Aelianus once suggested to me that the principal difference between the elves and the men in Tolkien is not their nature but their end: the elves are directed by God to a merely natural end, whereas the men are directed to a supernatural end. This is why the elves are destined to remain in Arda, that is, on earth, since they can find there all that is necessary for them to achieve their goal, whereas men by ‘the gift of Iluvatar’, that is, by death, go elsewhere, the elves know not whither.
Savonarola suggested – though Bellarmine didn’t like it – that the inhabitants of Limbo would after the resurrection have dealings with the saints, sharing at least some of the same space and speaking to them.
Since those in Limbo have the same nature as the saints, but only attain a natural end, they would be after the resurrection rather similar to Tolkien’s elves. It is true that those in Limbo had a supernatural end insofar as they are members of the human race, but they were never personally proportioned to the beatific vision by receiving any actual grace, and so they would not experience any longing for it, or have any sense that their natural fulfilment was insufficient for them.
(Garrigou-Lagrange claims in various places that those in Limbo have a will that is averted from God as their supernatural end, and that by this fact that their will is also averted from God as their natural end. If this were true then their lot would seem to be very unpleasant, but I don’t know why he says it. Original sin implies an absence of charity in the will, but not a state of ‘having turned away from God’ in it.)
We can be tempted to imagine the inhabitants of Limbo after the resurrection as being like over-grown children, or like the adults on earth who have Down’s syndrome. But this would be quite wrong. Their intellects would function excellently, and their wills would love God with a natural love, and each other with noble friendship, and their emotions would be in complete harmony with reason. God might even give them certain natural gifts that the saints would not possess, such as the gift of writing beautiful poetry or singing beautiful songs in honour of creation. Or even if the saints could do the same, their would surely be a style of speech and song unique to those who live by nature alone, in a natural purity of heart, yet without desire of friendship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost; just as the saints have no desire, for example, to be higher in glory than they are, or to have been the redeemer of the world.
If we put, then, Aelianus’s and Savonarola’s suggestion together, we come up with the question of this post: shall we see elves?
Laodicea 
July 22, 2018 at 9:46 pm
“Supernatural is a dangerous and difficult word in any of its senses, looser or stricter. But to fairies it can hardly be applied, unless super is taken merely as a superlative prefix. For it is man who is, in contrast to fairies, supernatural (and often of diminutive stature); whereas they are natural, far more natural than he. Such is their doom.”
Click to access fairystories-tolkien.pdf
July 22, 2018 at 9:52 pm
July 23, 2018 at 4:36 pm
I like this idea; it’s one I’ve mused about myself.
The Book of Revelation mentions a new heaven and a new earth. I do imagine that those assigned to “limbo” will inhabit the new earth. It will be similar to the original paradise, and these limbo inhabitants will be in a similar state of justice and integrity as Adam prior to the Fall, except there will be no cause for sin (the devil will finally be locked away, for one). Having paid the debt of original sin through death, they will be free to return to the original state of justice, though not to the glorified state seeing as they lacked supernatural grace and rebirth through baptism. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of heaven – those that passed on in a state of supernatural grace – will be free to walk about the new earth along with the limbo people and (I also presume) the newly restored wildlife. They will appear to the limbo people as resembling themselves yet more godly and angelic, though there will be no cause for the sin of idolatry on this account. The limbo people will have a very high degree of philosophical understanding of God, but they will not see His Essence as the glorified people will; so the former will appear to the latter as ignorant children in the realm of knowledge, despite being far more endowed than we are in this world.
The Greeks assigned the dead to Hades, but they also assigned their worthy men to Elysium, the Isle of the Heroes, which apparently was a more pleasant place than Hades. I don’t know if this Elysium was the Limbo of the Fathers or its own more permanent kind of limbo.
July 24, 2018 at 7:48 am
Maybe try and refer to real-life concepts of Elves as opposed to just those from blatantly acknowledged (by the author himself) fiction? You know, just a friendly tip.
July 25, 2018 at 2:25 pm
What are the real life concepts?
July 25, 2018 at 10:39 pm
Elves, Limbo and….? Any mention of these story-like fantasies in either the
Hebrew scriptures or the Christian New Covenant/Testament writings?
What about the dwarfs and giants etcetera, etcetera?
July 26, 2018 at 8:51 am
Nothing directly about Limbo, which is why it is a theological conclusion rather than a dogma of faith. Giants are mentioned in Genesis 6:4.
November 17, 2018 at 2:45 pm
This all strikes me as so much Pelagianism.
“It is true that those in Limbo had a supernatural end insofar as they are members of the human race, but they were never personally proportioned to the beatific vision by receiving any actual grace, . . .”
The admission “had a supernatural end” should show you that you need to start over. Everything else in your argument is based on treating this true supernatural end as completely irrelevant.
“Original sin implies an absence of charity in the will, but not a state of ‘having turned away from God’ in it.”
The traditional rite of Baptism treats infants as having been turned away from God by original sin. It’s not a mere absence of charity. It’s a deficiency. These are rational creatures lacking the means to achieve their supernatural end, and therefore they are turned away from that end. If it’s true of infants who reach the font, it’s true of infants who don’t. Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange (who, by the way, seems to have believed ardently in implicitism), is correct here.
November 17, 2018 at 2:48 pm
“Their intellects would function excellently, and their wills would love God with a natural love, and each other with noble friendship, and their emotions would be in complete harmony with reason.”
Why is this the case? Having lived in a state of concupiscence effected by original sin, why would they not endure the persistence of concupiscence? What is the mechanism that perfects their will? An infant with no virtuous habits and with a will deformed by concupiscence is resurrected. What part of the resurrection, absence a supernatural virtue, perfects the will? What is the basis for this perfection? It doesn’t seem to be supernatural grace.
November 17, 2018 at 3:00 pm
Additionally, original sin adds mankind to the devil’s dominion. This is why the traditional rite of Baptism entailed exorcism *before* Baptism. In the case of Limbo, nothing removes the person from the devil’s dominion. This is why the older view of limbo is that it is the limbus (edge) of Hell, where people are given the lightest of punishments, but they are punished eternally nonetheless.
The denial of the Beatific Vision is for those in Limbo a punishment for original sin. You would seem to make it a simple fact flowing from the non-vocation of these people to the Beatific Vision. This is not consistent with the Catholic Faith. In Adam, all were called. In Adam, all fell. We are speaking here of fallen people, such as we were before our own Baptism, our own brothers and sisters, and, for some of us, children. We are not speaking of silly elves from a children’s book.
We are speaking of Dinocrates, the brother of St. Perpetua, who died unbaptized. She saved him by her prayer, but only after seeing a truly sad vision of him with a disfigured face, trying to drink from a water container but unable to drink. Limbo is not the pit of Hell that we merit by our actual sins, but it is the denial of eternal life to people who were called to it, just as we were.
November 17, 2018 at 4:52 pm
I agree with much of that. Limbo is a part of hell where there is an eternal punishment for original sin; as St Thomas says, it is not simply the case that these souls do not have that which entitles them to heaven – they have that by which they deserve to be excluded from heaven. At the same time, as he also says, ‘to a sin contracted without pleasure there corresponds a punishment undergone without pain’. However the fact that they are turned away from God as supernatural end doesn’t seem to imply that they are turned away from him as natural end. The traditional rite of baptism presupposes that unbaptised babies in this world are under the dominion of the devil; however, Rome apparently did not approve the canon of the council of Carthage in 418 which described unbaptised children as being co-heirs of the devil after death.
St Thomas regards the fact that these souls as individuals were never proportioned to their supernatural end by the offer of actual grace as decisive for understanding their condition after death, and as explaining how the absence of the beatific vision, though inflicted as a punishment, implies no suffering.
Concupiscence does not exist in the separated soul (I prescind from the question of the effects of actual sin.) It arises because the goods of sense are better known to us in this life than the goods of intellect, and hence without grace more attractive. That the separated soul has a natural knowledge of God seems certain from the fact that such knowledge is within the power of natural reason, and these souls are better able to grasp immaterial objects than are philosophers on earth, not being weighed down by the corruptible body. Having no vices or concupiscence or motive for not loving God, this knowledge will presumably produced a natural love of God: “Pueri in originali decedentes, sunt quidem separati a Deo perpetuo quantum ad amissionem gloriae quam ignorant, non tamen quantum ad participationem naturalium bonorum quae cognoscunt” (De malo, 5, 3 ad 4).
Since their resurrection is not penal – their punishment is exclusion from the beatific vision – it cannot make their condition worse. I presume then that in some way God will preserve them from concupiscence after the resurrection, perhaps by the infusion of natural virtues, just as He will preserve them from all sins.
February 8, 2021 at 4:51 pm
https://www.thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com/post/the-vanishing-of-the-faeries