{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4405",
    "note": "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.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 4405,
    "subject": "Christology & Sev-ology",
    "messages": 3,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "2005-04-17T04:23:08+00:00",
    "last": "2005-04-17T06:01:29+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<200504171123.j3HBN1Go046871@mailserver2.hushmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "thalassocrat at nym.hush.com",
        "address": "thalassocrat at nym.hush.com"
      },
      "date": "2005-04-17T04:23:08+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Christology & Sev-ology",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "OK, so Sev isn't supposed to be Jesus. He's just a guy who happens \nto have been selected to be the transcendant saviour of humanity's \npotential and who along the way recapitulates some of Christ's \nmiracles, including the raising of the dead. Notably, these \nmiracles are performed by virtue of his own power, as the New Sun, \nand not eg as a saint would perform them, through petitioning the \nIncreate. \n\nWhen he prays at the altar of the Pelerines shortly before his \ndestruction, he prays to himself. In a beautifully written but \nspooky scene, Sev imagines himself speaking through a crack in the \nedge of the universe to a listener. As he asks to be give the power \nto lead himself, the crack expands to reveal a new universe bathed \nin light, and himself as the one listening.  \n\nInire hails him as a divinity, unambiguously: Helios and Hyperion. \nHierodules and Hierogrammates worship him. Like it or not, Sev is a \ngod, and not just a minor one (despite his self-deprecating words \nat the end of UOTNS).\n\nHow this fits with any kind of orthodox Christinity, even as a \nfable, I have no idea. If I were a Christian, I think I'd find it \nquite disturbing. I don't think I could read it as any kind of \n\"imitation of Christ\" story. Sev bears no stigmata. He violently \nfails to imitate Christ at his betrayal, and he kills the prison \ngoverness without hesitation or qualm. There is no suggestion that \nhe errs in doing this.\n\nHow to square this failure to imitate the crucial aspect of Christ \nwith Sev's Christ-like miracles? If Sev isn't supposed to be a type \nof Jesus, why the miracles? Were Wolfe not supposed to be an \northodox Catholic, I'd find it easy to see him as criticizing \nJesus: He shouldn't have been such a wuss; He should have been more \nlike Sev.\n\nLeaving that aside, how can the story be seen as theologically \northodox? What room does orthodox Christianity have for a god not \nconsubstantial with God? If I look for a Christian context, I think \nit works much better as an fantasy in the tradition of Adoptionism, \nie the tradition which sees Jesus as a created being given divinity \nby God. This of course was a widely accepted and respectable view \nuntil the final triumph of \"orthodoxy\" over its various \nexpressions, notably Arianism.\n\nSev is confirmed as a god on the Ship, outside of Time, when he is \nresurrected as an aquastor and the New Sun, his god-hood, is \nbrought into being and united with him. It reminds me of the pre-\nNicaean (respected, widely accepted) views of proto-Arian Origen:  \n\n\"God is incorporeal, immaterial, uncreated and unbegotten ..  the \nMonad .. Christ is God's only-begotten son, not in any human sense, \nbut eternally, just as a ray of light is generated by its source \n... He is the Word of God, of a different susbtance from God, and \nin a sense almost material, because 'he shows himself and puts \nhimself into the minds of those who can receive his virtues and \nknowledge.' ... Among the rational beings who loved their creator \nin varying degrees, one soul remained inseparably devoted to its \ncreator. The soul was united with God's Word to become a single \nspirit which, with the substance of the soul mediating between God \nand flesh, was born as God-man. Hence Christ has a soul like all \nother souls, capable of both good and evil.\" [Barnes, \"Eusebius and \nConstantine\", pp88-89]\n\nPerhaps Wolfe is actually a clost Arian?\n\n\"The Word of God did not always exist, but came into existence out \nof nothing. For God, who existed, made him who did not exist out of \nwhat did not exist. Hence, too, there was a time when he was not. \nFor the Son is a creature and an object. He is neither like the \nFather in substance, nor the true and natural Word of the Father, \nnor his true Wisdom, but one of the created objects, and he is \nimproperly called Word and Wisdom, since he himself came into being \nby the proper Word of God and the Wisdom in God, in which God made \nboth everything and him. Hence he is both mutable and changeable by \nnature, as are all rational creatures. The Word is alien to, \ndifferent from and separated from the substance of God, and the \nFather is invisible to the Son. For the Word neither knows the \nFather perfectly and exactly nor can see him perfectly. And the Son \ndoes not know the nature of his own substance. For he was made for \nour sake, so that God might make us by means of him, as by a tool.\"\n\n-- Alexander of Alexandria, describing the errors of Arius.\n\n\"The Son, [Arius] wrote, was a 'perfect creature of God, but not \nlike other created objects.' He received life and existence from \nthe Father 'before all ages': only the Father is without beginning; \nthe Son is 'begotten by the Father outside time,' and hence neither \neternal nor coeternal with the Father.\n\n-- Barnes, ibid, p203"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<200504171126.j3HBQLwX046987@mailserver2.hushmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "thalassocrat at nym.hush.com",
        "address": "thalassocrat at nym.hush.com"
      },
      "date": "2005-04-17T04:26:25+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Christology & Sev-ology",
      "in_reply_to": "<200504171123.j3HBN1Go046871@mailserver2.hushmail.com>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Oopsie -"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "When he prays at the altar of the Pelerines shortly before his \ndestruction"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Obviously, \"its destruction\"."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<000701c5434d$8ac0ef90$60a3f63f@wynnhouse>",
      "from": {
        "name": "James Wynn",
        "address": "thewynns at earthlink.net"
      },
      "date": "2005-04-17T06:01:29+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Christology & Sev-ology",
      "in_reply_to": "<200504171123.j3HBN1Go046871@mailserver2.hushmail.com>",
      "reply_link": "header",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Leaving that aside, how can the story be seen as theologically\northodox?...It reminds me of the pre-\nNicaean (respected, widely accepted) views of proto-Arian Origen:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "This brings up an idea that I've been toying with that Severian was intended \nas an amalgum of heretical Christs. His name identifies him with the \nheretical Encratites as explained here and elsewhere:\nhttp://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0206/1204.txt.shtml\n\nThis would fit with Wolfe's claim that Severian is not a Christ-figure.\n\n~ Crush "
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}