The atrocity of the Akallabêth

[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!"

[Lalwendë]

I'm personally quite happy with the Sil as it is. I fully trust Christopher to have produced the work as his father would have wanted it. And then there's the not very small point that the Prof appointed Christopher to have full control over his work (including to burn it all, should he so wish) which demonstrates his own level of trust.

But as for ancillary works - such as Letters, we have to use those more carefully as they are secondary texts only; they can only serve to illuminate (or confuse) what we gather from the primary texts. Even so, the status of such documents can change over time. From reading the Companion & Guide it becomes apparent that even Humphrey Carpenter's Biography was flawed, as for example it gives the impression of a mousish, overly-studious man when he was quite the opposite, very outgoing and fond of pranks.

Anyway. Now when I ask if what we read is the truth - I mean that what we read is only one point of view of Middle-earth, most of it in fact seen through the eyes of either high ranking Elves or Hobbits. We don't see much through the eyes of Men or Dwarves or Wood Elves or Woses or Wizards or Orcs...not apart from reported speech and inserted documents. Heading down that path where we examine if what we read really is the truth of Middle-earth really is tempting madness...all kinds of questions about authorship, and not least maybe going over the edge of the fact that this is still just a book.

[Son of Númenor]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I'm personally quite happy with the Sil as it is. I fully trust Christopher to have produced the work as his father would have wanted it. And then there's the not very small point that the Prof appointed Christopher to have full control over his work (including to burn it all, should he so wish) which demonstrates his own level of trust.

But as for ancillary works - such as Letters, we have to use those more carefully as they are secondary texts only; they can only serve to illuminate (or confuse) what we gather from the primary texts. Even so, the status of such documents can change over time. From reading the Companion & Guide it becomes apparent that even Humphrey Carpenter's Biography was flawed, as for example it gives the impression of a mousish, overly-studious man when he was quite the opposite, very outgoing and fond of pranks.

Anyway. Now when I ask if what we read is the truth - I mean that what we read is only one point of view of Middle-earth, most of it in fact seen through the eyes of either high ranking Elves or Hobbits. We don't see much through the eyes of Men or Dwarves or Wood Elves or Woses or Wizards or Orcs...not apart from reported speech and inserted documents. Heading down that path where we examine if what we read really is the truth of Middle-earth really is tempting madness...all kinds of questions about authorship, and not least maybe going over the edge of the fact that this is still just a book.

"It's all just a book until someone gets bonked over the head with a wizard's sceptre."

Oh, but I am feeling fey today. I may be trying to see things that don't exist - as luck would have it I've snuck into Far Harad and the Blue Wizards have got a hold of me.

[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?

[Beleg Cuthalion]

You, obviously. The consistent message of your posts here seems to be that nothing that Tolkien did, nothing that he said, really means what it should mean. That we can't trust the word of the creator of Middle-Earth in explaining hiw work and purposes, but instead have to accept the radically different spin that you're putting on it. It's very similar to Sauron's seduction of the Numenoreans, coincidentally enough, considering the topic of the thread.

[Beleg Cuthalion]

Originally Posted by Son of Númenor

That's not what I'm saying at all, I did not mean to imply in any way that I know more about J.R.R. Tolkien than J.R.R. Tolkien: I do not and never will. 'I', in fact, cannot understand anything that does not exist in my own mind: I cannot understand something as simple as why I ate pizza and salad for dinner this evening, much less understand the reality of a deceased South African hobbit.

Regarding the pizza and salad, one would assume that it was because you inhabit a physical body with dietary needs, and must therefore fulfill them. Perhaps the reason you chose pizza and salad in particular was because you've enjoyed eating them in the past and are favourably disposed to eating them again. Maybe that's all that was in the refrigerator. Really, the possibilities for interpretation are endless, but if you look long and hard enough, you'll only find one true answer.

Originally Posted by Son of Númenor

A question has plagued me since I first met J.R.R. Tolkien - that is, met him through Peter Jackson - whom I met through a video screen... etc. etc.

The question is this:

Can a piece of writing exist as a complete metaphor for my own life and as a metaphor for the person who wrote it?

The answer is yes.

Is it? Is that truly the answer, or is simpy what you've been led to believe is the answer? Perhaps the answer is that it just feels biologically good to attempt to interpret Tokien's works as a metaphor for your personal experiences.

Again though, don't you think that's interesting? How you, intentionally or not, are echoing Sauron and his appeals to the Numenorians turning them away from Eru and the Valar? The connection is an intriguing one, really. Perhaps you don't understand it, but nothing happens for no reason.