[Aratlithiel]

It would seem to me that anytime you assume that Good will prevail in the end because Eru, God, Allah or any other deity wills it, you are necessarily substituting free will (which is a consistent gift to Man from most any deity in any religion you choose) for fate - and fate, by nature, removes free will. I don't think you can have both - they are extremely contradictory and not in line with the claim of perfection that these deities maintain.

Scenario 1 - Eru gives Morgoth free will and Morgoth freely chooses to do evil against the designs of Eru. Conclusion: Eru is not perfect.

Scenario 2 - Eru invests Morgoth with evil purposes in order to foster an appreciation of Good. Conclusion: Morgoth does not have free will.

I don't think you can have it both ways on this. HOWEVER, since we've already broached the subject of Judeo-Christian comparison, I would like to point out that in this context, Morgoth would be equivalent to an angel and angels were not granted free will. Free will was in fact the very reason for the revolt led by Lucifer - he didn't appreciate the fact that humans were granted it and angels were not. So, did Lucifer excercise free will when he led the revolt or was it God's design? (Now read that again and substitute Morgoth for Lucifer and Eru for God.) And if it wasn't His design, wouldn't that mean He's imperfect?

In essence, I don't think you can have a deity claiming perfection and divine purpose as well as the bestowment of the gift of free will upon his creations. If there is divine purpose, there must necessarily be fate and if there is fate, there is necessarily, no free will.

Now, how do we bring this back to the subject at hand? The original question was, did Iluvatar have any opponents? If by this you mean one that was outside his creations, then I believe the answer to be no. But, if we can read it a little more deeply and ask whether Iluvatar had any opponents at all, I would have to say that Morgoth would qualify since, although he is a Valar, he has made himself an opponent of them, and by association, an opponent of Iluvatar as well. Witch-King, when you ask this question and make a corrolary to God and Satan, you must take into consideration that Satan was God's creation which did not stop him from becoming His adversary. I don't see much difference in the God vs. Satan subject and the Iluvatar vs. Morgoth one. But in either case, you can't really consider them opponents at all if you assume divine purpose - divine purpose would mean that they were acting as they were meant to by their respective deities which would essentially make them that deity's allies - whether they knew it or not. The only way either of them can be considered true adversaries to their creators would be if we took away divine purpose and assumed free will.

[ January 24, 2003: Message edited by: Aratlithiel ]

[ January 24, 2003: Message edited by: Aratlithiel ]