(urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or something)

[Dave Tallman]

David Stockhoff wrote:
> In similar vein, discussing "what offices a Christian man may hold", he 
> refers to a recent case wherein a Church member had the opportunity to 
> receive high public office as a magistrate. Tertullian argues that it 
> would be morally impossible for this man to satisfy both the Gospel's 
> demands and those of Roman law, for that would require him to abstain 
> not only from all public pagan sacrifices, oaths, etc., but also from 
> "sitting in judgment on anyone's life or character, . . . neither 
> condemning nor fore-condemning; binding no one, imprisoning /or 
> torturing no one/".^*2 <http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt119.html#FN_2>* 
> These are the earliest known explicit Christian statements on the 
> morality of torture.
>   
Wolfe may have drawn some ideas from Tertullian, but he surely wouldn't 
consider him to be the last word on Christian morality. A couple of 
centuries later St. Augustine wrote on the idea of a "just war," which 
could be fought by righteous Christian soldiers. Tertullian ended up 
being declared a heretic (not about pacificism, but about whether a new 
prophecy could have the same force as scripture).

Tertullian had the luxury in the third century of belonging to a 
persucuted group that could stand outside and condemn the system. But 
later the Church became the accepted state religion, and took over a 
great deal of power in the Middle Ages. At that point, soldiers, 
magistrates, and even torturers were at least nominally Christians. It's 
a difficult moral dilemma and one that Wolfe doesn't shrink from 
presenting in all its horror.