[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

How else does one explain the "coeval"="contemporary" situation then? All the Valar are brethren, but why would all necessarily have to have been thought into being at the same instance? I'm not saying that wasn't the case, but I don't think it's clear one way or the other.

Read what I just said in what you quoted. The point is, you cannot use the word "contemporary", because there is no *time* when the Valar are created (or "when" the Valar are created). Therefore, if we use the word that Manwë and Melkor are "first", we must use it in metaphorical sense. And that metaphore can mean, for instance, that they had the first place in Eru's mind (sort of, the most important, or whichever other way you could - again more metaphorically than not - express it). And lo - we are back again at the original thought: if both of them had the first place in Eru's mind, then they are "coeval" in this respect. Plain and simple.

In any case, it all comes down to that Eru thought them equally important - that would go along with what you are saying further about authority eventually deriving from the Creator simply because he is the Creator. To borrow words from elsewhere, "power resides where people believe it to reside", or in this case, not the people, but the Creator - even if all other Valar were equally "powerful" (in the sense of how much they can do, make, spawn, whatever), or if let's say one of our two was not in fact as powerful as the other, then because Eru sees them that way, he makes them that way. (In contrary to the quote I used above, this is sort of "real" way of giving them the power, not just "imaginary" like in the case of the people-power example; because Eru is the Creator and his mere thought in fact becomes reality - logically.) That is one way to approach it. Another one (and the simpler one) is to say that simply Manwë and Melkor were created with the most capabilities, the biggest potential. Trivially speaking, Ulmo could create only things related to water, while Melkor "shared the gifts of all his bretheren" - and so did Manwë, in a certain way (and slightly less than Melkor). That is how I have seen it, always.

I wonder if there is another way to put it so that I make myself clear. Okay, for example - this is going to be a really baaad example, but I think it might be sufficient enough. Do you know the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game? (Or anything sufficiently similar. Whoever has no idea what it is, better maybe skip the rest of this paragraph so that it does not confuse you.) That's a crude example at best, but let's say: each Vala is a character with one class and several levels in it. Tulkas is level 10 fighter, Oromë is level 10 ranger, Yavanna is level 10 druid. And now we suddenly have Melkor, who is a multiclass of level 20 fighter/ranger/druid... and we have Manwë, who is a multiclass of level 19 fighter/ranger/druid... See what I have in mind? Sharing all the gifts of their bretheren, being more "proficient" at them, being almost equal in this respect (in this way, they have much more in common with each other than with the rest), and yet at the same time, Melkor is the stronger.

That's the reason I favor the “Yin-Yang" approach. The two of them could be connected in the mind of Eru by being opposites; Manwe being the "anti-Melkor"', there to oversee and ensure the Creator's purposes are pursued, as opposed to Melkor seeking to tear down and rebuild to his own designs.

That's what I agree with completely as well. "Yin-Yang" is a good way to put it (or Form's equally good comparison to Lucifer-Michael, for that matter, which looks at it from different perspective, and both of those comparisons can make the view more "plastic"). But that is also why I say they had the same amount of (or same kind of) power, or potential. Or, in the terms of my Dungeons and Dragons example, we have two almost the same characters, only one is good and one evil.