From my childhood up, my thoughts had been filled with objections to the doctrine of God’s sovereignty. . . . However I’ve typically, since that first conviction, had fairly one other form of sense of God’s sovereignty than I had then. I’ve typically since had not solely a conviction, however a pleasant conviction. The doctrine has fairly often appeared exceedingly vivid and candy. Absolute sovereignty is what I like to ascribe to God.
I ponder what number of can sympathize with the primary line of Jonathan Edwards’s confession as a result of they’ve by no means tasted the sweetness of “the doctrine” (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 1:xii–xiii). What number of protest towards the thought of God’s absolute sovereignty as a result of they’ve by no means seen its “exceedingly vivid” magnificence? How can the doctrine come down from the heavens and delight us right here on earth?
In his essay “Delusion Grew to become Truth,” C.S. Lewis provides us his reply for tips on how to higher expertise what doctrine can merely clarify: tales (what he calls “myths”). “Within the enjoyment of an excellent fable we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can in any other case be understood solely as an abstraction” (57).
If we wish to expertise the sweetness of God’s sovereignty that Edwards celebrates within the type of the story Lewis advocates, we are able to hardly do higher than the creation account in Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. What we too rapidly set to chill into the tidy ingots of doctrine, Tolkien presents within the molten type of fable.
The Ainulindalë
For many who don’t know, The Silmarillion is Tolkien’s mythological historical past behind The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the roots of his tree of tales. He begins the story with the Ainulindalë, which serves as each a creation fable and a form of musical theodicy, revealing how an all-good and omnipotent Creator can permit evil in his world.
Earlier than unpacking Tolkien’s beautiful portrait of windfall within the Ainulindalë (which is simply over three pages lengthy in small font), let me supply two clarifications that can assist you take advantage of studying it.
First, Tolkien states elsewhere the central theme of this mythology in no unsure phrases: “It’s about God, and His sole proper to divine honour” (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 260). God and his glory run like a subterranean river below Tolkien’s world. Each reader (or filmmaker) who fails to start at that fountainhead will essentially do violence to Tolkien’s imaginative and prescient.
Tolkien sounds this central word within the first sentence of his legendarium: “There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is known as Ilúvatar” (The Silmarillion, 15). Though Tolkien invents his personal identify for the Creator, his first line echoes the beginning of the True Delusion: “At first, God.”
Second, Tolkien builds on an extended custom that views the celestial beings or angelic “sons of God” as individuals in creation. God himself pulls again the primordial veil and provides us a touch of this when he asks Job, “The place had been you after I laid the inspiration of the earth? . . . When the morning stars sang collectively and all the sons of God shouted for pleasure?” (Job 38:4, 7). Tolkien names these angelic beings the Ainur.
With the most important gamers — Ilúvatar (God) and the Ainur (gods) — in place, let’s contemplate the fantastic thing about God’s sovereignty in Tolkien’s fable.
Adorning the Theme
Tolkien begins his story by fronting the mysterious concord between Creator windfall and creature company. After Ilúvatar creates the Ainur, he reveals his sovereign plan to them as “a mighty theme” of music — the central melody line of historical past. This theme begins in glory and ends in splendor. Similar to Yahweh, Ilúvatar is the Creator, King, and Coherence of his world, and the central theme of all is his glory (Romans 11:36).
When the Ainur hear the theme, awe seizes them, and so they bow earlier than their Creator in silence. However their amazement solely will increase along with his subsequent phrases:
Of the theme that I’ve declared to you, I’ll now that ye make in concord collectively a Nice Music. And since I’ve kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall present forth your powers in adorning this theme, every along with his personal ideas and units, if he’ll. However I’ll sit and hearken, and be glad that by way of you nice magnificence has been wakened into tune. (15)
The storyline is about in stone. It can’t be modified. Ilúvatar has declared it. And but he invitations his creatures to “obtain it” (20). For Tolkien, God is not any machinist of automatons. He’s a Creator of subcreators — a time period that captures the thriller, dignity, and privilege of actual creaturely company. Although God is the Creator, he intends his characters to “truly help within the effoliation and a number of enrichment of creation” (Tolkien, On Fairy-stories, 79). The Grasp-Maker’s artwork prospers within the arms of made-makers.
And what’s the finish of this cosmic polyphony? The pleasure of the Creator. He delights to see their work. The by-product magnificence they awaken makes him “glad” as a result of it mirrors his personal unique magnificence.
Tolkien recounts the Ainur’s response to this fee:
Then the voices of the Ainur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, and like unto numerous choirs singing with phrases, started to style the theme of Ilúvatar to an excellent music; and a sound arose of limitless interchanging melodies woven in concord that handed past listening to into the depths and into the heights, and the locations of the dwelling of Ilúvatar had been stuffed to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void. (15)
This music of the Ainur adorning Ilúvatar’s theme is the musical historical past of the world “foreshadowed and foresung” (20). But, as in our personal world, the music doesn’t stay harmonious for lengthy.
Notes of Discord
Good, good, good, excellent — then dissonance. The sample of the backyard is mirrored in Tolkien’s fable. The music begins flawless, however quickly arises “the discord of Melkor.”
Because the theme progressed, it got here into the guts of Melkor to interweave issues of his personal imagining that weren’t in accord with the theme of Ilúvatar; for he sought therein to extend the facility and glory of the half assigned to himself (16).
Melkor, a Devil-like character whom Tolkien calls “the Prime sub-creative Insurgent,” tries to make his personal music other than God’s design (Letters, 191). There isn’t any worry of God earlier than his eyes, so he seeks to usurp heavenly hierarchy. He desires to wield the conductor’s wand. But he solely manages to make discord — the inevitable outcome when creatures search to jettison their creatureliness, when made issues envy their Maker. Devil sought to ascend God’s throne; Adam tried to grab divinity; Melkor needed his personal theme. The notes might change, however the dissonance is identical. This insurgent chorus echoes all through our fallen world.
“God and his glory run like a subterranean river below Tolkien’s world.”
Melkor’s discord, like Devil’s and Adam’s (and ours), is contagious. Consequently, lots of the different Ainur attune their music to Melkor as a substitute of staying in live performance with Ilúvatar. A cacophony outcomes, a sea of sound, a tempest of clashing tones.
However simply right here, Tolkien’s imaginative and prescient of sovereignty shines brightest. The rivalry of themes is a false one. In the end, there is just one theme — Ilúvatar’s. He makes new music by way of the chaos:
It appeared at first comfortable and candy, a mere rippling of light sounds in delicate melodies; but it surely couldn’t be quenched, and it took to itself energy and profundity. And it appeared finally that there have been two musics progressing at one time earlier than the seat of Ilúvatar, and so they had been completely at variance. The one was deep and extensive and exquisite, however gradual and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its magnificence mainly got here. The opposite had now achieved a unity of its personal; but it surely was loud, and useless, and endlessly repeated; and it had little concord, however reasonably a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a couple of notes. And it essayed to drown the opposite music by the violence of its voice, but it surely appeared that its most triumphant notes had been taken by the opposite and woven into its personal solemn sample. (16–17)
Like a grasp conductor, Ilúvatar folds discord into his theme. Simply when evil appears most triumphant — when the cross looms giant and the grave yawns deep — it most serves the theme of glory. Tolkien, following each Augustine and Aquinas, holds that God permits evil on this planet to serve his closing functions. The splendor of the comfortable ending “displays a glory backwards” that reveals God’s good design from the beginning (On Fairy-stories, 76).
The Irresistible Melody
Shortly after Ilúvatar weaves the disharmony of Melkor into his grand theme, he stops the music and declares,
Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest amongst them is Melkor; however that he might know, and all of the Ainur, that I’m Ilúvatar, these issues that ye have sung, I’ll present them forth, that ye might even see what ye have carried out. (17)
Ilúvatar transposes the music of the Ainur into being. As if a guide had been delivered to life, Ilúvatar makes the music right into a world and does so for a particular function — to show his sovereign glory. Echoing Yahweh’s phrases to Pharaoh (Exodus 9:16), Ilúvatar declares,
Thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme could also be performed that hath not its uttermost supply in me, nor can any alter the music in my regardless of. For he that attempteth this shall show however mine instrument within the devising of issues extra fantastic, which he himself hath not imagined. (17)
What a potent style of the doctrine! In the long run, sovereignty and company mingle in excellent concord. Not solely will evil bow to good (Proverbs 14:19), however finally, evil should serve good (Genesis 50:20). All of the schemes of Melkor will show “however part of the entire and a tributary to its glory” (17). And lest we think about Ilúvatar had solely the gods in thoughts, he says of males, “These too of their time shall discover that each one that they do redounds on the finish solely to the glory of my work” (42). All of the revolt of gods and males, within the closing reckoning, serves however to amplify and intensify the symphony of glory. For Tolkien, good wins as a result of God is sovereign.
Time and again, Tolkien exhibits that Windfall could make magnificence blossom out of evil and its bitter fruit. Tolkien calls this stunning transformation eucatastrophe. Austin Freeman explains, “The eucatastrophic subversion of evil into good is the important means that God has designed Center-earth to operate” (Tolkien Dogmatics, 208). Because the greed of Gollum finally ensures the destruction of the Ring, God makes all discord finally serve his ends.
Irrespective of how dire the scenario, irrespective of how bent the Darkish Lord could also be, irrespective of how far the filth of Mordor spreads — even when Saruman breaks all of the bonds of friendship and scours the Shire, although, with the very fires of Mt. Doom heating his coronary heart, Frodo claims the Ring as “mine,” and even Samwise the Courageous surrenders his final hope — but the sovereign tune takes up all of the darkish and the damaging, all of the evil intents and bent imaginings, all sin and sorrow, and makes them adorn the theme of glory.
Celebrating Sovereignty
Within the symphony of sovereignty, God’s excellent windfall and man’s actual company type one fantastic melody. The 2 seemingly distinct strains of music dance collectively, Windfall main and guiding the steps whereas creatures transfer in time. Even man’s missteps and discordant notes, God flawlessly weaves into the material of the entire in order that when the ultimate ovation comes, the standing cosmos will without end sing, “From him and thru him and to him are all issues. Blessed, blessed, blessed be he!”
Tolkien helps us style the sovereignty Edwards celebrates. He exhibits us that God’s sovereignty transcends mere reality. It fires the creativeness. It’s without delay imperious and mellifluous — an insurmountable wall for would-be rebels and an unassailable fortress for the trustworthy. Certainly, by his pen, the doctrine seems exceedingly vivid and candy.
