Subject: (urth) Christians and Christs: A new RPG?

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 16:27:45 +0000

Crush declaimed:

> ... Actually, I think the operative sentence here is "Severian is a
> Christian rather than a Christ." Although, to me for some reason,
> saying Severian is a Christian is a more jarring statement than
> saying he's a Christ.

Well, here you fall afair of the common Catholic theological concept
of the "anonymous Christian" -- the person who, for whatever reason,
is not given the grace to know and believe in Christ in this life, but
believes in what the closest conception available to him/her. This is
a hair, but a critical hair, separater from syncretic universalism: it
doesn't say that everyone will be saved; rather, it says that God 
plays fair and that everyone has the opportunity to be saved.

How many hit points does a Jesus have, anyway?

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From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at cox.net>
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 17:13:22 +0000

At 09:27 AM 6/12/2002 -0700, you wrote:
>--Blattid

         I'm inclined to think that there is Christianity in the Urth 
world, but that we don't see it except very indirectly. Wolfe has left it 
in the background, but hinted at it with his Byzantine setting, the 
Byzantine theological terminology (Increate, Pancreator, Theoanthropos), 
the confused but still somewhat faithful nuns of the Pelerines (sp?) with 
their saint-relic shrine, etc. Severian utters a prayer as he commits his 
first book to the stellar winds. So I don't think we're supposed to think 
of Sev as an "anonymous Christian" but as a person living in a confused and 
compromised Christian world (as all Christian worlds are, because of sin, 
and Byzantium certainly was) and as having a background that makes him a 
very "undisciplined" Christian of some sort. He's a believer, but a weak 
one. He shares the common faith of his society.
         BTW, when Wolfe told me that he was thinking of Briah as a 
previous universe, I took it at face value. Maybe all this means is that 
this is what he was thinking when he started out. He was "playing" with the 
notion of a cyclical universe. I certainly don't have anything invested in 
it, and the 11 or 12 volume super-novel is in a lot of ways simpler if we 
assume it is "our" universe. I don't think it matters much, for I have not 
been able to see that it is some kind of major interpretive clue -- except 
that it does allow him to have a flood over the earth, which in our 
universe would be problematic because of the promise to Noah. That aspect 
of the narrative is "cleaner" if this a pre-Noah universe.
         FWIW.

Nutria

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From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 00:55:09 +0000

>      From: 
>           James Jordan <jbjordan4 at cox.net>

> previous universe, I took it at face value.

The transcript does not render your question clearly at all; what
exactly =did= you ask him, if you can recall at 11 years' remove? 

> I don't think it matters much, for I have not 

Is it possible to dodge the promise some other way? Was Urth ever
abandoned by humanity? Could the flood be local in nature, or due to
some other cause, perhaps Abaia? The flood lasts far too long to be due
to the White Fountain alone.

-- 
Jeff Wilson
How Am I Posting? 1-800-555-6789
"If your SecOp can see you, so can the enemy." -Cpt Law

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 14:39:06 +0000

The thought occurs to me that the Deluge of Ushas *could* be the Deluge of
Noah - that the Story of Noah could be the a mythological telling of the
Ushas Deluge...OR the Noah story could be a PROPHECY of the Ushas Deluge!!!

...or (as I'm inclined to believe) Wolfe was toying with the idea of the
ultimate beneficial intent of even G-d's most punitive actions - and took up
the icon of the world-wide flood to show it (I'm pretty certain that Wolfe
does not believe in a historical Deluge).

Seen this last way, Wolfe's NS, LS, and SS books stories are "mythological"
sci-fi rather than "speculative" sci-fi. That is, one cannot expect to draw
a line from the Messiah's Earth to the Conciliator's Urth. You can do it
technologically, linguistically, geographically, and in literature. But
Biblically? No. That's just too much to ask even from Wolfe. Even Tolkien
balked at attempting to create such a world - insisting that there is NO
religion in Middle Earth (except the false worship of Sauron by the Swarthy
Men).

C. S. Lewis DID draw such a connection in both his Space Trilogy and the
Narnia series. But when he attempted to add a tenuous connection (in the
space trilogy) to Middle-Earth, Tolkien deeply resented it.

If Wolfe IS bringing into the Long Sun and the Short Sun books the actual
G-d he worships at Mass, then I'll bet a dollar he does not see Silk's world
and history as any more potentially "actual" than Tolkien saw Middle-Earth
when he included in it the origin of "Hey-diddle-diddle".

I'm not sure I'm making myself clear. Sorry about that.

-- Crush

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Wilson [mailto:jwilson at io.com]
Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2002 7:55 PM
To: urth at urth.net
Subject: Re: (urth) Christians and Christs: A new RPG?

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