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<p><span class=rvts7>A point or two.</span></p>
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<p><span class=rvts7>1. Wolfe is his ancient interview with me makes it clear that Severian's God is the Christian God, and that he is a "Christian figure," a person seeking by grace to grow out of a horrible background, still deeply flawed for all that, but becoming more Christlike, which is what grace is supposed to do.</span></p>
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<p><span class=rvts7>2. While Wolfe uses the heirarchy of angels notion, the God at the top is not that of pure neoplatonism. Remember that the "real" conciliator is the Theoanthropos, who set salvation in motion. Severian as conciliator is carrying forward but an aspect of His work. </span></p>
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<p><span class=rvts7>3. Not that this is all that obvious. As I've mentioned before, the first time I read the original quartet, I figured Severian to be an antichrist, like Number 5.</span></p>
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<p><span class=rvts7>Nutria </span></p>
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<p>Yes, Severian's God is Christian God, and also Jewish God and Islamic God, and Neoplatonic One, and even Hinduistic brahman - that is, it is the ground of all being, First Cause and Ultimate End. On the other hand, he (it) is described very differently in different tradition - as personal or impersonal etc. The descriptions of God and of spiritual level of being in TBoNS is close to neoplatonic tradition, although with Eastern Christian influence. </p>
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<p>As for Theoanthropos, I am not sure whether He had appeared at all in the universe described in the TBoNS. Since it is a future time but of a former iteration of universe, the Christ-event could belong to the future. </p>
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<p>It should be noted that the description of society, and especially religion in TBoNS is somewhat similar to the late Roman Empire. There are holy men, temples etc but there is no Church as one, unitary organization. The Autarch has an important religion function, in fact he is the highest priest in the Commonwealth.</p>
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<p>Compare Julian the Apostate, who said:</p>
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<p>"Divine government is not through a special society (such as the Christian Church) teaching an authoritative doctrine, but through the order of the visible universe and all the variety of civic and national institutions. The underlying harmony of these is to be sought out by free examination, which is philosophy." </p>
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<p>There is also the everyday cruelty of life in Commonwealth. As Wolfe said about world without Christ: </p>
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<p><a class=rvts12 href="http://mysite.verizon.net/~vze2tmhh/wolfejbj.html#diff">http://mysite.verizon.net/~vze2tmhh/wolfejbj.html#sold</a></p>
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<p><span class=rvts13>"JJ:</span><span class=rvts10> That is an interesting perspective on it, I hadn't thought of at all. My wife had one of her professors that taught in a Moslem country for a while and said he woke up one day and saw the children had a bunch of kittens they were throwing up in the air and hitting them with a baseball bat against the wall and the mothers just sat by and watched. He said "I am not a Christian, I am an atheist, but I am a Christian in that I could not tolerate that." There has been an influence in our society that has made us different from pagans.</span></p>
<p><span class=rvts10><br></span></p>
<p><span class=rvts13>GW:</span><span class=rvts10> We vastly underestimate the importance of Jesus. We think we don't. We have all these churches and we say how can we be underestimating Jesus? We don't until we start trying to figure out what it would be like if he had never lived. When you really start trying to figure out what it would be like if He never lived you realize that He is a much more pivotal figure than we give him credit for. All of these people, everybody at this convention is in that sense a Christian although most of them would tell you that they are not and some of them would tell them quite truthfully that they were Jews who practice Judaism in one of its various forms and so on and so forth. Nevertheless they have been influenced by Christ much more than they realized. We are very lucky to have had Him. We are very fortunate. A friend of mine learned to read Turkish. And he got hold of a Turkish joke book and read it. And I said, "What were the jokes like?" He said it was horrible. They were all about ugly tricks that were being played on blind people and things like that. This is what we have escaped from and we don't realize that it is there and we came very close to falling into it. We very easily could have and we still may."</span></p>
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<p>Neoplatonism wasn't interested very much in such things as improving life on earth. They tried to free spirit from the bonds of matter, not make its slavery to it more pleasant. It influenced also to some degree the Orthodox Church, which is much less interested than Western Church in reforming society etc.</p>
<p><span class=rvts10><br></span></p>
<p><span class=rvts10><br></span></p>
<p><span class=rvts10><br></span></p>
<p><span class=rvts8>Best regards,</span></p>
<p><span class=rvts8> Stanislaus </span><a class=rvts9 href="mailto:sbocian@poczta.fm">mailto:sbocian@poczta.fm</a></p>
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