The halls of mandos and elvish "free will"

[Nar]

Lovely responses! Very stimulating. Aiwendil:

Technically speaking, even a temporally linear God like that in Judeo-Christian theology would be 'present in all time'. That would merely mean that he/she/it exists from the beginning of the universe to the end of the universe. Elves are present through all time from their awakening to the end of the world. Humans are present in all time from birth to death.

Very true. Humans or Elves are present in time with consciousness and existence recopied and updated for each successive moment, aware of previous copies as the 'self in the past' but not aware of future copies, 'self in the future'. I imagine a 'godlike' perspective as one consciousness experiencing all moments: many moments mapped to one self. Imagining that consciousness outside of the series of moments, viewing them as a whole is certainly easier than imagining that consciousness inside them all at one time. I take it that's what you meant, Selmo. I like your 'omnitemporal' term.

Take HerenIstarion's excellent 'rope analogy': suppose the man(God) coils the rope, ants, juice, sugar and all, so that he can hold all of it loosely in his arms: the ants can't tell if the timerope is straight or coiled, for they know only that there is another millimeter ahead of them, but the man(God) has intimate access to all of the rope at once. That's sort of what I meant by being in all of time at once as opposed to outside perceiving all of time at once.
Aiwendil:

The real question is whether a particular god is somehow beyond the unidirectionality of our time, superceding our strange macroscopic causality. As he is depicted in The Silmarillion, Eru is definitely not like this.

The depiction of Eru's interactions with the Ainur at the beginning is linear and supports your point about Eru. However, the playing of the music representing all of Arda and events in Arda before (or as) the creation is enacted suggests a different relation between Eru and those Ainur who remained outside and Arda's time.

Helen:

God the Ultimate Gentleman, forcing himself on no one.

I like that.

[ September 24, 2002: Message edited by: Nar ]