Is Eru God?

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Originally Posted by Hookbill the Goomba

7. Did Tolkien intend Eru to be read as God (Jehovah)?

Oooooo...now that's a way of thinking about this that had not occured to me: love it! I think that there are probably several answers:

In the Sil I think that Eru clearly was Tolkien's 'version' of God and was meant to be taken in that light.

But I'm not so sure about LotR where, of course, Eru never really appears 'directly', only by very distant inference through the shadowy allusions to Elbereth et al who "dwell in the West". And here I think we see an example of Tolkien's stated preference for applicability over allegory insofar as he decided to leave his story, and his world, more 'open'. Tolkien was no fool and would have been more than aware that:

1) a lot of people in the world do not believe in God

2) a lot of people in the world do not believe in the Christian God

3) a lot of people in the world do not believe in the Catholic God

4) most people in the world do not believe in Tolkien's version of the Catholic God, whom he has emodied in the tale as Eru.

To include Eru overtly would have immediately put a gloss on the events that force readers down paths they don't want to go, or creates a barrier that they have to contend with.

So while I think Eru in the Silmarillion is pretty cleary 'supposed' (by Tolkien) to be interpreted as God, I think the shadowy "power" or "forces" at work 'behind the scenes' in LotR is 'supposed' by Tolkien to be ambiguous enough for different readers to respond to in their own way. What I see Tolkien striving for in LotR is not a particular sense of the Creator/God but for a more impersonal sense of the sacred: the landscape of Middle-Earth, the narrative itself, the peoples that we meet, the 'plan' that seems to guide history, the legends and history that the Elves inhabit all give off the odour of sanctity, even perhaps of divinity, without locating that sense within any single form or version of a god.