Davem wrote:
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But surely 'Perfect' is Perfect & cannot be bettered. Perfect implies absence of any flaws. If a thing can be bettered it is not perfect. And if we are speaking of something made/concieved by a perfect being surely the thing should be beyond improvement?
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Again, I don't see why this need be so. I've even given an example where, in myh opinion (and, I'd venture to say, the opinion of a number of musical scholars), one work can be both greater and more imperfect than another. I think that Tolkien would say that Arda Healed is not an "improvement" upon Arda Unmarred; it's a different thing, and greater - even if Arda Unmarred would have been "perfect"
Mozart's 41st is just about perfect
as a Classical symphony. Beethoven's 5th is perhaps not perfect, but is more than a Classical symphony.
To take an example closer to home, as it were, I think a great many people feel the Silmarillion is a greater work than LotR, despite the fact that it is obviously more imperfect.
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As to the quotes you gave re: Arda Envinyantar - these are only Elvish speculations or hopes, it seems to me, & therefore we cannot necessarily take them as 'facts'.
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It certainly seems to me that Tolkien is speaking through Finrod's mouth - I would be very surprised indeed to discover evidence that Tolkien's views on the theology of Arda differed from Finrod's.
But in any case the first bit I quoted is spoken not by an Elf but by Manwe himself!