The Outsider

Andrew Mason · 16 Dec 2010, 20:56 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com (Andrew Mason)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:56:38 +0000
Subject: (urth) The Outsider
Message-ID: <AANLkTikDVRV7K45+kHPTqE9_aQyyFSt2ixHEs4OY9G+8 at mail.gmail.com>

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote: >
>
>> It's the basis of the Narnia series, and Lewis is generally seen as
>> pretty orthodox.
>
> Actually, a number of fundamentalists have condemned the Narnia books
> on precisely this ground.

Oh, I know. But we aren't actually doing theology here, but literary
interpretation: can we be sure that, while Lewis is capable of heresy,
Wolfe is not? Or at least of imagining a world whose literal
description would be heretical?

I'm not particularly attached to the actual presence of Jesus in the
_Sun_ universe; after all the various pagan gods who are alluded to
aren't literally present in it either. I just don't see him as so
manifestly absent that the series can actually be read as having the
aim of working out the consequnces of his absence.

> That's actually another theological problem. Scripture has the Church
> enduring to the end of days.

True. This may be another point on which Wolfe is deviating from
orthodoxy; though actually you could finesse it by saying that while
Christ is unknown (or not clearly known) on Urth and the Whorl, he
might be known in some other corners of the universe.

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