October 15, 2002

Am I Fated to Talk About This Forever ?
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Eriol, believe me when I say I understand where you all are coming from with the foreknowledge thing and freewill. The little thing is, Gods foreknowledge raises too many unanswered and contradictory questions. I'm humble enough ;) to say I don't have the wordskill to elequently explain everything I find wrong with it, nor indeed is a Tolkien forum a place for it. An idea in a Raymond E Fiest book kind of fleshes out what I mean (a little) where he describes the dreams of a God are made reality. Gods foreknowledge carries with it an inherent power, that being the power of fate. I hate the idea that the power of God could be restrained (as obviously it cannot, being without bounds) but the price of free will is the negation of foreknowledge. I balance this with Gods knowledge of all possible futures, a mind numbing expanse of knowledge and power; also the idea that the gift of free will was given at God sacrificing or refraining from using foreknowledge. To hold fast to the idea of foreknowledge is to embrace the idea that God knew what was going to happen before the Universe was created, yet he still made it that way in sure knowledge of how it was going to pan out, and in the sure knowledge of who was damned and who was saved. A persons life is then "stamped" accordingly before his/her birth and nothing they can do can alter the destination point, heaven or hell. Anyways back to Tolkien, a pretty strange thought occured to me, thanks to Arina and her Balrog farms. Could Balrogs breed? Ordinary Maiar could, Melain and Me for example (told you all before it was a love triangle, Luthien is my Daughter. Thingol used to come home late drunk, bad elf (is there such a thing as a good one?!)). So could Morgie breed legions of Balrogs, or did he have a gradually depleting stock over the years? Ha Ha, could baby Balrogs fly from birth or did they have to learn? See you all later :) P.s Good Idea Brett C, a web site... I will have to look deeper into this. Death to all Elves!!! Ash Nazg...