Board Thread:General Mod Discussion/@comment-26322120-20151231185738/@comment-26335978-20160113132639

Thorin Stonehelm wrote: Catfishperson wrote: 707Mithrandir wrote: Okay, okay okay okay.

Eru is good. He is supposed to be God (the Christian God) in Middle Earth. Read the first chapter of the Silmarrilion. Does this sound strikingly like God making the Angels and Lucifer rebelling and becoming Satan? And later, don't the next chapters seem like a guided Creation? (Tolkien also used this to illustrate his idea of "sub-creation" that is, creating in our minds). God could sweep away all evil. He does not. Why? Well, because it would be too easy for us. He wants us to choose him. This is the same idea with Eru, in fact, Tolkien in his letter to Christopher makes it pretty clear that Eru is intended to be God.

Eru is totally good. Evil is, in reality, nothing compared to Good on a supernatural level (we're talking about lore here now) but only on a physical level. And then there are the Valar, which only use their power as a very last resort (and no wonder: they smashed up Beleriand pretty bad)

I only brought up the theological stuff to illustrate my point, and Tolkien's. Eru is good, and there is no changing that. Correct me if I´m wrong, but you assume Eru is ¨totally¨ good becuase he´s God like the Christian God.

First, in case you didn´t read the religoun thread, a fair amount of people aren´t Christian.

Second, Melkor was part of Eru, (as are we all) Melkor was evil. Conclusion: part of Eru must be evil.

Third, just way to many assumptions about Tolkein-lore being linked to Christianity for it to hold any wait with me.

Eru was based off of the christian god yes. however you got one or two things wrong. In lore people are not "part of Eru" they were created by him bot were not him. Eru allowed Melkor to exist and Melkor had free will, however when he rebelled against Eru, Eru stated that for every act of rebellion Melkor commited it would simply add onto the Glory of Eru (essentially stating that whatever evil you do will simply glorify what good you cannot harm in any way). and in response to your 3rd point its not assumptions, Tolkien stated several times that his books were based off of a combination of Christianity (of which he was a devout catholic) and various mythologies, especially scandanavian

Like Thorin said, Tolkien himself said that he included many Christian themes in his books. I was not trying to start up a religious argument, but my point was that if we want a true lore understanding we need the author's intent. I was not assuming anything about Tolkien's basing this on Christainity: He made it clear on his own (he would say it is not an allegory because, save for a few characters including Eru, the symbolic roles are not always a perfect parallel). However this does not mean that you must be a Christian to enjoy Tolkien's works or even gain insight from them, but you need to keep those things in mind when looking for the author's intent