# I wonder...



## Sarah (Jul 20, 2003)

I wonder if there is anyone out there who really truly believes that Iluvatar is the creater.


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## YayGollum (Jul 20, 2003)

I don't. That would be too crazy. Who reads these books thinking that they're not just a bunch of fiction made to entertain? Sounds like a crazy person.


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## Eriol (Jul 20, 2003)

I do; and so did Tolkien, by the way. He said somewhere the "God is the Lord of angels, of men... and of elves". 

"Ilúvatar" is just another way to say God, as "Allah". (By the way, "Ilúvatar" means "All-Father").


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## Flame of Udûn (Jul 20, 2003)

Tolkien did not have Ilúvatar as a representation of God (the Christian God). Just because they fulfilled the same roles does not mean that one is a representation of the other.


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## Eriol (Jul 21, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Flame of Udûn _
> *Tolkien did not have Ilúvatar as a representation of God (the Christian God). Just because they fulfilled the same roles does not mean that one is a representation of the other. *



Quotes would be welcome.


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## Beorn (Jul 21, 2003)

I don't think that Tolkien truly believed that his Ilúvatar was God. Read letter 153. It is marked ''Not sent. It seemed to be taking myself too importantly."



> ....Foreseeing this in pan, the gods laid a Ban on the Númenóreans from the beginning: they must never sail to Eressëa, nor westward out of sight of their own land. In all other directions they could go as they would. They must not set foot on 'immortal' lands, and so become enamoured of an immortality (within the world), which was against their law, the special doom or gift of Ilúvatar (God), and which their nature could not in fact endure.


 Letter 131



> In this mythical 'prehistory' immortality, strictly longevity co-extensive with the life of Arda, was pan of the given nature of the Elves; beyond the End nothing was revealed. Mortality, that is a short life-span having no relation to the life of Arda, is spoken of as the given nature of Men: the Elves called it the Gift of Ilúvatar (God).


 Letter 212




> So while God (Eru) was a datum of good	Númenórean philosophy, and a prime fact in their conception of history. He had at the time of the War of the Ring no worship and no hallowed place.


Letter 156

I think these quotes show that Iluvatar was the equivalent of God in his works, but not in real life. The problem lays not in how Eru and God compare, but rather in what they do. For example....God said, Let there be light. Eru created Varda to pepper the sky with stars, and Yavanna to make the Two Trees. 

There are plenty more instances of non-parity that I could come up with...


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## Eriol (Jul 21, 2003)

I agree, completely. Tolkien was not re-telling the Christian myth in fancy clothes. As YayGollum said, it is "a bunch of fiction made to entertain". But as your very quotes show, Beorn, Eru and God were the same Being in Tolkien's mind -- else why would he add "(God)" after all those instances of naming Eru? No, the Being is the same, but the story told within the myth is different.

Even your example is the same one I picked in another thread (that about the Question on the Bible) -- in Christian theology, God created everything without any assistance from angels; in Tolkien's mythology, the angels shaped the world, which was created "formless" by Eru.

But these differences in the myth do not mean that the Beings being named are different. Eru has all the predicates of God; so does Allah; so does Yahweh; and so on. Different names denoting the same being. (In Portuguese it is "Deus"  ).

The fact that Muslims do not believe in the Blessed Trinity does not mean that their God is a different God; one of us (Christians or Muslims) is mistaken regarding this part of God's essence, but we still worship the same God.

Which Tolkien called Eru Ilúvatar in his myth -- the fact that this myth has angels shaping creation (instead of direct creation by God) does not touch on God's essence.

P.S. Even Tolkien's reluctance to send Letter 153 can be seen as evidence that he was taking Eru as God. Else, why would he be reluctant to send it? He can't commit any kind of sacrilege against his invented deity... unless he was identifying Eru with God, the real God in which he believed.


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## YayGollum (Jul 21, 2003)

The Sarah person was wondering if there were actually people who thought that this Eru thing was real. First you say that you think that some people do and that Tolkien was one of them. Then you say that you agree with me. Which one is it? oh well. 

I would have to say that a person would have to be crazy to believe that Eru was actually real. just like the Christians and Muslims you're talking about. Some of those types believe that there's no such thing as the other religion's god. Someone who actually believes that Eru is real would have to believe that the gods talked about in real religions aren't. Craziness. 

Or were you just saying that the insane person who believes that Eru is real is actually thinking that the guy's just a different way to look at the Christian and Muslim gods? Whoops. I don't know. oh well.


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## legandir (Jul 21, 2003)

Sarah,

Im not sure if I understand your statement - do you mean in our personal lives, do we believe the story of Lluvatar as the beginning and guiding force of our world ?
Or are you talking about in the 'world' created by Tolkien that has Lluvatar as its creator ?

Im thinking that somebody out there might in actual real-life consider the myth of Lluvatar to be actual.

Although on the flip-side I wonder how many men after a century of the 4th age believed in Lluvatar was the creator (within the conception of Tolkien's middle earth)

Both conceptions are merely conjecture.


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## Celebthôl (Jul 21, 2003)

I believe it, i also believe our planet to be Arda


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## Eriol (Jul 21, 2003)

Yay, I said that it is a fancy story, but that the God is the same. Just as in any other fiction with God -- the story is fiction, but the God is the same.


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## Sarah (Jul 22, 2003)

> _Originally posted by legandir _
> *Sarah,
> 
> Im not sure if I understand your statement - do you mean in our personal lives, do we believe the story of Lluvatar as the beginning and guiding force of our world ?
> ...



I meant w/in our world. If you read the Silmarillian in a certain way, it's almost bible-like. (not like I believe it, but i was just wonding if someone did.)


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## Eriol (Jul 22, 2003)

Oh... well, then I don't . I don't think the Sil is a tale describing actual events. But there was a thread about this (is it for real?) a long time ago... I did not take part in it, but I remember it.


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## baragund (Jul 22, 2003)

I don't think you can rule out the possibility that there may be somebody out there (or some group of people) who have been touched so profoundly by JRRT's writings that they come to believe it to be true, despite all of the commentaries under his own hand. I'm talking about pretty gullible, weak-minded people; the type who tend for fall for cults and wierd stuff like that.

I can't see JRRT himself confusing his creation with reality or his religious beliefs. Scan through his letters or his biography and you will see a _very_ strong devotion to his Roman Catholic faith.


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## Beorn (Jul 22, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Eriol _
> *I agree, completely. Tolkien was not re-telling the Christian myth in fancy clothes. As YayGollum said, it is "a bunch of fiction made to entertain". But as your very quotes show, Beorn, Eru and God were the same Being in Tolkien's mind -- else why would he add "(God)" after all those instances of naming Eru? No, the Being is the same, but the story told within the myth is different.
> 
> Even your example is the same one I picked in another thread (that about the Question on the Bible) -- in Christian theology, God created everything without any assistance from angels; in Tolkien's mythology, the angels shaped the world, which was created "formless" by Eru.
> ...



How can someone do something once, but in two different ways? They are both the primary religious figure. Tolkien uses (God) to show that they are similar (the primary religious figure), not that they are the same.

Saying that Eru and God are the same is like saying that the Angels created Earth (rather than God), that Lucifer walked out of heaven on his own (rather than being thrown out), that people go to the Halls of Mandos when they die (rather than being judged at the gates of heaven), and that there used to be Elves walking upon the earth.

They're similar, not the same.

Look at this, also from Letter 131:


> The cycles begin with a cosmogonical myth: the Music of the Ainur. God and the Valar (or powers: Englished as gods) are revealed. These latter are as we should say *angelic powers*, whose function is to exercise delegated authority in their spheres (of rule and government, not creation, making or re-making). *They are 'divine'*, that is, were originally 'outside' and existed 'before' the making of the world. Their power and wisdom is derived from their Knowledge of the cosmogonical drama, which they perceived first as a drama (that is as in a fashion we perceive a story composed by some-one else), and later as a 'reality'. On the side of mere narrative device, *this is*, of course, *meant to provide beings of the same order of beauty, power, and majesty as the 'gods' of higher mythology, which can yet be accepted* – well, shall we say *baldly, by a mind that believes in the Blessed Trinity.*



Tolkien *clearly* avoids saying that they definitely ARE angels, that Eru definitely IS God.

As to letter 153, I don't think Mr. Hastings would take lightly to the below, among other things:


> As for Tom Bombadil, I really do think you are being too serious, besides missing the point. (Again the words used are by Goldberry and Tom not me as a commentator). You rather remind me of a Protestant relation who to me objected to the (modern) Catholic habit of calling priests Father, because the name father belonged only to the First Person, citing last Sunday's Epistle – inappositely since that says ex quo. Lots of other characters are called Master;


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## YayGollum (Jul 22, 2003)

Got it, Eriol person. It still doesn't make very much sense to me. Eru and gods from real religions do different things. Work in different ways. Things like that. Sounds like only an especially crazy person would end up confusing the two.


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## Eriol (Jul 23, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Beorn _
> *Saying that Eru and God are the same is like saying that the Angels created Earth (rather than God), that Lucifer walked out of heaven on his own (rather than being thrown out), that people go to the Halls of Mandos when they die (rather than being judged at the gates of heaven), and that there used to be Elves walking upon the earth.
> *



That's the premise I disagree with. If I say that God is an important character in, say, "Crime and Punishment", this does not mean that everything that happened in that book is automatically true. It does not mean that a guy called Raskolnikov killed a woman in St. Petersburg just for the heck of it. (By the way, God _is_ very present in that book).

The presence of God in a story does not ratify all parts of it. And I took a story which is, though fiction, not fantastic; I could have picked other stories more fantastic, none come to mind right now. 

The original question is "does anyone think that Ilúvatar is the creator?" -- I still think Tolkien did. I know I do. They are indistinguishable. When I think of Ilúvatar, I see no difference between him and God; and I think Tolkien did not. In fact, I think Tolkien took very special measures to ensure that the differences in the story did not touch Eru's character. 

People can weave fancy stories about God (they do it all the time  ), but that does not change God. LotR is just one more of those fancy stories; and a particularly close-to-reality story, at least as regards God's attributes (as I see it).

By the way -- I think the major "error", or difference between Tolkien's myth and Catholic theology, is the mortality of men as a gift from God, designed from the beginning; Catholic theology holds that death is a result of sin, and was therefore not present in Eden. This is the "misfit" between Tolkien and Catholicism that I see most defended in the Letters under "artistic freedom" arguments; and even in that major difference, I think Tolkien was moving towards a "closer-to-Catholicism" view in the Athrabeth. The big question, for me, is -- was this a deliberate attempt to erase or mitigate the differences between the two? Or just a side effect? I think it was deliberate; I think Tolkien was striving to make his work even more believable by that mind which believes in the Blessed Trinity.

Also, I don't think that calling the Valar "angelic powers" is to avoid calling them angels; quite the contrary. Angels are named "powers" in theology (and even in some of St. Paul's epistles); and Tolkien had many other options. He could call them "demi-gods", or "lesser gods", or simply "powers" (as he did in the book itself); I read that passage as Tolkien going _out of his way_ to emphasize that Eru is God, that the Valar can be thought of as angels, etc. Else, why would he try to "fit" his mythology with a "mind that believes in the Blessed Trinity"? He was under no constraint to do that -- except if he saw Eru as God. 

It makes no sense if Eru is just a literary creation. That, of course, is how I see it .


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## RosiePosie (Aug 14, 2003)

But after all, "angel" comes from the ancient Greek _Anghelòs_, "messenger, and we all know that the Valars were made part of the creation of Arda through the concert of Music, which is the quintessential art, and what is the peremptory function of art if not the carrying of a meaning, a _message_ from a speaker to a receiver so that both agents join in a communication both on conscious and subconscious level?


 

Sorry, guys, just kidding! But it looks like you willingly dove into one of those debates made to quote any word ever written/spoken by man so that you can give any possible explanation of any potential thought Tolkien may ever had on any possible subject.

When I first opened my copy of The Silmarillion I knew relatively little about Tolkien. despite having read LotR and The Hobbit. But the first words struck me out as an undoubtable quote, or homage, if you prefer, to the Genesis. I know Tolkien wanted, among other things, to write some kind of mythological/cosmogonical background in his language, 'cause he thought English lit was lacking in that department. I highly doubt, myself, that he ever believed, _believed_, in the _faith_ sense, that Eru was God's name. I know many people have no faith in a God with a name and rites but have less problems accepting the existence of a God who doesn't need distinction between Allah and Javeh because of a difference of language.

I also know that a few years ago, in Great Britain, after a census the number of people who next to the voice *religion* wrote "Jedi Knight" that the State now has to recognize them as an anknowledged minority. Was it a joke? Who can say? 
The Law of Big Numbers says there has to be at least someone who does believe that. I don't think Tolkien's mythology lacks the characteristics to get into Big Numbers like those.


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