Subject: (whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v011.n025

From: akt <akt at attglobal.net>
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2000 23:45:36 +0000

>From Alex
:
> Hmmm...  Alga's mapping to Origen's ideas is interesting, but I'm not
> convinced.  Universalism doesn't strike me as being particularly
> Wolfean, given the number especially of short stories that are quite
> comfortable in damning a protagonist ("Bed and Breakfast" certainly
> doesn't carry much hint of demonic free will).  Also, despite some
> obvious intentional points, a simple mapping of the inhumans to demons
> or the Neighbors to angels seems false--the Neighbors seem more like
> post-Urth Severian, of the "human" order of creation, but
> transfigured.  The inhumi are different in that their nature is a
> mirror of their prey (their will is reduced but present) but they are
> in this a biological analogue also of Wolfe's chems and machine
> intelligences--a mirror in this case of their prey rather than their
> makers, of course.  This doesn't strike me as very Origenist, in that
> except in Severian's visit to get the New Sun I don't think we see
> anything that is really meant to be of an angelic nature.

OK, I didn't say that it was a template, only that it reminded me of
Origen's system. Regard: a dynamic system is inherently more interesting
than a static one, and even the Rat admited that Wolfe as a novelist
might be attracted to Origen's ideas while rejecting them as a believer.
A plain view of Wolfe's system here seems to me to follow my simplified
Origenic patern. But I'm not going to fight for it.

> And by the way, unless I'm recalling incorrectly (which is quite
> possible) Origen wasn't precisely "consigned to hell"--a number of his
> propsitions (from De Principis mostly, I think) were condemned, but a
> number of church figures have defended him as a fundamentally orthodox
> fellow carried away with intellectual speculation at times, and
> certainly no rebel against Church authority in his day.

Au contraire, mon frere, they consigned him to eternal flames at the
Synod of Constantiople in 543 and then, just to make sure he didn't
escape from his fate, again in 553, 680, 787 and 869. That's a crispy
kind of guy.

>From Tim Bolas:

> Just a note on Origen.  His heresy charges did not
> have to do with the redeemability or not of demons
> (that is in line with Orthodox Theology), rather with
> the "pre-existence" of souls and a sort of cosmic
> recycling that Alga alluded to, among other things.
> Origen was only considered a heretic towards the end
> of his life.  His early teachings are still held in
> regard among theologians.

I never said it did, only that it was a fact. Of course they are. They
make a lot of sense theologically.

-akga

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