[Nogrod]

I guess all the pantheons of the world have had their mercifuls and cruel ones, the goodies and the baddies; the bringers of plenty and the bringers of doom and damnation. When reduced to just one God on certain cultures, that One has retained those conflicting characteristics. Just look at Yahweh (Jehova), Allah or even the christian God.

So Eru willing to drown all the Numenorians seems to be nothing new from the higher beings as all the enemies of Islam will perish in the end, the unchristians will face eternal damnation in the Last Judgement, all the people had to drown in Noah's flood and so on. The problem we see arising in here I think, is the protestantic interpretation of the God which partly (but only partly) leaves this other side of the coin behind and wishes to stick to the purely loving and good God. With this presupposition - and trying to see Eru as a christian God-like - we face a dilemma: how could Eru do that? If we stick to the traditional Gods we might answer: easily. But if we try to "modernise" (reads: clinging to the traditon of the enlightenment) our image of God will face these problems.

The interesting question to me follows as I try to think how Tolkien himself thought this. Was he thinking it along the lines of traditional religiousity where it was just right and good that the sins of the fathers were avenged to all in the lineage or did he indeed flirt with protestantism here trying to make the readers feel bad about that kind of judgement by Eru?