The Original Breaking of the Fellowship

[piosenniel]

mark12_30

The sense that I get about this is that not just Mortals, but The Children of Iluvatar (elves & men, & I wonder if this includes Hobbits, Tolkien said that Hobbits and Men were very closely related) are faced with choosing good and evil, and have their respective lifetimes to choose in. In choosing good, they are redeemable. Melkor I think has already made his choice, and is wreaking havoc.

The problem I see with saying that Melkor 'made his choice', is that it seems to imply that a Valar can only make choices which are eternal in nature. Do they not also have free will, so that each second is about making new choices? This is where I see the possibility for redemption for Melkor.

Iluvatar, in his harmonious design, already includes the discordant theme of Melkor in his composition. In a sense, Melkor is already redeemed through this grace, but has not yet chosen to realize it. We could say the redemption is the easy part; the long hard part of it will be his atonement.