[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Roa_Aoife

The question was is “Eru equivalent to the Judea-Christian God?” not “Is Eru equivalent to your view of God?”

No. The question (as clarified) was "Is Eru, in your opinion, God"? Fordim went on to reason that, if one believes that Eru is God, then the moral "rules" of Middle-earth must be Christian. In my opinion, that reasoning is defective because it relies on the assumption that God is the Christian God (whatever that involves - see below). And that is an assumption which I do not accept.

In any event, how can one answer the question as you have intepreted it given that, taking the Judeo-Christian God alone, there are widely differing interpretations of his nature? A fact that is supported by many of the responses to date on this very thread. In my opinion, one can only answer on the basis of one's personal view of God. Eru does not match up to my personal conception of God, and therefore my answer to the question can only be "no".

Originally Posted by Roa_Aoife

And, I said before, of course there is merit in discussing how this applies to your own spiritual growth. That’s just not what we’re supposed to be discussing here.

Ouch!

You seek to limit the nature of the discussion far too narrowly which, in my opinion, would be to its detriment. As should be clear from my response above, I believe that my comments are entirely relevant to the discussion at hand.

And even were they not, I would contend that they are a valid digression from the core topic.

Edit: Cross-posted with Fea (and others) who makes a similar point.

Edit 2:

Originally Posted by alatar

Apologies to SpM in advance for any inferred insult

None taken, old chap. Glad to be of service. Mind you, in light of our many similarities, you probably knew that already ...