Eru will enter Eä: The Creational-Eschatological Hope of J.R.R. Tolkien

This paper aims to demonstrate that Tolkien's hope for a future restoration of nature rests upon a fundamentally Catholic understanding of nature and history, and more precisely Thomistic. To do so, the paper will first look at central aspects of this future « natural hope » in Tolkien's works. References to Christopher Tolkien's History of Middle-Earth will serve to underline Tolkien's conception of what theologians call “eschatological hope.