Bruce N H
Active Member
Hi all,
Last week's Mythgard Academy (August 7, 2002, Morgoth's Ring class 17) included a discussion of the Fall. Christopher quoted a letter by JRRT - it's letter 212 in Letters of JRRT - comparing the difference between Christian theology and the internal theology his sub-created world. In Christian belief God created a good (i.e. unfallen) world. In Genesis 1 after God creates in different stages there is the repeated refrain "And God saw that it was good," even "very good" at the end of creation. There are two falls - the fall of Satan and later the fall of Adam and Eve - but the one that mattered in that it affected all of creation was that second one, which necessarily happened after Adam and Eve were created and were running around. In contrast to this in Arda, there was really one fall - the fall of Morgoth. His discord in the music was part of the very act of creation, so fallenness was worked into the warp and woof of all of Arda Marred.
Anyway, this got me thinking. Within the logic of the story the world was inherently marred because the fallen Morgoth was one of the subcreators involved in the act of creation. Outside the story, in Tolkien's theology he himself as a Son of Adam (to quote Mr. Tumnus) is fallen. Therefore the world he creates will itself be inherently fallen. Back to Letters of JRRT, in letter 131 he writes: "Anyway, all this stuff is mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine. With Fall inevitably, and that motive occurs in several modes. ... There cannot be any 'story' without a fall - all stories are ultimately about the fall- at least not for human minds as we know them and have them." (emphasis mine). Tolkien says here that a story by a human mind will always include fallenness, and so he couldn't create a world that didn't have fallenness in its very DNA. Anyway, I find it interesting that this in some ways connects Tolkien* with Morgoth - they are both fallen subcreators, and their own fallenness infects the worlds they help subcreate.
Bruce
*And, for that matter, all of us, in Tolkien's theology, as we all come from Adam and Eve and (back to Lewis, here Aslan speaking to Caspian) "that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth. Be content."
Last week's Mythgard Academy (August 7, 2002, Morgoth's Ring class 17) included a discussion of the Fall. Christopher quoted a letter by JRRT - it's letter 212 in Letters of JRRT - comparing the difference between Christian theology and the internal theology his sub-created world. In Christian belief God created a good (i.e. unfallen) world. In Genesis 1 after God creates in different stages there is the repeated refrain "And God saw that it was good," even "very good" at the end of creation. There are two falls - the fall of Satan and later the fall of Adam and Eve - but the one that mattered in that it affected all of creation was that second one, which necessarily happened after Adam and Eve were created and were running around. In contrast to this in Arda, there was really one fall - the fall of Morgoth. His discord in the music was part of the very act of creation, so fallenness was worked into the warp and woof of all of Arda Marred.
Anyway, this got me thinking. Within the logic of the story the world was inherently marred because the fallen Morgoth was one of the subcreators involved in the act of creation. Outside the story, in Tolkien's theology he himself as a Son of Adam (to quote Mr. Tumnus) is fallen. Therefore the world he creates will itself be inherently fallen. Back to Letters of JRRT, in letter 131 he writes: "Anyway, all this stuff is mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine. With Fall inevitably, and that motive occurs in several modes. ... There cannot be any 'story' without a fall - all stories are ultimately about the fall- at least not for human minds as we know them and have them." (emphasis mine). Tolkien says here that a story by a human mind will always include fallenness, and so he couldn't create a world that didn't have fallenness in its very DNA. Anyway, I find it interesting that this in some ways connects Tolkien* with Morgoth - they are both fallen subcreators, and their own fallenness infects the worlds they help subcreate.
Bruce
*And, for that matter, all of us, in Tolkien's theology, as we all come from Adam and Eve and (back to Lewis, here Aslan speaking to Caspian) "that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth. Be content."