appear to be wholly coherent and he wonders if, “though in every world on every plane all must ultimately be under the Will of God, even in ours there are not some ‘tolerated’ sub-creational counterfeits!” It is unclear what Tolkien has in mind here—if anything in particular at all—but it is an attempt to illustrate a further dimension of realism to Tolkien’s project if Eru Ilúvatar allows on the level of Secondary Reality what God allows on the level of Primary Reality. What is also noteworthy about this quote is how Tolkien perceives some measure of ontological reality and significance for his own Secondary World and others that they should be under the sovereign will of God. If one believes that God is Sustainer and that all things exist simply because God creates and sustains them by power according to God’s will, then Tolkien’s statement implies that there is something that God does to hallow and to sustain the existence of these Secondary Worlds.
On the matters of the decision-making powers in his world and religion, one again sees the influence of Tolkien’s Primary World theology, even in these new Secondary World forms. When he must address the issue of what happens to the descendants of union between Elves and Men, he must also address whose authority decides these matters:
The immediate ‘authorities’ are the Valar (the Power or Authorities): the ‘gods’. But they are only created spirits – of high angelic order we should say, with their attendant lesser angels – reverend, therefore, but not worshipful; and though potently ‘subcreative’, and resident on Earth to which they are bound by love, having assisted in its making and ordering, they cannot by their own will alter any fundamental provision…. Immortality and Mortality being the special gifts of God to the Eruhíni (in whose conception and creation the Valar had no part at all) it must be assumed that no alteration of their fundamental kind could be effected by the Valar even in one case: the cases of Lúthien (and Túor) and the position of their descendants was a direct act of God. The entering into Men of the Elven-strain is indeed represented as part of a Divine Plan for the ennoblement of the Human Race, from the beginning destined to replace the Elves.
In earlier drafts of The Silmarillion presented in The Book of Lost Tales 1 and 2, Tolkien had a habit of referring to the Valar as gods, for they are equivalents to the gods found in mythologies, particularly some of the Norse gods.17 But in his letters he offers more clarification, which he offered in the early drafts simply by distinguishing Eru Ilúvatar from the Valar. They are gods from the perspective of lesser created beings, mortal and immortal, but they are not gods in the sense of ones who are coeval with and equal to Eru, for they were created by him. As such, the proper framework is not like a Norse one in which these gods are on the same level of ontological status as the One, but one in which the gods are great angels, incomparably ancient and immortal, but still created beings (cf. Letter #286). Like angels, they are worthy of reverence, but not worship, which belongs to the One alone. Indeed, the dividing lines between the Valar proper and Melkor, who was ontologically of their order but separated from them, consisted of whether or not they took their proper place in submission to Eru or sought to usurp him, and whether they recognized that they were sub-creators and thus not deserving of worship, or sought to become Creator and so usurp worship.
Naturally, this matter leads to a footnote in which Tolkien discusses religion and worship in his story. Since what he notes here are things that we will find in future commentaries on LOTR, The Silmarillion, and the History of Middle-earth series, I will leave more extensive comments for those commentaries. For now, I simply quote the footnote in full:
There are thus no temples or ‘churches’ or fanes in this ‘world’ among ‘good’ peoples. They had little or no ‘religion’ in the sense of worship. For help they may call on a Vala (as Elbereth), as a Catholic might on a Saint, though no doubt knowing in theory as well as he that the power of the Vala was limited and derivative. But this is a ‘primitive age’: and these folk may be said to view the Valar as children view their parents or immediate adult superiors, and though they know they are subjects of the King he does not live in their country nor have there any dwelling. I do not think Hobbits practised any form of worship or prayer (unless through exceptional contact with Elves). The Númenóreans (and others of that branch of Humanity, that fought against Morgoth, even if they elected to remain in Middle-earth and did not go to Númenor: such as the Rohirrim) were pure monotheists. But there was no temple in Númenor (until Sauron introduced the cult of Morgoth). The top of the Mountain, the Meneltarma or Pillar of Heaven, was dedicated to Eru, the One, and there at any time privately, and at certain times publicly, God was invoked, praised, and adored: an imitation of the Valar and the Mountain of Aman. But Númenor fell and was destroyed and the Mountain engulfed, and there was no substitute. Among the exiles, remnants of the Faithful who had not adopted the false religion nor taken part in the rebellion, religion as divine worship (though perhaps not as philosophy and metaphysics) seems to have played a small part; though a glimpse of it is caught in Faramir’s remark on ‘grace at meat’…
He will go on to say in later letters that this is a world of monotheistic natural theology and that much of the story is set in an imaginary time between the Fall and the Incarnation. As such, the modes of the Christian religion would be out of place here, even if there is some manner of continuity of theology and even praxis (to a more limited extent).
In response to Hastings’s overarching concern of Tolkien overstepping his bounds, he questions if there are any bounds except the bounds of reality itself in the laws of contradiction and bounds of the writer in mere finitude. Even so, there is need for writers to be self-limiting in humility before the power God endows humanity with in the capacities of sub-creation. With the divinely granted freedom of sub-creation, there is clear potential and precedent for use of freedom for the sake of harm and other wickedness. Similarly, sub-creations may be imperfect reflections and extensions of reality, but therein lies a risk of proclaiming and explaining “truths” that are not true and providing guidance in morality by what is not moral. Given that Tolkien agrees that good stories (myths in particular) can be well-suited for teaching religious and moral truths—though in some lesser light than the divine radiance of the gospel—it is not surprising that this proper end is corruptible. But Tolkien also insists that he needs convincing that he has run afoul here and written something truly harmful before he is willing to recant or rewrite anything.
He closes the letter with reflections on free will in relation to the divine will and the corresponding relation of sub-creation to divine creation. One of the ways Tolkien has used the term “sub-creation,” is, “in a special way to make visible and physical the effects of Sin or misused Free Will by men.” He has already referred in this letter to sub-creational counterfeits, but it could also refer to how Saruman and Sauron—in their own ways—have used Magic and Machine to corrupt and destroy the earth and living creatures around them. Like sub-creation—good or bad—volition is derivative and limited by circumstance. But for it to exist, Tolkien insists, “it is necessary that the Author should guarantee it, whatever betides: sc. when it is ‘against His Will’, as we say, at any rate as it appears on a finite view. He does not stop or make ‘unreal’ sinful acts and their consequences.” In other words, for volition to be real and effective, it must have real consequences, whether the choices or consequences are good or evil. In the Primary World, the capacities designed to aid humans in the vocation of image-bearing are not removed even when humans use them for sin (even for grievous sin on massive scales). In the Secondary World, even Morgoth does not have his ability to make removed, despite the most perverted use to which he puts it, such as corrupting Elves into Orcs in order to make them his fearful slaves who acknowledge him as lord and creator. Eru Ilúvatar allows such things into existence as an extreme upholding of volition, even though Morgoth’s corruptions must be naturally—though not irredeemably—bad.18 Still, volition is limited and cannot make what is impossible possible. There are many powers that God in the Secondary World—like God in the Primary World—has not delegated, such as making spirits. Hence, Orcs are corrupted pre-existing creatures, not actual creations by Morgoth.
Letter #154 (25 September 1954 to Naomi Mitchison)
I have commented on this letter at some length in my post on Tolkien’s response to critics. There, I noted Tolkien’s own pushback against the criticism of his work as a simplistic tale of good vs. evil. That element of conflict is obviously present, but his moral vision is more complex than that criticism assumes. It is a Christian moral vision in which there is no absolute evil and even those on the side of good can manifest evil in their multitudinous ways, as befits imperfect creatures who are not yet free from sinfulness. I will not be going over the many complexities here, as I would rather save that for the commentaries on LOTR and The Silmarillion, so I will leave his examples to the side.
One other point from this letter worth noting is what he has to say about the Valar. In a footnote he says of the Valar that, “‘gods’ is the nearest equivalent, but not strictly accurate.” This comment fits what he said in Letter #153 and what he will say again in Letter #286. I thus leave further commentary for those letters.
Tom A. Shippey, J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 65–68.
I/2.
I/8.
II/2.
As he writes in a letter to Milton Waldman analyzed below, “They are made small (little more than half human stature, but dwindling as the years pass) partly to exhibit the pettiness of man, plain unimaginative parochial man – though not with either the smallness or the savageness of Swift, and mostly to show up, in creatures of very small physical power, the amazing and unexpected heroism of ordinary men ‘at a pinch’”
Gandalf says that Bilbo was “meant” to find the Ring by something operating beyond the design of Sauron. (I/2) Gandalf refers to Frodo as the one “chosen” to carry the Ring, echoing Frodo’s question of why he was chosen. (I/2) There are several references to sudden sensations, instincts, occurrences, and other such things that make the characters more or less passive recipients in their own minds, though sometimes the narrator more directly identifies the sources. Elrond refers to chance, as well as “calling” and “it is so ordered” as he opens the Council. (II/2) Frodo finds himself surprised to speak as if some other will is using his voice and Elrond thinks that Frodo’s task is “appointed” for him. (II/2) Galadriel thinks that perhaps the paths of the Fellowship are “already laid” before them. (II/8) Frodo thinks that he and Sam were “meant” to go together. (II/10) Gandalf describes the enemies as ones who have contrived in helping bring Merry and Pippin to Fangorn Forest, where they have a part to play. (III/5) Frodo says that Sméagol is in some way “bound up” with his quest. (IV/6) And of course the eucatastrophe itself is a demonstration of providence in which Gollum, because of his overwhelming desire to possess the Ring, had a part to play in destroying the Ring when the Ringbearer scorned his heavy responsibility at the last moment.
Peter J. Kreeft, The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind The Lord of the Rings (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), 54–61. For a different angle on this point, see Benjamin Saxton, “Tolkien and Bakhtin on Authorship, Literary Freedom, and Alterity,” Tolkien Studies 10 (2013): 167–83.
For more on the story of the conflicts Tolkien had with Allen & Unwin and then with Collins, see Humphrey Carpenter, J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography, (London: Allen & Unwin, 1977), 211–16.
Though there are no details for it, “Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth,” preserved now in Morgoth’s Ring, indicates that even in the First Age there was something resembling the Fall in the Primary World in the unspoken history of Men before they came into Beleriand.
II/7.
Of course, in the case of Melkor, the fundamental desire is even more bent toward evil.
Letter # 215: “But long narratives cannot be made out of nothing; and one cannot rearrange the primary matter in secondary patterns without indicating feelings and opinions about one’s material.”
Tolkien, Tree and Leaf, 87.
Tolkien regarded perhaps his heaviest problem in terms of the inner consistency of reality as the biological one of having Elves be immortal yet still able, rarely, to produce offspring with Men.
“But Trolls are only counterfeits, made by the Enemy in the Great Darkness, in mockery of Ents, as Orcs were of Elves.” (III/4)
He is not even committed to the idea that all Trolls are counterfeits.
E.g.: “‘Indeed I would fain to know who be these Valar; are they the Gods?’ ‘So be they,’ said Lindo, ‘though concerning them Men tell many strange things and garbled tales that are far from the truth, and many strange names they call them that you will not hear here.’” Book of Lost Tales 1, p. 41
He makes this important qualification because, “by accepting or tolerating their making – necessary to their actual existence – even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God’s and ultimately good.”