# Did Eru bring about evil?



## BalrogRingDestroyer (Mar 3, 2020)

I know this almost sounds blasphemous, but he actually said that even Melkor's diverge from the themes of the others, which supposedly created evil and sadness, had its source in Eru, not Melkor, and that Melkor was ultimately doing his will, even though he thought he was doing his own.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Mar 4, 2020)

It's the problem faced by every theodicy. I doubt it will be solved here.


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## Phantom718 (Mar 5, 2020)

Basically, evil has to exist for good to exist, and vice versa.


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## Olorgando (Mar 5, 2020)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> It's the problem faced by every theodicy. I doubt it will be solved here.


I doubt it will *ever *be solved ...


Phantom718 said:


> Basically, evil has to exist for good to exist, and vice versa.


There's a passage in (Sir) Peter Ustinov's amazing, and to me brilliant 1990 book "The Old Man and Mr. Smith" (which I have in a 2004 10th printing of the German translation), between the title protagonists (and antagonists) about light needing dark so that a contrast can be seen ...


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## Phantom718 (Mar 5, 2020)

Olorgando said:


> I doubt it will *ever *be solved ...
> 
> There's a passage in (Sir) Peter Ustinov's amazing, and to me brilliant 1990 book "The Old Man and Mr. Smith" (which I have in a 2004 10th printing of the German translation), between the title protagonists (and antagonists) about light needing dark so that a contrast can be seen ...



Precisely. We may not understand or appreciate things if they didn't have a contextual or theoretical opposite: Light/dark, day/night, up/down, left/right, good/evil, dry/wet, easy/difficult, salt/sugar, etc. etc. etc. list goes on.


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## Olorgando (Mar 5, 2020)

Just to pick two of your opposites, their being considered "good" or "bad" (I do not use the term "evil" for reasons I will explain (I hope) below).
Day / night. All birds except for owls (as far as I can recall) would very much opt for "day", while practically all bats would opt for "night". Both for good reasons.
Dry / wet. This gets even more fundamental, as all air-breathing creatures would certainly opt for dry (or would drown). All fish (or other gill-"breathers") would opt for wet (ask a fish flopping around on dry land).

"Evil" is an entirely human concept (we don't know, and may never know, if some of the more - by our terms - "intelligent" creatures such as our nearest relatives, dolphins, crows, whatever have at least rudiments of such a concept - my guess would be yes, and that it remains unprovable). And unfortunately, by our own definition, we are the only beings capable of true evil, senseless destruction.


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## Phantom718 (Mar 5, 2020)

I was only listing things that are considered by most to be exact opposites of each other. Nature uses these things in their own ways, as you pointed out (with bats, owls, fish, etc.) My point was simply that you must have one to understand the other. If there was no daylight, the concept of darkness would be completely different. If everyone was a bad person, we wouldn't appreciate the good ones. 

It's all part of how the universe balances things. 

In the OP, it is explained how Melkor's M.O. is derived from Eru himself; he allows it to be so. Hence the historical analogy to God and Satan. There's an entire philosophical/theological debate there however,, that I won't get into 😎


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## Olorgando (Mar 5, 2020)

I may have been trying to make the point that not (nearly) all opposites are equals, in the sense of a balancing scale. Mahatma Gandhi and Hitler (or Stalin, or…) do not balance.
To exaggerate a bit (recent history has rendered the exaggeration so small) there may be say 99 highly respected and eminently competent scientists on one side, and a corrupt, criminal, narcissistic, psychopathic raving lunatic on the "other side". Some parts of society, seriously misinformed for whatever reasons, might conclude "the issue is in doubt!"

Nope. It ain't.

To repeat a very sarcastic post of mine in another JRRT site. Einstein's relativity theories have been proven (and as all serious scientific theories they await their being possibly disproven) massively. GPS needs both the special and the general theory to work, for example. I am seriously unable to explain either of them (the mathematics involved are extremely non-trivial).
So someone quotes my post and claims "Einstein's theories are unexplainable!". Next poster does not quote my post, but the already mangled interpretation of that first poster.
Continue that for a handful of posts. and you get unmitigated garbage. It's called "Stille Post" in Germany, "Chinese Whispers" by Richard Dawkins, one of the best explainers of Darwin's theory (by now refined and confirmed even more that Einstein's). When people do not transmit what they have heard (read, whatever), verbatim, but their (all-too-often) faulty interpretation.


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## Elthir (Mar 5, 2020)

In Tolkien's poem _Mythopoeia,_ he writes:

Then looking on the Blessed Land 'twill see
that all is as it is, and yet made free:
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.
Evil it will not see, for evil lies
not in God's picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in malicious choice,
and not in sound but in the tuneless voice.


To me this seems to echo a Christian notion that God did not create evil, but created a world in which free will exists, and thus evil is possible (which can also redound to good). God can create automatons that simply play out a script, or, he can create beings with free will/choice.

Is this the answer to the Problem of Evil? No. It's an answer. But as noted, there's no all-agreed-upon answer, so whether it "makes sense" or not, or the most sense, to anyone, is subjective in any case -- and if I merely pick the answer that makes the "most sense" to me (not that I necessarily have), that wouldn't necessarily mean, of course, that it automatically reflects Tolkien or Eru.

So in that light: JRR Tolkien wrote this part of this poem . . . but not this post 😇


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## Miguel (Mar 6, 2020)

He was not supposed to go into the darkness of the void, when he came back into the halls he was probably like:_ "This fools have no idea what i just saw, i need that place filled with light immediately, not when he decides..."_ Eru was referring exclusively to the music, hanging out in the void has nothing to do with the music.


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## Sartr (Mar 12, 2020)

I was thinking about this recently and came to the same conclusion. Melkor was deliberately created to provide opposition to the other Valar. Each of them has a domain of influence, like "water" or "air" or "plant life", but Melkor has some of the power of each. If he was meant to be just another Vala, that would make him redundant, wouldn't it? He is told right in the very beginning by Illuvatar:
_
And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.' _

Which to paraphrase, essentially is "go ahead and do evil things, because greater good will come of it." And to reinforce the idea, this statement follows shortly after:

_In the beginning the Elder Children of Ilúvatar were stronger and greater than they have since become; but not more fair, for though the beauty of the Quendi in the days of their youth was beyond all other beauty that Ilúvatar has caused to be, it has not perished, but lives in the West, and sorrow and wisdom have enriched it. _

This theme is repeated all throughtout the canon from Feanor to the Hobbits - Middle Earth thrives under an analog of the medieval virtues: bravery, charity, sacrifice, etc. These virtues need an antagonist - you can't showcase courage against all odds without something to fight. And so Melkor is the necessary evil which brings out the best in Man and Elf. That's why the Silmarillion is about the Noldor and not the Vanyar, who are pious and innocent but never seem to accomplish much of anything.

My unanswered question is: Melkor is told right at the start that rebelling against Illuvatar is exactly what he wants. So why does he do it anyways? Is he truly rebelling, or just doing what his job is supposed to be?


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## Elthir (Mar 12, 2020)

Sartr said:


> I was thinking about this recently and came to the same conclusion. Melkor was deliberately created to provide opposition to the other Valar [ . . . ] _ And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.' _
> 
> Which to paraphrase, essentially is "go ahead and do evil things, because greater good will come of it." And to reinforce the idea, this statement follows shortly after:




Or, to paraphrase this slightly differently, if you choose to go against goodness, you shall see . . . 

For myself, I see nothing here that necessarily disagrees with the Augustinian view of the Problem of Evil, very arguably expressed in Tolkien's poem, and I think, fairly well explained here.






Augustine on Evil


Is God the author of evil or its helpless victim?




www.str.org





Again, I don't plan on defending the argument as the best answer, or most "logical" answer to the Problem of Evil, only that I think the difficult notions found in this article are expressed briefly and poetically above by JRRT.

As the poem states:

Evil is not in God's picture.
Not in the source. 
Not in the . . . sound!

The first two seem "all encompassing" to me. And the third is, I think, a particularly noteworthy choice of words given the "musical" creation in _The Silmarillion. _Melkor's "tuneless voice" was his _choice_, and in an Augustinian sense at least, evil is not a thing, thus Melkor has chosen "less goodness", which Men call evil.


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## Olorgando (Mar 14, 2020)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> It's the problem faced by every theodicy. I doubt it will be solved here.





Olorgando said:


> I doubt it will *ever *be solved ...


If theologians of every confession continue to the maximum possible to contort themselves until our sun becomes a Red Giant in several billion years in the future, they do not have the slightest chance of explaining this (away). The basic fallacy of all such "arguments", including Eru's pathetic "explanations" to Melkor, is that you need black to be able to see white in contrast.
Thundering Baloney Slices. Even light shades of grey suffice as a contrast, and never mind the other colors of the rainbow, all far more spectacular than all "shades of grey".


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Mar 14, 2020)

Roses are red,
Violets are blue;
Analogies are imperfect,
And so is this poem.


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## Olorgando (Mar 18, 2020)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> Roses are red,
> Violets are blue;
> Analogies are imperfect,
> And so is this poem.


My spontaneous reaction to your post was "bro, you don't know how bad poetry can get unless you've read some of mine!" … 🥴
The I started searching my fading memory about when I may have last perpetrated anything of the sort … 🤔
My best guess, and I really can't narrow it down to more than a decade, would be the 1960s (I was all of 13 when they ended).
And again, this faded memory seems to stem from about 1996, when we had a 30-year reunion of people having attended the German school in Bombay (mow Mumbai), India.
If this were true, I was just 10 when I composed it (for the teacher I had in the fourth grade - and for me last grade there).
While I doubt it was as bad as the Vogon poetry in Douglas Adams's "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (or the two even wore ones), it was probably pretty insipid.
And anyway, of this I'm certain, it was in German, and poems translate very badly, as a rule.
The translation might have matched the Vogon stuff, so be happy you're ignorant of it! 😉


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## Olorgando (Mar 23, 2020)

Without the slightest doubt he created the (later) evil-doers ...


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## Boffer Balsashield (Mar 26, 2020)

To take a sort of "meta" approach to this, Tolkien always said the Lord of the Rings was a Christian story. The Book of Isaiah (45:7) states that God creates evil, so presumably this would apply to Eru as well.


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## Olorgando (Mar 26, 2020)

My source is a "Saint Joseph New Catholic Edition of the Holy Bible", copyright 1963 Catholic Book Publishing Company, New York, presented to me on June 22 1969 by our diocese bishop Joseph P Denning, by the date it must have been my graduation from eight (and last) grade from this grade school, for … *mathematics?!?!?*

Dim memories - but then this was most likely sub-algebra (in which I was diffident, except for a perfect 100% score on the state final exams), never mind even geometry or trig and calc.
I can still do sums and related arithmetical stuff just by thinking, at least to plausibility levels ...

Isaia (in my above-mentioned version), chapter 45:7: "I form the light, and create the darkness, I make well-being and create woe; I, the Lord, do all these things."

One of the least-quoted passages in this book, is my spontaneous guess.


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## Boffer Balsashield (Mar 26, 2020)

Ah. Sorry, my source was the KJV...which does contain a lot of poor bits of translation. Yours is probably closer to the original.


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## Olorgando (Mar 26, 2020)

Boffer Balsashield said:


> Ah. Sorry, my source was the KJV...which does contain a lot of poor bits of translation. Yours is probably closer to the original.


Not the slightest need to apologize. Translation errors from the ancient Greek that much of the NT was written in abound, and never mind errors in the translation of the Hebrew Bible or Tanach, with confusion thrown in by the Septuagint, translated from Hebrew into the then prevalent Greek a bit before 200 BC.

Martin Luther, credited with translating the (for 99% plus illegible) Vulgate, meaning Latin, Bible into then current German (I am a dual native speaker of German and English), actually did far less of this than credited for. His linguistically far more adept follower Philip Melanchthon did far more of it. I have no idea where the King James version fits into this collection ...


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## Boffer Balsashield (Mar 26, 2020)

Well, the King James Version was done by a committee in the early 17th century. It deliberately mistranslated things people were squeamish about, mainly by using (now) obscure euphemisms in relation to sex, sexual organs, and slaves. It also deliberately fudged some wording to make the KJV look more like it supported royal authority. So it was not what we would consider a scholarly translation and it very much had an agenda, or perhaps a couple of agendas, as we would say today.


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## Olorgando (Mar 26, 2020)

Hypocrisy rampant - why does this not surprise me in the least? (Not that the KJV was the worst mistranslation, I would guess).


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## Elthir (Mar 26, 2020)

With respect to Isaiah 45:7, like many things, it depends upon translation/interpretation. Sorry, forgot to jot down all the sources below, but a quick search on the web can unearth the following and more (with respect to similar commentary). First, a bit of context:




> Isaiah 45:7 "these words are directed to Cyrus king of Persia, and must be understood as spoken in reference to the Persian sect of the Magians; who then held light and darkness, or good and evil, to be the supreme Beings, without acknowledging the great God as superior to both;''






> [the next four quotes hail from the same source, noted below]
> 
> Isaiah 45:7 in the King James Version says, “I make peace, and create evil.” One of the fundamental rules about understanding the Bible accurately is to read a difficult-to-understand verse in its immediate context, as well as in the broader context of the rest of the Scripture. Another rule is to consider other possible translations of the verse.






> Many Hebrew words have a broad range of meanings. While the Hebrew word translated “evil” in the King James Version usually refers to unethical or immoral activity, it can also mean times of distress (Amos 6:3) and is sometimes contrasted with shalom (peace). The New International Version renders the passage, “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster.” Similarly, the New Living Translation offers, “I am the one who creates the light and makes the darkness. I am the one who sends good times and bad times.” Tanakh, The Holy Scriptures: The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text confirms this understanding with, “I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe—I the Lord do all these things.”






> Barnes’ Notes, a Bible commentary, has this helpful additional comment: “The parallelism here shows that this is not to be understood in the sense of all evil, but of that which is the opposite of peace and prosperity. That is, God directs judgments, disappointments, trials, and calamities; he has power to suffer the mad passions of people to rage, and to afflict nations with war; he presides over adverse as well as prosperous events. The passage does not prove that God is the author of moral evil, or sin, and such a sentiment is abhorrent to the general strain of the Bible, and to all just views of the character of a holy God” (notes on Isaiah 45:7).






> Although God allows moral evil and sin, He does not create this kind of evil. The rest of the Bible is replete with evidence of His goodness and His marvelous plans for mankind. James 1 17 assures us that “every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (NIV). Satan is responsible for much of the evil of this present world. And unfortunately, people have brought many evil things on themselves by their own actions.
> 
> _Beyond Today_
> published Jan 5th 2011




And another couple of examples:



> "light … darkness—literally (Ge 1:1-3), emblematical also, prosperity to Cyrus, calamity to Babylon and the nations to be vanquished [Grotius] … Isaiah refers also to the Oriental belief in two coexistent, eternal principles, ever struggling with each other, light or good, and darkness or evil, Oromasden and Ahrimanen. God, here, in opposition, asserts His sovereignty over both [Vitringa]. create evil—not moral evil (Jas 1:13), but in contrast to "peace" in the parallel clause, war, disaster (compare Ps 65:7; Am 3:6).












Why does Isaiah 45:7 say that God created evil? | GotQuestions.org


Why does Isaiah 45:7 say that God created evil? Did God create evil? What is the interpretation of Isaiah 45:7?



www.gotquestions.org


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## Boffer Balsashield (Mar 26, 2020)

Elthir said:


> “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster.”


That would tie in nicely with the practice of labeling natural disasters "Acts of God"! (Again, probably a better translation of the original.)


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## pippin le qer (Mar 26, 2020)

When an omnipotent being: Eru or just God creates a world it/he/she creates in equal amount creation and destruction, they are as the opposite poles of a magnet and cannot go without eachother.
exemple: when a song is created, silence is broken. As long there is balance there is no trouble - and no story either - when on side goes aacting on its own, you get a Morgoth or Satan.
We can call creation Good and destruction Evil, therefore both have there source in Eru.


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## Elthir (Mar 27, 2020)

> As long there is balance there is no trouble - and no story either - when on side goes aacting on its own, you get a Morgoth or Satan.
> We can call creation Good and destruction Evil, therefore both have there source in Eru.




And/or we can say that creation is good and destruction -- if we are going to call it "evil", is the choice of a Morgoth or a Satan or others -- which to me negates (or at least amounts to "not necessarily") your _therefore_ about "source" -- the very word Tolkien, in his poem (see page one of this thread "not in the source . . ."), uses.


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## Olorgando (Mar 27, 2020)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> It's the problem faced by every theodicy.


And thus unsolvable. As are all circular "arguments".
The problem is assumptions - unquestioned ones (by "believers").
Nothing gets me riled as much as the statement I've heard far too often, that there are "assumptions that may not be challenged".
"Shove it where the sun don't shine", is the only comment that may be fit to be posted here.
Or perhaps not, I do not care …


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Mar 27, 2020)

Now, now...


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## Olorgando (Mar 27, 2020)

There's a hypothesis that one mellows with age ...
some may, I didn't, for darn good reasons.


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## Elthir (Mar 29, 2020)

Hi. Ando here. And I'm surprised no one has argued that JRRT's poem (quoted in part by that handsome cat, Elthir) is not part of the world of Middle-earth, and thus, it doesn't necessarily follow that whatever it has to say about evil and God (however it is interpreted) pertains to Eru.

From one of Tolkien's draft letters, dated 1958 (also published in _Morgoth's Ring_):



> "I suppose a difference between this Myth and what may be perhaps called Christian mythology is this. In the latter the Fall of Man is subsequent to and a consequence (though not a necessary consequence) of the "Fall of the Angels": a rebellion of created free-will at a higher level than Man; but it is not clearly held (and in many versions is not held at all) that this affected the "World" in its nature: evil was brought in from outside, by Satan.
> 
> In this Myth the rebellion of created free-will precedes creation of the World (Ea); Ea has in it, *sub*creatively introduced, evil, rebellious, discordant elements of its own nature already when the_ Let it Be_ was spoken. The Fall, or corruption, therefore, of all things in it and all inhabitants of it, was a possibility if not inevitable."




I read this as: Creator Eru creates Free Will = allows the _possibility_ of evil. Evil is now possible (not inevitable) and is introduced by Subcreators.

What?
Oh Yeah.
Ahem.

Elthir coloured some words red
and wants me to add that he thinks
this fits nicely with the part of JRRT's
poem he quoted earlier.

I am not surprised that Elthir thinks this


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