The atrocity of the Akallabêth

[davem]

We have to distinguish between the reason for having an 'Eru' - to make the world monotheistic & provide an account of Arda'a origin - & Eru as a character. If we take the original Silmarillion (which was effectively limited to the First Age) Eru is not a 'player' - he lights the blue touch paper & retires to watch the fireworks. Bringing him into the story as an active participant as in Numenor makes him a character in the story. Creating the Children ws an act that happened 'in Eternity', before time, & is part of the role he plays as creative force. His only real intervention into the world is in Numenor, & that's the problem, because argue & justify it as you will, the first time anyone apart from the Ainur encounters Eru they meet something so overwhelmingly terrifying as to make them feel neither love nor respect for him, but simple terror.

This is not a question of whether a single omnipotent deity is necessary to the plot, but the kind of deity that is. And Eru is not a transcendent mystery, nor is he a loving compassionate Father - he is a petulant, angry Artist, who will smash & kill what 'offends' him.

I can't accept the point that the Valar lay down their authority because the Children are involved - that didn't stop them going in at the end of the First Age & stomping all over the Children who had gone over to Melkor.

Ultimately the Valar provoked the Numenorean revolt - they 'rewarded' the faithful Edain with longer life but not with immortality. What message does that send out? More life is a good thing, postponing death is a good thing, not dying when you were 'intended' is a good thing. And what justification did the Numenoreans use when they defied the Valar - all of the above.

Eru's incarnation is required so as to finally remove all traces of Melkor's marring...
I believe it shows his discomfort with the fact that his story would explicitly contain the Christian religion, which he considered, in Letter #131, fatal to a story - a recurrent idea in the letters.

Which is Tolkien's choice - Tolkien decides that it is the 'only way'. And the point is this 'only way' introduces something 'fatal' into the Legendarium. Hence, for Tolkien to make such a 'fatal' addition he must have been driven by an overwhelming & unavoidable necessity. And that necessity has nothing to do with the 'fact' that Eru's entry into Arda is the 'only way' to remove the traces of Melkor from the stuff of Arda - Tolkien could equally well have decided that the 'only way' for all trace of Melkor to be removed was for all the Dwarves to simultaneously shave off their beards, or for all the Elves to juggle geese for 2 hours straight on the first Thursday in December.

In other words, Tolkien could have decided that anything at all could have 'purified' Arda, but he chose the one thing which he considered 'fatal' to any invented myth - the introduction of Primary World religion (specifically the Christian religion) ...

or did he?

As I stated, I don't think that we are dealing here with the introduction of Christianity into the Legendarium, & I don't believe that the justification given in the Athrabeth is the whole story. The incarnation of Eru in the Athrabeth is necessary in order to redeem Eru, not to redeem the world. Arda was not created perfect & then subject to a Fall - it was (as Tolkien stated) created already Fallen - by Eru's choice (in that he chose to create the world with Melkor's corruption inherent in it & further to allow Melkor to enter into it & do pretty much as he wished - there is no 'ideal' state for Arda to return to - Arda cannot be returned to an 'Edenic' state, because in Arda there was never an Eden. Men cannot be returned to their 'original, unfalllen' state, because they were never actually unfallen & never dwelt in an unfallen world.