{"id":933,"date":"2021-12-30T19:29:59","date_gmt":"2021-12-30T19:29:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/?p=933"},"modified":"2021-12-30T21:39:50","modified_gmt":"2021-12-30T21:39:50","slug":"genesis-1-compared-with-the-ainulindale-and-valaquenta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/2021\/12\/30\/genesis-1-compared-with-the-ainulindale-and-valaquenta\/","title":{"rendered":"Genesis 1 Compared with the Ainulindal\u00eb and Valaquenta"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As noted in the brief opening for this section of the page, Tolkien has many Christian detractors. These may be divided into two broad classes: those who object to his mythology on the basis of special revelation<\/span> and those who object on the basis of general revelation<\/a><\/span>. (Of course, the same objector may have objections in both categories of revelation.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this page I begin – but can by no means complete! – a textual analysis of what Scripture tells us about the creation of the world and what the Silmarillion<\/em> tells us. Are the two sources contradictory? Does Tolkien use his important idea of subcreation<\/a> in a way that violates either or both general and special revelation in his mythic account of the world’s creation? Is Tolkien presenting us with some sort of thinly “Christianized” variant of polytheism, an idolatrous system which we must reject in order to preserve the sole glory of God Himself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think not, and here is my first effort at showing why this is so. I invite the reader to carefully read, perhaps several times, these three passages placed in parallel:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
<\/span> Genesis 1<\/big><\/strong><\/span><\/td> <\/span>Ainulindal\u00eb<\/big><\/span><\/strong><\/td> Valaquenta<\/big><\/strong> <\/span> <\/td><\/tr>
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, \u201cLet there be light,\u201d and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.




<\/td>		There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Il\u00favatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought,and they were with him before aught else was made. Then those of the Ainur who desired it arose and entered into the World at the beginning of Time; and it was their task to achieve it, and by their labours to fulfil the vision which they had seen. Long they laboured in the regions of E\u00e4, which are vast beyond the thought of Elves and Men,
until in the time appointed was made Arda, the Kingdom of Earth. Then they put on the raiment of Earth and descended into it, and dwelt therein.<\/td>		In the beginning Eru, the One,
who in the Elvish tongue is
named Il\u00favatar, made the Ainur
of his thought; and they made a
great Music before him. In this
Music the World was begun; for Il\u00favatar made visible the song of
the Ainur, and they beheld it as a light in the darkness. And many among them became enamoured of its beauty, and of its history which they saw beginning and unfolding as in a vision. Therefore Il\u00favatar gave to their vision Being, and set it amid the Void, and the Secret Fire was sent to burn at the heart of the World; and it was
called E\u00e4.

<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>
Textual Comparison of Genesis 1:1-5 with The Silmarillion<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Where to begin, since the three sources at first seem vastly divergent? Perhaps the best way to begin is to question that very premise – that the three sources are<\/em> vastly divergent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over a number of years of working with Tolkien and observing Christian objections to his work I have noticed that many believers think inside a very “wooden” box-like concept of biblical inspiration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is, an extremely powerful but quite un<\/em>literary understanding of “the literal<\/span> interpretation of the Bible” tends to control their thinking, especially about issues of creation. I make no apologies for saying up front that this variety of literalism must be understood as both a product of and a reaction to the prevailing intellectual winds of evolutionary theory that have for so long captured our general cultural mindset. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now it may very well be that when all the necessary interpretive factors are well taken into account we will find that Genesis does in fact teache that the universe as we now observe it was created very recently, on the order of 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. It may very well be that humankind is therefore a very young race, and that all the unpleasantness of whatever kind that we see about us through all of our recorded history are simply and finally the result of the Fall of man in the Garden. It may be very well be that the waters of the Flood covered every square inch of the planet. And so on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Items like this are typically what the type of Christian I’m referring to here means when he speaks of “interpreting the Bible literally<\/span>.” And it is usually in the grip of such thinking that objections to Tolkien’s creation account as found in The Silmarillion<\/em> arise. For on the basis of such thinking, isn’t it just obvious<\/em> that Tolkien’s writing contradicts<\/em> the Bible?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, er, no, it’s not obvious<\/em>. Or rather, it’s only obvious<\/em> if this type of Christian is allowed to simply beg the question about what exactly”the literal<\/span> interpretation of Scripture” consists. This is far too big an issue to diverge into in this essay, but I will note (with the caveat that much<\/span> further explanation must be given) that the Bible, though coming to us from God and so constituting the only infallible rule of our faith and practice, essentially is a piece of literature written in human languages<\/span>, and so the interpretive task must follow the established conventions of literary interpretation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bible is indeed sui generis<\/em> (it’s own unique thing) in terms of its origin<\/span>, but it is not so in terms of how it is to be read. The Christian who has not had his mind significantly shaped in literary<\/span> manner – including the serious study of history, at least one or two languages other than the English he reads the Bible in, and a wide variety of genres of literature – is just flat not in a position to lecture those who have had such formation as to what “literal interpretation” must <\/em>mean. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But let me return to the parallel texts above. Are the creation accounts given in the second and third columns (The Silmarillion<\/em>) contradictory to that given in the first (Genesis 1)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, because contradiction<\/span> means “opposite” or “conflicting,” and disallowing that wonderfully begged question about so-called “literal interpretation<\/span>” it’s going to turn out to be pretty difficult to prove Tolkien’s words have those two qualities as compared with Genesis. Let’s take just a few of the fronts of argument that must be worked through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, Genesis 1 states that in the beginning God “made the heavens and the earth” while The Silmarillion<\/em> states that in the beginning God made some spiritual beings called the Ainur as “the offspring of his thought.” Now the hasty reader will jump to “Contradiction!” without realizing that if God made the heavens and the earth<\/span> He certainly made the beings contained in it<\/span> – and these Ainur are nothing more than a species of those created things. There is no contradiction<\/em> here, though there is certainly a difference<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And herein we see one major way that the wooden literalism I noted above infects the interpretation of Scripture, particularly the first 11 chapters of Genesis. The so-called “literal” interpreter gratuitously assumes that if the Bible doesn’t say a thing exists or happened in very clear and exact words, well, that thing cannot be real or true. (A pastor’s wife I knew once claimed, on the grounds of such illogical, universal negative reasoning, that because the Bible never mentions the word “aliens” we can know<\/em> that there is no such thing anywhere in God’s created universe.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the problem with asserting contradiction<\/span> between Genesis and The Silmarillion<\/em> appears right in the beginning of the compared accounts, and is rooted in nothing more than the assumption that “heavens and the earth” can’t be expanded, even if only as a literary device, and the expansion treated only in terms of mentioning a few items not<\/em> mentioned by Scripture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this is just simplistic and flatly unreasonable, since “heavens and earth” are catch-all terms necessarily implying all the vast array of individual beings contained therein. The Bible never mentions hamburgers or art galleries or tyrannosauruses or laptop computers, either. Perhaps sentences in fictional works that speak of such things are therefore “contradictory” to Scripture?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, purely textually, Genesis 1:3 tells us that “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” The hasty so-called biblical literalist again jumps to “Contradiction!”, for he has apparently not noticed that the Ainulindal\u00eb<\/em> specifically states, “Il\u00favatar made visible<\/span> the song of the Ainur, and they beheld it as a light in the darkness<\/span>.” Whereas Genesis speaks in the third person singular<\/span> of God Himself, “God separated the light from the darkness,” the Ainulindal\u00eb<\/em> speaks in the third person plural<\/span> from the point of view of God’s creatures, “and they beheld it as a light in the darkness.” Moreover, somewhat later than the part I cited above, Iluvatar tells the Ainur that He is going to make their song about the world a reality: “Therefore I say: E\u00e4! Let these things Be!” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would take a particularly obtuse reader – or at least one who has an agenda not related to what the text itself says – not<\/em> to see the parallel ideas and language in the two accounts. “Let there be light!” \/ “Let these things Be!”, and so forth. The<\/em> Ainulindal\u00eb<\/em> does not here “contradict” Genesis 1 so much as it expresses the same truths about the all-powerful, eternal God’s unilateral creation of the finite world in language different from<\/span> that of Scripture. Difference is not necessarily the same thing as contradiction. The burden of proof lies here on the so-called “literalist<\/em>,” not on the literary<\/em> reader of both the Bible and Tolkien.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I have above given two text-based reasons why it is improper to assert that the creation accounts of Genesis 1 and The Silmarillion<\/em> are “contradictory.” A third, which I consider possibly more important than the other two, consists of the fact that Tolkien himself tells us the Silmarillion<\/em> is not<\/span> a literary work that can be judged by criteria that arise from the experiences of human beings. Quite simply – though there are profound depths here! – the Silmarillion<\/em> is a collection of Elf-centered<\/span> legends and tales about Elf<\/span> experiences with humans, other creatures in the world, and God Himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A crucial explanation from Tolkien himself appears on pp. 194-196 of his Letters<\/em>, where, explaining the whole literary purpose of his mythology is to explore “the physical effects of Sin and misused Free Will” he adds of the Valar subcreating the physical world, “in this myth, it is \u2018feigned\u2019 (legitimately whether that is a feature of the real world or not) that He gave special \u2018sub-creative\u2019 powers to certain of His highest created beings…” Note the word “feigned” and the phrase “whether that is a feature of the real world or not.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are Tolkien’s own qualifications, and they express his recognition, first, that his imaginative universe has a carefully theologically circumscribed didactic purpose and second, that he himself is quite aware that none of what he wrote may have any factual connection with the world God actually created. As he himself put it in one of his letters, “On the side of mere narrative device, this is, of course, meant to provide beings of the same order of beauty, power, and majesty as the \u2018gods\u2019 of higher mythology, which can yet be accepted\u2014well, shall we say baldly, by a mind that believes in the Blessed Trinity.” (Letters<\/em>, p. 146)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Valar as agents of God in the creative shaping of the world, then, need not be taken as Tolkien attempting to detract from God’s sole glory as Creator by setting up a possibly (or likely) idolatrous chain of other objects of worship. Any critique which doesn’t take Tolkien at his word here, granting him maximum charity of interpretation, is a critique I won’t find persuasive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, there is a great deal more that needs to be said – I have hardly even begun to scratch the surface. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, on the basis of the parallel texts above, the literalist Christian will next jump to attacking the very concept of God using other beings which He Himself made to perform the actual physical creative works of shaping the world. The objector may urge that such a concept somehow diminishes the sole<\/em> glory of God as Creator, or that it borrows from anti-Hebrew and anti-Christian paganisms, setting up a thinly-veiled variety of polytheism for the believer to become enamored with (as Israel of old with her golden calves and Asherah poles) instead of God and His revealed truths in nature and Scripture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are objections worthy of exploration, but they will have to be taken up in another essay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As noted in the brief opening for this section of the page, Tolkien has many Christian detractors. These may be divided into two broad classes: those who object to his mythology on the basis of special revelation and those who object on the basis of general revelation. (Of course, the same objector may have objections […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-myth-conceptions","category-on-tolkien"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=933"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":957,"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933\/revisions\/957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}