Is Eru God?

[davem]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

I'm not saying that your theory is entirely discreditable, but it does make Tolkien's statement that it was CONSCIOUSLY Catholic in the revision to be either a misstatment, or- to take the facts in the most simply presented way, to be a lie.

It certainly wasn't a 'lie' - it just wasn't a fact. CT has shown that his father's memory (in letters written/statements made many years after the fact) was not 100% - cf the statement that he 'halted for a year by Balin's Tomb'. His other statement in the Foreword, that it has 'no inner meaning in the author's intention', that it is 'merely' entertainment, clashes with statements in the letters where he as much as says that LotR is an intentionally Christian work & the 'similarities' between Mary/Galadriel Lembas/The Host were deliberate.

I think Tolkien had convinced himself that LotR was made 'consciously Catholic' in the revision - but (if you've read HoM-e) can you tell me where the evidence is for that?

As I said, I think Tolkien spent years after the publication of LotR attempting to understand it & make it fit with his beliefs. He constructed a Catholic interpretation of the story - which many of his readers (though not all) have accepted.

I don't know where the Legendarium came from - his constant references to 'finding out what really happened' rather than 'inventing' are clearly true & I think it was only the critical & readerly responses & challenges that made him actually start analysing it for meaning & conformity to his faith.

One point Hutton made in his talk: Tolkien's claim that LotR was about 'the elevation of the humble' & that this somehow confirmed its Christianity. Fairy stories were the 'literature' of ordinary folk, & their heroes tend to be ordinary, humble heroes - ie a 'humble flittle man elevated to the status of 'hero' is not a uniquely Christian theme. Tolkien supplied that interpretation of his Hobbit heroes & then claimed that tsuch things made it a specifically Christian story.

Not 'lying', then, but not exactly stating the 'facts'.

[Lalwendë]

The full quote is, if I am not mistaken:

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like `religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.

So Tolkien here says that this 'revision' consisted of excising any references to religious ritual. He does not say that he altered the rest as it was 'absorbed into the story'. I have to say, it was absorbed so well and with such subtlety that I entirely fail to see many of these references as specifically 'Catholic'.

davem used the example of 'the elevation of the humble' as being something Tolkien used to 'prove' the Christian credentials of his work - while it is actually a far more universal factor. This is just one of many examples throughout the Legendarium which can have mulitple meanings and interpretations. Symbolism such as sacrifice is not exclusive to Christianity, it is Universal. I'd wholeheartedly agree with Tolkien that his work is fundamentally religious, but in a truly Universal way.

I think that his infamous statement/soundbite can be re-interpreted as it is Tricksy. A 'fundamentally' religious and Catholic work may be said to have its roots in those things; the origins of the work were both from the 'religious' i.e. sacred but not necessarily Catholic (bearing in mind Tolkien was steeped in knowledge of Pagan literature, both European and Classical) and from the 'Catholic' i.e. his own idiosyncratic and intensely personal interpretation of Catholicism.

Tolkien seems to be saying that at first he did have reference to rites and rituals in his work (unconsciously, as though he could not help but do this) but that in order to make his work coherent as a representation of a Secondary World he had to ensure that such references were excised. The things which happen in his works follow his own (as a Catholic) moral standards (How could they not reflect his views on what is right and wrong behaviour? Are there many writers who would produce something which they found morally repugnant?) and he wrote of these 'unconsciously' at first.

When it came to revision of what he had written, he bore in mind (consciously) his own Primary World faith and ensured he had excised explicit references to this. Note that what was left was not Catholic, but 'religious', a very different kettle of fish.

His statement, if viewed as proof positive that he did revise his work to make it more Catholic actually does not make sense. If looked at that way then he seems to be saying "Well, I started off unable to do anything but write a Catholic work. Then I had to edit my work and realised it had to be a Catholic work so I removed all the Catholic references."

[Bêthberry]

Lalwendë, that is a very interesting analysis of Tolkien's comment in theological terms. However, I have always interpreted Tolkiens comment about the absorption of the religious element into the story and the symbolism as an aesthetic statement.

To explain my interpretation, I compare LotR with Lewis' Narnia series. I must admit to complete failure to ever being able to finish reading Narnia, no matter how much I am delighted by the idea of a wordrobe into another world. I have tried, and tried recently as preparation for viewing the movie (the trailers of which attract me very much). Yet time and again I cannot get over the abject obviousness of Lewis' allegory. I find it wearyingly boring. I very much prefer the indeterminacy of Tolkien's hints and suggestions. Perhaps this says more about me as a reader than about either author but I think that Tolkien was a more astute storeyteller than Lewis. I think he had a surer hand in understanding what drives audiences/ readers to adopt stories keenly and closely and I think it was this concept of the relation between author and audience that drove his thoughts about the Catholic references rather than any theological desire per se.

[davem]

I just found this in an essay by Verlyn Flieger, 'A Cautionary Tale' in an edition of The Chesterton Review. The relevant issue is avaiable as a free download from the website.

Tolkien borrowed from the myths of northwestern Europe for the flavor of his stories, and much has been written about his debt to existing mythologies from Scandinavia to Sumer. Nevertheless, he wrote to father Robert Murray that The Lord of the Ringswas “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work” (Letters 172), and one might assume that nothing in the legendarium as a whole would contradict that. Rather surprisingly, a quick comparison between the two reveals some fundamental differences, and not just on the level of doctrine or creed. Tolkien’s is a far darker world than that envisioned by Christianity, and falls short of the promise and the hope that the older story holds out. Unlike the Judaeo-Christian mythos with which it is so often compared, and which tells of a world fallen through human willfulness and saved by sacrifice, Tolkien’s mythos as a whole begins with a fall long before humanity comes on the scene. He wrote of his story:

Thus original sin (if one may borrow that term) enters the world in the very process of its coming to be, when the melodic theme that is the metaphor for creation is distorted by the clamorous and discordant counter-theme of the rebel demiurge Melkor. The resultant Music sets the tone for all that is to follow.
The supreme godhead, Eru/Iluvatar, who both proposes the theme and conducts the Music, is neither the Judaic God of Hosts who alternately punishes and rewards his people, nor the traditional Christian God of love and forgiveness. Rather, he is a curiously remote and for the most part inactive figure, uninvolved, with the exception of one cataclysmic moment, in the world he has conceived. The lesser demiurgic powers, the Valar, have only partial comprehension of the world they have helped to make. The primary heroes, the Elves, are gifted beings caught in a web of pride, power, and deceit—largely of their own weaving—that hampers and constrains every effort they make to get free of it. The secondary heroes, Men, are courageous but shortsighted blunderers with but little sense of history and even less comprehension of their place in the larger scheme of things.

[Roa_Aoife]

I can't let this go unanswered. It seems that one Verlyn Flieger has a rather onesided view of Christian beliefs. Unfortunately, this shortcoming is shared by far too many people, on all sides of every debate involving it.

Tolkien’s is a far darker world than that envisioned by Christianity, and falls short of the promise and the hope that the older story holds out. Unlike the Judaeo-Christian mythos with which it is so often compared, and which tells of a world fallen through human willfulness and saved by sacrifice, Tolkien’s mythos as a whole begins with a fall long before humanity comes on the scene

If one truly studies the Bible where it describes Mankind as a whole, the world is a very dark and ugly place, where we screw up constantly, and hope for us is all but gone.

So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them." -Gen 6:7

29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. -Rom 1:29-30

19Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. ....48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. -Math 5:19-20, 48

Right away, we have a sense of hopelessness. The world is evil, fallen, and the only way around it is perfection or mercy.

In this [i.e. Tolkien’s own] Myth the rebellion of created free-will precedes creation of the world (Eä); and Eä has in it, subcreatively introduced, evil, rebellions, discordant elements of its own nature already when the Let it Be was spoken. The Fall, or corruption, therefore, of all things in it and all inhabitants of it, was a possibility if not inevitable. (Letters 286-87)

In truth, we don't know when the fall of Satan took place, all we know is that it took place sometime before the fall of Man, and that it was indeed Satan who pled to the free-will of both Eve and Adam. It has been said that the Angelic fall happened after the creation of the world, some say during, and other's say well before. There is nothing to say that the angels weren't involved in some way, though there certainly isn't anything saying they were.

Many would say that the fall was inevetible because of how things were set up in the Garden. I could argue till I'm blue in the face about why the fall happened, why there was a forbidden tree in the first place, and what God was doing while all this was going on (surely He was aware) but that would be a bit off topic. All I'll say is that the Fall was an onvious possiblity, maybe it was even supposed to happen.

Rather, he is a curiously remote and for the most part inactive figure, uninvolved, with the exception of one cataclysmic moment, in the world he has conceived.

Uninvolved? He may have allowed the Ainur, with their free will, to sing in dischord, but everytime Eru wove the dischord into an even more wonderful melody than had been before. He turns evil to good, sets up the Valar to help and guide his children, who, though imperfect follow Him as best they can. He even moves in some less obvious ways, as pointed out by LMP.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Roa-Aiofe

In truth, we don't know when the fall of Satan took place, all we know is that it took place sometime before the fall of Man, and that it was indeed Satan who pled to the free-will of both Eve and Adam. It has been said that the Angelic fall happened after the creation of the world, some say during, and other's say well before. There is nothing to say that the angels weren't involved in some way, though there certainly isn't anything saying they were.

Ah, but the quote given is from Tolkien himself, so he clearly distinguished his myth from that of Christianity in that sense. The point is that the Fall in Judeo-Christian myth comes about as a result of Adam & Eve's 'sin' in the Garden post Creation. In Tolkien's myth the world is created already 'marred' by Melkor's interventions in the Music. As Tolkien stated 'The Fall, or corruption, therefore, of all things in it and all inhabitants of it, was a possibility if not inevitable'.'

I think those last three words sum up the difference perfectly - in Judeo-Christian myth the Fall is a tragedy because it didn't have to happen. Tolkien clearly implies that if a Fall was not necessarily 'inevitable' (though I wonder from his words whether he didn't actually consider it was inevitable) it was certainly very likely. God creates a world which He considers 'Good', Eru creates a world which is already flawed in such a way that a Fall is 'an accident waiting to happen'. Eru chose to allow Melkor's dissonance to be included in the creation. Why? To give Melkor the chance to repent when he saw his 'dissonance' made real? Fine, but real people area going to suffer as a resullt of that act of compassion.

Or was it all about 'free will' - too easy. If I leave a group of of children alone in a room where I have placed a load of sharp knives in full view because they have 'free will' as far as what they do with those knives, am I thereby absolved of any responsibility as to what they do? Would I be justified in punishing those children if they stabbed each other?

In short, Tolkien clearly saw a difference between his myth & the Biblical story....

Then again, which of his letters do we go with - in other letters he implies there is no difference: Eru is God, Middle-earth is our world. This illustrates Hutton's point about the Letters - we can't depend on them to present us with a coherent view re the theology of Middle-earth & its correspondence or otherwise with Christianity. He wanted the two to match up, & wherever posssible he tried to make them 'fit'. There were certain things that didn't match up, that he couldn't make match up, & in those instances he was forced to admit that (as in the letter quoted by Fleiger). His later writings show his attempt (need???) to make them fit. The whole 'Myths Transformed' section of HoM-e 10 shows him trying to force his creation into the Judeo-Christian model & (as even Christopher acknowledges) failing to do so & in the process harming his own creation. He wanted the two to match up perfectly, but he couldn't make them do so.

His mythology was his real religion, what he really believed, how he really thought the world worked. Yet he considered himself an orthodox Catholic. Doublethink I would suggest. And this doublethink allowed him to create one of the greatest works of Art in the history of literature. Only when he was challenged as to its unorthodoxy was he backed into a corner. Like Frodo on Amon Hen, caught between the Voice & the Eye, he writhed.

[Roa_Aoife]

Originally Posted by davem

I think those last three words sum up the difference perfectly - in Judeo-Christian myth the Fall is a tragedy because it didn't have to happen. Tolkien clearly implies that if a Fall was not necessarily 'inevitable' (though I wonder from his words whether he didn't actually consider it was inevitable) it was certainly very likely. God creates a world which He considers 'Good', Eru creates a world which is already flawed in such a way that a Fall is 'an accident waiting to happen'. Eru chose to allow Melkor's dissonance to be included in the creation. Why? To give Melkor the chance to repent when he saw his 'dissonance' made real? Fine, but real people area going to suffer as a resullt of that act of compassion.

Or was it all about 'free will' - too easy. If I leave a group of of children alone in a room where I have placed a load of sharp knives in full view because they have 'free will' as far as what they do with those knives, am I thereby absolved of any responsibility as to what they do? Would I be justified in punishing those children if they stabbed each other?

Congratulations, you just brought up one of the biggest debates in Christianity today. If Tolkien thought the Fall of Man was inevitable, I can bring to mind several Theologians who would disagree. This debate has been going around for a long time, even from the Middle Ages when the Calvinists showed up. Yes, God declares the world good, but that doesn't mean it was supposed to stay that way. Initially, Ea was good, too, until Melkor started messing things up. Many think the Fall of Man was a plan of God's all along- certainly he knew it was going to happen before the world was created (that's what Omniscient means...) but He created it anyway, and then allowed it to occur.

In the Garden of Eden, God set up a failure- the Tree- allowed Satan in to tempt Adam and Eve, and then He wasn't there at the crucial moment. Many Theologians look at this and say it was inevitable. Given Tolkien's pessimisstic view of God, it's possible that he belonged to this school of thought. Therefore, perhaps he wasn't trying to insert Catholicism into the story, but trying to make it look more positive and optimistic, as was the status quo of that time. Looking like a Calvinist (which is a sect of Protestantism) would not be acceptable to an Orthodox Catholic.

So, if we can't trust his statements, and the text is vague, and there's no hard evidence about his mindset, what are we left with? Our own interpretations? Eru help us....

EDIT: My pastor made my point about the fall of Man for me this morning. "We tend to view the fall like this: God created a perfect world, and declared it good. Then Adam and Eve come along and screw it all up and 'Ooops!' God is caught off guard. He says, 'Oh no! Whatdo I do? Anyone have any ideas?' Jesus stands up in the back and says, 'It's ok, Dad, I have a plan.' It seems silly, but that's how we really think of it. God had a perfect plan A, we screwed it up, and He had to come up with a Plan B. The truth is more likely to be that God planned in the Fall, that in fact it was part of his Perfect Plan A to reveal His love through our reconciliation to Him. The Fall of Man was supposed to happen."

This is not a widely accepted thought, especially not in Catholicism. If this is the idea that Tolkien had, in some form, he may have tried later to bring it back to the more accepted "We screwed up God's Plan, now we have to pay for it." Galileo, when he suggested the world was round, was nearly excommunicated untill he recanted his idea. Tolkien may have felt the same pressure to conform to the Catholic Church, not by inserting Christianity, but by fixing the view of it, even openly admitting that his version didn't coincide with the truth, even if that thruth may have been wrong.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Roa_Aoife

I can't let this go unanswered. . . .
In truth, we don't know when the fall of Satan took place, all we know is that it took place sometime before the fall of Man, and that it was indeed Satan who pled to the free-will of both Eve and Adam.

And while I am not sure how this relates to Tolkien, I can't let this go unanswered.

Actually, the Bible does not tell us it was "Satan" who instigated the Fall by messing with Eve's mind. Our contemporary concept of Satan is very much derived from New Testament sources and, even, Milton's Paradise Lost, which is a work on the Vatican's list of proscribed works for its irreglarities in dogma. In fact, satan in much of at least the Hebrew Bible is simply a minion of God who helps to do God's work by challenging people, to see if they are truly good. (He gives God the idea to make Job prove his faith.) He is not a full blown adversary until far later in Christian history.

Genesis3:1 reads:

The serpent was more crafty than any wild creature that the Lord God had made. The New English Bible: Oxford Study Edition

(The King James Bible uses "subtil" rather than "crafty" and "beast of the field" for "wild creature".)

A footnote to the study edition notes:

An ancient extrabiblical story tells how a serpent stole the plant which would have given immortality to man.It was believed that when the snake shed his skin, he was rejuvenated. . . .The idea of the serpent as a primeval adversary of God, indeed, the Devil, arose much later (See Wis.2.24).

I don't know if Tolkien would have been aware of this ancient myth about immortality, nor what his understanding of Satan was, but at least it is possible to think that he recognised the serpent was one of God's creations, just as Melkor is one of Eru's creations. Good is not good until it is actively tested and proven against its obverse.