[burrahobbit]

I voted yes for reasons that I feel are very obvious and that have already been brought up. However, I will add that I disagree with the following:

Originally Posted by Fordim Hedgethistle

There's a lot hanging on this question: if you believe that Eru is God, then you are saying that the moral "rules" of M-E are Christian. If you believe that Eru is not God, then those "rules" are something else.

Middle-Earth is a pre-Christian world. Like the Jews. Jewish moral rules are not Christian moral rules.

Now I'm going to comment on everything else, all at once, and pay absolutely no attention to who is saying anything. Replies will follow quotes. Feel free to sip all of the rest.

From the very beginning, he establishes contact and reveals himself to them (walking with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden).

Granted. However, he also contacts people through angels and the Holy Spirit. One could say that he does all or nearly all of his contacting through angels and the Holy Spirit. That seems fairly analogous with the various Ainur.

I thought that since Tolkien was a christian and he said that ME was the same world we live in, wouldn't it just be logical that the god was same also?

Yes.

Eru at no time seemed much interested in a personal relationship with his creation.

Reminds me of the Catholic idea of praying through saints. Tolkien was one of those, wasn't he?

I'd like to add to, and somewhat reiterate, what she said. First, that Eru does not seek a personal relationship, which is the core of Christian belief.

I would like to iterate, all on my own, that it isn't. You are confusing "What Christians Believe" with "What I Believe." Perhaps it is very important to your particular group of Christians, but there are lots of diffeent groups and they don't all hold t hat bit in quite such high regard.

The main difference then is the fact that God became incarnate and walked among us.

That just hadn't happened yet. The books take place BC. Except for BoLT, sort of.

Eru acts very much how I've always though God would. (except in teh judgment of melkor.)

Howso? The Devil does lots of things that God wants him to, even naughty things. CF. Job.

i guess they can do whatever they want with it (ei. lets make a mountain range here, put some lamps there, etc., as the vision was rather vague

That sounds like things that God's Hands would be doing.

He seems to have been afraid of writing a mischaracterization. I think he wanted the parallel (or maybe "similarity") to be there but didn't want to push it too far.

Excellent point. I don't see that as affecting Eru as God, though. Eru is God, but there is much more of His nature revealed to us in the Bible. The books aren't about him, so they don't go into too much detail. I've read plenty of books about modern people, even modern religious people, and those books don't tell me nearly as much about those people's God as the Bible. Likewise with Tolkien's work.

Chicken.

Don't be a prat, that isn't your job.

God is God and I believe because we cannot know exactly what 'God' is, how can we know if a fictional God is the same?

I listen to this one blues song a lot, I have about sixty versions of it, and I may not know if it is about a real person but I can say with some certainty that Stagger lee is the same guy as Stackalee.

The Legendarium, from the Ainulindale down to the fall of Sauron was intended to be the history of this world, in a somewhat distant time B.C. This same world which, in Tolkien's faith, is under the dominion of God. Therefore, if the world in that time was under the dominion of Eru, then Eru must be God.

Eru and God are intended to be one and the same.

And I personally feel that no amount of "personal opinion" on the matter changes it. If you accept the existence of Frodo, Sam, and Gollum in Middle-Earth, you have to accept the existence of Eru- as the Judeo-Christian God within the story.

Do as you wish in real life, but within the confines of the story you have to, in my opinion, accept Eru, as presented, as God, if you are going to accept it at all.

Yes.

Is the question: do you think that Eru is God? Or is it: do you think Tolkien thought that Eru is God?

Good point. I see them as the same question since we are talking about things that Tolkien wrote. Tolkien's world, Tolkien's rules.

So how do we know whether we are reading the view of the translator or the original writer? And how do we know that the original writer was correct in their view of Eru?

Too meta.

As christian, it's obvious that Tolkien's view of a god is that of the Christian/Jewish(/Muslim/Buddhist etc. as all gods are the same according to many people) and he's been influenced by that of course.

NO. WRONG. God is God, the other ones are NOT God. That is the same sort of reasoning as saying the Black Numenoreans the worshipped Sauron/Morgoth were actually worshiping Eru, because it's all the same anyway. It is not the same, it is idolatry.

But if you say that Eru is God, you say that Tolkien tried to describe God through Eru Illuvatar

No you don't.

Eru might have become an equivalent to God

You do realize that equivalent means "the same as"? Right? Is equal to?

M-E is his kingdom, not Eru's domain even if Manwe subordinate to Iluvatar. There's no equivalent in Tolkien's religion.

It's like a ven diagram.

Also intersting is Melkor's role as the fallen angel, becoming the Dark Lord. In this case, there's a lot of similarities with Christianity and Satan's fall. He was one of the greatest angel's, one of those with most power and one of those closest to God, but was hungry for more power. Exactly like Melkor. They both fell and became to metaphor of Evil.

That is pretty interesting, isn't it? Pretty interesting indeed.

There's a downloadable issue of Vinyar Tengwar http://www.elvish.org/VT/VT43sample.pdf which contains Tolkien's translations of the Lord's Prayer & the Ave Maria. Tolkien uses 'Eru' to translate 'God'.

For what its worth - Tolkien seems to have considered the two words equivalent - only really stubborn & awkward people would deny that

+1

Stubborn and awkward it may be, but this only proves that Tolkien used that word in this linguistic experiment as it was as close as he could get in the Elvish language.

The whole thing is a linguistic experiment. He made the world for his language, not the other way around.

Is the character of "Deep Throat" from All the President's Men W. Mark Felt?

Ooo, that one is much better than what I came up with. Good form.

Done now, might come back later.