The halls of mandos and elvish "free will"

[Rimbaud]

When you say Eru 'sees' the future, you point to a deity that is 'omniprescient' not, as in your terms, 'omnitemporal'. If that deity were the latter, there would be no future, or indeed past (for that deity), there would simply be an infinite present. All events would be. In that argument, given that from a theistic viewpoint, that deity is the Creator-absolute, all events do not stem from that deity, strictly, but rather that deity is all events. The deity encompasses all. So, what a mortal may perceive as evil, does not even have its root within the deity but is an inherent part of the deity itself. *

This does not fit comfortably with Tolkien's belief-construct.

*Indeed, it is worth noting that time, or more importantly, the passage of time, is an artificial construct, since each and every event is unique. There is no yesterday - indeed, for all that it matters, there well have never been one. To expect a tomorrow is to trust blindly in something that has been created simply for the purposes of enslaving the human mind (see the dawn of agricultre for details).

Therefore if there is no time - be it simply a mass-hallucination, to use contemporary nomenclature like confetti - there is no conflict between deity and progression.


However, Tolkien (in his literature) is fond of the device of Fate. Fate necessitates (in my mind at present, although I would be willing to absorb counter-argument) the actual (not perceived) existence of linear time. I would argue therefore that the deity within Ea as Tolkien perceived (oops, described [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] ) it was not 'omnitemporal' but rather, omniprescient; seeing all events that are and may be but not present within them.

** I apologise for the closeness in appearance of 'omniprescient' and 'omnipresent'; they are distinct, of course.