Inherent Evil

[The Saucepan Man]

I see a very big difference between being evil and understanding that evil can exist. I can see that someone can break the law without ever breaking the law myself. (Nils)

I believe too believe that evil was "within" Eru, but I do not understand your definition of "within." (Lord of Angmar)

How could Eru understand the concept of evil in a pre-Creation universe if there was not evil within him? How else could he gain this knowledge?

Perhaps the answer is that it is the potential to do evil, ie act contrary to the standards which he defines as good, that is within him. Although you have a good point, Lord of Angmar, when you say:

if he acted in an evil way it could no longer be considered evil because he is the Creator of Ea and his actions pertaining to Ea are therefore the "right" ones.

That opens up the possibilty of a universe where the Creator exercises his potential for evil so that to act in a way that we would consider evil would actually be the "right" way to act. [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img]

But, I suppose that's all hypothetical as Iluvatar never exercised that particular option. He had Melkor to do it for him. [img]smilies/evil.gif[/img]

OK, back to my original question. Accepting that Iluvatar is good (ie does not exercise his option of committing evil thereby creating a world where evil acts are acceptable by his standards), why would he not allow the Orcs the possibility of redemption when they had no choice in being born as Orcs in the first place?