From my childhood up, my mind had been full of objections to the doctrine of God’s sovereignty. . . . But I have often, since that first conviction, had quite another kind of sense of God’s sovereignty than I had then. I have often since had not only a conviction, but a delightful conviction. The doctrine has very often appeared exceedingly bright and sweet. Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God.

I wonder how many can sympathize with the first line of Jonathan Edwards’s confession because they have never tasted the sweetness of “the doctrine” (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 1:xii–xiii). How many protest against the idea of God’s absolute sovereignty because they’ve never seen its “exceedingly bright” beauty? How can the doctrine come down from the heavens and delight us here on earth?

In his essay “Myth Became Fact,” C.S. Lewis gives us his answer for how to better experience what doctrine can merely explain: stories (what he calls “myths”). “In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction” (57).

If we want to experience the sweetness of God’s sovereignty that Edwards celebrates in the form of the story Lewis advocates, we can hardly do better than the creation account in Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. What we too quickly set to cool into the tidy ingots of doctrine, Tolkien presents in the molten form of myth.

The Ainulindalë

For those who don’t know, The Silmarillion is Tolkien’s mythological history 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 both a creation myth and a kind of musical theodicy, revealing how an all-good and all-powerful Creator can allow evil in his world.

Before unpacking Tolkien’s lovely portrait of providence in the Ainulindalë (which is just over three pages long in small font), let me offer two clarifications to help you make the most of reading it.

First, Tolkien states elsewhere the central theme of this mythology in no uncertain terms: “It is about God, and His sole right to divine honour” (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 260). God and his glory run like a subterranean river under Tolkien’s world. Every reader (or filmmaker) who fails to begin at that fountainhead will necessarily do violence to Tolkien’s vision.

Tolkien sounds this central note in the first sentence of his legendarium: “There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar” (The Silmarillion, 15). Although Tolkien invents his own name for the Creator, his first line echoes the start of the True Myth: “In the beginning, God.”

Second, Tolkien builds on a long tradition that views the celestial beings or angelic “sons of God” as participants in creation. God himself pulls back the primordial veil and gives us a hint of this when he asks Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? . . . When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job 38:4, 7). Tolkien names these angelic beings the Ainur.

With the major players — Ilúvatar (God) and the Ainur (gods) — in place, let’s consider the beauty of God’s sovereignty in Tolkien’s myth.

Adorning the Theme

Tolkien begins his story by fronting the mysterious harmony between Creator providence and creature agency. After Ilúvatar creates the Ainur, he reveals his sovereign plan to them as “a mighty theme” of music — the central melody line of history. This theme begins in glory and ends in splendor. Just like 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 they bow before their Creator in silence. But their amazement only increases with his next words:

Of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music. And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts and devices, if he will. But I will sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song. (15)

The storyline is set in stone. It cannot be changed. Ilúvatar has declared it. And yet he invites his creatures to “achieve it” (20). For Tolkien, God is no machinist of automatons. He is a Creator of subcreators — a term that captures the mystery, dignity, and privilege of real creaturely agency. Though God is the Author, he intends his characters to “actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation” (Tolkien, On Fairy-stories, 79). The Master-Maker’s art flourishes in the hands of made-makers.

And what is the end of this cosmic polyphony? The pleasure of the Creator. He delights to see their work. The derivative beauty they awaken makes him “glad” because it mirrors his own original beauty.

Tolkien recounts the Ainur’s response to this commission:

Then the voices of the Ainur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, and like unto countless choirs singing with words, began to fashion the theme of Ilúvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights, and the places of the dwelling of Ilúvatar were filled 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 history of the world “foreshadowed and foresung” (20). Yet, as in our own world, the music does not remain harmonious for long.

Notes of Discord

Good, good, good, very good — then dissonance. The pattern of the garden is mirrored in Tolkien’s myth. The music begins flawless, but soon arises “the discord of Melkor.”

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 (16).

Melkor, a Satan-like character whom Tolkien calls “the Prime sub-creative Rebel,” tries to make his own music apart from God’s design (Letters, 191). There is no fear of God before his eyes, so he seeks to usurp heavenly hierarchy. He wants to wield the conductor’s wand. Yet he only manages to make discord — the inevitable result when creatures seek to jettison their creatureliness, when made things envy their Maker. Satan sought to ascend God’s throne; Adam tried to seize divinity; Melkor wanted his own theme. The notes may change, but the dissonance is the same. This rebel refrain echoes throughout our fallen world.

“God and his glory run like a subterranean river under Tolkien’s world.”

Melkor’s discord, like Satan’s and Adam’s (and ours), is contagious. As a result, many of the other Ainur attune their music to Melkor instead of staying in concert with Ilúvatar. A cacophony results, a sea of sound, a tempest of clashing tones.

But just here, Tolkien’s vision of sovereignty shines brightest. The rivalry of themes is a false one. Ultimately, there is only one theme — Ilúvatar’s. He makes new music through the chaos:

It seemed at first soft and sweet, a mere rippling of gentle sounds in delicate melodies; but it could not be quenched, and it took to itself power and profundity. And it seemed at last that there were two musics progressing at one time before the seat of Ilúvatar, and they were utterly at variance. The one was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came. The other had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a few notes. And it essayed to drown the other music by the violence of its voice, but it seemed that its most triumphant notes were taken by the other and woven into its own solemn pattern. (16–17)

Like a master conductor, Ilúvatar folds discord into his theme. Just when evil seems most triumphant — when the cross looms large and the grave yawns deep — it most serves the theme of glory. Tolkien, following both Augustine and Aquinas, holds that God permits evil in the world to serve his final purposes. The splendor of the happy ending “reflects a glory backwards” that reveals God’s good design from the start (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 among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. (17)

Ilúvatar transposes the music of the Ainur into being. As if a book were brought to life, Ilúvatar makes the music into a world and does so for a specific purpose — to display his sovereign glory. Echoing Yahweh’s words to Pharaoh (Exodus 9:16), Ilúvatar declares,

Thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined. (17)

What a potent taste of the doctrine! In the end, sovereignty and agency mingle in perfect harmony. Not only will evil bow to good (Proverbs 14:19), but ultimately, evil must serve good (Genesis 50:20). All the schemes of Melkor will prove “but a part of the whole and a tributary to its glory” (17). And lest we imagine Ilúvatar had only the gods in mind, he says of men, “These too in their time shall find that all that they do redounds at the end only to the glory of my work” (42). All the rebellion of gods and men, in the final reckoning, serves but to amplify and accentuate the symphony of glory. For Tolkien, good wins because God is sovereign.

Again and again, Tolkien shows that Providence can make beauty blossom out of evil and its bitter fruit. Tolkien calls this surprising transformation eucatastrophe. Austin Freeman explains, “The eucatastrophic subversion of evil into good is the essential way that God has designed Middle-earth to function” (Tolkien Dogmatics, 208). As the greed of Gollum ultimately ensures the destruction of the Ring, God makes all discord ultimately serve his ends.

No matter how dire the situation, no matter how bent the Dark Lord may be, no matter how far the filth of Mordor spreads — even if Saruman breaks all the bonds of friendship and scours the Shire, though, with the very fires of Mt. Doom heating his heart, Frodo claims the Ring as “mine,” and even Samwise the Brave surrenders his last hope — yet the sovereign song takes up all the dark and the dangerous, all the evil intents and bent imaginings, all sin and sorrow, and makes them adorn the theme of glory.

Celebrating Sovereignty

In the symphony of sovereignty, God’s perfect providence and man’s real agency form one wonderful melody. The two seemingly distinct strains of music dance together, Providence leading and guiding the steps while creatures move in time. Even man’s missteps and discordant notes, God flawlessly weaves into the fabric of the whole so that when the final ovation comes, the standing cosmos will forever sing, “From him and through him and to him are all things. Blessed, blessed, blessed be he!”

Tolkien helps us taste the sovereignty Edwards celebrates. He shows us that God’s sovereignty transcends mere fact. It fires the imagination. It is at once imperious and mellifluous — an insurmountable wall for would-be rebels and an unassailable fortress for the faithful. Indeed, by his pen, the doctrine appears exceedingly bright and sweet.