Severian as reverse Christ (or something)

David Stockhoff · 22 Nov 2008, 23:05 · from 2008-November.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 18:05:38 -0500
Subject: (urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or something)
In-Reply-To: <mailman.16771.1227384169.21489.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
References: <mailman.16771.1227384169.21489.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <49289042.8040808 at verizon.net>

Message: 4 Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 11:19:09 -0700 From: Dave Tallman 
<davetallman at msn.com> Subject: Re: (urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or 
something) To: urth at lists.urth.net Message-ID: 
<49284D1D.80802 at gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; 
format=flowed 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.

------------------------------

Yes, Tertullian was a minor figure, as far as I can tell, which makes this connection even more interesting to me. I think Wolfe is always very consciously interested in exactly that difference between being a Christian in a nominally Christian world and being a Christian in a non-Christian---or worse---world. Thus the Outsider in the Long Sun, and the outer-space gods of Silhouette. This interest is the whole basis of his attempts to make pagan systems Christian, pagan men Christlike, or immoral men, moral. So Tertullian's outsider views are far from peripheral to the topic.

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