The White Council

Re: Ranking Bombadil, Sauron, and other great powers

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: : But militarily Sauron could not have hoped to have overcome : : the Valar any more than Melkor had in the First Age. They : : had the overwhelming strength on their side. They would not : : again invade Middle-earth with war, for their own reasons, : : but Sauron posed no threat to them. He did, however, in the : : estimation of those at Rivendell, possess the strength to : : overcome even Bombadil, and thus Bombadil's inherent power : : should not be deemed so great (on the evidence available) : : that he would rival a Vala in power. There is no evidence : : that Sauron could have overcome any of the Valar in a contest : : of strength.

: Careful there. I think you're being too flip there with the : power of the Valar. Remember, all the Valar - all beings - are : finite. The 14 Valar are not invincible, and their powers are : very limited - partly because they are finite, and partly : because they are subject to laws that they cannot simply cast : aside. If they are invincible, why would they raise the Pelori? : Fashion? If they cannot be defeated by any military might, why : would they have brought the hosts of the Vanyar with them in : the War of Wrath, needlessly endangering lives? If they were : infinitely powerful, why would they have needed to abdicate : their powers to Iluvatar when the Numenoreans set foot in Aman? : (they *could* have just pushed them all back into their ships : and blown their ships back to Numenor without harming a single : one... if they were infinitely powerful, that is.)

You've partially answered your own objections. The Valar can raise mountains. That act alone would unleash sufficient power to defeat Sauron's armies. They need not be INFINITELY powerful to be MORE POWERFUL than Sauron. Sauron was not a threat to the Valar. He could not asail the Undying Lands, and he had no hope of assembling a greater military power than Melkor had at the height of his own power. Melkor's decline began with his defeat in the War of the Powers. Sauron never approached (in terms of raw power and strength of followings) the kind of power Melkor had mustered.

[snip suggestion of Tulkas taking Sauron out of the picture]

: Think about it... If Tulkas *could* have done that, why didn't : he? How many lives would have been saved? The only conclusion : from this line of thinking is that either (a) something is : terribly wrong with Valinorean morality; or (b) something is : terribly wrong with ours (in so far as we think that people : dying needlessly is a bad thing).

There need be nothing wrong with either the Valar's morality or ours. Tolkien's viewpoint was that as Time progressed, the Valar became less and less free to act within the world, but they also learned that their direct actions usually had terrible consequences. They chose not to take direct action against Sauron so as to avoid introducing any further terrible consequences. But they did take action against him.

And given that Elves and Men (and Dwarves) alone were able to defeat Sauron in the Second Age, it's not like Middle-earth's plight in the Third Age was equivalent to the situation at the end of the First Age. Morgoth had not stored the greater part of his strength in any object of which there might be a hope of destroying. It was beyond the power of Elves and Men to defeat him. Sauron's defeat was really brought about because of Iluvatar's intervention. He sent Gandalf back to organize the West so that Sauron's attention would be directed away from Mordor, and perhaps gave Frodo a little direct help (as Varda may have done, too). But the final overthrow of Sauron really only depended on a lone hobbit's happy dance at the end of the trail.

Sauron therefore had a vulnerability which could be and was exploited. Morgoth had no such vulnerability. That implies Sauron was considerably weaker than Morgoth in the final accounting of things, even though Sauron's personal power at its height may have been greater than Morgoth's at the end of the First Age.

: But it doesn't need to come to that. Rather, I'd just leave it up to the vague discription that the Valar were unable to do such things - either because they physically couldn't, or because it would break some ethereal laws, or both.

: You say there is no evidence to suggest that Sauron could have overcome the Valar in a contest of strength. But is there any evidence against it? Had Sauron regained the ring, he would have been much more powerful than he had been at any point before. He would have been militarily more powerful than Morgoth ever was. And who can say if he approached the personal power (for lack of a better term) of a Vala with the ring on his finger? It is unquestioned by Gandalf and the Wise, that if Sauron were to regain the One, he would dominate Middle-earth. Morgoth was never able to achieve that. Morgoth, with his Balrogs and his Dragons and other servants, did come close, and only the War of Wrath kept total victory from his grasp; but Sauron almost matched that without the One. If he had regained the One, and had his wraiths with their rings on their fingers at his side, and all his other servants (Orcs, Trolls, Men, Dwarves (?), Sorcerors, etc.) as well, and all the resources of Middle-earth at his disposal - who can say what Sauron would have or could have done? Could he have assailed Valinor? Could he have released Morgoth from the Void? Would Armageddon have come? Or only the Millennial rule of the Enemy?

: Or maybe you are correct and the Valar would have descended to Middle-earth and whoopped his hide. But if that is the case, why did they allow ruination and genocide to come within a hair's breadth of happening in the first place? Or if Sauron did conquer, and they came to conquer him in turn, what then would be left of Middle-earth except a war-torn land of pestilence and horror?

: Just some thoughts to upset the apple cart. ;)

: Dave C-Q