One of the most challenging aspects of the problem of evil concerns so-called “natural evil” that appears to exist for vast stretches of time prior to humanity. If, for example, death, disease, disorder, and decay in the natural world around us cannot be attributed to the human fall, then how do we account for it? Much contemporary theodicy has been concerned with this question, and there are an increasing number of “developmental” views of creation, arguing that death and suffering can be compatible with the goodness of creation. Perhaps a lesser-explored option is the so-called angelic fall theodicy, according to which natural evil was introduced to the world through the fall of angels.

Angelic fall theodicy is sometimes dismissed as fanciful or overly speculative. On the other hand, it has been taken seriously by significant Christian thinkers throughout the twentieth century, such as the Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, the Reformed theologian Thomas Torrance, and the analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga.¹See Gavin Ortlund, “On the Fall of Angels and the Fallenness of Nature: An Evangelical Hypothesis Regarding Natural Evil,” EvQ 87 (2015): 125–30. It has also been discussed in connection to the writings of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Lewis proposed it as a possible solution to the problem of pre-human natural evil in both The Problem of Pain and Miracles.²C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics, reprint ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 423; C. S. Lewis, Miracles, The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics, reprint ed. ( New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 277. Lewis had read The Problem of Pain aloud to the Inklings, to whom he also dedicated the book, and he shared with Tolkien the basic angelology within which angelic fall theodicy makes sense. Tolkien, as we shall see, recounted something akin to an angelic fall theodicy in The Silmarillion.³J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, ed. Christopher Tolkien, 2nd ed. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 15–22. Tolkien scholar Richard Purtill, discussing the reading of The Problem of Pain among the Inklings, suggests that “Lewis might have in some sense borrowed from Tolkien, or Tolkien from Lewis, or more likely, they arrived at the general idea independently out of their common Christian tradition.”⁴Richard L. Purtill, J. R. R. Tolkien: Myth, Mortality, and Religion (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), 95–96.

This article fleshes out Purtill’s suggestion that Lewis and Tolkien were drawing from the “common Christian tradition” in their articulation of angelic fall theodicy. We argue that Tolkien and Lewis were indeed drawing from a classical angelology that was common throughout the tradition of the church (though it is less known and sometimes overlooked among contemporary Christians). We then suggest that this consideration of classical angelology may weaken one of the common objections to angelic fall theodicy, namely, that its mechanism for the introduction of natural evil is arbitrary. To this end, we offer a brief overview of Tolkien’s account of angelic fall theodicy, followed by an exploration of Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas as representative of a classical angelology.⁵Jonathan S. McIntosh, The Flame Imperishable: Tolkien, St. Thomas, and the Metaphysics of Faërie (Kettering, OH: Angelico, 2017) has ably explored Thomas’s influence on Tolkien’s metaphysics. Less attention has been given to the influence of the broader Christian tradition on Tolkien’s works (as will be evident from a consideration of Augustine’s angelology). We conclude with some reflections on the relevance of Augustine and Thomas’s angelology for defending angelic fall theodicy today.

1. Angelic Fall Theodicy in Tolkien

Tolkien did not use the term, “angelic fall theodicy,” or propose it in a philosophical context as a response to the problem of evil. Nonetheless, his fictional account of the creation of the world is highly relevant to discussion of this hypothesis today. Some might object to drawing fictional writing into contact with a real theological proposal, particularly in light of Tolkien’s protests that his story had no allegorical significance.⁶J. R. R. Tolkien, “Foreword to the Second Edition,” in The Lord of the Rings, reprint ed. (New York: Mifflin, 2004), xxiii–xxiv. Nonetheless, in Tolkien’s non-fictional writings and letters, he makes it clear that his actual beliefs about angelology undergird and inform the “fictional metaphysics” he imagines for his story. For instance, in an important 1951 letter in which Tolkien responds to a request for a sketch of this “imaginary world,” Tolkien correlates Eru (also called Ilúvatar), the supreme deity in Tolkien’s world, with God; and he calls the Valar “angelic powers, whose function is to exercise delegated authority in their spheres.”⁷Tolkien, “From a Letter by J. R. R. Tolkien to Milton Waldman, 1951,” in The Silmarillion, xiv. According to Tolkien, the presence of these creatures in his story is “the narrative device” designed to correspond to the “gods” of higher mythology, which he believes can be accepted by a mind that believes in the Trinity.⁸Tolkien, “From a Letter by J. R. R. Tolkien,” xiv. In this letter Tolkien also calls the “fall” that occurs in the First Age of Eä—the universe in which Valinor, Beleriand, Númenor, and Middle-earth exist (where The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings occur)—“a fall of Angels we should say.”⁹Tolkien, “From a Letter by J. R. R. Tolkien,” xv. For more on Tolkien’s theology and how it informed his fiction, see Austin M. Freeman, Tolkien Dogmatics: Theology through Mythology with the Maker of Middle-Earth (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2022).

Tolkien called the first section of The Silmarillion, entitled “The Music of Ainur,” a “cosmogonical myth.”¹⁰This terminology is from Tolkien, “From a Letter by J. R. R. Tolkien,” xiv. In it Tolkien recounts the agency of the Valar in creation. The essentially Christian structure of the metaphysics of Tolkien’s world are evident in this work in ways that they are only implicit and in the background of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien recounts how in the beginning, Eru creates angelic-like beings called Ainur. These creatures exist with Eru prior to the creation of anything else.¹¹Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 15. By participating in musical harmony, they play a role in subsequent activity of creation. But one of the Ainur, Melkor, creates his own music that is in disharmony with that of Eru, earning his rebuke and becoming angry and ashamed.¹²Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 16–17. In another of his letters, Tolkien refers to Melkor as the Diabolos (devil) of that world.¹³J. R. R. Tolkien, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter (New York: Mifflin, 1995), 283.

In the Silmarillion, certain of the Ainur are then depicted as limiting their power to be contained within the world, taking leave of Eru and descending into it “to be within it forever, until it is complete, so that they are its life and it is theirs.”¹⁴Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 20. These are called the Valar, or “the Powers of the World,” and they exercise a kind of territorial authority and governance over the world, among other roles.¹⁵For instance, he also speaks of the Valar as mediating the knowledge of Eru. See Tolkien, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, 387. In a later letter Tolkien refers to the Valar as “angelic beings appointed to the government of the world.”¹⁶Tolkien, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, 368. He also calls them in various letters “the angelic guardians”¹⁷Tolkien, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, 407. and “regents under God.”¹⁸Tolkien, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, 411. The Valar play a role in both the creation and oversight of the world. (Tolkien clarifies elsewhere that he does not understand the stewardship given to the Valar in terms of creation proper but rather in terms of rule and governance.¹⁹Tolkien, “From a Letter by J. R. R. Tolkien,” xiv. ) However, Melkor meddles with their work:

But Melkor too was there from the first, and he meddled in all that was done, turning it if he might to his own desires and purposes; and he kindled great fires. When therefore the Earth was yet young and full of flame Melkor coveted it, and he said to other Valar: “This shall be my own kingdom; and I name it unto myself!”²⁰Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 20–21.

Tolkien then recounts the battle that rages between the Valar and Melkor, as the Valar seek to prepare the world for the children of Ilúvatar, while Melkor opposes their efforts. The Valar eventually succeed in their creative work, though the battle slows their progress and has destructive consequences along the way:

They built lands and Melkor destroyed them; valleys they delved and Melkor raise them up; mountains they carved and Melkor threw them down; seas they hollowed and Melkor spilled them; and naught might have peace or come to lasting growth, for as surely as the Valar began a labour so would Melkor undo it or corrupt it. And yet their labour was not all in vain; and though nowhere and in no work was their will and purpose wholly fulfilled, and all things were in hue and shape other than the Valar had at first intended, slowly nonetheless the Earth was fashioned and made firm.²¹Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 22.

There is much that could be explored about the role of the Valar in creation in Tolkien’s world, but several initial observations will suffice for our purposes here. First, it is interesting that while the Ainur preexist the creation of anything else, some of them come to inhabit and remain within the universe. They have the specific charge of dwelling there as guardians and governors. Second, it is striking how significant of a role the Valar play in the creation and governance of the world. While elsewhere Tolkien distinguishes the work of the Valar from creation proper, they are nonetheless involved in building lands, carving mountains, hollowing seas, and so forth. Third, Melkor’s presence in these events suggests a vision of creation as involving a kind of warfare between good and evil forces. It is not simply that Melkor harasses the work of the Valar; he gains territorial dominion over some regions for extended periods of time. Later, for example, Tolkien writes that for many years Melkor “held dominion over most of the lands of the earth.”²²Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 31. It is also striking that his activity affects everything the Valar do; they progress despite his comprehensive opposition. This is evident from Tolkien’s assertion that “nowhere and in no work was (the Valars’) will and purpose wholly fulfilled, and all things were in hue and shape other than the Valar had at first intended.”²³Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 22.

The upshot of all this is that the activity of Melkor represents the presence of evil and opposition to God in the natural world during the process of its actual construction. As Purtill notes, commenting on this element of Tolkien’s creation mythology, “the key point of Tolkien’s ‘myth’ … is that the fall of the angels had an actual physical effect on the world, that some of the harsher and uglier aspects of the material universe may not have been in God’s original design.”²⁴Purtill, J. R. R. Tolkien, 95. This is possible because there has been an earlier fall, prior to the creation of the world. As Tolkien described it in a letter, “the rebellion of created free-will precedes creation of the world (Eä) and Eä has in it, subcreatively introduced, evil, rebellious, discordant elements in its own nature already when the Let it Be was spoken.”²⁵Cited in Purtill, J. R. R. Tolkien, 94.

2. Tolkienian Angelology in Relation to Classical Angelology

The angelology reflected in The Silmarillion is not a purely literary imagination but accords well with how angelology was conceived for most Christians in earlier times. As an entry point into our exploration of this fact, it is worth referencing a commonly cited passage from C. S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The children meet a character named Ramandu who is a “retired star”—or, as he calls it, a “star at rest.” Eustace says in response that “in our world … a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.” In response Ramandu declares: “Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.”²⁶C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, reprint ed., The Chronicles of Narnia 5 (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 522. He then declares that the children have already met a star, a character named Coriakin.

What does it mean to think of stars as personal in this way? Strange as this way of thinking may sound to modern Christians, it is, like so much of Lewis’s thought (as well as Tolkien’s), simply an unpacking of earlier Christian ideas. All throughout church history, stars have been associated with angels (and at times glorified saints as well), drawing upon similar perceived associations reflected in biblical imagery (Job 38:7; Ps 104:4; Dan 8:9–10; Rev 9:1–2; 12:3–4). Saint Augustine, for example, assigns angels a significant role in the oversight of creation, particularly in their agency with respect to stars. At one point in his literal commentary on Genesis, he ponders whether the stars (and perhaps other heavenly bodies) are “enspirited” by angels, in a way analogous to how fleshly bodies are “ensouled,” or whether they are merely “directed” on their course by the presence of angels without any such mixture.²⁷Augustine, On Genesis 2.18.38(ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill, The Works of Saint Augustine 1/13 [Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002], 214). Augustine calls this a “commonly asked” question, though he ultimately does not provide an answer to it, as Aquinas observes when he takes it up.²⁸See John Rotelle’s discussion in Augustine, On Genesis, 214 n. 44, who identifies Origen and Jerome as proponents of the theory that heavenly bodies are enspirited by angels, and Basil and John of Damascus as proponents of the view that they are merely directed or governed by them. In his Enchiridion Augustine likewise confesses uncertainty both about the distinction between angels and archangels, as well as “whether the sun and the moon and all the stars belong to that same society, although some people think that there exist shining bodies that do not lack sense or intelligence.”²⁹Augustine, Enchiridion 15.58 (in On Christian Belief, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Michael Fiedrowicz, The Works of Saint Augustine 1/8 [Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2005], 308). What is striking is that, for Augustine, the only question is whether angels inhabit stars or merely direct them. That the life and movement of stars owe to angels in some way or another is simply taken for granted.

Augustine also emphasizes the location of angels within the material universe, including those rebellious angels who turned against God. At one point in his literal commentary on Genesis he speculates that perhaps angels resided in the “higher region of the air” and then after their sin “were thrust down into this foggy darkness,” with catastrophic impact upon the climate.³⁰Augustine, On Genesis 3.10.14. These lower regions of the air serve as a kind of prison for demons, whom Augustine regards as now possessing “airy” bodies, to wait for judgment.³¹Augustine, On Genesis 3.10.15. Later he asserts that “the angels that sinned were thrust down into this foggy atmosphere round the earth as into a prison, where they are being kept in order to be punished at the judgment,”³²Augustine, On Genesis 11.26.33. attributing this view to the faith of the apostles (likely drawing from 2 Pet 2:4). Similarly, in The City of God Augustine likewise envisages angels at their fall “thrust down to the lower parts of this world, where they are, as it were, incarcerated.”³³Augustine, The City of God 11.33, trans. Marcus Dods (New York: Modern Library, 2000), 377.

Elsewhere in the literal commentary on Genesis, in explicating the hierarchical nature of creation and God’s providential rule over it, Augustine asserts that not only do all things depend on God but that God has subjected physical creation to the spiritual rule of angels:

To the sublime angels, who enjoy God in obedience and serve him in bliss, are subjected every bodily nature, every non-rational form of life, every will whether weak or bent. This is so that they may act upon or together with the things subjected to them, whatever the order of nature requires in all of them, on the orders of him to whom all things are subject.³⁴Augustine, On Genesis 8.24.45.

Augustine does not clarify what exactly he means in asserting that angels “act upon or together with” material things, but it is clear that he regards them as having a direct influence upon creation. Throughout this section Augustine emphasizes the importance of angels in executing God’s government of the world: angels are internally assisted by God; he speaks to them; they gaze upon God; and they execute God’s providential direction over the rest of creation.³⁵Augustine, On Genesis 8.25.46–47.

But do angels actually assist God in the work of creation proper? On this question Augustine makes a fine distinction, granting that they aid in the “production” of the world but are not properly called creators in the way God is: “Although they do, so far as they are permitted and commissioned, aid in the production of the things around us, yet not on that account are we to call them creators, any more than we call gardeners the creators of fruits and trees.”³⁶Augustine, The City of God 12.24. Thus, angels are given a significant role in the work of creation, but it is distinguished from the work of creation ex nihilo. Just a bit later Augustine admits uncertainty as to how exactly the angels assist God in creating things but insists that God has a role in creation proper only to himself.³⁷Augustine, The City of God 12.25.

Angels play an important role in the thought of Thomas Aquinas as well. Questions pertaining to the placement and movement of angels in relation to material bodies occupy a particularly significant amount of space in his treatment of angelology in Questions 50–64 of Part 1 of the Summa Theologica. He considers it theologically important to maintain, for example, that angels cannot occupy two places at once, that two angels cannot occupy the same place at the same time, that the movement of an angel from one place to another is not instantaneous but requires a duration of time, and many other such views that assign angels a spatial existence in the physical world.³⁸On these various points, see especially Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q.52, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Notre Dame: Christian Classics, 1948). Like Augustine, Thomas also emphasizes that the current location of both angels and demons, until judgment day, is within “our atmosphere.”³⁹Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q.64 a.4.

In the context of addressing whether the angels were created before the corporeal world, Thomas acknowledges a diversity of views among the church fathers but favors the view that they were created along with the material universe. His rationale for this is that “the angels are part of the universe: they do not constitute a universe of themselves; but both they and corporeal natures unite in constituting one universe.”⁴⁰Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q.61 a.3. It is evident here that Thomas does not conceive of angels simply inhabiting the universe; rather, angels actually constitute the universe, in union with corporeal things.

Thomas thinks that angels were created in this manner in order to govern and rule over the physical creation. Thus, in affirming that the angels were created in the “empyrean heaven” (that is, the highest heaven of ancient cosmologies, supposedly composed of fire), Thomas writes, “Spiritual creatures were so created as to bear some relationship to the corporeal creature, and to rule over every corporeal creature. Hence it was fitting for the angels to be created in the highest corporeal place, as presiding over all corporeal nature.”⁴¹Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q.61 a.4. Later, in his treatment of the government of the world, after establishing that angels exist according to hierarchies and orders, he writes, “As the inferior angels who have the less universal forms, are ruled by the superior; so are all corporeal things ruled by the angels.”⁴²Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q.110 a.1. In defense of this claim Thomas supplies an array of quotes from the church fathers, all asserting that all visible things are ruled over by angels. After this, Thomas argues that although corporeal bodies do not obey the mere will of an angel, they do obey the angels with regard to local movement.⁴³Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q.110 a.2–3. To defend this claim, Thomas asserts that “the angels use corporeal seed to produce certain effects” and that this would be impossible without local movement.⁴⁴Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q.110 a.3.

Like Augustine, Thomas understands this role of government over material creation given to the angels in terms of a hierarchical vision of creation. In his view, angels (as spiritual creatures) occupy a “higher” place than corporeal creatures, with humanity (a composite creature at once spiritual and corporeal) in a sort of mid-level position.⁴⁵This is evident, for example, in how Thomas starts off the treatise on angels in Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q.50. In turn, “the angels in their own nature stand midway between God and man.”⁴⁶Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q.64 a.4. As McIntosh puts it, angels “fill an ontological gap that would otherwise intervene between God and man if they did not exist.”⁴⁷McIntosh, The Flame Imperishable, 187. Thus, Thomas argues that angels can know material things because human beings can know material things, and “whatever the lower power can do, the higher can do likewise.”⁴⁸Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q.57 a.1. Thomas consistently argues that the higher bodies influence and govern the lower ones. Later, for example, he insists that heavenly bodies are the cause of what is produced in bodies here below, such that the movement of physical things is caused by the movement of heavenly things.⁴⁹Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q.115 a.3.

3. How Classical Angelology Can Blunt the Charge of Arbitrariness in Angelic Fall Theodicy

This high account of the role of angels in relation to God’s physical creation stands at odd with how angels are often understood today. In contemporary theology, angels often function somewhat like an appendage: they are affirmed, but they do not do much work theologically (aside from occasional supernatural appearances). Augustine and Thomas, by contrast, consider them to play an integral role in creation, such that the particular quality of the world God has made cannot be understood without consideration of their agency.⁵⁰The general significance of angelology for Augustine can be seen in The City of God, where Augustine sets his two-fold division of humanity into good and evil in the broader context of the angelic division, such that there are not four cities (good angels, bad angels, good humans, bad humans) but simply two (Augustine, The City of God 12.1). They are the governors and preservers of the very structure of physical reality. Angels can be summarized as C. S. Lewis describes them in his novel, That Hideous Strength: “those high creatures whose activity builds what we call Nature.”⁵¹C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups, reprint ed. (New York: Scribner, 2003), 199.

Contemporary Christians need not adhere to classical angelology in all its details (e.g., the ancient cosmology in which it is embedded) in order to appreciate its relevance to angelic fall theodicy. Two aspects of classical angelology are particularly worth identifying: (1) the relation of angels to material creation and (2) the role of stewardship over material creation that God entrusted to angels. Both points undercut the concern that angelic fall theodicy is arbitrary (a frequent charge from critics). For instance, angelic fall theodicy is sometimes unfairly represented as involving the direct, local activity of demons upon creation. Ronald Osborne, in his book Death Before the Fall, even references theories about “demonic biological experimentation or gene manipulation”—though he distinguishes such theories from the more thoughtful angelic fall theodicy of C. S. Lewis.⁵²Ronald E. Osborn, Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014), 138. Shandon Guthrie thinks that angelic fall theodicies require the belief that “demons (with Satan being among them) can directly interact with and manipulate parts of the physical universe.” Guthrie objects to this possibility on the grounds that “immaterial substances are incommensurable with material substances without there being a special provision for such interaction.”⁵³Shandon L. Guthrie, “A New Challenge to a Warfare Theodicy,” International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 5.2 (2017): 38.

This conception of the relation of spiritual and material substances is common in modern thought, perhaps the default of modern thought—but it is at odds with classical Christian ways of thinking about angels. For Augustine or Thomas, and the classical angelology they represent, spiritual and material substances are not incommensurable but inextricably intertwined, together constituting the nature of the created reality. Thus, angelic fall theodicy need not posit the direct or local activity of particular demons in order to account for natural evil, any more than young-earth creationists conceive of Adam and Eve directly harming nature through their actions in order to explain their understanding of the effects of the human fall on nature. Rather, it is the presence of evil itself that introduces inherently corrosive, destructive tendencies. These destructive tendencies cannot be limited to spiritual reality and hermetically sealed off from physical reality, since the spiritual and physical are interwoven from the beginning. Thus, the plausibility of angelic fall theodicy does not turn on the power of demons but the power of evil.

Osborn, following a criticism of John Polkinghorne, objects that the angelic fall theodicy of C. S. Lewis “remains very much unresolved since there is no clear answer to the question of how these dark powers originated and why God should have permitted them to wreak havoc for so long.”⁵⁴Osborn, Death Before the Fall, 150. But if we approach angelic fall theodicy from the vantage point of the angelology represented by Augustine and Thomas, we are less likely to conceive of the matter in terms of God’s permitting demons to wreak havoc upon the world. For if it is the natural province of angels to govern the world, it is more difficult to imagine how their fall into evil could not affect the status of creation. After all, if angels exist in tight interrelation to physical reality and are in fact charged with stewardship over material bodies, it is difficult to imagine that the bending of their wills to evil would have a purely benign effect upon physical reality. The general relation of “higher” created things (like angels) to “lower” created things (like atoms or stars) might be compared, as a point of analogy, to the relation of a pregnant woman and the child growing within, where alcohol or substance abuse affects not just her but the child as well.

None of this is intended to establish the exact truthfulness of the classical angelology represented by theologians like Augustine and Thomas, nor to respond to every other possible criticism of angelic fall theodicy. However, if the angelology of Augustine and Thomas (and, for that matter, Lewis and Tolkien) is accepted, then the charge of arbitrariness against the mechanism of angelic fall theodicy is reduced. In fact, it seems plausible that we will be sympathetic to the kind of creation account told in The Silmarillion, including the role it assigns to the evil Valar, just to the extent that we are in tune with these older Christian instincts concerning angels. In my own experience, I have observed it to be a nearly universal rule that those who scoff at angelic fall theodicy tend to be less familiar with Tolkien, while those who take it seriously tend to read him quite closely.

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