Why Would Melkor and Sauron Rebel Against Ilúvatar?

Q: Why Would Melkor and Sauron Rebel Against Ilúvatar?

ANSWER: This is such an interesting question because it brings to the forefront one of the great myths of Tolkien scholarship, that he wasn’t writing allegory. Most Tolkien scholars acknowledge the very powerful Christian themes Tolkien included in his work, but everyone carefully notes his disavowal of allegory. As Tom Shippey pointed out in The Road to Middle-earth, J.R.R. Tolkien did write allegory, but one of the best allegories in Tolkien’s canon is, in my opinion, “Ainulindale”.

There have been numerous attempts to compare The Lord of the Rings to allegorical fiction, and I think Tolkien’s denials about allegory stand on pretty solid ground where that book is concerned. Nonetheless, if you include Judeo-Christian angels in your fiction, as he did, and you provide them with an origin story, as he did, then you cannot help but include allegory in your fictional world. But that the fictional world uses allegory does not mean it is entirely allegory or that all which is written about it is allegorical.

Allegory is not necessarily the purview of religious writers, either. You can write an allegory that presents a political or moral lesson without entering into matters of faith. But Tolkien’s allegories are almost certainly all religious in context, if not in meaning. “Ainulindale” is one of the clearest allegories as it appears (to me) to be strongly influenced by the Biblical book of Job (and refer to this interview with Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull concerning the confusion over Tolkien’s work on Jonah, not Job). I have Chapter 38 of Job in mind:

“Who is this that obscures my plans
with words without knowledge?
3 Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
7 while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels^[a] shouted for joy?

That citation is from the New International Version and the footnote reads: “Job 38:7 Hebrew the sons of God“.

This imagery, of God creating the universe while the angels (and morning stars) sing and shout joyously, is very clearly the inspiration for “Ainulindale”. But Melkor’s rebellion, like Lucifer’s, is related in almost matter-of-fact fashion. In Biblical writings the only verse that seems to address Lucifer’s rebellion is provided in Isaiah, Chapter 14:

How you have fallen from heaven,
morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
you who once laid low the nations!
13 You said in your heart,
“I will ascend to the heavens;
I will raise my throne
above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,
on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon.[b]
14 I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.”
15 But you are brought down to the realm of the dead,
to the depths of the pit.

The footnote reads: “Isaiah 14:13 Or of the north; Zaphon was the most sacred mountain of the Canaanites.” In “Ainulindale” Melkor wanted to find the Flame Imperishable and use it to create new things, as Ilúvatar had done; so he is very much re-enacting the rebellion of Lucifer (identified in this passage as “The King of Babylon”). Another passage typically associated with Lucifer’s fall is found in Ezekiel Chapter 28 (addressed to the “King of Tyre”):

“‘You were the seal of perfection,
full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
13 You were in Eden,
the garden of God;
every precious stone adorned you:
carnelian, chrysolite and emerald,
topaz, onyx and jasper,
lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl.^[b]
Your settings and mountings^[c] were made of gold;
on the day you were created they were prepared.
14 You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
you walked among the fiery stones.
15 You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created
till wickedness was found in you.
16 Through your widespread trade
you were filled with violence,
and you sinned.
So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God,
and I expelled you, guardian cherub,
from among the fiery stones.
17 Your heart became proud
on account of your beauty,
and you corrupted your wisdom
because of your splendor.
So I threw you to the earth;
I made a spectacle of you before kings.
18 By your many sins and dishonest trade
you have desecrated your sanctuaries.
So I made a fire come out from you,
and it consumed you,
and I reduced you to ashes on the ground
in the sight of all who were watching.
19 All the nations who knew you
are appalled at you;
you have come to a horrible end
and will be no more.’”

Footnote [b] reads: “Ezekiel 28:13 The precise identification of some of these precious stones is uncertain.” Footnote [c] reads: “Ezekiel 28:13 The meaning of the Hebrew for this phrase is uncertain.”

The message here is that God created a good being who chose to become evil, to turn away from his relationship with God, and to seek in his own way to be like God, to stand equal to God. The usual interpretation of this story (in my experience) is that the created cannot raise himself to the stature of the creator no matter how hard he tries.

Many people, especially athiests, demand to know why a loving God would create a world filled with evil; or why he would allow his creation to become evil and corrupt. This question drives the allegory behind “Ainulindale” and the story of Melkor and Sauron. Why would Ilúvatar knowingly create beings who would turn to evil?

Maybe Alfred Lord Tennyson explained it best in his poem In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 27 (read in full here):

I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

A loving God, we are taught, wants to be loved in return, and knowing that we may turn to evil nonetheless gives us the capacity to choose between good and evil, or between God and darkness, love and rejection, for it is better to be loved by free choice than to force another will to love as we would choose for them.

This principle has been propounded by many Christian writers but it has been challenged for many reasons, especially because of some of the doctrines some Christian writers have proposed. For example, there is the concept of the Elect, based on the the book of Matthew, Chapter 22, verse 14 which says “for many are called, but few are chosen”. There are also references in several Biblical books to “The Book of Life”, in which the names of all people are written. Anyone whose name is blotted out of the book will be condemned to everlasting damnation.

The question of why the names are blotted leads to challenges to the concept of Free Will. If God pre-emptively blots your name out of the Book of Life then you are doomed to damnation, essentially created only to be damned, and therefore why should you attempt to do good? Some people in their despair feel they are so doomed, so unloved by God that they must surely be condemned for all their sins.

I cannot explain the Roman Catholic view on these matters but some Protestant teachers hold that your final choice is only made at the moment of your death. That is, you are free to choose between God and darkness throughout your life, but you can only make that choice final or complete through a commitment to God’s love (not to the Law of God, but to his Love — this is a New Testament concept). In other words, the most vile murderer could turn to God and seek redemption at the end of his life, and if he is sincere and truly believes and accepts Jesus as the sacrifice that God offered for his sins, then he doesn’t have to be condemned.

And so people want to know why God would tolerate so much evil and yet forgive it. Did God want the world to be evil? If we assume that he wanted the world to be evil then the question of whether God created you for that purpose again arises. Free Will theists argue that although we have the freedom to choose between God and darkness we nonetheless struggle — as sons of Adam — with an inherited sinful state that makes us prone to be sinful. We as a race of beings have lost rapport with God and the New Testament is a compilation of teachings and testimonies that together make the case for God having reached out and offered us all an alternative to eternal punishment. That is, for the price of allowing one sinless man (Jesus) to die the death that should have been bestowed upon a sinful man, and merely accepting that is the case (on faith), we are absolved of all our sins, past, present, and future.

To challenge this teaching some people hold that if Jones, a man, commits a sin at Time T, then God must believe at Time T-minus-X that Jones would commit that sin in order for that sin to happen. In other words, truth or reality depends on what God believes. But belief is a human concept. What if God doesn’t believe anything? Before you can use an argument about what God believes to prove that Jones has free will (or not), you have to show that God actually needs to believe anything.

Belief is both rational and irrational, so it is not inherently axiomatic. The universe exists regardless of whether you or I believe in it. Belief is not a foundation for determination. Hence, to argue about what Jones’ choice at Time T means for God’s belief at Time T-minus-X is irrelevant to the scope of Free Will. God simply knows what Jones will choose to do regardless of whether Jones has the power to change that decision.

Free Will doesn’t negate God’s knowledge of the future; it merely fulfills that knowledge. So no matter how you form your proposition for Jones’ choices, God’s knowledge will remain intact. And we must therefore accept that God knows evil will occur in spite of his desire for good and that he will tolerate that evil. But why should a loving God choose to tolerate evil in the world? I think Tolkien tried to answer this powerful question with the story of Melkor and his followers. In “Ainulindale” he wrote:

Then Ilúvatar spoke, and he said: ‘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. And 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.’

Tolkien revisited this idea in Chapter 1, “The Beginning of Days”, of Quenta Silmarillion:

But Ilúvatar knew that Men, being set amid the turmoils of the powers of the world, would stray often, and would not use their gifts in harmony; and he said: ‘‘’These too in their time shall find that all that they do redounds at the end only to the glory of my work.’’ Yet the Elves believe that Men are often a grief to Manwë, who knows most of the mind of Ilúvatar; for it seems to the Elves that Men resemble Melkor most of all the Ainur, although he has ever feared and hated them, even those that served him.

In other words, the only way that evil can come from God’s good is if that evil in turn leads to more good. The end result redresses all hurts.

Because God suffers the existence of evil he understands what those who are victimized by evil are experiencing. And he sacrificed himself (through Jesus) to share in the hurts of the world. While that seems to offer small comfort to people who live in constant misery it nonetheless helps to construct a framework for evil that leads only to good.

In other words, we are all free to choose between good and evil but in the end everything will come to good, but only for those who remain faithful to God. Unlike mankind, who were corrupted through an external influence, Melkor/Lucifer was self-corrupting. He made an irrevocable choice. No one influenced him to make that choice.

Because he bestowed Free Will upon those who rebelled, God set himself a boundary of not interfering with that Free Will, but in doing so he ensured that the choices of the rebellious beings he had created would lead to their eventual exclusion from the healing he would introduce in the future.

Could Melkor/Lucifer have known this in advance? Should he have known it in advance? I think that if the Created can never elevate himself to the status of the Creator then the knowledge of the Created can never be complete. In other words, even the highest of angels, dwelling in the closest of all possible relationships with God, had to take some things on faith and somewhere along the way he lost his faith, or rejected it.

His choice was better informed than that of the average man, who is born blind to God and unaware of what it means to live in communion and harmony with God. We get to make our choices not on the basis of knowledge but on the basis of complete faith. We need belief because it is only through belief that we’ll ever make the choice to love God, even though God allows evil to exist in the world. We use belief to accept things both real and unreal. Belief is, perhaps, the lens through which we focus Free Will.

Perhaps that choice vindicates the requirement for faith, showing to the Created that you don’t need complete knowledge in order to make a good choice. Melkor/Lucifer did not understand this, or else he did not appreciate it.

They do say that hindsight offers 20/20 (perfect) vision. We have the advantage of being able to learn from someone’s else’s mistakes while having the freedom to make our own. But sooner or later our choices will become irrevocable, just as Melkor’s choice was.

Maybe the point in Tolkien’s allegory is that Melkor wanted to be God, and that Sauron formed that desire after Melkor was defeated. That desire consumed them both.

And this is probably why Tolkien always viewed himself as a subcreator, rather than a creator.

# # #

Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?

15

Click to Like