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Originally Posted by Lalwendė
No. God is God and I believe because we cannot know exactly what 'God' is, how can we know if a fictional God is the same? Eru might well be the God of Arda, or the God of the Elves, or the God of the Elves and the Numenoreans, or the God of some Elves and some Numenoreans and some other beings. Some in Arda believe Eru is God. Others no doubt, do not; this does not make them wrong, only different. Just as in our own world there might or might not be God, and He or She or It may mean very different things to different people. Even (especially?) amongst Christians God is not always the same. God is not always even a Trinity.
Eru is the only 'good' God we are aware of in Arda, given to Arda by Tolkien. I say 'good' because a) that is sometimes debatable, and b) some worship other 'Gods', e.g. Sauron, and their 'God' may also be perfectly 'good' to them.
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Well, I don't really say that I agree with much of that. But that's another fish in a larger sea, and really doesn't have much to do with Tolkien.
I will say that your statement here:
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Originally Posted by Lalwendė
Some in Arda believe Eru is God. Others no doubt, do not; this does not make them wrong, only different.
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is certainly not correct as far as I can see. If Eru is God, then he is God. If someone believes that, then they are right. If someone does not believe that, then they are
wrong. They are believing that Eru is not God when he is.
Also, I just thought of this when I was reading
Fordim's original question.
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Originally Posted by Fordim Hedgethistle
There's a lot hanging on this question: if you believe that Eru is God, then you are saying that the moral "rules" of M-E are Christian. If you believe that Eru is not God, then those "rules" are something else.
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I do believe that the Christian moral rules hold true in Middle-Earth. It would make perfect sense for Tolkien to hold the same sense of right and wrong in Middle-Earth as in his own beliefs, regardless of whether Eru is God. If that were the primary question, then I would have said YES.