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Originally Posted by Eomer of the Rohirrim
To be a, no doubt very basic, Devil's advocate, isn't there conflict between means and ends here? Great atrocities have been carried out in the pursuit of a higher purpose. Or is it just that Eru decides what is moral and what is not?
Maybe then Gandalf's decision was not a moral one, but there's the added bonus in the story of the author postulating a god. In non-fiction at least it's a classic moral dilemma, but it could lose something in adaptation.
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I think the problem here is that you cannot look at The Lord of the Rings as the Arda cosmology.
Tolkien labored his entire career over the Arda cosmology; The Lord of the Rings represented one phase of his literary career.
Eru does not exist in the Lord of the Rings.
I was wrong in saying that the Lord of the Rings is trans-moral. In fact, the morality behind the Lord of the Rings is of a staunchly Catholic variety: a moral battle taking place on a plane on which Deity does not exist; there are, however, three 'transcendental' figures who impose themselves on the narrative: Gandalf, Wisdom; Sauron, Corruption; and Saruman, Wisdom Corrupted.
Then there is the Hobbit: there is no Deity and only a vague allusion to Transcendental force - though there is magic of a childlike variety, to be sure.
Then there is the Silmarillion: it is this piece which is trans-moral, as it presents to us the paradox of Evil as an Illusion which God caused to be.
Gandalf is the link between Trans-Morality and Childhood Faerie Tale: he saves Faramir as a moral act on the earthly plane which exists between the two, because he alone knows the trans-moral implications of sacrificing the lives of others.