[The Saucepan Man]

First of all, let me reiterate that, in this thread, I am discussing Iluvatar/Eru, the fictional divine character created by JRR Tolkien. I feel perfectly able to speculate on what Eru, as a fictional character, might or might not have intended, but I am unable (and wholly unqualified) to speculate upon the the purposes of God, or Allah, or Vishnu, or any other divine being that is worshipped in reality. Clearly, personal beliefs add (often immense) value to the discussions, but let's remember that we are discussing a work of fiction.

And to answer a point that you raised, aragronreborn, I see "good" and "evil" in the context of this discussion as being defined by the way in which the characters in JRRT's tales acted. In LotR, certainly, it is fairly easy to spot which are the good characters and which are the evil ones. There are a few borderline, for example Boromir, Denethor and Gollum. Boromir acted in the way he did out of a desire to do good (save his people and defeat Sauron). He is therefore an intrinsically good character. And he ultimately redeemed himself for his weak-willed moment, when he gave into the power of the Ring. Denethor and Gollum, on the other hand, are both irredeemably corrupted by the power of evil. Denethor gives into hopelessness in the face of what he regards as irresistable evil. Gollum is directly influenced by the evil power of the Ring. Both are weak-willed, but do not redeem themselves by any conscious exercise of free will (unlike Boromir). But neither is either of them intrinsically evil (in the sense, say, that Sauron is). I do not agree with you, aragornreborn, that they are punished by Eru for giving into evil, but I do agree that they had a choice not to give into it and ended up making the wrong choice. They therefore suffer the inevitable consequences of that failure.

I remain of the view that Eru did not intend evil to occur. I agree with you, aragornreborn, that "inevitable" is a better word than "necessary". Evil was an inevitable part of his plan. Eru gave the beings that he created free will. If you give someone free will, that means they are free to make a choice in what they do, including making a choice to do evil (in the cases of Sauron and Saruman) or not to resist the influence of evil (in Denethor and Gollum's cases).

That having being said, I think that what Aratlithiel says is true to an extent. If the beings that Eru created have free will, then it is not in itself inevitable that good will prevail. This is why I was interested in exporing whether it was open to Eru personally to intervene in the struggles of the beings that he created. Because, if he could, then it was inevitable that good would prevail (assuming that this was his will) because he could intervene to make it so. But then, why give beings free will if he was always going to "fix" things if they did not exercise that free will correctly? There is a tension between his gift of free choice and his apparent omnipotence. Unless, of course, he was not concerned with how matters turned out?

This brings me back to my intial view that, having created beings with free will, it was up to those beings to determine the fate of Arda. In that sense, it might be said that Eru has no opponents because he is not "playing the game". He set it in motion, but then stood back and let the beings he created battle it out.

I am conscious that my views are evolving as this thread continues. This is because these are issues which I have not previously spent a great deal of time thinking about. But, I am enormously enjoying doing so now (and I reserve the right to change my mind again depending upon the content of future posts!). [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

[ January 24, 2003: Message edited by: The Saucepan Man ]