The Marring

I recently mentioned I had, as a J.R.R. Tolkien fan, finally gotten around to reading The Silmarillion.

One of the things that struck me in reading The Silmarillion was Tolkien's depiction of the cosmic, angelic fall that brings evil to Middle Earth. Again, this is well-trod territory, and I had known about the fall of Melkor. So, it wasn't discovering this part of Tolkien's world that caught my attention but was, rather, the evocative way he describes the impact of Melkor's fall on the world at the end of the Quenta Silmarillion. That evocation is what interrupted me.

But before we get to those haunting lines, let me catch everyone up. Not everyone is a Tolkien nerd.

At the beginning of time Eru, who is also called Ilúvatar, the One, creates the world by singing it into existence. Among his creation are divine beings calls the Ainur. The Ainur are invited by Eru Ilúvatar to participate in creation by joining his harmony. The Ainur do so, but one of their number, Melkor, begins to insert dissonant notes of his own devising:

But now Ilúvatar sat and hearkened, and for a great while it seemed good to him, for in the music there were no flaws. But as the theme progressed, it came into the heart of Melkor to interweave matters of his own imagining that were not in accord with the theme of Ilúvatar; for he sought therein to increase the power and glory of the part assigned to himself. To Melkor among the Ainur had been given the greatest gifts of power and knowledge, and he had a share in all the gifts of his brethren. He had gone often alone into the void places seeking the Imperishable Flame; for desire grew hot within him to bring into Being things of his own, and it seemed to him that Ilúvatar took no thought for the Void, and he was impatient of its emptiness.

Some of these thoughts he now wove into his music, and straightway discord arose about him, and many that sang nigh him grew despondent, and their thought was disturbed and their music faltered; but some began to attune their music to his rather than to the thought which they had at first. Then the discord of Melkor spread ever wider, and the melodies which had been heard before foundered in a sea of turbulent sound. But Ilúvatar sat and hearkened until it seemed that about his throne there was a raging storm, as of dark waters that made war one upon another in an endless wrath that would not be assuaged.

As is both obvious and often pointed out, given Tolkien's Catholicism, we have here something akin to the cosmic rebellion of Satan. And while we're all aware of this Biblical cosmology, it's not one we readily inhabit. Most of the Christians I know don't assume that the world has been wrecked and remains a wreck because of dark angelic powers. Satan is typically conceived as a moral tempter, a psychological experience within our hearts, than as an angelic Archon ruling over our world.

I bring this up, as I've pointed out before, because our imaginative distance from the Biblical cosmology affects how we think about the problem of evil. As the power of Satan has waned in our imaginations, shifting from the cosmic to the psychological, we lay the blame for evil increasingly at God's feet. To be clear, I'm not saying this blame-shifting is illegitimate. I'm just being descriptive in noting how beliefs about Satan, or a lack thereof, affect our emotional experience with God.

Back to Tolkien.

The Quenta Silmarillion, which is most of The Silmarillion, recounts how Melkor flees Valinor, the home of the divine beings on earth, to live in and terrorize Middle Earth, the mortal part of the world. Lots of stuff happens, but at the end of the Quenta Silmarillion Melkor, now called Morgoth, is defeated and thrown out of the world and imprisoned in the Void.

And yet, the world is not wholly healed. Melkor has damaged the world, and those scars remain behind. Tolkien calls this the "Marring." Here are the final lines of the Quenta Silmarillion that captured my attention:

But Morgoth himself the Valar thrust through the Door of Night beyond the Walls of the World, into the Timeless Void; and a guard is set for ever on those walls, and Eärendil keeps watch upon the ramparts of the sky. Yet the lies of that Melkor, the mighty and accursed, Morgoth Bauglir, the Power of Terror and of Hate, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days.

This is the Marring. Melkor is banished, but a seed is planted in the hearts of Elves and Men that, ever and anon, sprouts anew and bears dark fruit even unto the latest days.

Interestingly, this seed isn't moral, but epistemological. What Melkor leaves behind are lies.

Now, Tolkien never intended his stories, lore, and mythology to be Christian allegories. So I don't want to equate the Marring with any Christian doctrine or belief. But Tolkien's evocative description of a dark seed planted in the hearts of humanity, perpetually bearing bad fruit, struck me and made me wonder if there's an idea here that might be of (experimental) use in thinking about the cosmological-to-psychological shift I described above in how we think about Satan.

Specifically, while Melkor's cosmological power over the world is broken his influence persists. His lies continue to ripple out. Might something similarly have happened with Satan? Satan's current relation to the world is ambiguous, especially after the resurrection. Has Satan been defeated or is he still the "god of this world"? Perhaps, if we borrow from Tolkien, it is both. Cosmically, Satan has been defeated, but the moral and epistemic influence--the Marring--persists.