The atrocity of the Akallabêth

[Lalwendë]

I've no debate with Tolkien, I have read what he wrote and it's all there in the text. There is no need to seek further clarification as it's there. Simple as. I can fully accept what he says about Eru, the god of this world he creates, despite it being wholly alien to what I believe and wholly alien to what I was taught in Church (a Protestant church). As time has gone by though, I see where it may stem from, from Catholicism. Everything has its root in Eru? Hmm, sounds strikingly similar to the (to me) slightly frightening concept that everything has its root in God as expressed by Catholics in my family, with the only difference being that it was not Men who realised the concept of The Fall but a God.

I have no debate with Tolkien.

But I will ask yet again, where does evil come from?

Does Tolkien lie? When he says:

no theme may be played that does not have its uttermost source in me

Is he putting a Lie into the mouth of Eru?

All that is needed to see this is to accept that this god which Tolkien created was omnipotent and by the very definition of that, he created Everything, yes, even Darkness.

Let's go right back to basics, to the beginning:

There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Iliivatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made.

First there is nothing but Eru. No void. No Ea. No Valar. No good. No evil. There is the All-Father.

Then he makes the Valar, offspring of his thought. And they are Holy Ones because they are the first things he makes, before he makes anything else. They are embodiments of his thought, given the Flame Imperishable to live to exist. They are in fact aspects of Eru himself.

Now the following supports the idea that Holy=Flawless is wrong:

But in this 'mythology' all the 'angelic' powers concerned with this world were capable of many degrees of error and failing between the absolute Satanic rebellion and evil of Morgoth and his satellite Sauron, and the fainéance of some of the other higher powers of 'gods'. The 'wizards' were not exempt, indeed being incarnate were more likely to stray, or err. Gandalf alone fully passes the tests, on a moral plane anyway (he makes mistakes of judgement). - Letter 156, from 1954

Ah! So here's Tolkien underlining just what I had read in his work! That Holy does not in fact equal flawless!

The Ainur took part in the making of the world as 'sub-creators': in various degrees, after this fashion. They interpreted according to their powers, and completed in detail, the Design propounded to them by the One. This was propounded first in musical or abstract form, and then in an 'historical vision'. In the first interpretation, the vast Music of the Ainur, Melkor introduced alterations, not interpretations of the mind of the One, and great discord arose. The One then presented this 'Music', including the apparent discords, as a visible 'history'. - Letter 212 - 1958

They were shown by Eru the 'plan' they had all created and then were sent to make it - Ea is formless when they enter. In their music they sing of what it will be and Melkor alters his tune, but we cannot get away from the fact that no theme may be played that does not have its uttermost source in Eru. So despite him thinking he can be altering it to his own advantage, he still cannot alter what Eru has put there, which is the potential for darkness. Have you heard of Elgar's Enigma Variations? This is a suite of music, each tune said to possess a mysterious melody which cannot be identified, but each very, very different; that is how The Music works - each Valar sings a tune from one source, each of their tunes is unique but they all share the common source.

The Knowledge of the Creation Drama was incomplete: incomplete in each individual 'god', and incomplete if all the knowledge of the pantheon were pooled. For (partly to redress the evil of the rebel Melkor, partly for the completion of all in an ultimate finesse of detail) the Creator had not revealed all. - Letter 131, from 1951 (before LotR was published)

That tells us nothing about where Melkor came from and why he is how he is, but it does tell us something about why Eru did not reveal all the Vision, something which Tolkien does not tell us in the text. So Eru wants it kept secret in part to battle the evil he created the world with?

Knowledge of the Story as it was when composed, before realization, gave [the Valar] their measure of fore-knowledge; the amount varied ver much, from the fairly complete knowledge of the mind of the Creator in this matter possessed by Manwë, the 'Elder King', to that of lesser spirits who might have been interested only in some subsidiary matter (such as trees or birds). Some had attached themselves to such major artists and knew things chiefly indirectly through their knowledge of the minds of these masters. Sauron had been attached to the greatest, Melkor, who ultimately became the inevitable Rebel and self-worshipper of mythologies that begin with a transcendant unique Creator. ...

The Creator did not hold himself aloof. He introduced new themes into the original design, which might therefore be unforeseen by many of the spirits in realization... - Letter 200, from 1957

Again, Tolkien underlines what I'm saying, that this all beagn with the Creator, Eru.

Have you actually considered what Arda would have been like if Eru had not created Melkor? There would be no snow, no storms, no ice, no dragons, no failing Frodo, no heroic Aragorn, no jealous Boromir, no sneaky Gollum, no proud Feanor, etc etc...all of these are as a result of Melkor 'marring' the vision. In fact the creation of Men and Elves is seemingly as a direct result of Melkor's dicordancy - Eru raises his hand and brings that thought into the vision after Melkor has sung.

Melkor's trouble is that having been made possesing all of the aspects that all of his kin possess, he effectively has everything that Eru has, apart from the Flame and Eru's Authority. And he wants that. But Eru made him. There is no way of getting away from that fact unless you care to rewrite the Silmarillion and issue it as your own book.

EDIT: I've been looking for this, which may illuminate some of Tolkien's thought:

Originally Posted by Isaiah 45:07

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

[Elmo]

just to claim the 100th post of my own post I realise why I thought the Valar were responsible for the Akallabeth because in 'Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age' Tolkien states that Sauron 'had forgotten the might of the Lords of the West in their anger.' as has already been stated somewhere in this very interesting debate Tolkien changed his mind about who was responsible for the carnage. As to why CT never changed this contradiction when they are merely pages apart in the Silmarillion is another matter...

[littlemanpoet]

Sigh.

Lal, you insist on taking that quote out of context.

Allow me to remind you of this, which may have been overlooked: I have read that Tolkien understood evil to be negative, as in the absence of good. Thus, evil is flawed good. This can be seen in various place throughout Tolkien's writings, in which he uses the prefix, 'un-' to describe a thing, such as 'un-light'.

As to the verse, I would be interested what the original Hebrew says, for my New King James version has Isaiah 45:7 this way:

I form the light and create darkness,
I make peace and create calamity;
I, the LORD, do all these things.

Just to add oil to the fire.... :P .... Amos 3:6 says:

If a trumpet is blown in a city,
will not the people be afraid?
If there is calamity in a city,
will not the LORD have done it?

It is also interesting that Tolkien says that there is no humanly acceptable answer to the problem of evil if one posits a wholly good God (or Eru), which I still insist The Silmarillion does, in spite of how it can be taken out of context.

[Lalwendë]

I fail to see how this is taken out of context. I could in fact say exactly the same thing but I won't (or have I just? )...I'm trying to understand what Tolkien says about Eru from the text he gives us, nothing else.

Even if evil is an absence of Good then if Eru is omnipotent then he must have caused the situation for that absence to happen.

If you have a can of petrol and a match and you give them to someone and he then burns down your house, who is to blame? You might beat yourself up over it and not trust anyone again. How about if you give your best mate a can of petrol and he offers to fill up your car, and then asks if he can borrow a match to light a cigarette when he's done, but then he burns down your house? Who's to blame then? Of course we might say he was simply using his free will and as we did not realise the consequences, he was our best mate after all, it wasn't our fault. But what if the petrol and the match never even existed? Or we did not choose to put him into that situation? We caused him to be in contact with the petrol and the match, even if we had no idea what he would do.

If evil in Tolkien's world is the absence of something then Eru (as creator of all) causes Melkor to be missing something.

Add into this that Eru knows what will happen. If he does not know, and if he does not cause everything to be, then he is impotent, not omnipotent.

And if we try and solve it by saying "OK then, Eru is not omnipotent" then who is the Authority and how do we ever distinguish between good and evil?

Having Eru also put evil into the world does not mean that he prefers it, nor even that he likes it. It's just there. It's the understanding why that's the really interesting question.

It is also interesting that Tolkien says that there is no humanly acceptable answer to the problem of evil if one posits a wholly good God (or Eru), which I still insist The Silmarillion does, in spite of how it can be taken out of context.

The problem here is that you are confusing one type, one interpretation of God with Eru. Whereas there are many, many possible answers to this problem. The whole pursuit of Theodicy is devoted to this problem and that has continued for thousands of years and probably will continue as long as people have religions. Lots of answers have been turned up - and I'll get to one fully commensurate with Tolkien's writings at the end.

This essential problem is why Tolkien creates an Eru who is omnipotent, who creates All and causes All to be. This ties in completely with the concept of the Long Defeat, an idea that critics (including Christians) of Tolkien's work put down simply to the problem that evil can never be fully defeated but we must try to do it all the same or else existence is futile. It ties in with what Eru says about how evil is simply 'tributary to glory'; the only thing which evil can ultimately do is serve to greater increase Glory. It also ties in with the existence of Free Will as without options from which to choose, there is no point in having Free Will in a universe with a fully omnipotent God; the Children may as well be automatons otherwise, flawless Cybermen without the burden of choices to make. This rounding off of even the theological aspects is entirely what we might come to expect of a writer like Tolkien who covers his bases and sought out complete internal consistency and continuity in his world

This concept of an all-creating, all-powerful God is also to be found in the Book of Job in which God repeatedly smites Job with troubles (and allows Satan to do so). Job's comforters advise him to 'repent' as misfortune is always a divine punishment and fortune is always a divine reward, but Job won't do that. His wife tells him to renounce God as he cannot possibly exist if he does this; Job won't do that either. He says: "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away". Job is eventually (it seems that way anyway, it's not wholly clear) released from his troubles. The lesson is that God simply exists, and he should be worshipped even if he does bad things to the good. It's about God's divine right to do as he pleases, as whatever he does it's in our best interests. Not comforting. not even something I personally agree with, but that's what comes out in Tolkien's work whether I like it or not.

[Son of Númenor]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

This essential problem is why Tolkien creates an Eru who is omnipotent, who creates All and causes All to be. This ties in completely with the concept of the Long Defeat, an idea that critics (including Christians) of Tolkien's work put down simply to the problem that evil can never be fully defeated but we must try to do it all the same or else existence is futile. It ties in with what Eru says about how evil is simply 'tributary to glory'; the only thing which evil can ultimately do is serve to greater increase Glory. It also ties in with the existence of Free Will as without options from which to choose, there is no point in having Free Will in a universe with a fully omnipotent God; the Children may as well be automatons otherwise, flawless Cybermen without the burden of choices to make. This rounding off of even the theological aspects is entirely what we might come to expect of a writer like Tolkien who covers his bases and sought out complete internal consistency and continuity in his world

This concept of an all-creating, all-powerful God is also to be found in the Book of Job in which God repeatedly smites Job with troubles (and allows Satan to do so). Job's comforters advise him to 'repent' as misfortune is always a divine punishment and fortune is always a divine reward, but Job won't do that. His wife tells him to renounce God as he cannot possibly exist if he does this; Job won't do that either. He says: "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away". Job is eventually (it seems that way anyway, it's not wholly clear) released from his troubles. The lesson is that God simply exists, and he should be worshipped even if he does bad things to the good. It's about God's divine right to do as he pleases, as whatever he does it's in our best interests. Not comforting. not even something I personally agree with, but that's what comes out in Tolkien's work whether I like it or not.

Tolkien's Middle-earth is a self-contained, completely rational model of reality. It is not a metaphor for an ideology or a statement about some Supreme Unknowable. It has nothing to say about the world you live in: it is a metaphor for the individual - for you.

Melkor in this metaphor is the Only Lie Which Exists: the lie that you have ever done anything wrong. There is nothing transcendental about this: it is pure logic, yet we fail to actualize this principle in our dealings with others. We are overly apologetic, sympathetic - we feel the need to speak, to reassure - these are lies which keep us from seeing each other: you are a mirror to everyone and the world is a mirror to you.

We empathize with Frodo because he was nice, he did the right thing, he failed, and he was unfulfilled - but there was still hope for him! This hope is born of Morgoth, The Only Lie Ever Told.

[Son of Númenor]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

It is also interesting that Tolkien says that there is no humanly acceptable answer to the problem of evil if one posits a wholly good God (or Eru), which I still insist The Silmarillion does, in spite of how it can be taken out of context.

Yes, context!

I think the missing link in understanding Tolkien's cosmology is in the process by which it was assembled.

The process of writing The Lord of the Rings was holographic, not creative. He assembled a beautiful Metaphor out of a tiny fragment of human experience - his own. It was testament to nothing more than the word-thoughts which arose in him as he experienced reality unfolding, yet in it each of us can find our entire lives reflected.

Gandalf tells Frodo to take pity on Smeagol. Why? There are two possibilities.

1) Pity is an epiphenomenon of random processes, and it 'feels' biologically good to express pity.

2) Gandalf knows that Smeagol has never done anything wrong in his life.

It would not have mattered if Frodo fried Smeagol on the spit and feasted on him with Sam. But hey, we all read the book: we know he didn't!

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Lal

If evil in Tolkien's world is the absence of something then Eru (as creator of all) causes Melkor to be missing something.

I don't follow how you get from your 'if' to your 'then'. Please explain.

Originally Posted by SoN

Pity is an epiphenomenon of random processes, and it 'feels' biologically good to express pity.

Huh? What are you talking about, pray? And are you certain that these are the only two possibilties?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

I don't follow how you get from your 'if' to your 'then'. Please explain.

Simply that if we decide that in Tolkien's world that evil means something is missing then as a world with an omnipotent creator God, we must also assume that this creator left something out of Melkor's creation. Everything comes back to him, even the gaps.

To use a metaphor, Melkor is rather like the talented son of a supremely talented father, but the talented son who the father has failed to give any guidance to; he has had all the gifts money can buy, and has had the best schooling, but the father did not guide him. Eventually, this son saw all the power his father had and decided for himself he wanted to have that. The good thing to come out of this situation though is that the eldest son's lack of guidance and his thirst for power has made all the younger siblings work all that harder (by and large, they aren't perfect) not to make the same mistakes. Nobody can say if the father intended this all along, but he was the father, nothing can take that away.

Originally Posted by SofN

Tolkien's Middle-earth is a self-contained, completely rational model of reality. It is not a metaphor for an ideology or a statement about some Supreme Unknowable. It has nothing to say about the world you live in: it is a metaphor for the individual - for you.

I agree, I don't think it is a 'lesson' or anything of that type - it is to me primarily Art.

But...

Originally Posted by SofN

It was testament to nothing more than the word-thoughts which arose in him as he experienced reality unfolding, yet in it each of us can find our entire lives reflected.

...this does not mean I think it has no structure or internal meaning. It has a lot of this, and it is good mental exercise to argue about that. And no matter how much I simply relax into the poetics of it all and like to speculate (it is after all fantasy, which encourages this sort of thing like no other literature can, apart from Poetry, which is perhaps even more like that), it is about a whole other world and there are boundaries, rules and frameworks.

But then who is to say that even what we read is correct if we choose to fully immerse into the concept of the secondary world? Like in the real world, how do we know that what we are told is the truth?

But that way madness lies...

[Son of Númenor]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

...this does not mean I think it has no structure or internal meaning. It has a lot of this, and it is good mental exercise to argue about that. And no matter how much I simply relax into the poetics of it all and like to speculate (it is after all fantasy, which encourages this sort of thing like no other literature can, apart from Poetry, which is perhaps even more like that), it is about a whole other world and there are boundaries, rules and frameworks.

But then who is to say that even what we read is correct if we choose to fully immerse into the concept of the secondary world? Like in the real world, how do we know that what we are told is the truth?

But that way madness lies...

The funny thing about Tolkien is we have access to such a wealth of words about his personal life, and we have three major works which exist as part of self-contained, utterly paradoxical cosmology. But that's not all we have. We also have access to other maddening pieces of information:

1) The finished product of the Trans-moral (Silm) was tampered with by people other than J.R.R. Tolkien
2) Tolkien himself was furiously revising major principles of the cosmology (orc - immortal Elf or Man doomed to die?) until his death - as well as offering seemingly contradictory statements about the books (i.e. it is fundamentally Catholic but is only an adventure story)

The question to ask is this:

How does a Trans-moral Cosmology give birth to a children's Faerie Tale and a Moral Epic, and how do the Faerie Tale and the Moral Epic force their Creator to revise the Trans-moral Cosmology?

Where you see madness I see Keanu Reevers saying, "Whoa!"

[Beleg Cuthalion]

Originally Posted by Son of Númenor

In The Lord of the Rings, there is no God. This is the first thing you have to realize in approaching The Lord of the Rings: there is no God.

That's Sauron speaking.

[Son of Númenor]

Originally Posted by Beleg Cuthalion

That's Sauron speaking.

Through me, or Tolkien?