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<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 4:34 PM, David Stockhoff <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dstockhoff@verizon.net">dstockhoff@verizon.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Oh, come on. Christ has had a dual nature only since the Nicene Creed of 325!<br><br>Seriously, you could just as well be describing the Monophysite or Arian Christs as Severian and Silk. Let's recall that you aren't comparing a real thing to a fictional thing. You are comparing fictional things to one another. As far as I can see, THEY ARE ALL CHRISTS. Wolfe's religion is secondary, because he could be holding up heretical Christs to compare them to the Chalcedonic Christ. We know his personal preference. So what?<br>
<br>THEY ARE ALL CHRISTS. Even if he is deliberately showing us only how partial they are---which I do not believe.<br><br>And this is true regardless of your religious beliefs, aside from Bible fundamentalist Bible literalism.<br>
<br>Just saying.</blockquote>
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<div>I don't see your argument here, other than the use of the slippery term "Christs." If Wolfe is deliberately contrasting what he believes to be the imperfection of a uni-nature messiah with that he believes to be the perfection of a dual-nature messiah, then of course his religion is relevant--primary, even--to understanding his project.</div>
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<div>I tend to think that the Eastern concept of <em>theosis </em>is at work in Severian and Silk, but lots of ink and no small amount of blood have been spilled distinguishing the idea of <em>becoming a more perfect image of God </em>from the idea of <em>becoming God</em>.</div>
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<div>That distinction is precisely what's lost by using the term "Christ." "Christ" just means "annointed one" and in that sense of course Severian and Silk (and Able and Neo and Frodo and Harry Potter and Starbuck and King David and Barack Obama and Sidney Crosby) are "Christs"--they are annointed ones, chosen among others for an extraordinary task. None of them, however, is meant to be understood as the Godhead incarnate, which is the natural-language translation of the term "Christ" due to its overwhelming use as an honorific for the historical/religious/mythological/whatwillyou figure of Jesus of Nazareth. </div>
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<div>Your point is very insightful as to Arian--while Arians, like Catholics, orthodox, and most Protestant Christians accepted that Jesus was <em>the Christ, </em>i.e., the Chosen One of God, they denied his <em>divine essence, </em>unlike those other groups. Wolfe, as a Roman Catholic, does not deny the <em>divine essence </em>of Christ and has not, as far as I can tell, created a character meant to embody the divine essence. He has, however, created a number of characters with messianic (or counter-messianic, i.e., Number Five) functions. </div>
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<div>To the extent that these characters' lives follow the type of Jesus's life, in Wolfe, at least, they are meant as <em>imitatio dei. </em>Wolfe has said himself that Severian's journey is the Christian journey--by his apeing of Jesus, Severian becomes more Christ-like (Jesus-like is too ugly a neologism), while still falling short of divine moral perfection. Silk likewise, although Silk is a far better man than Severian (or perhaps merely a man with far more advantages--a seed sown on good earth, not in thorns).</div>
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<div>I think it is a very great error to read Wolfe's "Christ figures" as representations of the divinity except in a very limited and incomplete sense. This isn't because I'm concerned about ideological purity--it's because I think that a great error in foundational thinking about these complex texts inevitably leads to other errors.</div>
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<div>As for that "limited and incomplete sense", I suppose tremendous things could be written on the idea of the Divine peeking from behind the curtain in Wolfe: the suggestion that gods in the Whorl, when the possess someone, leave something of themselves behind, for example, or the possibility that eating the flesh of a higher being raises oneself up a level in the Wizard Knight. That stuff, to me, is much more interesting than the idea that a practising Catholic wrote a story about an Incarnation of the Most High who rapes, tortures, kills, commits adultery at the first opportunity, lies regularly and ultimately leads to the near-genocide of the human race. </div>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"><span id=""></span><br>------------------------------<br><br>Message: 3<br>Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:20:32 -0500 (EST)<br>
From: <a href="mailto:brunians@brunians.org" target="_blank">brunians@brunians.org</a>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>Subject: Re: (urth) Silk corrupted?<br></div>To: "The Urth Mailing List" <<a href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net" target="_blank">urth@lists.urth.net</a>><br>Message-ID: <<a href="mailto:3026.67.142.130.20.1232655632.squirrel@brunians.org" target="_blank">3026.67.142.130.20.1232655632.squirrel@brunians.org</a>><br>
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<div class="Ih2E3d"><br><br>Severian (and Silk) are human beings. They each have a single, human,<br>nature. Christ is unique, in Christianity in that He has a dual nature,<br>being both human and God. He is the only being in the Christian World that<br>
has such a dual nature. He can manifest through other beings, and this is<br>what is happening with Severian and Silk.<br><br><br><br></div>---<br>avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean.<br>Virus Database (VPS): 090122-0, 01/22/2009<br>
Tested on: 1/22/2009 4:34:33 PM<br>avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2009 ALWIL Software.<br><a href="http://www.avast.com/" target="_blank">http://www.avast.com</a>
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