LotR -- Book 6 - Chapter 3 - Mount Doom

[Kuruharan]

I suspect from this point on we are just going to be running in circles.

Its the difference between the general & the specific

You are still not getting me…

What it sounds like you are saying is that you find it perfectly alright to kill on a huge (indeed total) scale through disease and decay, but object to an intervention to end one particular life. However, the end of both is the same thing. This really almost seems like splitting hairs. I have to ask why you find the built in death to be so preferable?

It seems He only intervenes at the point where He has to kill somebody to prevent a disaster. You do wonder why He couldn't intervene at an earlier point where He wouldn't end up with blood on His hands

Well, that would sort of be messing with the freedom of choice thing that was also part of Eru’s Gift to Men.

Or demanded an answer to the question of why, if He was prepared to intervene in His creation, He didn't intervene to saved those poor babies?

What method would you propose? You obviously object to Eru intervening to kill Gollum. If he had been caught by the Woodmen or the Dalemen, he would have been killed. You could construct an argument that Eru would be culpable for that. Gollum could have been chased off or scared away. However, now we get back to the meddling with free will issue again. Gollum wanted to do wrong. What is to be done with such a creature?

There are any number of things to discuss about Answer to Job, however they have nothing to do with Tolkien so I’ll confine myself one comment on what seems the most relevant issue. I’m afraid I fail to entirely appreciate the relevance of this piece to the topic at hand. Quite frankly, I think you are attempting to inject it in the wrong place. I say this, if for no other reason, than because Job’s suffering was unmerited, where I don’t think anybody would argue with the notion that Gollum was a thoroughly rotten individual and ultimately embraced that choice. This sort of renders a large part of the point of Answer to Job irrelevant to the discussion.