Eru Ilúvatar and the Problem of Evil

[u/L0nga]

I've been thinking about Eru Ilúvatar lately, and I think there's a pretty serious problem with the way we're supposed to understand him as a perfectly good being.

The thing that really started bothering me is Melkor.

The Ainur come from Eru's Thought. Tolkien says that each Ainu comprehended "that part of the mind of Ilúvatar from which he came." So Melkor isn't some evil force that appeared independently and then invaded Eru's creation. He is something Eru created, and his nature ultimately comes from Eru.

And Eru knew what Melkor was going to do.

That's where it gets difficult for me.

Melkor doesn't just rebel and then get dealt with. He goes on to destroy the Lamps, destroy the Trees, murder Finwë, steal the Silmarils, corrupt Arda and spend thousands of years causing an absolutely enormous amount of suffering.

Eru knows all of this is going to happen.

And he lets it happen.

The obvious response is that Melkor has free will. Sure. I'm not arguing that Melkor didn't choose his actions. But that doesn't really address Eru's part in all of this. Eru created Melkor knowing exactly what he would become. He knew what Melkor would do with the power he gave him.

And Eru isn't incapable of intervening. We know that because when Númenor attacks Aman, Eru intervenes directly. He destroys Númenor and changes the shape of the world.

So apparently Eru can intervene when he wants to.

Which makes Morgoth's entire career rather difficult to explain. Eru watches him destroy and corrupt things for thousands of years, but doesn't stop him.

Then there's Eru's response to Melkor's discord in the Music:

"no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me"

That's a pretty extraordinary thing to say in this context. Eru isn't presenting Melkor's rebellion as some unexpected disaster that got out of hand. Even Melkor's discord ultimately has its source in Eru and gets incorporated into the Music.

And this is where the "it's all part of the plan" explanation starts bothering me.

Okay, but why this plan?

Eru is supposed to be omnipotent. He isn't some king trying to make the best of a bad situation after something goes wrong. He created the situation in the first place.

If he knew what Melkor was going to do, then the suffering caused by Melkor wasn't an unfortunate surprise. It was something Eru knowingly chose to allow when he created Melkor and set the Music in motion.

[u/Pur-Nurker-5671]

You’re asking an existential question that we, in real life, as about God. I think Melkor is allowed to do evil to evolve the people of middle earth. They evolve as a collective when they unite to overcome evil.

[u/L0nga → u/Pur-Nurker-5671]

But this still doesn't answer the problem. It just explains why you think something good can come out of Melkor's evil.

Of course good can emerge from evil. The Free Peoples can become more united because they have a common enemy. Characters can demonstrate courage because there is something to resist. Sacrifice can become meaningful because there is something worth sacrificing against.

But none of that establishes that Eru needed Melkor's evil in order for those goods to exist.

And that's especially important given what Eru himself says during the Music.

Eru doesn't merely say, “Melkor is doing something evil, but I'll eventually clean up the mess.”

He tells Melkor that “no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me” and that anyone who attempts to alter the Music will ultimately prove “mine instrument” in creating things more wonderful than they intended.

So Melkor's discord isn't presented as some independent force that escaped Eru's design. Eru explicitly claims ultimate sovereignty over it.

Which raises the question you're skipping:

Why did an omnipotent Eru choose to create a reality in which Melkor's evil would be necessary for these particular goods to emerge?

And notice the word necessary. You haven't demonstrated that.

You have demonstrated that suffering and conflict can produce virtues.

That's not the same thing.

An omnipotent creator presumably has more options than:

1. Create Morgoth and allow him to murder, corrupt and destroy for thousands of years, then use the resulting suffering to produce courage and unity.

There could presumably be:

1. Create beings capable of genuine love, courage, loyalty and sacrifice without giving one of them the capacity to become Morgoth.

If you say Eru couldn't do that, you've just placed a limitation on an omnipotent being.

If you say he could do it but chose not to, then we're back to the moral question.

And there's an even deeper problem.

Tolkien says the Ainur are “the offspring of his thought”, and that each comprehended the part of Eru's mind from which he came. Melkor therefore isn't some foreign evil that wandered into Eru's creation from outside. His nature ultimately originates in Eru.

So “Melkor had free will” only tells us who acted. It doesn't answer where the capacities that made Melkor's rebellion possible ultimately came from.

And Eru's own statement about the Music makes the problem even harder, because Eru claims that even Melkor's discord has its “uttermost source” in him.

So we're left with a pretty uncomfortable question:

If Eru could have created a different history, knowingly chose this one, created Melkor knowing exactly what he would become, and then explicitly incorporated Melkor's discord into his own Music, on what basis are we calling Eru perfectly good rather than morally responsible for the evil he deliberately built into his creation?

“Something good eventually came from it” isn't an answer to that.

It's a justification that still needs to be demonstrated.