<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 1:08 PM, David Stockhoff <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dstockhoff@verizon.net">dstockhoff@verizon.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Thanks for the links, Stanislaus. <br>
That was in fact the distinction that I assumed in reading the books---that there is the Increate, and then there is everything else. None of those other terms are used, of course---merely hinted at, so some posters here have had to use them. Nothing even tells us what entity possessed Severian. One assumes the Increate, but Witz has proposed the New Sun itself.<br>
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I don't follow that this rule alone keeps Severian from being "a Christ," since that depends on the degree to which Severian is divine and for that matter whether the OTC is divine. If neither is divine, then there is no forced inequivalence on these grounds alone. If both are---well, that was the reason for my original question.<br>
<br></blockquote></div><br>The Christ of traditional christology is divine as the incarnation of the Son (one of the three Persons of the Trinity). Since the Trinity is not a hierarchy, and since its Persons are co-eternal, Christ is not a created being; the begetter/begotten language bespeaks a relationship and not a temporal order (in the Creed's language, Christ is genitum, non factum, and consubstantialem Patris--begotten, not made, and of the same substance as the Father). Orthodox Christianity does not understand the Incarnation as a kind of possession or adoption. It is the unity of two natures (the divine and the human) in one person, often called the hypostatic union.<br>
<br>It is difficult for this Christian priest to see how Severian could be a Christ; he is unaware of his Godhead in any meaningful way, and is far from sinless. His trajectory is, however, fairly close to that of a Christian who strives to imitate Christ and grows (oh, how slowly!) in faith and virtue.<br>
<br>Having said this, though, I'm sure that other interpretations will offer much of value. Wolfe's work is very complex, after all!<br><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Matt +<br><br>Oligarchy : a government resting on a valuation of property, in which the rich have power and the poor man is deprived of it.<br>
Plato (c. 428-348 B.C.), The Republic, bk. VIII, 550-C<br><br>