Standard Wolfean Riddle

James Wynn · 16 Aug 2010, 12:09 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2010 07:09:33 -0500
Subject: (urth) Standard Wolfean Riddle
In-Reply-To: <4C6925B9.50009 at verizon.net>
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Message-ID: <4C692A7D.2070808 at gmail.com>


>>> James Wynn -Presumably, the Briahs (n -/+) remain in sync because they
>>> are compelled to by their approximation to each other.
>>> So there will be similarities between Briah (n -/+) that make
>>> no internal sense. There might well have been a Catholic
>>> Church with nearly the same rituals (and an American
>>> moon landing as well) even though there was no Jesus
>>> to influence the next 2000 years of history.
>>
>> Antonio - I'll just repeat what I said earlier: I think there's a 
>> Jesus in any universe,
>> and I think it's as good a Jesus no matter where. [snip] And each Jesus
>> said something equivalent to 'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will
>> build by church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it'.
>> But in some universes the original church may have disappeared from
>> sight. And any other attempt at building a church won't be endowed
>> with the same grace.
>>
> David Stackhoff- This shift in focus to the universes might be a way
> out from a sticky problem, but you seem to propose that each Jesus
> is identically Jesus-like but not necessarily identically effective.
> Why are some Jesuses less effective? Why do some fail utterly?
>

I said before that I don't think the settings (as opposed to the themes) 
of the Sun Cycle should be scrutinized theologically. For that reason, I 
don't really like the idea of a Jesus for every Briah...in part, for the 
very reasons David offers. Antonio's model pulls the setting ineluctably 
into theological questions.  I think "There Are Doors" nicely resolved 
the question "What happened to Christianity in on Urth?" Answer: There 
was a Catholic Church and there were saints, but there was no Jesus. 
Urth is in a gnostic iteration of Briah and Severian is its Christ.

u+16b9

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