Was evil meant for Arda?

[Eriol]

Well, to each his own . But Tolkien surely did not view Eru as an analogue of Brahman, but of Jehovah. Eru has a personality, has a will, and judges. Brahman does nothing of the sort.

In a monotheistic setting, perfect does indeed mean "all-good" (as well as "all-beautiful" and "all-true").

Though certainly no one will arrest you for seeing Eru as Brahman .

 

[Lantarion]

Haha; sorry, I didn't mean to say that Ilúvatar was exactly like Brahman. I meant that I think he is above adjectival desciption. He is the Maker of Everything. To call him one thing would mean that he was not another. Therefore you must call him Everything, or Nothing.
But as Eru is indeed a 'godlike' mythological figure, i.e. he has a vaguel described 'personality', and has certain qualities (e.g. the Flame Imperishable). I mean, he is tangible in a sense, whereas Brahman could never be called tangible.

 

[Celebthôl]

So therefore he was everything, including evil, he just didnt use these traits he didnt need to, but he made the Ainur out of everything he was, but spreadout between them all, except with Melkor he had a part of everything including evil, and seeing as no other Valar (apparently) gained evilness, we must asume that Melkor gained a fair ammount of evilness. Maybe Eru planned on Melkor being able to control the evil...i dunno

 

[Eriol]

I don't have time to answer this now, Thôl, but I will give you a part of the answer as I see it: Evil does not really exist. That is why perfection does not include it. Evil is simply a debasement of good. And therefore perfection has no trace of evil, since it is incorruptible.

 

[Ithrynluin]

I happened upon another interesting quote in HoME X: Morgoth's Ring:

For Eru is Lord of All, and moveth all the devices of his creatures, even the malice of the Marrer, in his final purposes

I think this reinforces my view that Melkor was made evil (not wholly evil, but most of his personality) and was acting out Eru's greater plan.

I'm sure that Eriol has an alternative explanation for this passage.

 

[Eriol]

Why, sure

Who has the malice? The Marrer. Who have the devices? The creatures. It is plain in the quote. The malice is not from Eru, and neither are the devices. Eru moves them for his own final purposes, but they are not from him.

I would think this interpretation is more likely than yours, by the phrasing of the sentence .

I have a favorite quote of Milton's Paradise Lost that shows well the relationship between Satan and God. (I had once qouted it in one of Luhnithiliel's threads, about Light). I know the parallel between these and Eru / Melkor is disputed by some, but I think Tolkien pretty much patterned them after God / Satan.

Fall’n Cherube, to be weak is miserable
Doing or Suffering:but of this be sure,
To do ought good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his Providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil.

This is not only explanatory of Melkor's motives but also of the way Providence, Eru's plan, works -- never by taking the free will out of the agent, only by thwarting his labors.

 

[Celebthôl]

Originally posted by Eriol
Who has the malice? The Marrer. Who have the devices? The creatures. It is plain in the quote. The malice is not from Eru, and neither are the devices. Eru moves them for his own final purposes, but they are not from him.

Everything is from Eru, anything that is on Arda, or that happens on Arda etc is his thought, the devices included, he did not bring them to Arda directly, he only left the plans for them in the Marrers head and the Marrer brings them forth, nothing can exist that was not first thought of by Eru...

Edit: Gah you edited that post just before i poste and i dont understand that quote i have such a feeble mind

 

[Eriol]

Originally posted by Celebthôl
Everything is from Eru, anything that is on Arda, or that happens on Arda etc is his thought, the devices included, he did not bring them to Arda directly, he only left the plans for them in the Marrers head and the Marrer brings them forth, nothing can exist that was not first thought of by Eru...

But then we have no free will, and are just like Aulë's Dwarves...

I could challenge that, but it would take looooong posts.

(I already did some of it in the Gary Kasparov thread, which had some record-breaking posts).

EDIT: Sorry! I thought the quote was worth it. It regards Satan speaking to himself about his methods, so to speak.

 

[Celebthôl]

Im not saying that they didnt have free will b/c that would be folly and they did, but things happened for a reason, i.e. Bilbo going on the journey etc, he didnt want to it was against his will, but look what happened there, i think Ilúvatar may have had some sort of dealings there, and the major things that happened, i believe Eru had a hand in aswell, i.e. the 5th battle of Beleriand where Morgoth was finally taken away and hurled into the void, and he most certainly had a hand in who gained the ring. Who better than Gollum to posses it? If he didnt gain it and go into hiding in the MM then it would have been found, and so on.

Edit: There are to many edits and it most likely was im just to dumb to understand it

 

[Eriol]

Sure Eru deals with the world -- constantly. But he does so through Providence, the governing of the World, and not through forcing people to make choices. And that is why we have free will, we can choose good or evil. The point of Providence is that even if we choose evil Eru can turn it into good through the governance of the World.

So there are some things in the world which do not come from Eru -- the choices of free agents. He uses this material to guide History, but he does not provide the material itself.

And this is why ithrynluin's quote can be interpreted in a "Catholic" way, as most probably Tolkien would have intended it.

 

[Celebthôl]

But it was not Bilbos choise to find the Ring, but he did, it was not his choise to go on the "adventure" but he did, (when i say that, i mean he didnt want to go on it).
Eru had a hand in both of these events, i.e. as Gandalf so perfectly put it

"Bilbo was meant to find the ring"

and only Eru can do that, not Manwe, not Gandalf.

Eru takes control in the most subtle of ways but it makes the biggest impact on Arda...

 

[Eriol]

Exactly. Bilbo' first choice after finding the Ring was a crucial one -- whether to kill Gollum or not. Perhaps Eru, the Master Puppeteer, was simply giving Bilbo the impression of having a choice.



I don't think so. I like to think that even if Bilbo killed Gollum, the world would get out of it all right. Perhaps it would take longer. Perhaps Sauron would have won the War of the Ring. It would certainly have been bad for Bilbo, himself.

But if you believe in an All-loving, All-mighty, All-perfect Eru you have to believe also that any setbacks will be solved, any obstacles will be surmounted.

The presumption that "in the end all will turn out right" is simply an illusion otherwise. (This applies to our world as well).

 

[Celebthôl]

It does apply to our world, all will turn out right, but let us say...somewhere along the line we killed Gollum, therefore the badness took over and it will all turn to right but will take a lot longer than it should

 

[Eriol]

Agreed...

And then we have the answer to the question of the thread, have we not?

 

[Celebthôl]

I guess we do

Well thank you for the great discussion

 

[Helcaraxë]

We could debate this for hours. Put simply, I agree with Thol. To be "Lord of All", he would also have to be lord of evil. That evil is a debasement of good is irrelevant. You say it doesn't exist, Eriol, but even as a debasement of good it must truly exist or we would have no knoledge nor understanding of it. And no, I don't think we have a proper answer to the question, only speculation, but I suppose that as mortals that that is the most we can understand regarding Eru's higher purposes.

 

[Eriol]

Originally posted by Morgoth"sBane
You say it doesn't exist, Eriol, but even as a debasement of good it must truly exist or we would have no knoledge nor understanding of it.

Truly exist -- many things are understood without "truly existing". Blindness may be understood, even though light is perceived, and even if someone has never experienced blindness itself.

Is there any ontological existence in blindness?

Can you say blindness "truly exists"? Well, sure you can, since there are blind people. But do you experience or know blindness at all, unless with your imagination? To you, blindness is more like a dream (a bad dream) than reality.

True existence is something that only God may grant. Pink flying elephants may be understood, but they don't exist . Likewise, Eä was understood before it was "willed" into existence. By your argument, this is impossible, and the vision brought before the Valar was nonsensical.

"Understandability" is a feature of reality only in so far as God/Eru wills it. There is no in-built rule in reality that demands it to be comprehensible. Einstein explained it quite well: the fact that the Universe is understandable, that it is liable to be studied by human reason, points strongly to the fact that there is a God. And even I, the staunchest evolutionist in this board , can't see how natural selection would mould an organ (reason, not "brain") that is able to detect the order in the movement of stars and mathematics, without presupposing there is an order pre-existent. Why should there be one? If our reason is merely the product of natural selection, then so is our science and all of our knowledge, and therefore we can't trust any of it to be true.

(Including, of course, the conclusion that reason is merely the product of natural selection ).

Finally, what about Manwë? Do you claim he does not exist in Tolkien's myth? He does not understand evil, he has no knowledge of evil. In our world, Manwë's role is assumed by the angels. (The real existence of angels is a side track. Luckily we are examining Tolkien's world here). If we must assume that Evil must exist or we would not understand or know it, I think this means that to Manwë it doesn't exist, since he fits these requirements.

And if something exists for some and not for others, I guess it is safe to say it does not "truly exists" -- just like blindness; or sight, for that matter!

(The matter of the true, ontological existence of things is a big investigation).

 

[Helcaraxë]

I'm not saying that to exist something must be understood. What I am saying is that we know evil exists not only because we understand it but also because we experience it. If evil does not exist, then how do you explain Morgoth? I find the idea of evil's non-existence rather far-fetched. I never said that if Manwe didn't understand evil it wouldn't exist.

 

[Eriol]

(I told Celebthôl that the non-existence of evil is a hard idea to explain...)

Evil has psychological existence. People can act evilly; Acts can have evil consequences -- even if people are not acting evilly.

However, evil has no ontological existence, which is the most basic kind of existence, and is why I can claim that it doesn't exist. You can't point at anything that exists and say -- "That is intrinsically evil". Not even Melkor; not even Satan.

Another way to put it is to say that existence, itself, is associated with goodness. And it is clear enough why this is so in a monotheistic setting. Everything that exists does so only through God's will (or Eru's will). Since God/Eru is perfect (i.e., All-Good), everything that exists is good in itself.

Evil appears when someone disobeys God's wishes. The ability to disobey God's wishes -- free will -- is among the greatest goods. This is why evil is allowed to exist; in a sense, evil is a side effect of free will. You can only erradicate evil by eliminating free will, but this would be a much greater evil in itself.

 

[Helcaraxë]

That makes more sense. However, even if it only exists psychologically, that is still existence, though on a different level than if it were innately present in the world. Because of this, I don't think the statement that evil is non-existant is completely accurate, though is certainly has some truth to it.

-MoGoBa