[Tar-Telperien]

Originally Posted by davem

Accepting much of what you say, it still leaves us with Eru as a cypher, while every other character is drawn in depth. He doesn't seem to fit. Maybe Tolkien didn't want to say to much about him for the reasons you give, but it still leaves him as as little more than a name. We don't know why he does most of what he does, what his intentions are, or why he bothers to do anything at all. He seems to exist only to make the world monotheistic. I suspect this is what leads readers to project their own God concepts onto him, & lead to religious arguments which get nowhere. He is probably the only character Tolkien invents who is not a 'character' at all.

I thought I explained that not "knowing his intentions" is vital for the creatures he desires to make. They have to trust and learn for themselves. If there's one moral a person can get out of the "Tale of Adanel", it's that Eru isn't pleased when his creatures beg for easy answers, from him or anyone.

Of course, you are perfectly free to see him as a cipher. But then, I think that was exactly the effect Tolkien wanted. I have strong doubts that it was unintended by him.

Originally Posted by davem

An author can't do this! A theologian may speak of the 'ineffability' of God, but a storyteller must create characters - or if he doesn't he isn't doing his job right. If someone had just popped up in Mordor to hand Sam & Frodo a canteen of water & then just wandered off again, with no explanation as to how or why he was there, we'd rightly dismiss him as a 'get out of jail free' card Tolkien was playing. We'd demand to know who he was, why he was there. We might assume there was a reason for him being there, but if there was no reason to be found (if his appearance could not be accounted for in any way & if his existence in the story was logically impossible) we'd have to say Tolkien had failed in his creation of a logically consistent secondary world - particularly if he admitted that he'd put the character in there simply because he didn't want Frodo & Sam to die of thirst & couldn't be bothered to come up with a better idea.

What makes Tolkien's stories great is that he wasn't just "an author". He was a world-builder. And when you devise and describe an entire constructed world, yes you can put irreducible mysteries in it like this. After all, what do you think Tom Bombadil is if not an irreducible mystery? People have had "arguments that go nowhere" concerning his nature for decades, but you aren't complaining about that. And the mysteries must only get deeper and yet more impenetrable when you're dealing with the One who created them in the first place.

Originally Posted by davem

Now this is not to say that Eru cannot be perceived by other characters as 'ineffable', but he shouldn't be so to the reader (or the writer), because the writer in this case is not writing a work of theology, but a story, & characters in a story must fit logically into the story & be explainable within the rules of the story world.

Tolkien wasn't just writing a story, he was writing a history. And what is, for example, the Bible if it is not a history (especially to the people who believe in it most)? Yet the reader of the Bible perceives God as being quite ineffable indeed. So why shouldn't Eru be viewed the same way, if Tolkien's intent with how the text is to be read was similar?

Originally Posted by davem

So, I find Eru unsatisfying, & try to ignore him, or put down his appearances to the character's belief systems. Accepting him as an actual character within the secondary world is too much for me. Ainulindale as 'fact' (the 'fundamentalist' approach) is something I can't stomach. Ainulindale as an Elvish creation myth, a metaphor or parable, just about works for me.

I encourage you to read it as a parable. That is what the Elves themselves did, apparently.

Originally Posted by Note on the 'Language of the Valar', from "Quendi and Eldar

If we consider the First History, which is called the Ainulindalë: this must have come from the Aratar themselves (for the most part indeed from Manwë, it is believed). Though it was plainly put into its present form by Eldar, and was already in that form when it was recorded by Rúmil, it must nonetheless have been from the first presented to us not only in the words of Quenya, but also according to our modes of thought and our imagination of the visible world, in symbols that were intelligible to us.