(urth) Appearances of Inire

[brunians at brunians.org]

Archangels are just angels who have cleared away more of their ego.

There no God where I is.

.

> John Watkins wrote (01-07-2010 13:18):
>> I think there are in fact three options:
>> 1)  Tzadkiel is, like a Christian archangel, more or less in direct
>> contact with the will of the deity.  Thus he/she is to be completely
>> trusted and is a more or less incontrovertible moral authority.
>> 3)  Tzadkiel is a "higher" being in some meaningful sense but remains
>> metaphysically removed from the divine, like the angel in "The Cock and
>> the Angel."  His/her belief in the Increate and desire to do its will is
>> sincere, and to that end he/she is just doing the best he/she can, but
>> like the angel in the story Tzadkiel remains fallible and infinitely
>> removed from the mind of the Increate.
>
> Afaict 1 and 3 are just points in a continuum. Unless you push 1 further
> and
> make it so that Tzadkiel has no will at all but God's will. In that case
> Tzadkiel would not be a free agent but merely an extension of God. Not
> exactly the same as an angel. I don't think Tzadkiel is such an extension,
> so between 1 and 3 I think only 3, which is really more or less the same
> as
> the lesser sense of 1, works. It is just open to debate how fallible
> Tzadkiel is.
>
> The Valar try not to commit evil because they're good, not because they're
> bound to Eru's will.
>
>  > 2)  Tzadkiel is a creepy insectoid alien thing and a liar.  The
>  > pretentions of religion are a means of controlling the human race.
>  > I go back and forth between 2) and 3) myself.
>
> Option 2 I think is untenable.
>
> - If God is good, then it makes no sense to create a universe in which:
>    + God's creatures are toys in an evil power's hands
>    + God's creatures believe that the evil power is not evil at all and is
> doing God's work
>    + those who oppose the evil power are not, generally speaking, better
> people than the others, and in fact seem to be worse.
>
> - If God isn't good then by what standard can we call such an unfathomable
> being as Tzadkiel evil?
>
> Keeping option 3 doesn't mean that the acts of Tzadkiel need no atoning
> for,
> it just means they're done with the best of intentions and knowledge. We
> have a saying here, 'Of [people with] good intentions is Hell full'.
>
> Antonio
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