# To justify... *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 24 Nov 1999* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Alex David Groce *24 Nov 1999, 11:42* (writing from old account) Ori, the best argument "justifying the ways of God to man" in BOTNS is not a quick quotation I can pluck out--although Severian, whose meditations I do not ignore while reading the book, says some pithy stuff. This strike me as the Dave Barry version of THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV: "Dear reader, is there a God? -Fyodor" Gene Wolfe wrote 5 books, not a brief essay solving the problem of evil. Wolfe's a great writer, but he hardly managed to "justify the ways of God to man" in 100 words or less (or even in the whole thing--conclusive arguments are generally not the work of fiction). Where in BOTNS does it say "Don't make no theological interpretations of all this, folks?" As to evidence of the survival of the Gospels/Christianity--why, surely the hieros have some reason for making their wicked plot resemble in so many details and miracles the story of Christ? They must have a bootleg copy of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John lying around to steal from. ``` "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32 -- Alex David Groce (adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu) http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce ``` ---