[Keneldil the Polka-dot]

Great thread. I will attempt to swim with the big fish in here.

Good = that which is consistant with the will of Eru. Evil = that which is not consistant with the will of Eru. Therefore, the ONLY thing that is inherently evil is to choose something that is not consistant with the will of Eru. Saucepan Man's comments were in the same vein.

So does the fact that Eru created a condition (free will) in which created beings could chose to go against his will mean he has evil within his being? I say no. The simple introduction of the possibility of choice is what opened the wide vista of evil. That does not mean Eru himself made evil choices.

It is an interesting circular point that Eru cannot go against his own will therefore can never be evil. I'd say if Eru ever did something that wasn't consistant, then THAT would be evil. Digression...

Another digression....does "good" really have any meaning without its opposite? No. What is light if there is no darkness? Before Eru allowed choices, there was only unity, no good or bad. Evil serves Eru's greater design because it owes its existance to his intention of free will.

I think perhaps this thread has moved beyond the original question, still:

Morgoth created the Orcs. He is their source. They are evil because of him

The power and influence of Morgoth directly ran through them, they were filled with his evil.

They are filled with Morgoth's evil, and it is because of this that they are not capable of good in any form.

I disagree with those things. The evil is of Melkor's intent, his choice against the will of Eru. Therefore it is his evil, not the Orcs. They had no hand in their own creation, no choice. Evil is not a substance or a stain or a thing to be passed on. It is a choice.

If orcs do have fea, then they can choose to do things that are evil, and be condemned by their choices. But beings with fea can also choose to do good. Just because we have no example of any orc ever doing that does not mean the possibility did not exist. If they had fea, then the possibility certainly did exist.

If orcs do not have fea, then they have no free will and are simply tools, extentions of the one that governs them. A tool cannot be evil. It cannot chose.

In my opinion, orcs had fea otherwise how could Tolkien say

I nearly wrote 'irredeemably bad'; but that would be going too far.

Orcs were not irredeemable. How would an orc ever be redeemed? By chosing to do things that were consistant with the will of Eru. How could they do that? I don't know, but they would have to have fea in order to even be able to choose.

If your understanding of that quote from the Silmarillion is correct, then how could there be a 'fallen state'? If no matter what we do, we are following Eru's plan, how could anything we do be outside that plan?

I can't remember who said this, and there is so much in this thread I lose track. I hope I am not taking someone out of context here. But to make my point: the "fallen state" is to chose to act against the will of Eru. The fact that all things work to enact the greater good of Eru's will does not change the evil in the intention to act against him.