Daniel,
I too enjoyed greatly our debate. Hopefully we will have others giving as much enjoyment. In such cases as this you are right we each end up with our own opinion. These can be shared and discussed without rancour and give pleasure and occasionally some enlightenment to others. Until we meet again, enjoy yourself. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]
Nar, I agree with you about Manwe not falling completely into the trap of too much good. The points I made about what he did showed that he was on the edge of doing so but did not fall. This means that the possiblity of doing great harm through being too Good was there, but Manwe managed to avoid the Fatal Slip.
As for the Dark side of a being, in my view this would includ such things as jealosy, anger, decitfulness and pride. These when taken too far will show as evil.
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I'm glad you seem to agree about the Valar's different aspects, what about free will within a specific Vala's mission, free will that does not involve the great question of allegience or good/evil: If Aule chooses to make a mountain range to the north, rather than a grassy plain just there, can't that be considered an excercise of free will, even though it doesn't involve a dark/light, obedience/disobedience or charity/cruelty choice?
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You are correct in what you say about 'Free Will'. In my posts I was concentrating too much on the extreams as I was discussing Melkor and Manwe, in doing so I overlooked the lesser expressions of free will. It is easy to look at the great events and forget that the "GREAT" events are actualy made up of many small events. [img]smilies/cool.gif[/img]
Kalessin,
When I said 'A pre-Christian mythology' I meant it as comparable to the Norse myths from before Christanity had come to Europe. I have no problem with your view of what he tried to do as essentaly it is the same. In many of the mythologies from before Christianity all gods had good and bad or light and dark in them. So it would not be surprising to find Tolkien using that model for Eru. His beliefs did not need christian models in the story to show through. In my view Tolkien used themes and moral codes that lay behind Christianity and are true whatever religion teaches them. It is these codes and themes that are in his works. I agree that he was writing about good triumphing over evil rather than keeping balance, but this does not get in the way of having Eru with a dark side to his nature.
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I am not sure that the somewhat more Eastern or humanist idea of the necessary coexistence of Good and Evil (or Light and Dark as pathways to either) is entirely appropriate with regard to interpreting Tolkien. It seems to me that a reasonably traditional Christian sensibility - in that Evil is not symbiotic with Good - is at work. In the end, the victorious conclusion of each struggle is the utter defeat of evil, and it doesn't appear to me that evil is ever accepted or tolerated as "part of the cosmic balance" or other such framework.
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As I have said before, Eru having a dark side does not mean that there is evil in him, only that he would be able to understand and deal with evil. The other option is to have two equal beings one 'Good' the other 'Evil'. This does not appear in Tolkien's work.
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I am content not to have a clear external solution (or resolution) to the issues of pre-determination, free will, good and evil that can be found in Tolkien's work - just as I cannot resolve these issues in 'real life' . We can intuitively deal with the themes of the narrative, with such conundrums present, through our imagination - our suspension of disbelief, the application of our particular spiritual worldview, our ability not to rationalise everything we perceive and experience, and so on.
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i too am content to have no clear external solution (or resolution) to these issues, after all if such happened we would have nothing to debate on these topics. [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] It all comes down to our own interpretations of what Tolkien wrote.
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By the way, I find the sub-topic "how do I (we) know that God is good?" fascinating, although perhaps too directly theological to justify lots of time on a Tolkien message board . But if anyone knows a place where we can go and thrash it out, let me know!
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yes this sub-topic is fasinating, however, as previously explained I only used it to get a reaction to help my answer to be understood. it might be interesting one day to have a go at it. [img]smilies/cool.gif[/img]