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Originally Posted by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh
obloquy: These are great points; but if we take the speculations of the Athrabeth to their logical conclusion, the Elves and some of the Edain hold to some belief in the incarnation of Eru. Tolkien seems to have been unhappy with the obvious connection with the Christian story of the incarnation of Christ, but the parallels are striking. Could it be that Eru incarnate would be vulnerable to physical injury and death in the same way as was Christ? Would he have to obey the same physical laws as all inhabitants of Arda if he came into his own creation? The Athrabeth points out that Eru would need to be at once inside and outside Arda, thus being divided and presumably reduced in potency in the incarnate form; so it bears consideration that perhaps Eru incarnate could be stabbed in the back and physically killed.
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If Eru is omnipotent then incarnation would not have to 'divide' him at all (any more than one can divide infinity in two & lessen it). He would only be 'reduced in potency' if he chose to be - or if, as in Christianity, the 'reduction in potency' was a necessity for the kind of 'redemption' he sought to bring about. Of course, like Aslan, it could well be that Eru had to die in order to defeat Morgoth finally - perhaps the hroa Eru incarnated into would be of the corrupted matter of Arda & Eru was to go through a 'resurrection', 'purifying' that very matter in an act that would create ripples throughout the stuff of Arda - the 'pure', unmarred resurrected form of Eru would act like a 'water purification tablet' (to put it crudely). One could certainly see that this would require Eru to incarnate - however much of a 'parody of Christianity it may have seemed to Tolkien.