Severian as reverse Christ (or something)

Son of Witz · 22 Nov 2008, 19:44 · from 2008-November.txt.gz

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From: sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org (Son of Witz)
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 11:44:16 -0800
Subject: (urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or something)
In-Reply-To: <49284D1D.80802 at gmail.com>
References: <4925BF53.2010602 at verizon.net> <49284D1D.80802 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <43B145D1-FA2D-4C1E-8D91-C991C1C4107C at butcherbaker.org>


On Nov 22, 2008, at 10:19 AM, Dave Tallman wrote:

> David Stockhoff wrote:
>> In similar vein, discussing "what offices a Christian man may  
>> hold", he refers to a recent case wherein a Church member had the  
>> opportunity to receive high public office as a magistrate.  
>> Tertullian argues that it would be morally impossible for this man  
>> to satisfy both the Gospel's demands and those of Roman law, for  
>> that would require him to abstain not only from all public pagan  
>> sacrifices, oaths, etc., but also from "sitting in judgment on  
>> anyone's life or character, . . . neither condemning nor fore- 
>> condemning; binding no one, imprisoning /or torturing no one/".^*2 <http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt119.html#FN_2 
>> >* These are the earliest known explicit Christian statements on  
>> the morality of torture.
>>
> Wolfe may have drawn some ideas from Tertullian, but he surely  
> wouldn't consider him to be the last word on Christian morality. A  
> couple of centuries later St. Augustine wrote on the idea of a "just  
> war," which could be fought by righteous Christian soldiers.  
> Tertullian ended up being declared a heretic (not about pacificism,  
> but about whether a new prophecy could have the same force as  
> scripture).
>
> Tertullian had the luxury in the third century of belonging to a  
> persucuted group that could stand outside and condemn the system.  
> But later the Church became the accepted state religion, and took  
> over a great deal of power in the Middle Ages. At that point,  
> soldiers, magistrates, and even torturers were at least nominally  
> Christians. It's a difficult moral dilemma and one that Wolfe  
> doesn't shrink from presenting in all its horror.


On that note, I've taken the Torturer's Guild as a sort of Inquisition  
that's become a more or less secular institution of the State. As if  
the State absorbed them and gradually became more and more ashamed of  
the Guild, yet kept it around in diminished form for their dirty work.  
but it's lost it's original purpose.   Of course that's all  
speculation, but it works for me.

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