Sauron vs. Your Mama - A Discussion of Power in Middle-earth

[davem]

Originally Posted by Raynor

. Also, such analysis is bound to reach only one conclusion in order to be coherent with Tolkien's larger work, where it is stated that Eru is to be seen as good, and thinking otherwise is the root of evil - thus rather excluding your right to question whether Eru is good or not.

So you're still arguing that whatever Eru does is 'Good' simply because Eru does it, & therefore 'Good' means 'Whatever Eru does'. There's no actual objective standard of Good which can be defined & which beings, from Eru down, can be judged by?

Even Aragorn's words from the Appendices imply, at least to me, a benevolent God. I don't need to play a fictitious hide-and-seek with the quotes outside LotR, where Tolkien clarifies what is implicit in the text; and if others choose to ignore the in-text implicit part, and the out-of-text clarification, then fine by me also.

All they 'imply' to me is that Aragorn believes in a benevolent God. LotR as a stand alone work speaks to 20th/21st century world. The M-e of LotR is full of folk who believe in 'something else', something beyond themselves, as 'ordering principle' or driving force behind events. Yet the reader is never told what that is - or even whether that 'perception' is correct. The reader of TH & LotR is in the same position as a 20th/21st century person - they can choose to believe in something 'else' ir they can believe that there is nothing 'beyond' the world & put references to it down to the characters' faith. Its only the Silmarillion that changes that. The Silmarillion 'forces' the reader to accept Eru - and, significantly to my mind, changes our perception of the characters & our understanding of their nature - Aragorn, Galadriel, et al go from being characters with 'faith' in something else to characters who know something other characters don't. In other words we move from a world where some folk have faith & others don't to a world where some characters are right & some are wrong.

So I don't see the value of arguing over an interpretation that is lacking in information - one which neither you nor I share. We both have read the work in its entirety, LotR and Silmarillion, and I believe it is safe to say that Eru as part of the entire picture, and the same can be expected of the average reader who has access to the books.

Again, I'm not 'arguing over an interpretation'. All I've been arguing is that Tolkien was wrong when he claimed LotR can't be understood without a knowledge of The Sil. Maybe it can't be understood in the way he wanted it to be understood, but its simply nonsense to say LotR can't be understood (ie is nonsensical or meaningless) by a reader unfamiliar with The Sil.

Edit

It seems to me that there has to be an objective standard of Good by which Eru can be judged. If, for example, Eru suddenly released Morgoth at the end of the Third Age to take over from Sauron, or at the other extreme, if he made an extra arm grow out of everyone's head - ie if he did something which supported evil or something irrational - we would have to question his goodness or his sanity. In other words, we can accept an 'unknowable' dimension to Eru, but his behaviour & acts must remain within certain bounds. We wouldn't (if only from an an artistic, if not a 'theological' viewpoint) accept any behaviour on Eru's part (we may accept the idea of Eru incarnating into Arda but we wouldn't accept an account that depicted Eru incarnating as a talking rhinoceros). Therefore its perfectly valid to ask whether Eru's behaviour at any point takes him beyond those bounds.