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Originally Posted by Aiwendil
I don't think that, in a Judeo-Christian-Tolkienian context, the origin of evil can be any further reduced than to free will. Free will is a strange and in some ways paradoxical concept, but one thing it does very well is act as a metaphysical device for the creation of evil. The paradox lies, I think, not in the generation of evil by free will, but in the generation of free will by supreme good. This is in my opinion an unanswerable question, and an unresolved contradiction. If you're going to suspend disbelief and accept Tolkien's world though (or, I would add, Judeo-Christian theology), you simply have to accept it.
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I have often tried in vain to grapple with the concept of free will as something bestowed upon mankind by a Creator. I wonder the extent to which Tolkien felt the weight of the paradox while creating Middle-earth and, more importantly, while contemplating his own faith. I gather (possibly entirely inaccurately) from the Legendarium and
Letters that he considers the Almighty capable of creating a will separate of His own, for the simple fact that he is omnipotent in the purest possible sense of the word. Many find this paradoxical simply because, logically, the Creator must create inherently of Himself; where would any separate building blocks come from?
The old Vedic concepts of Brahman and Purusha seem particularly pertinent to any discussion of will (though how pertinent they are to Middle-earth is debatable). Forgive me, Hindu Downers, if my knowledge of the Vedas proves skewed. Purusha, to my understanding, is deemed by the Vedas to be the Ultimate Self (Atman): it encompasses --
is -- everything. Brahman is the 'physical' manifestation of Purusha: a split in the Self occurs literally infinitely, on an infinite planes, wherein Brahman becomes the physically limited entity 'the universe'.
The Vedas posit that each of us is none other than the Purusha, and that individual egos merely reflect a 'dream' of Purusha, a stream of consciousness in the physical Brahman which feels it is its own Atman because it is given a name and told that it is, for example, 'you', 'him', 'John', 'my son', 'his brother', etc. and that the collection of ever-dividing and -dying cells that forms the physical body is 'your body', or even is 'you'. So on some level every unenlightened person -- that is, everyone who has not rid himself of ego and recognized himself as the All-One -- is really just Purusha playing games with Itself, dreaming something that is not inherently 'real'. Although the leaps of faith that those of us who remain unenlightened have to take in order to believe that God is playing mind games with himself are staggering, this model explains free will rationally in the sense that it is logical within the confines of the Vedic canon.
How would Tolkien react to this notion? Does the concept of the All-Knowing Creator as, on some level, thinking
wrongly that he is creating something that inherently Not Himself appalling to Catholics? How would he react to a fan asking of him, 'Is Gollum, on some level, Eru?' (These questions are not rhetorical, by the way. Although none here can speak on Tolkien's behalf, there are some who are far more versed in Catholic canon -- and in the Professor's own beliefs as laid down in his extensive body of work -- than I.)