Subject: (urth) Christology & Sev-ology

From: thalassocrat at nym.hush.com <thalassocrat at nym.hush.com>
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 04:23:08 +0000

OK, so Sev isn't supposed to be Jesus. He's just a guy who happens 
to have been selected to be the transcendant saviour of humanity's 
potential and who along the way recapitulates some of Christ's 
miracles, including the raising of the dead. Notably, these 
miracles are performed by virtue of his own power, as the New Sun, 
and not eg as a saint would perform them, through petitioning the 
Increate. 

When he prays at the altar of the Pelerines shortly before his 
destruction, he prays to himself. In a beautifully written but 
spooky scene, Sev imagines himself speaking through a crack in the 
edge of the universe to a listener. As he asks to be give the power 
to lead himself, the crack expands to reveal a new universe bathed 
in light, and himself as the one listening.  

Inire hails him as a divinity, unambiguously: Helios and Hyperion. 
Hierodules and Hierogrammates worship him. Like it or not, Sev is a 
god, and not just a minor one (despite his self-deprecating words 
at the end of UOTNS).

How this fits with any kind of orthodox Christinity, even as a 
fable, I have no idea. If I were a Christian, I think I'd find it 
quite disturbing. I don't think I could read it as any kind of 
"imitation of Christ" story. Sev bears no stigmata. He violently 
fails to imitate Christ at his betrayal, and he kills the prison 
governess without hesitation or qualm. There is no suggestion that 
he errs in doing this.

How to square this failure to imitate the crucial aspect of Christ 
with Sev's Christ-like miracles? If Sev isn't supposed to be a type 
of Jesus, why the miracles? Were Wolfe not supposed to be an 
orthodox Catholic, I'd find it easy to see him as criticizing 
Jesus: He shouldn't have been such a wuss; He should have been more 
like Sev.

Leaving that aside, how can the story be seen as theologically 
orthodox? What room does orthodox Christianity have for a god not 
consubstantial with God? If I look for a Christian context, I think 
it works much better as an fantasy in the tradition of Adoptionism, 
ie the tradition which sees Jesus as a created being given divinity 
by God. This of course was a widely accepted and respectable view 
until the final triumph of "orthodoxy" over its various 
expressions, notably Arianism.

Sev is confirmed as a god on the Ship, outside of Time, when he is 
resurrected as an aquastor and the New Sun, his god-hood, is 
brought into being and united with him. It reminds me of the pre-
Nicaean (respected, widely accepted) views of proto-Arian Origen:  

"God is incorporeal, immaterial, uncreated and unbegotten ..  the 
Monad .. Christ is God's only-begotten son, not in any human sense, 
but eternally, just as a ray of light is generated by its source 
... He is the Word of God, of a different susbtance from God, and 
in a sense almost material, because 'he shows himself and puts 
himself into the minds of those who can receive his virtues and 
knowledge.' ... Among the rational beings who loved their creator 
in varying degrees, one soul remained inseparably devoted to its 
creator. The soul was united with God's Word to become a single 
spirit which, with the substance of the soul mediating between God 
and flesh, was born as God-man. Hence Christ has a soul like all 
other souls, capable of both good and evil." [Barnes, "Eusebius and 
Constantine", pp88-89]

Perhaps Wolfe is actually a clost Arian?

"The Word of God did not always exist, but came into existence out 
of nothing. For God, who existed, made him who did not exist out of 
what did not exist. Hence, too, there was a time when he was not. 
For the Son is a creature and an object. He is neither like the 
Father in substance, nor the true and natural Word of the Father, 
nor his true Wisdom, but one of the created objects, and he is 
improperly called Word and Wisdom, since he himself came into being 
by the proper Word of God and the Wisdom in God, in which God made 
both everything and him. Hence he is both mutable and changeable by 
nature, as are all rational creatures. The Word is alien to, 
different from and separated from the substance of God, and the 
Father is invisible to the Son. For the Word neither knows the 
Father perfectly and exactly nor can see him perfectly. And the Son 
does not know the nature of his own substance. For he was made for 
our sake, so that God might make us by means of him, as by a tool."

-- Alexander of Alexandria, describing the errors of Arius.

"The Son, [Arius] wrote, was a 'perfect creature of God, but not 
like other created objects.' He received life and existence from 
the Father 'before all ages': only the Father is without beginning; 
the Son is 'begotten by the Father outside time,' and hence neither 
eternal nor coeternal with the Father.

-- Barnes, ibid, p203

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From: thalassocrat at nym.hush.com <thalassocrat at nym.hush.com>
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 04:26:25 +0000

Oopsie -

>destruction

Obviously, "its destruction".

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From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 06:01:29 +0000

>orthodox?...It reminds me of the pre-

This brings up an idea that I've been toying with that Severian was intended 
as an amalgum of heretical Christs. His name identifies him with the 
heretical Encratites as explained here and elsewhere:
http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0206/1204.txt.shtml

This would fit with Wolfe's claim that Severian is not a Christ-figure.

~ Crush