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Ahh. The simple answer to your question is He Did!

Eru is always present, always helping just in ways you do not know. If your talking about ways like when he made Numenor crash into the sea, then he does not intervene.

However when Frodo was in Mt doom and failed to destroy the Ring, it Was Eru that Made Gollum fall into the lava. It was Eru who made Bilbo find the Ring, It was Eru who sent Gandalf back from dying with the balrog.

He is always present and always helping, in ways few can notice. I will quote something tonight or tommorow for you Bauglir.

Phil_d_one?

I go to the plaza as there are still some features you can use after your suspended. You can browse there members and email them if your logged in, you can view all the forums and possibly do the tests.

Here is what I mean:

"Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that maybe an encouraging thought." (The Shadow of the Past, FotR)

"Frodo deserved all honour because he spent every drop of his power of will and body, and that was just sufficient to bring him to the destined point, and no further. Few others, possibly no others of his time, would have got so far. The Other Power then took over: the Writer of the Story (by which I do not mean myself), 'that one ever-present Person who is never absent and never named' (as one critic has said). See Vol. I p. 65." (Letter #192, Letters of Tolkien

It was Eru that made things happen - you just did not knwo it was him.

Your post have been helpful to clear things up for me TM and mouthofsauron111 so thanks, but going back to mouthofsauron111's first post and the examples of Eru intervening indirectly, I understand about Eru sending Gandalf back to finish his task, but how do you know that it was Eru who made Bilbo find the ring, and Eru who made Gollum fall into Mnt Doom. Does it say somewhere? These things could have just been coincidences couldn't they?

What about the promise that Frodo made Smeagol swear on the ring?  Didn't he warn him that if he took the ring he might be caused to throw himself into the fire?  I always thought that it was this promise that caused Gollum to fall into the fire.  This, of course, doesn't change the argument that Eru was moving things, but perhaps other things.

Jaidoprism7,

I love this line; "When Men came they learned what they could from the Elves and Presto! Dogma!"

Did you mean this world or Tolkien's world?   ...  because  "... Presto! Dogma!" is what we get lots of times when we are looking for "numinious" truth.

Anytime we transpose the real world on Tolkien or vice versa there is always a cloud of myth ... but also a chance to look for answers inside ourselves.

Why did Eru not help?
He did help ... in many ways ... from the Music of the Ainur and beyond ... the first and second children ... changing the world to round ...
What we see as his non-involvement is our own ignorance of how the divine work ...

A very interesting series of posts.

I guess I can't see that Eru didn't help. The quote Bear provided, and other examples during his song, to me says he helped a great deal. All things will be worked for his ends even though they aren;t seen by everyone. As Gandalf says:

"Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring maker."

Eru's design perhaps. I guess we'd call it Providence in this world. And, of course, people interpret Providence to mean different things.

Eru did intervene in the unfolding of Arda's history, either directly (such as when he sunk Numenor and rounded the world) and indirectly. The quotes provided by MoS above point to this very clearly. Obviously we might call these interventions 'coincidence' or 'Providence', which in Tolkien's mind (he was a practicing Catholic), means 'God's intervention'.

Obviously Eru acts in the Legendarium much as God acts in our world (note that I am an atheist and do not think there is any God at all, but when discussing Tolkien, we must use his frame of mind): i.e., very discreetly. If Eru intervened directly, two things would not have been right: firstly and most importantly, the Deux-ex machina resolution to problems that make up the novel. How would it all be if Iluvatar suddenly made the Ring disappear, recalled Sauron to the Timeless Halls and turned all the Orcs into pretty maidens offering flowers to the heavily outnumbered armies of the West? Clearly the whole climax of the novel would have become a bad joke that the readers could never appreciate. Secondly, because Eru is God and that's not how God does things. Tolkien had to stay true to this.

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Star, you quoted Ian McKellen and I felt (without consulting any work) that his statement is amiss. Then I looked the matter up in Tolkien's Letters and here's what I found in the author's own words:

"The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism." (Letter 142, 2 Dec 1953)

I am not sure and I have no context for this assumption, but I believe McKellen is mixing up the film with the book (unpardonable mistake when one thinks he is entitled to an opinion without knowing the fundamentals, especially when one is a reputable actor who's listened to by millions)...