Hello all,
I have been wondering on the Valar and their titles within Middle Earth. It is very hard to not think of them as gods. Usually, gods can have a wide range of omnipresence, power, omniscience, etc. They're immortal, can remain unknown/invisible if they so wished but can also take on many forms, and some are focused in other areas of nature (the wind, the stars, etc.). In many religions they would have been thought of as gods even if they are just regents of Ilúvatar. Daniel during this last week had a specific phrasing that I think puts a pretty bow on it: "From below they appear as gods, but from above they're known not to be." I guess a question on mind regarding the Valar is, why was Tolkein so explicit that there they weren't gods?
That's all,
Elendil
I think this kind of has to do with being Illúvatar's messengers. In context from Christianity, they are merely Illúvatar's angels. The fact that they have some power and essence of grace does not make them gods themselves, merely that they have a part of Illúvatar within them. Children are not duplicates of their parents right? Just because Illúvatar is god does not mean his children are also gods. I suppose this depends on your view. According to Greek mythology, being a god means your children will at least be part gods. So it is more a race than a status or state of being or whatever. However, according to Christianity, there is only one God (there's the whole Jesus thing but he's also the same person sort of and that gets really convoluted but otherwise...) and his "children" are all of us. All people are children of God.Therefore, being God's child does not make one a god. So for this, I think this really stems out of Tolkien's Catholic background and God's angels.
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