Ath, I must say, my thinking is moving back in your direction. I'll need to think about what you have written some more, but I'm also going to post what I have been working on, which is a response to something that you said earlier.
Athrabeth wrote:In one of his letters, Tolkien says something to the effect that in gifting the Ainur with both free will and the powers of subcreation, Ilúvatar must accept all the potential outcomes born from these forces as part of the great unfolding tale that he began. The only assurance he gives, unchanging and absolute, is that no "subdesign" conceived by any one of them can ultimately usurp the greater themes of his thought, and though individuals may fall and be corrupted, though death and pain and despair may long hold sway, no evil can overcome the blessedness of his Children, for whom Arda was created.
This inspired me to go through Tolkien’s letters to try find what you talking about. Doing so gave me, I think, a much firmer grasp on Tolkien's conception.
We begin with this basic statement about the Valar:
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’. (Letter 131, p. 146.)
This analogy of the Valar perceiving the “cosmogonical drama” the way that we perceive a story is of critical importance to understanding the Valar relationship to the Eldar. Tolkien later wrote:
The Ainur took part in the making of the world as ‘sub-creators’: in various degrees, after this fashion. They interpreted according to their powers, and completed in detail, the Design propounded to them by the One. This was propounded first in musical or abstract form, and then in an ‘historical vision’. In the first interpretation, the vast Music of the Ainur, Melkor introduced alterations, not interpretations of the mind of the One, and great discord arose. The One then presented this ‘Music’, including the apparent discords, as a visible ‘history.’
At this stage it had still only a validity, to which the validity of a ‘story’ among ourselves may be compared: it ‘exists’ in the mind of the teller, and derivatively in the minds of hearers, but not on the same plane as teller or hearers. When the One (the Teller) said Let it Be* (* Hence the Elves called the World, the Universe, Eä), then the Tale became History, on the same plane as the hearers; and these could, if they desired, enter into it. Many of the Ainur did enter into it, and must bide in it till the End, being involved in Time, the series of events that complete it. These were the Valar, and their lesser attendants. They were those who had ‘fallen in love’ with the vision, and no doubt, were those who had played the most ‘sub-creative’ (or as we might say ‘artistic’) part in the Music. (Letter 212, p. 284.)
I want to first address the remarkable bolded section, because it relates so starkly to a question that has run through this whole multi-venue discussion: the particular question of Melkor’s free will in opposing the will of Eru. This quote certainly suggests that Ath is most correct; that Melkor’s actions were not determined by Eru but were in fact the product of Melkor’s free will. Of course, that free will itself was part of the “plan”, but what form it would take was clearly (from this statement) not pre-determined by Eru.
(A second detour could be a discussion of Tolkien’s views about the artist as a sub-creator, but I think that discussion requires its own thread.)
Turning back to the analogy of the Valar perceiving the Design of Eru in the way we perceive a story, I love the image of One saying Let it Be, and the Tale becoming History, and the Valar entering into the Tale and laboring to reproduce the Design of Eru in actuality, by exercising their own powers of sub-creation and free will. For it seems clear to me that the actions of the other Valar are no more pre-determined that that of Melkor, other then as a result of the fact that it was Eru that gave them the free will to act, consistent with the nature of being that Eru created each of them to be.
Turning back to the earlier letter, Tolkien wrote:
The Knowledge of the Creation Drama was incomplete: incomplete in each individual ‘god’, and incomplete if all the knowledge of the pantheon were pooled. For (partly to redress the evil of the rebel Melkor, partly for the completion of all in an ultimate fitness of detail) the Creator had not revealed all. The making, and nature, of the Children of God, were the two chief secrets. (Letter 131, p. 147.)
I find the conception that Eru’s hiding of the making and nature of the Children of Eru was partly to redress Melkor’s evil wonderfully counter-intuitive. But it is the very incompleteness of the Valar’s individual and collective knowledge that allows them to act with Free Will, which itself is an important part of the design.
The following quote is one I know Ath has cited before, and may well be the one she was referring to.
But the One retains all ultimate authority, and (or so it seems as viewed in serial time) reserves the right to intrude the finger of God into the story: that is to produce realities which could not be deduced even from a complete knowledge of the previous past, but which being real become part of the effective past for all subsequent time (a possible definition of a ‘miracle’). According to the fable Elves and Men were the first of these intrusions, made indeed while the ‘story’ was still only a story and not ‘realized’; they were not therefore in any sense conceived or made by the gods, the Valar, and were called the Eruhíni or ‘Children of God’, and were for the Valar an incalculable element: that is they were rational creatures of free will in regard to God, of the same historical rank as the Valar, though of far smaller spiritual and intellectual power and status. (Letter 181, pp. 235-236.)
Here we come to the critical point. Elves and Men are “an intrusion” into the Plan, at least so far as it was revealed by Eru to the Valar. The Children of Eru also exercise free will, subject only to the nature of their being as created by Eru, and thus are unpredictable to the Valar.
As Tolkien said:
Elves and Men were called the ‘children of God’, because they were, so to speak, a private addition to the Design, by the Creator, and one in which the Valar had no part. (Their ‘themes were introduced into the Music by the One, when the discords of Melkor arose.) The Valar knew that they would appear, and the great ones knew when and how (though not precisely), but they knew little of their nature, and their foresight, derived from their pre-knowledge of the Design, was imperfect or failed in the matter of the deeds of the Children. (Letter 212, p. 285.)
I think much of the Valar’s seeming naivete in dealing with the Elves is explained by this. Imagine thinking you know a story, but then seeing it turn in a different direction that you thought it must be going. That must of been how the Valar were reacting to the actions of both Melkor and the Eldar.
But what I find most interesting is the realization that not only is there room for Free Will of both the Ainur and the Children of Eru, but that the exercising of that Free Will is actually necessary for the realization of Eru’s Plan.
Atrabeth wrote:I, too think that Mandos is there to inform us of the inevitability of certain key aspects of the tale, but why are they inevitable? Because Ilúvatar has ordained them to be in place, so that they simply must be, or because Ilúvatar has created the possibility that, through subcreation and free will, certain paths will indeed become inevitable? What is Mandos actually seeing? Fragments of a creator’s predetermined plan that was set before the "offspring of his thought" were kindled with the Imperishable Flame, or the pivotal intersections of various paths that have been set in motion through the freely made choices and actions of their designers? To me at least, there’s a big difference between those two things.............I think.
After reading and thinking about the quotes that I cited above, I agree with you that there is a big difference between the two, and that the latter was what Tolkien intended to express.
One more quote. In the Shibboleth of Fëanor, Tolkien’s talks about Míriel’s decision to forsake her body and go to the Halls of Waiting.
So the Valar were faced by the one thing that they could neither change nor heal: the free will of one of the Children of Eru, which it was unlawful for them to coerce - and in such a case useless, since force could not achieve its purpose. (Shibboleth of Fëanor, p. 334.)
Was Míriel’s choice to accept death pre-determined by Eru? I would say, clearly not. It is the fact that she
could chose to "die" that is critical to the Plan. It is the exercising of Free Will by all of the creations of Eru-- the Ainur that did not choose to go down into Arda and enter into the Tale, the Valar and the Maiar that did enter into the Tale, and the Children of Eru--that is most necessary for the final actualization of the "cosmogonical drama."
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."