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<pre wrap=""><div class="moz-txt-sig">Message: 4
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 11:19:09 -0700
From: Dave Tallman <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:davetallman@msn.com"><davetallman@msn.com></a>
Subject: Re: (urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or something)
To: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net">urth@lists.urth.net</a>
Message-ID: <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:49284D1D.80802@gmail.com"><49284D1D.80802@gmail.com></a>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
David Stockhoff wrote:
</div></pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap=""><span class="moz-txt-citetags">> </span>In similar vein, discussing "what offices a Christian man may hold", he
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">> </span>refers to a recent case wherein a Church member had the opportunity to
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">> </span>receive high public office as a magistrate. Tertullian argues that it
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">> </span>would be morally impossible for this man to satisfy both the Gospel's
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">> </span>demands and those of Roman law, for that would require him to abstain
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">> </span>not only from all public pagan sacrifices, oaths, etc., but also from
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">> </span>"sitting in judgment on anyone's life or character, . . . neither
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">> </span>condemning nor fore-condemning; binding no one, imprisoning /or
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">> </span>torturing no one/".^*2 <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt119.html#FN_2"><http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt119.html#FN_2></a>*
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">> </span>These are the earliest known explicit Christian statements on the
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">> </span>morality of torture.
<span class="moz-txt-citetags">> </span>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->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.
------------------------------
Yes, Tertullian was a minor figure, as far as I can tell, which makes this connection even more interesting to me. I think Wolfe is always very consciously interested in exactly that difference between being a Christian in a nominally Christian world and being a Christian in a non-Christian---or worse---world. Thus the Outsider in the Long Sun, and the outer-space gods of Silhouette. This interest is the whole basis of his attempts to make pagan systems Christian, pagan men Christlike, or immoral men, moral. So Tertullian's outsider views are far from peripheral to the topic.</pre>
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