(urth) Re: Increate on trial
James Wynn
thewynns at earthlink.net
Thu Mar 31 10:43:02 PST 2005
----- Original Message -----
From: "Roy C. Lackey"
>my point in the above excerpt was to maintain that, from
>one end of the Judeo-Christian spectrum to the other, from the Old
>Testament
>to the New, the world we live on is necessarily the most dear piece of real
>estate in Creation to the Increate. I don't see how either Jew or Christian
>could argue with that.
"And if there's life on other planets
Then I'm sure that He must know,
And He's been there once already
And has died to save their souls"
-- Larry Norman ("He's An Unidentified Flying Object")
>Maybe Wolfe placed the Sun cycle in a previous universe in an attempt to
>dodge the problem presented by the Incarnation that I mentioned. But both
>Newton and Einstein would frown on uncaused effects -- those Christian
>symbols.
I have understood Wolfe to be saying consistently and through multiple
novels that that imagery is universal. That Christ did what he did because
he was the Christ, not because circumstances shaped his history. That Christ
being who he is, all creation and all saviors in myth and history tend to
look like him.
And I don't see any more point in speculating on the eternal fate of the
Urthlings than to question the eternal fate of Frodo. I could say, "well
since these Urthers were before Adam, why they must have had no eternal
souls" or "being in a different Universe, the current concepts of Heaven and
Hell are not relevant". But what's the point? Those are hardly the only way
to bring the Sun cycle into the Christian universe. But I don't think Wolfe
intends any such thing. He wrote a new mythology here, not speculative
fiction.
Personally, I've come to like the idea of a "futuristic novel" set in a vast
distant future that occurs in the staggeringly distant "past" (if that's the
proper word for something that occurs beyond multiple iterations of the
collapse and rebirth of Time). Its just the sort of twisting Wolfe does all
the time with his stories and characters. Maybe he didn't think of it until
later but I don't find it especially undermined in the text (even the quote
David Kirby mentioned since the Bang-Gnab theory Wolfe is playing with was
similar to the parallel universe concept of String theory). I don't see it
as a plot hole at all.
Stone Ox asks:
>Isn't there some dispute about what happened to those who died before
>Jesus was born?
There's a tradition (touched on in the Apostolic Creed) that Jesus went to
Hell to free those like Abraham, Moses, and Elijah who were held because no
permanent sacrifice had yet been offered.
~ Crush
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