[Formendacil]

If we're taking sides, put me down solidly on the Puddlegum/Pitchwife side of temporal vs. spiritual. For what it's worth, I don't think the analogy can be made that Valinor is equivalent to the Christian conception of Heaven--even transposing it into Middle-earthic terms.

For one thing, Heaven in Christian theology* is only a place after Jesus takes a body and dies and ascends to be with his Father. It is also only at that time that the souls of the dead can conceive of Heaven as a post-mortem option--because Heaven is not "place above the world where God is where good people go when they die" but "the place where Jesus is, which is the ultimate goal of the Christian life--to be like Him, so that we may be with Him as He is."

Since Middle-earth never has (or has not had yet, as of Frodo's time, depending how you read the "Athrabeth") Eru Incarnate, there is nowhere that can be considered "Heaven, aka the place where Eru Incarnate lives and we want to live with him." If Valinor is a place of retirement for the Dead, it is more akin to Jewish Sheol (and the Halls of Mandos definitely has shades of this), or even the Catholic conception of Purgatory. If I remember aright, Tolkien does say somewhere that Frodo's stay in Valinor was more of a Purgatory than Heaven--a place to be purified of what had happened in his life. We should note that while Purgatory is generally considered to be an unpleasant place to be, it is not an unpleasant place to be going to, since it means that you've escaped the alternative (aka Hell) and are on the right track to eventually make it to Heaven.

There is another aspect to the Christian conception of Heaven that needs to be taken into account, however, and that is the post-worldly quality of the place. Heaven isn't just somewhere to go after we die, it is the new world after death. It's pretty difficult to separate out "new heavens and a new earth" (aka the heavenly Jerusalem) from "Heaven" per se. And, as far as that goes, there IS a whole tradition in Tolkien of Arda Remade which matches this idea of post-worldly Heaven quite nicely.... but that's after the Dagor Dagorath, after the Elves and the Valar grow weary of this world and envy the Gift of Men, when Eru remakes things.

And Valinor isn't Arda Remade. It isn't even Arda Unmarred... merely a part of Arda Marred that has been preserved from the stain of Melkor in a unique way. It is a sort of Elven purgatory, still attached to the physical world, since the Elves are uniquely bound to the physical world, but it isn't the world as it should be, nor as it will be, when it is remade.

There's also a whole possible distinction to be made between Valinor and Tol Eressëa, but that might be splitting hairs a little more than I need to. I think my point is made...

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Yes, time goes on and affects the traveller. However, the traveller would not feel the time. I suppose that Valinor is similar to Lorien in this sense, except even stronger. Sam didn't want to believe that he spent a whole month in Lorien, because he didn't feel the time pass by. Even though Frodo and Bilbo would eventually die in Valinor, they wouldn't really be aware/conscious of the years that go by.

The Lórien/Valinor comparison is probably a lot more fruitful than Heaven/Valinor, but I think there are some issues with it. First of all, it's one thing thing to say Valinor is like Lórien, it's another thing to say that the voyage to Valinor is like Lórien.

Aside from that quibble, however, I'm still not sure that Valinor would have the same relationship with time that Lórien did. Lórien's time-dilation effect is directly the byproduct of Galadriel's use of Nenya. It was, in that respect, an artificial defence against the effects of time in the world. While there is a timelessness in Valinor, it stems from different causes (certainly, it doesn't stem from a Ring made with Celebrimbor's craft and Sauron's influence). In Lórien, the effects of time are halted by playing with time itself, it seems. In Valinor, I think the effects of time are avoided, not by avoiding time, but because the stain of Morgoth is kept away, and thus "death" does not enter.

Nonetheless, insofar as even the Valar will someday envy the Gift of Men, I think we can take it for certain that time does flow in Valinor, and presumably at a more or less normal rate.




*I am speaking more specifically of Catholic theology, which is the pertinent theology if we're using Tolkien as our barometer anyway, but I think I'm speaking in generic enough terms that the Catholic/any Christian distinction is unnecessary.