[davem]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

That is debateable.

Only if we give credence to the later writings (Athrabeth, etc) which came from a period when Tolkien was attempting to make his Legendarium fit with both current scientific thinking & with Christian belief. Otherwise, from the beginning, mortality was innate to Men & was part of the Divine plan not as punishment but because they had a different role & purpose within Middle-earth.

So you are suggesting that it is okay for Eru to have built death into the system. However, it is not okay for him to ever intervene to cause a death because that puts him at a moral level below that of the creation.

Is this an accurate summary of your postion?

Yes, because Death was not a punishment, but an entirely natural thing (even unnatural deaths - as a result of violence, disease, suicide, etc could come under the heading of 'natural' as they are a consequence of events happening within the created world. We could even say that deaths caused by the Valar are 'natural' because once they entered into Arda they became a part of its nature, unable to leave it of their own accord).

With Gollum (& the Numenoreans) it is a case of unnatural (ie supernatural) death, because the cause of their death is brought about from beyond the Circles of the World. It is a Divine intervention which causes them to die, a breaking in of the supernatural into nature.

In other words, the deaths of Gollum & the Numenoreans are miracles. I don't think that's something we can didmiss easily. We can be blinded by the Eucatastrophic experience - the world is saved, the heroes don't die as we'd expected, etc - & miss the vitally important detail that the miraculous event, the happy ending, we've just witnessed involved the killing, by Eru himself, of His children.

Its too easy to just say 'Well, they brought it on themselves' - they may well have done - but Eru (God within Middle-earth) intervened to kill them. Was there no other form of intervention available? Could He not have shown Himself in all His glory to the Numenoreans & intimidated them into returning to Numenor? Could he not just have caused a chunk of rock to fall from the roof of the Sammath Naur to knock Gollum out so that he dropped the Ring & it rolled into the Fire? Of course neither of those outcomes would have been as dramatic. The point is though, that He could have intervened in such a way that it didn't require them to die at His hands, but He didn't. Any intervention by Eru takes away their freedom of action, so that can't be used as an argument.

The other interesting question, imo, is why do we feel that the way Eru did interevene, resulting in the deaths of Gollum & the Numenoreans, is more, what? fulfilling, 'right', convincing???? Why would Gollum being knocked out, or the Numenoreans being intimidated by Eru in His glory & going home & behaving themselves from then on, have felt like a cop out on Tolkien's part?