[Lord Gothmog]

Nar, I thank you for your welcome and your compliments. To answer some of the points you raise:

I'm not sure Manwe couldn't go wrong, though-- couldn't he be too narrow, didactic, strict or intolerant? He doesn't seem to have fallen that way, but could he?

Some would view his treatment of the Elves who did not come to Aman in the first place and the Noldor who left, in just the terms you say he doesn't seem to have shown.

Moving beyond the issue of good/bad and varieties of temptation and fall, is it really the case that free will is only indicated by this choice of good or bad? Couldn't there be different aspect of good-- different ways of building, sub-creating, or living, on which a free choice could be excercised? After all, there is more than one 'good' vala (is that the right word?) --each contributing goodness to the world in a different way. Can we go further and say that within their different natures, they can excercise a choice as to how they develop their specialty in the creation?

In my post I was compearing Manwe and Melkor who seem to be the extream opposites of the spectrum. However, I also used both Ulmo and Tulkas to show that there are Valar who fall between these. In fact All of the Ainur not just those who came to Arda, fall between these extreams. Also it is the choice that comes from 'Free Will'. Do you choose good or evil, then which path within either good or evil do you follow. In Melkor's case he was at the darkest end of the spectrum and he chose to walk the Darkest path of all. So Yes each of the 'Good' Valar would act in a different way and show different aspects of 'Good'.

Amarinth

melkor did emanate from eru who is the source of everything, and by the principle of the conservation of mass if melkor hath evil in him then so should eru. if eru is pure good, then melkor needs attain evil from a source outside of eru that, by definition, does not exist. in spite of this simple logic though i believe quite differently, that is, eru is just good and evil is just melkor

I used the terms Light and Dark to avoid 'Good' and 'Evil' as while I believe that Melkor was Dark by nature due to the Dark side of Iluvatar, this does not mean that Iluvatar was evil, only that he had both sides to him. It was Melkor who had too much of the Darkness in him.

from what i understand of the silm it was somewhat of a process rather than a matter of being that melkor came to wear the face of evil -- he was first made sentient (birth of the ainur), then given self-expression (music of the world), then began self-will (marring of arda) and finally self-rule, declaring himself the dominator of arda. he first began exploring the possibilities of evil with disruption of the music of the ainur.

Yes, but without his dark nature how would he have come to this path? No other of the greatest powers even concidered it.

by the time of the making of arda melkor had of course completely tumbled off the path set out by eru and made his self-will painfully manifest in arda. it is at this stage when evil had clearly been created, by melkor and not eru, and made tangible in the material world. certainly melkor had the capacity to create and destroy, and by fashioning for himself a different role and destiny in which he alone was the motivation, he had recreated himself as his finest masterpiece. he had created evil. acknowledged that the ingredients for it he derived from eru -- greatness, talent, power -- but the recipe he concocted himself.

True it was Melkor's choice that brought about the Evil in Arda but the darkness of Melkor had to come from Iluvatar. It is for that reason I said that Melkor was Dark by Nature but Evil by Choice.