[tumhalad2]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

I'd be careful... this cuts both ways: what's true of the Valar in terms of fallibility is true of Morgoth. And, for what it's worth, from the way it's presented, the Curse on the Children of Húrin is MORE dependent on Túrin's free agency than the Doom of the Noldor is on the free agency of the Elves.

True, Morgoth is just as (if not more, considering his rapid existential decline) fallible as the Valar. I also agree that the Curse is presented as being dependent on Turin's free agency as opposed to metaphysical designs (at least to some degree).

But the point is that Turin's free agency is limited by his lack moral certainty. He does exhibit pride, and repeatedly rejects the advice of friends and those wiser than himself, but we need to bare in mind that as far as Turin is concerned, the advice of others constitutes only marginally better courses of action than his own decisoin. We may fault Turin for rejecting good advice, but we cannot fault Turin for rejecting divine will. Nowhere in the text is it implied that providential forces are at work in Turin's universe, as they are in LoTR.

At this point I need to address another criticism. Given that we know Eru essentially grants the Valar power in Middle-earth, doesn't it follow that all this philosophical wrangling is just insubstantive talk? Well, no. It is true that Eru does give the Valar some kind of temporal authority, but we are never left thinking that he has cut himself off from the world entirely. As far as I understand it, Eru is the Christian god, and therefore must necessarily have certain attributes that the Christian god also possesses. If you argue that he does not possess these attributes, you are in fact admitting that Eru is necessarily imperfect and deistic, something that Tolkien seems not to have intended.

When I say that fate is "divinely orchestrated" I do not mean to discount the obvious free will exhibited by the characters in LoTR. "Fate" as a concept does not define people's individual actions; rather fate is far more obviously at work at a "macro" level. Thus, Bilbo was "meant" to find the ring. Although Bilbo's choices contributed, to some degree, to his being in Gollum's cave, readers are led to understand that his being there was not a coincidence.
"Fate" as understood through LoTR, possesses a benevolent teleological quality that works in tandem with characters' free will. The benevolent providential forces that undeniably suffuse the story in LoTR do not exist at the expense of free-will; they work, literally, in mysterious ways. But it is present.

I made the point that Gandalf is the first to mention that forces other than mere chance may be at work in the case of Frodo's possessing the ring. Given that I had also denied the completely divine authority of Melian and other "angelic" beings, it was pointed out that I can't have it both ways - I must accept that Gandalf also possesses provisional knowledge according to these standards. Indeed he does, but my point was not that Gandalf has a kind of one way cell phone connection to God. He is just the first to make mention of this theme, which is elaborated upon in throughout the novel. The reader is never left to doubt the presence of a benevolent will at work, countering the movements of Sauron in mysterious ways.

I'm not contesting Tolkien's metaphysical explanations; I'm arguing that they are not adequate to just explain away the philosophical issue of the Problem or Evil in Tolkien's works. I've tried to argue that CoH and LoTR present different "moral universes" largely because they present different implicit cosmologies: one in which Eru is effectively present and one in which he is explicitly absent.

Neither work is wholly atheistic or wholly providential; as many have pointed out, divine powers are explicitly present in CoH, and the providential presence is obvious in LoTR. But in each work the emphasis is different.