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Originally Posted by Lal
Now can we even say that a god like Eru is like the God known by all Christians anyway?
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Two issues, both raised before:
- Tolkien applied Christian percepts to interpreting and commenting on LotR
- how could two transcendent realities differ?
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Originally Posted by Lal
I still don't like what he does, I can find no justification for it beyond it being consistent with a god who would create Melkor (and allow Melkor to do what he wants, sing what he wants and then go on to create a world with innocent, organic beings within it, knowing that it will be tainted by Melkor).
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Interesting. Can you reconcile your own positions?
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Originally Posted by Lal
If the world was 'perfect' then there would be no need for inspirational figures such as Gandhi or the Dalai Lama. There would be no need for scientific endeavour or even education and we could all lie around on our chaise longues eating chocolate tangents for eternity. There would be no need for Art as the world would be so perfect why would we need to express any joy or sadness in it. And there would be NO Tolkien!
Darkness is essential to the creation of satisfying Art, without it there is no plot, we merely have a succession of thoroughly nice chaps and ladies being thoroughly nice to one another. A bit like one of those manufactured Disney stories about pretty princesses endlessly marrying handsome princes - the only way to increase the excitement is to increase the bling. Or those awful platitudes expressed on 'inspirational' posters that you used to get in the workplace. Poetry would all be like greetings cards and music would all be bland manufactured non-threatening pre-teen boyband pap. If you look at all the great pop and rock music it is there purely because of suffering and struggle - The Beatles wanted to break free of the limited expectations set on them and did it by becoming musicians. Art is the same - there would be no Pre-Raphaelites had they not been struggling against the establishment, and remember there would be no work by Tolkien to even discuss had he not suffered in his youth - he'd probably simply followed his father into banking.
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It seems that you consider(ed) Melkor to be quite good for the Creation!
As a matter of fact, I quite like your point that evil will bring about Gandhi or the Dalai Lama. There is an interesting concept in the catholic religion, felix culpa, the happy sin that would bring about a great saviour:
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Originally Posted by Introduction to Western Humanities -- Baroque & Enlightenment, Kansas State University
Easter Sunday in the Christian calendar is the day on which the Resurrection of Jesus from the Crucifixion (on Good Friday). The day in between is Holy Saturday, and is also the occasion for a mass specially designed for the occasion. In the Latin version, which was in use in the Catholic Church almost universally until the early 1960s, one of the lines in this mass is: O felix culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorem. We might translate this "O blessed sin [literally, happy fault] which which received as its reward so great and so good a redeemer."
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