Doom or Gift?

[Telcontar_Dunedain]

What do you think death for humans was? They obviously saw it as a doom and in Athrabeth they say that they were immortal. However it is also spoken as Eru's gift to Men. What do you guys think?

[Artanis]

I agree more or less with Finrod on this matter, I think it was a gift. I don't see how the Valaquenta can be understood otherwise. The real gift however, was the gift of freedom from fate as laid out by the music of the Ainur. Men were not bound to Arda, and it was in their nature to soon become tired of the world and yearn to be set free. It is true that Andreth says another thing in the Athrabeth, but I do not trust her entirely. Her ancestors were under the influence of Morgoth, and I think it is likely that he managed to twist their beliefs about death and immortality to serve his own purpose.

At first sight the immortality of the Elves may seem like a thing to envy, but the Elves are not truly immortal, though it may seem so because their lifespan is very long. True immortality lasts longer than the existence of the world.

[Lefty Scaevola]

The elves are restricted to existing in and being incarnated of the the Marred sustance of Arda, while Human spirits get to seek beyond, to existances without the marring by Melkor. Note how many religions and philosophies of earth regard the palcing of the sirit in incarnate form a purgatory to be evolved beyond by various means such as virtue, good works, purification, etc.

[Embladyne]

Definitely a gift. If people were to live as the elves did, many more tragedies would have occured.

[inked]

A gift to deliver Man from the Doom of disobedience to Eru. Tolkien takes the stance that had Man not been disobedient, the attitude towards death would have been different. Because much of the good of the intellect was lost in the Fall, abandoned in self-willed choice, the path for twisting the meaning had been opened and was exploited by Melkor et alia. It achieves the re-ordering of the world after the blasphemies of Numenor in the discordancies of rebellious Ainur but...the rumor is that it shall not always be so. What is to be is uncertain and like Gandalf observes of Frodo's Quest "a hope, perhaps a fool's hope". Yet, even in the midst of life, we are in death, but it shall not always be so!

[Rían]

I agree with Lefty in some sense. Since the Athrabeth has a lot to say about this in its section on the fall, I think a very relevant point is that in the fall described in the Bible, eternal life (as represented by the tree of life) was removed from being available to Adam and Eve after their fall. (There were TWO trees given special names in the Bible - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life.)

One of the most interesting sentences in the Bible is what God says, AFTER the sin of Adam and Eve, and AFTER He has made a "covering" for their sin (a prophetic reference to Jesus' atonement) - it's an unfinished sentence, which makes it even more interesting : "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever -"

(and "knowing" good and evil refers to a personal knowledge/experience; for example, "I know what lying is like, for I have been lied to by a friend, and it is terrible!")

Since God, later on, offers eternal life thru Jesus, this leads me to conclude that God has no problem with eternal life for humans; He only has a problem with eternal life in a sin-marred state in a sin-marred world.

To put it a little more plainly, I think it is a huge gift, indeed, to NOT be eternally bound to a sin-marred world with a sin-marred soul, and death is the way to this, for those who so choose.