Quasi Christ?

David Stockhoff · 10 Feb 2009, 21:45 · from 2009-February.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:45:58 -0500
Subject: (urth) Quasi Christ?
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Well, that clears that up nicely! 

We don't need evidence of multiple resurrections, and we don't have any. They would only make the whole Christ scheme feel more mechanical anyway, when it is the Hieros' schemes that Wolfe wants to have a mechanical feel.

The Mystery quote is also relevant to the other discussion. I always assumed that the Torturers had a mystery simply because ALL guilds had mysteries---most of them fairly mundane, basically secret handshake-type stuff. But here it is explicitly related to the earthly authority of the Church.

This also supports the idea of the Commonwealth as representing humanity as a whole even though it controls only a fraction of its territory. And Severian becomes more like the Pope than Christ, especially considering Roy's quote about the Conciliator's conciliation as a mundane and semipolitical one, as opposed to one with the Increate.

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Message: 6
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:34:04 -0800 (PST)
From: Joe Riley <whamdoodler at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Quasi Christ?
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <42301.4716.qm at web38508.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

I'm not a Catholic, so this could be wrong, but someone mentioned it on the list once before, and I remember being floored by it then.

Didn't the Second Vatican Council (1965) rule that even "those who have not yet received the Gospel" can go to heaven if they've discerned the nature of God through their own religion?? Here's what Wikipedia says:

"Perhaps the most famous and most influential product of the council is the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium.
In its first chapter, titled "The Mystery of the Church," is
the famous statement that "the sole Church of Christ which in the Creed
we profess to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic, which our Saviour,
after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd, and him and the
other apostles to extend and direct with authority, which He erected
for all ages as 'the pillar and mainstay of the truth.' This Church,
constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in
the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by
the bishops in communion with him" (Lumen Gentium, 8). The document
immediately adds: "Nevertheless, many elements of sanctification and of
truth are found outside its visible confines."

In the second chapter, titled "On the People of God", the
Council teaches that God wills to save people not just as individuals
but as a people. For this reason God chose the Israelite people to be
his own people and established a covenant with it, as a preparation and
figure of the covenant ratified in Christ that constitutes the new
People of God, which would be one, not according to the flesh, but in
the Spirit and which is called the Church of Christ (Lumen Gentium,
9). All human beings are called to belong to the Church. Not all are
fully incorporated into the Church, but "the Church knows that she is
joined in many ways to the baptized who are honored by the name of
Christ, but who do not however profess the Catholic faith in its
entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the successor
of Peter" (Lumen Gentium, 15) and even with "those who have not yet received the Gospel," among whom Jews and Muslims are explicitly mentioned (Lumen Gentium, 16).

Doesn't this make multiple Christs unnecessary, so long as the sentient aliens came to an understanding of God through their own gods?? Being a dogmatic Catholic, I'm sure Wolfe would have been aware of this.? 

-Joe 

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