Ok, so why Angelology also saves the Silmarillion

I wrote recently on how it is theology that “saves the Silmarillion,” providing its foregrounded history of the Elves with its own sense of “background,” the necessary lens for “viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist,” and hence the requisite “new unattainable vistas [being] again revealed.” Perhaps more immediate in this regard than the theology of the Silmarillion, however, would be its “angelology,” for lack of a better term (the Ainur/Valar are angelic, but they are not angels–they’re simply Ainur). This is brought out in many places, but this passage from the Ainulindale is perhaps the first:

For the Children of Iluvatar were conceived by him alone; and they came with the third theme, and were not in the theme which Iluvatar propounded at the beginning, and none of the Ainur had part in their making. Therefore when they beheld them, the more did they love them, being things other than themselves, strange and free, wherein they saw the mind of Iluvatar reflected anew, and learned yet a little more of his wisdom, which otherwise had been hidden even from the Ainur.

In other words, in the Ainur is embodied, among other things, the very same love of otherness that Tolkien in places associates particularly with his Elves, making the Ainur into the “Elves’ Elves.” To restate Tolkien’s own criticism, or at least concern, regarding the Silmarillion, therefore, it is that the fairies, the usual agents of Fantasy, Recovery, Escape, and Consolation, are themselves in need of undergoing these same operations. Who will be there to “enchant” the Elves when the Elves need to be enchanted? The Ainur.