Subcreation and image [was: RE: Betreft: Re: Steg's wonderful .sig (and a question)]

Irina Rempt-Drijfhout <ira@...> wrote:

[I forgot who wrote this:]
> > The
> > alternative interpretation to being subcreators in the image of God, is
> > being subcreators in the image of Lucifer, what we do is in defiance of
> > God's created order, we rebel and try to do better, and equally face the
> > risk of falling.
>
> But Lucifer never created anything - at least not in orthodox (note
> the lowercase initial) doctrine. He just took what was already there,
> what God had already created, and warped it to his purposes.
And Tolkien apparently wanted to make it clear that this was his
understanding too, since he explicitly stated that Melkor/Morgoth,
the Power of Evil, could never create anything, but could only
corrupt what was already created. Plus the topic of images and
looks is another important issue in Tolkien's work -- cf. the
careful explanation he makes in the Valaquenta and later, by which
the Powers could put on, at first, the image that they chose, or
no image (no body), but later were more or less 'fixed', so to
speak, so their image fit their status and grace -- fair (that
I take to mean 'more like the ideal image', the one of Eru) or
hateful (the image of something that has been twisted and ruined
by setting itself far from Eru).

Coming back to subcreation, it's interesting to see that in
Christian orthodoxy, as Lucifer is himself a creation of God,
he can't create himself -- but why can't he *sub*create?

And it'd be even more interesting to know what other religions
and conceptions of the world see this issue. Especially dualist
conceptions, where it's conceivable that two equal and opposing
powers could really create. While God and Goodness are supposed
to win in the end, maybe because all creatures are originally good
and made by God, in a dualist conception there won't be such a
limit, and there would be no way to justify the final defeat of
Evil -- unless a third and superior power came into play. Am I
just babbling? (My English speech-cortex neurons are panting!)


--Pablo Flores
  http://draseleq.conlang.org/pablo-david/