Quote:
Originally Posted by Raynor
I think we should make a difference between evil as a moral category, and Melkor as the most powerful agent of evil; indeed, the two of them exist independently. And since evil is a prerequisite of free will, and if all the valar had free will from the beginning, then evil precedes even Melkor (who, on the other hand, in the beginning at least, was pictured to be good; he fell "afterwards").
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Think that this is what I was getting at. If, in heaven, there will be free-willed spirits/souls, and, by definition, being in the presence of God cannot contain evil, why could not the Creator create a world with free will and not evil (or, again as some posit, so much)? Why the "prerequisite?"
Regardless, as I don't want to start another brouhaha, but how does evil differ in the world that Tolkien created? To me it seems that the free will - evil connection is not to the same degree, if it exists at all in Arda.