Sauron vs. Your Mama - A Discussion of Power in Middle-earth

[Raynor]

Originally Posted by davem

So effectively we cannot judge Eru - whatever he does is 'good' simply because he does it - or in other words there is no objective standard of good & evil, 'Good' is whatever Eru says it is, & evil is whatever Eru says it is. Slaughtering tens of thousands of Numenoreans is 'good' (it cannot simply be 'necessary', let alone 'the lesser of two evils' - because if Eru commited the 'lesser of two evils he would still be committing evil. The slaughter of the Numenoreans is a morally 'good' act because Eru commits it, & Eru is the source of Good. Note, you can't argue that the destruction of Numenor (or Gollum) was intended to bring about a good result - you have to argue that the act itself was good, otherwise you are arguing that Eru will commit 'not-good' (ie 'evil') acts)

I believe that there are much more issues at play; for one, the morality of an act of God cannot be judged, unless we have his knowledge, which we don't. Then, if one is to judge the fact itself that he killed one or many persons, then I believe one is actually questioning his very right to end life at all. Then death itself would appear as a curse (be it "natural" or not, I might add); but this specifically stated to be a distortion of truth, a lie perpetrated by the Enemy.

You seem to be arguing that Tolkien 'reinterpreted' TH, & imposed a new meaning on it.
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You seem here to be arguing for the 'purposed domination of the author' (not to mention the Author), which is something Tolkien himself rejected.

That Tolkien changed TH has well within his right, and we couldn't reasonably expect those who read only the early edition to have the same information. I am not sure what you mean by the purposed domination of the author in this case, but the author is certainly expected to structure the story to whatever level of information he considers it necessary; this is what it is transmitted to us and what we further want to make of it is down to personal level.