Is Eru God?

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Fordie

What I see Tolkien striving for in LotR is not a particular sense of the Creator/God but for a more impersonal sense of the sacred: the landscape of Middle-Earth, the narrative itself, the peoples that we meet, the 'plan' that seems to guide history, the legends and history that the Elves inhabit all give off the odour of sanctity, even perhaps of divinity, without locating that sense within any single form or version of a god.

Agreed.

Originally Posted by Fordie again

In the Sil I think that Eru clearly was Tolkien's 'version' of God and was meant to be taken in that light.

But why would Tolkien not apply the same considerations that you set out at 1 to 4 in your post equally to the Silmarillion? While writing LotR, he anticipated his Silmarillion stories being published. Are you suggesting that he viewed the Silmarillion tales as being for a "specialist market" while LotR would have wider appeal? That does not come across in his Letters, those dealing with the possibility of both works being published, which suggest that he regarded them as intrinsic to each other.

[Roa_Aoife]

I agree with Saucy, but in the other direction. If it is clear that Eru is God in the Sil, then Eru must still be God in LoTR, not the other way around.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Originally Posted by Roa_Aoife

I agree with Saucy, but in the other direction. If it is clear that Eru is God in the Sil, then Eru must still be God in LoTR, not the other way around.

I agree, but the question I was addressing above was Hookbill's neat number 7 -- how did Tolkien intend for the reader to understand Eru? What I'm suggesting is that as Tolkien wrote the Sil he was thinking "Eru is God and the reader should be able to see that clearly" but when he was writing LotR he was thinking "Eru is God, but I'm going to leave it a bit fuzzy for the reader so he or she can find his or her own way into the text."

As to why he did it this way Saucy, I don't know, but I see no problem in it insofar as he was writing two different books: one more 'allegorical' and one more 'applicable'. He was striving for different effects in each so it makes sense to me that he would have different approaches to how he crafted them.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Fordim Hedgethistle

As to why he did it this way Saucy, I don't know, but I see no problem in it insofar as he was writing two different books: one more 'allegorical' and one more 'applicable'. He was striving for different effects in each so it makes sense to me that he would have different approaches to how he crafted them.

Ok, but this thread is discussing Eru & as Eru doesn't appear in LotR I'm not sure it gets us very far.

[Mister Underhill]

This is a little off-center, but one thing that fascinates me about the theology/morality of LotR is that Tolkien very deliberately made an effort to exclude overt, direct links to Christian religion:

...there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one thing its 'faerie' is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion.

For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal. Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world.

--Letter 131

I would claim, if I did not think it presumptuous in one so ill-instructed, to have as one object the elucidation of truth, and the encouragement of good morals in this real world, by the ancient device of exemplifying them in unfamiliar embodiments, that may tend to 'bring them home'.

--Letter 153

It's interesting to me that he found, or sensed, that the best way to talk about the truths that he held so dear was to not talk about them, if you take my meaning. To portray the underlying truth without the trapping, or in a different trapping. I don't know what that has to do with this discussion, just something that comes up for me as I read through the thread.

Also, I think some posters are taking the idea of the legendarium as pre-history a little too far. At some point you are forced to consider Tolkien's stories as "alternate history", no? I mean we have two creation stories at the very least which aren't reconcilable. There's no way for the Silmarillion to pre-date Genesis: "In the beginning..."

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Mister Underhill

I mean we have two creation stories at the very least which aren't reconcilable. There's no way for the Silmarillion to pre-date Genesis: "In the beginning..."

Nice use of the letters, Mr. U. Did you use those on the Canonicity thread? I think this is a very important aspect of Tolkien, that he wanted active, or perhaps interactive, readers, rather than passive ones.

But as to two creation stories, actually Genesis itself has two, or at least two accounts of primeval time, and I have always rather thought of the Ainulindale and the Valaquenta similarly. So that makes four.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

But as to two creation stories, actually Genesis itself has two, or at least two accounts of primeval time, and I have always rather thought of the Ainulindale and the Valaquenta similarly. So that makes four.

Heck, throw in John 1:1 and you have yet another version of the creation story, one that I think particularly pertinent and resonant with Tolkien: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God".

But I digress.

It's interesting to me that he found, or sensed, that the best way to talk about the truths that he held so dear was to not talk about them, if you take my meaning. To portray the underlying truth without the trapping, or in a different trapping.

Misty Undy: I think this is what I was trying to get at myself when I wrote above about Tolkien's having given his story the 'odour' of the sacred, but you do it much better. Reading LotR always reminds me of a particular fish pond in Istanbul -- bear with me. The fish pond dates back to Persian Empire when it was said that the fish were sacred to the water deity of Asia Minor. Then Greece conquered the city, renamed it Byzantium, and the pond was full of fish sacred to Poseiden. The Greece fell to Rome, the city was once again renamed Constantinople and the fish were sacred to Neptune. Then Rome became Christian and the fish were the descendants of those caught by the apostles and which Christ had used for his miracle of the loaves and the fishes. Then the Ottomans conquered the city, renamed it Istanbul, and the fish suddenly lived in a pond that had been created by a miracle of Allah... The point being that even though different beliefs and creeds have come and gone, that particular place (which is quite beautiful) has throughout the millenia maintained a sense of sacredness. The people who have claimed it may have disagreed as to which god or God it was who had sanctified the place, but they all agreed that it was a holy place.

Middle-Earth seems to me to be very much that kind of a place.

[Folwren]

There's been so much writing since I was last on here that I don't really want to read it all. So I won't, but I would like to say one last thing before going.

It is my understanding that Tolkien wrote about M-E and fashioned it so that Great Britain could have a mythological backround. If this is the case, this would be far before Jesus Christ was ever around, but also before anyone ever knew about God.

If that is the case, then I don't believe that Eru would be the equivilant of the Christain God, Jehovah. Tolkien (don't anybody leap on me because I'm about to write as if I actually knew what he thought, which I don't) wanted one god over all of Middle-Earth because it just made sense. However, he put many other gods below himself to take care and form the Earth - these gods, or Valar, were the gods of water, air, plants, and all the other things, much like the Romans and Greeks had, or the Indians and Chineese and whoever else have mythology and made up gods. I mean, he wanted his mythology to be like the other old ones, that is to say, he fashioned them after the old works (many titles have been brought up here).

And I'm not writing this down very well, but see here. God doesn't apoint different angels over all the different things on Earth -weather, sun, moon, what not - but directs them all himself. The Valar did all that kind of work. Eru remained far off and distant, watching the Valar and their progess, but really taking little part in it most of the time. That is different than God ever was, even before Jesus came. God did talk to his people BC, and he didn't leave their fates in the hands of his subordinates.

This post is a bit unclear - had a late night last night, but it's all I can give you just now.

-- Folwren

[Lalwendë]

If Eru is God, then he is Tolkien's God, and he seems to ahve had a very tortured and idiosyncratic relationship with God. Firstly, Tolkien obviously endured immense mental suffering during WWI seeing his friends (and other men) slaughtered ostensibly for no good reason. Looking at the quotes davem has already posted, this is clear. Secondly, Tolkien undoubtedly had more than spiritual reasons for being a Catholic; it was his mother's religion and was important to him for this reason. It could have been said to have been his own 'precious', as it linked him to a loved parent.

So it appears Tolkien had a God he loved, and a God with motives he struggled to fully understand (of course none of us can ever truly know of any other person's relationship with God so we can only take evidence from what is written). This latter God appeared to demand blood sacrifice, like Odin (I think it was Fea who first mentioned this), and was not forgiving, not gentle. This God only seemed to offer a living Hell. I don't think it's coincidence that Tolkien stopped going to church during the 20s. He clearly had a difficult relationship with God and came to understand Him as a God who demanded not just worship but full on blood sacrifice.

Look at what happens in his work. This is a God who is not worshipped, whose only relationship with his people is to demand their lives every now and then (Numenor, Frodo) for the greater good. What Frodo goes through is very much like what the young conscript goes through. He is sent off to fight, to complete a suicide mission; he does not fully comprehend what will happen to him and only at Mount Doom does he realise what fate has in store for him. Against the odds he survives but only just, as what he ends up with is pure torment and Hell. He gets no reward. For all we know, his going off to the Undying Lands may as well be like taking his own life. We know he is mortal and going there is unlikely to change this; at best he might get a little comfort before he dies, but no reward of returning to his former life, no reward of going to 'Heaven'. What hapens to Frodo is horrible.

Yet what happens is compatible with the God that Tolkien knew, as he was inscrutable, sometimes incredibly cruel, but could somehow not be rejected. The other noticeable thing about this God is that he leaves the people to sort out just about all their problems and there is little intervention. For all the god it does the people, they might as well not have Eru. It demonstrates Tolkien's very difficult relationship with God. Where others who had been through what he went through entirely rejected God, he held onto his belief, seemingly only just, but at the expense of knowing a good God.

Looking at it from personal experience, my father rejected God after trauma, and says he would like to believe in God but cannot. I on the other hand believe in a God (though what I call it I don't know, although I know it is not trinitarian) but I cannot see the point in a veangeful or cruel God as I believe "Hell is other people". Anyone who has been through Hell may come out of it the other side with an idiosyncratic view of God, and this is what happened to Tolkien. Looked at this way, one of the major themes of his work may be the struggle to deal with a veangeful God who you cannot let go of.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Lalwende

Looked at this way, one of the major themes of his work may be the struggle to deal with a veangeful God who you cannot let go of.

I think it is the psychological 'tension' Tolkien felt between the reality he had known - losing his parents, his closest friends & having seen man's inhumanity to man on a scale never before experienced (which must have tempted him to question the existence of a caring God) - & his inability to reject God because of his mother's 'martyrdom' for her faith, which may actually have enabled him to produce his Legendarium, to spend most of his life producing it. That inner conflict had to be dealt with. God stands back & allows waste & suffering on a collossal scale - why doesn't he intervene & stop it???

Yet his own mother gave her life for that very God. To reject God would be to reject his own mother - or at least to declare that she was wrong & her death unnecessary (she quite possibly wouldn't have died if she had not become Catholic & brought her family's rejection & withdrawal of financial support on herself & her children).

I don't think that Tolkien's God was simply a 'vengeful' Deity who demanded human blood, & was glorified by that, but I do think he had that aspect to Him. Of course, Tolkien had to find some reason, or justification, for his mother's God having such a 'dark' side.

[littlemanpoet]

Regardless of how much can be garnered from Tolkien's Legendarium, Letters, and authorized Biography, attempting to psychologize the nature of his beliefs runs the inevitable risk of saying more about oneself than one says about Tolkien. Very astute points have been made, but I still find the commentary of Lalwendë and davem, for example, more revelatory about their own beliefs than those of Tolkien. Lalwendë, your own comments are very well qualified by a host of "seems" and "appears", as well as the admittance that I refer to above. Nevertheless, we cannot help but be inaccurate in our attempted portrayal of Tolkien's beliefs, at least from a psychological frame of reference. I imagine that a theological frame of reference may serve a little better, but I don't think very many people would be satisifed with that, in so much as it would either require a Roman Catholic (or at least Christian) context, or a non-RCC context that would be by turns just as innaccurate as a psychological.

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by davem

The first quote was regarding Tolkien's original motivation pre- & during WW1, the second about his state of mind during the writing of LotR.

Fair 'nuff.

Although, given the success of The Hobbit, he must have had some conception while writing LotR that it would attract a modest readership, at the very least, and that this would most probably include Atheists, Agnostics and Jews, if not those of other faiths.