(urth) The Wizard

[Jerry Friedman]

Thanks for your answers.  I'm sorry if I was unclear.  I didn't intend to suggest there was any nastiness or meanness or evil or cruel delight in the Christian conception of God, and I don't think Dan'l did either.  I suggested that Silk's speculation that the Outsider was "good in a dark way" was compatible with his being God, from Wolfe's point of view and from an orthodox Catholic point of view (if they're different).
 
The Biblical passages you mentioned are illuminating (sorry), and I wasn't aware of them.  (So is John 1, which I looked at before noticing that you'd cited 1 John 1.)  They suggest that a Catholic wouldn't call God "dark".  However, you're willing to say "good in a 'dark' and even 'scary' way" and "darkly merciful", so I gather that's a different sense of "dark".  And from all this, I'm not convinced by the argument that the Outsider is too "dark" to be God as Wolfe, or Catholics in general, see him.
 
Jerry Friedman


>________________________________
>From: Daniel Petersen <danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com>
>To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net> 
>Sent: Tuesday, March 6, 2012 4:06 PM
>Subject: Re: (urth) The Wizard
>
>
>Furthermore, the Christian God is deeply merciful at his core and perhaps that too is 'dark' and 'scary' to people who would give everything to neither receive that mercy nor be merciful to others (from the Christian understanding).  That darkly merciful God comes through in Wolfe very strongly to me ('dark' in the sense of mysterious also, the miracles of incarnation and atonement being paradoxical and bizarre). 
>
>
>-DOJP
>
>
>On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 11:02 PM, Daniel Petersen <danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Uh, I think you guys may be getting a little confused here.  The Christian God is Good in a 'dark' and even 'scary' way because he is HOLY.  There is no 'nastiness' or 'meanness' in the Christian conception of God.  He doesn't delight in the death of the wicked as the prophet Ezekiel puts it.  In that sense 'in him there is no darkness at all' as 1 John chapter 1 puts it.  Tread carefully here if you want to speak coherently about orthodox theology.  Not for sensibilities but for accuracy.  Pure goodness is nothing we've ever truly seen in fullness and the eternal Triune Love (as Christian theology would have it) is a degree of communion and self-giving glory we just cannot imagine ('he dwells in unapproachable light' as Paul put it).  Thus this kind of transcendent goodness can be downright terrifying to people enmeshed in spiritual darkness and sin (again from the Christian story).  That is what it means for God not to be 'safe' or 'tame'.
  God's wildness is a terror to evil, not a participant in it. 
>>
>>
>>-DOJP 
>>
>>
>>
>>On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 10:20 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>Jerry Friedman wrote:
>>>
>>>> I believe one could make a case from the Christian point of view
>>>> that God is good in a dark way, since he kills lots of people and
>>>> condemns people to eternal torment.  I hope the Christians here will
>>>> correct me if I'm wrong, but I can see Wolfe believing that God, who
>>>> created space and the stars, is good in every way, including the dark way.
>>>
>>>No correction from me. C.S. Lewis put it very succinctly: "Aslan is
>>>not a _tame_ lion." God is good but he isn't _nice_.
>>>
>>>
>>>--
>>>Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
>>>
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>>
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