A few years back I was talking to an eminent theologian when he remarked that, while the Church had good theologies of salvation, redemption and suffering, its theology of creation was thin.

He should have read The Silmarillion. Tolkien is the theologian of creation par-excellence because he was himself a creator (or a sub-creator as he put it): through his entire adult life he struggled with the contradictory demands of fashioning a coherent world that also satisfied his understanding of human and divine nature. The creation myth that begins The Silmarillion is perhaps, The Ainulindalë, the most coherent expression of a true theology of creation yet written and it raises for those of us who also profess to create the responsibility and privilege that Tolkien presents to us: that when the Music of Eru is played aright at the end, then He will take our own creations and give to them the Secret Fire, and they will live.