J.R.R. Tolkien had an enormous impact on my teenage years. I read Lord of the Rings by the time I was eleven and loved it enough to reread it each year for the next few years. By the time I was thirteen, the Silmarillion was my favorite book and my mom was bringing home the History of Middle Earth series from the library for me to read. As a result, Tolkien had some impact on my religious thoughts during this formative period.
You see, Tolkien was Catholic and the Christian worldview permeated his work. Occasionally, I found some of his mythological/theological ideas helpful in making sense of my own Latter-day Saint religion. For example, in the universe in which Middle Earth is set, God exists as Eru Ilúvatar, but there are also groups of lesser divine beings, called the Ainur, who resemble the Norse gods. (Though, given the Christian nature of his worldview, they have often been called archangels instead. As Tolkien explained it, they “take the imaginative but not the theological place of ‘gods.'”[1]) The Silmarillion opens with a creation story wherein Eru Ilúvatar creates life and frames the universe and the world, but then gives the Ainur a chance to give specific shape to it: “The Ainur took part in the making of the world as ‘sub-creators’: in various degrees, after this fashion. They interpreted according to their powers, and completed in detail, the Design propounded to them by the One.”[2] While Eru is the ultimate architect, he employs sub-creators to create the world’s details.
As a Latter-day Saint, this offered a bit of validation to me about the idea of premortal spirits acting as “sub-creators” in the shaping of the earth in Mormon cosmology. For example, I had read Joseph Fielding Smith’s statement that “It is true that Adam helped to form this earth. He labored with our Savior Jesus Christ. I have a strong view or conviction that there were others also who assisted them. Perhaps Noah and Enoch; and why not Joseph Smith, and those who were appointed to be rulers before the earth was formed?”[3] I also had read Brigham Young’s statement that “It is true that the earth was organized by three distinct characters, namely, Eloheim, Yahovah, and Michael, these three forming a quorum, as in all heavenly bodies, and in organizing element.”[4] Reading that Tolkien felt that there was room for a similar idea in his mythology helped me to give shape to those teachings in my mind.
Another area in which Tolkien gave shape to the way I understand a religious idea is the resurrection. While he was intentionally vague about the fate of the souls of humans in his work, he felt more free to develop the fate of the spirits of elves (which he called fëa, or fëar in plural). What sets Elves apart from humans in his lore is that when they are killed, the spirit is eventually able to regain a body (hrondo) after a period of time in the Halls of Waiting (Mandos). The method by which this happened was something that Tolkien played with over time. For example, at one point he wrote that “A houseless fëa that chose or was permitted to return to life re-entered the incarnate world through child-birth. Only thus could it return.”[5] Given that Latter-day Saints generally reject reincarnation as a belief, that idea wasn’t too useful to me. But Tolkien suggested another possibility: “Thence they are recalled at length to freedom, either as spirits, taking form according to their own thought … or else, it is said, they are at times re-born.”[6] He elaborated on this in a portrayal of a discussion between the chief of the Ainur and Eru (God), wherein Eru states that “Look and ye will find that each spirit of My Children retaineth in itself the full imprint and memory of its former house; and in its nakedness it is open to you, so that ye may clearly perceive all that is in it. After this imprint ye may make for it again such a house in all particulars as it had ere evil befell it. Thus ye may send it back to the lands of the living.”[7] This last quote gave shape to my own view of how the resurrection takes place for us.
One recurring concern with the resurrection in the Latter-day Saint tradition is the degree to which the resurrected body has to have continuity with the same molecules as the mortal body. For example, Joseph Fielding Smith was once asked about cremation, and responded with a theory about the resurrection that each individual had a set of “essential particles” that would come together:
It is impossible to destroy a body. It makes no difference whether a body is consumed by fire, buried in the depths of the sea, or placed in the tomb, the time will come when every essential particle will be called back again to its own place, and the individual whose body was laid away, or scattered to the winds, will be reassembled with every essential part restored.[8]
He offered this as an interpretation of a statement of Joseph Smith, Jr.:
their is no fundamental principle belonging to a human System that never goes into another— <?in this world. or the world to come.—?> … we have the testimony that God will raise us up & he has power to do it.— If any one supposes— that any part of our bodies. that is the fundame[n]tal parts thereof, ever goes into another body the is mistaken.[9]
Both of these Joseph Smiths believed that there had to be continuity in substance between essential (or fundamental) parts of the mortal and resurrected body.
President Brigham Young likewise faced questions about the nature of the resurrection and also offered some thoughts about this subject:
We are here in circumstances to bury our dead according to the order of the Priesthood. But some of our brethren die upon the ocean; they cannot be buried in a burying ground, but they are sewed up in canvas and cast into the sea, and perhaps in two minutes after they are in the bowels of the shark, yet those persons will come forth in the resurrection, and receive all the glory of which they are worthy, and be clothed upon with all the beauty of resurrected Saints, as much so as if they had been laid away in a gold or silver coffin, and in a place expressly for burying the dead.[10]
Here, Brigham Young didn’t worry about the idea of essential particles, testifying instead simply that God will take care of everything such that people will be resurrected regardless of whether their body was intact or not. But he was responding to an ongoing question in so doing.
My own views combine that of Brigham Young with those of J. R. R. Tolkien. In my eyes, the main continuity between mortal and resurrected state is the spirit. All of the molecules that compose our bodies are just molecules and are constantly being ingested, replaced, and released from the body. As long as there is a template and you have the ability to control molecules (which, God does), you could reassemble a body for the spirit regardless of whether or not they are the same molecules as were used at the time of death. The mind and spirit of the dead offer that template. Taking the statement from Tolkien’s fictional work, “each spirit … retaineth in itself the full imprint and memory of its former house … After this imprint ye may make for it again such a house in all particulars.”
While I recognize it’s rarely wise to develop theology from a fictional work, this made sense to me as a way to understand the resurrection. As humans, we tend to rely heavily on narratives and stories to help us make sense of the universe, and Tolkien’s stories about Elvish rebirth gave me a framework for viewing the resurrection from a very early period of my teenage years.
[1] J.R.R. Tolkien draft letter to Rhona Beare, in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981), Letter 212, p. 284.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 1:74–75.
[4] Brigham Young, April 9, 1852, Journal of Discourses 1:51.
[5] J. R. R. Tolkien, Morgoth’s Ring: The Later Silmarillion, Part 1, ed. Christopher Tolkein (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993), 221.
[6] Tolkien, Morgoth’s Ring, 266.
[7] Tolkien, Morgoth’s Ring, 362.
[8] Joseph Fielding Smith, Answers to Gospel Questions, in 5 volumes(Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company: 1957–1966), 2:100.
[9] Journal, December 1842–June 1844; Book 2, 10 March 1843–14 July 1843, p. 93, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 13, 2024, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-december-1842-june-1844-book-2-10-march-1843-14-july-1843/101.
[10] Brigham Young, February 9, 1862, Journal of Discourses, 9:193, https://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/digital/collection/JournalOfDiscourses3/id/3719/rec/10.
Thanks for posting this, Chad. I haven’t delved into Tolkien HISTORY OF MIDDLE EARTH so was unaware of his musings on reincarnation for elves. Plato also taught reincarnation, and I did a few posts at the JI on Plato and Tolkien.
https://juvenileinstructor.org/plato-tolkien-and-mormonism-part-1-the-travels-of-cyrus/
https://juvenileinstructor.org/plato-tolkien-and-mormonism-part-2-w-w-phelpss-paracletes/
My memory is that Celsus, essentially Christianity’s first critic, argued that Christianity was quite similar to Greek philosophy and argued that the Christian notion of resurrection was an adaptation of Plato’s reincarnation.
Those are some really interesting posts. Thank you for sharing, Stephen!
This is great, Chad. These “fairy stories” can be a lot more important at key points in our lives than we like to admit (I like Tolkien a lot, but I have a different set of formative stories).
Tolkien was a staunch Catholic. While he was openly critical of what he termed “allegory”, his letters are full of the religious themes in his work on Middle Earth. An expanded version of his letters was released last fall. This week, there’s a three volume release of his poetry with annotations and comments. I don’t know how his religious views will be addressed, but we’ll see.
Tolkien so often hits the nail right on the head. This poignant excerpt from Appendix A to me perfectly describes what we will see in each other in the resurrection.
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“I speak no comfort to you, for there is no comfort for such pain within the circles of the world. The uttermost choice is before you: to repent and go to the Havens and bear away into the West the memory of our days together that shall there be evergreen but never more than memory; or else to abide the Doom of Men.’
‘Nay, dear lord,’ she said, ‘that choice is long over. There is now no ship that would bear me hence, and I must indeed abide the Doom of Men, whether I will or I nill: the loss and the silence. But I say to you, King of the Númenoreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive.’
‘So it seems,’ he said. ‘But let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory. Farewell!’
‘Estel, Estel!’ she cried, and with that even as he took her hand and kissed it, he fell into sleep. Then a great beauty was revealed in him, so that all who after came there looked on him in wonder; for they saw that the grace of his youth, and the valour of his manhood, and the wisdom and majesty of his age were blended together. And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.”
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And as Finrod put it so well in the Athrabeth (published in Morgoth’s Ring)
“If we are indeed the Eruhin, the Children of the One, then He will not suffer Himself to be deprived of His own, not by any Enemy, not even by ourselves. This is the last foundation of Estel, which we keep even when we contemplate the End: of all His designs the issue must be for His Children’s joy.”