Atonement Theology and the Conciliator

David Stockhoff · 13 Jan 2011, 22:33 · from 2011-January.txt.gz
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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 17:33:36 -0500
Subject: (urth) Atonement Theology and the Conciliator
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I have long been trying to figure out specifically what, if anything, 
Wolfe was trying to get at with his depiction of a man who becomes a god 
called the Conciliator. I recently read a few things that crystallized 
the topic for me.

I formulate my main question as follows: To what extent does the 
Conciliator represent, signify, or suggest (a) a situation of either 
more or less enlightenment than modern Catholicism (b) Catholicism 
itself? That is, does it depict a lower form of Catholicism---one that 
might then be interpreted as a parody or as a kind of paganism---or a 
higher form---one that at least grasps the nature of the fictional/SF 
universe in which it exists?

Failing that, at least I think I may have run into some things that got 
the Wolfe brain churning in his reading and research.

Before I unload, I want to announce my intent (1) to avoid terms and 
arguments that will confuse these remarks with previous discussions and 
(2) to leave blank what I feel anyone can fill in or confirm, or that 
those more versed in Catholic thought than I can address. Some 
ideas/events to which I will allude could fill books with exposition, 
but I won't do that. So you won't find all the possible ramifications 
addressed here.

Also, I'm just going to assume that anything _I_ can find and _I_ find 
interesting, Wolfe also read and found interesting when he was 
researching Catholicism before he converted to it. All my quotes will be 
from the Catholic Encyclopedia unless noted; it's online now but was 
first published in 1917.

Apologies for the incoherence.

1. Conciliation

The name "Conciliator" is a synonym of the name "Mediator," applied to 
Christ, the "One Mediator" between God and Man, who have been estranged 
since Paradise (Old Testament). The perfection of this Mediator is seen 
in his being both God and man at once. (Don't ask me how this affects 
the Trinity!) As such, "By the union of the Eternal Word with the nature 
of man all mankind <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09580c.htm> was 
lifted up and, so to say, deified. "He was made man 
<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07706b.htm>", says St. Athanasius 
<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02035a.htm>, "that we might be made 
gods" (De Incarnatione Verbi, 54).

Also, although "conciliation" is generally synonymous with "mediation," 
a conciliator may issue a binding opinion. There is thus added an 
element of force---but only if both parties agree, so consent is present.

---Note the word "gods" vs "God." BOTNS and especially UOTNS lay out a 
scenario of literal uplift presented in SF terms. The Judaism of the Old 
Testament is generally considered by Christians to have been improved on 
by the events of the New, so that is an example of an actual, historical 
uplift event. Specifically, the sixth Council of Trent referred to " the 
insufficiency of Nature, and of Mosaic Law 
<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10582c.htm>," pretty much settling that.

But there is a tension here between raising humans up toward God and 
raising us up toward ... something else, perhaps something with xtreem 
powers. Maybe we are to be lifted up to something more than high-speed 
broadband communion with the divine, or living on bread and water or, 
for that matter, sunlight and fresh air. Someone should write about that....

---Fun quote: "Christ is the Crown the Centre, and the Fountain of a new 
and higher order of things..."

2. Atonement
""God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself" (2 Corinthians 
5:19 <http://www.newadvent.org/bible/2co005.htm#vrs19>). But the peace 
of that reconciliation was accomplished by the death of the Divine 
Redeemer...."

These are thus two separate events, and the rising from the dead was 
another separate event. The concept of atonement focuses on the death 
alone and what it "bought" (an idea related to the "blood debt" of the 
German and Celtic tribes in which a murder can be paid for by the 
murderer). "Christ accepted death as the chief feature of His atoning 
sacrifice."

Anselm developed this concept further in the Middle Ages, but his 
obsession with the Incarnation's death as the only path to salvation was 
later rejected, as was his "tendency to treat the Passion of Christ as 
being literally a case of vicarious punishment." Fear of the wrath of 
God was another element; these ideas took hold and persisted despite 
Reform. (Puritanism hung on to it.) Anselm tended to dismiss the 
Resurrection.

3. Atonement Theology as a Tool for Evil
In "Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for 
Crucifixion and Empire," the authors (two pacifist female theologians) 
describe how Christianity became a political tool for the Roman Empire, 
then Charlemagne, and then the Papacy (and presumably King Henry VIII, 
no slouch at twisting religion to his own ends). I have to agree that 
the religion developed during this period was largely a perversion that 
took European civilization several steps backward into barbarity. The 
Church later retreated from some of its worst positions.

Setting that particular thesis aside, it is a matter of historical fact 
that Charlemagne crushed the Saxons by a combination of force, 
slaughter, resettlement at spearpoint, and accusations of paganism, thus 
establishing his empire. He also established a new church to serve his 
political aims. The new Carolingian Christianity had its own rite and 
was far more authoritarian than previous versions. This rite made a 
graphic victim of Christ and declared his murderers---and anyone who did 
not accept the Carolingian rite and Carolingian rule---enemies of 
Christendom. Around this time (~900-1000) crosses began to appear in 
churches. Previously, churches had domes painted blue and walls painted 
with pastoral scenes and had no crosses with corpses on them.

Originally, soldiers who served had to leave the church for at least a 
year and undergo a long process of rehabilitation before they were 
readmitted. Over a millennium, through the Constantine and Carolingian 
periods, Christianity's aversion to violence lessened until Urban II 
made violence a path to salvation in declaring the Crusades open for 
business. At the same time, Church leaders changed the focus of the 
Christian "paradise" from something present and accessible for 
all---especially for outsiders unconnected with politics, as in the 
early centuries---to something reserved for monks and the dead. A pious 
Christian had these choices: kill, suffer, die, or some combination. The 
Crusades offered all three, and if you failed to die you came home rich.

And you didn't need to go to Jerusalem to find Muslims to kill; there 
were pacifist Cathars in the south of France. Anselm and Urban reputely 
pulled out their lawn chairs to watch the Cathars---fellow Christians 
who followed more conservative teachings---get massacred.

In this period, hell (vs paradise) became a prominent element of 
Christian preaching. Even the faithful were murderers of Christ who 
should fear God. Anselm wrote a prayer (The Meditation to Stir Up Fear) 
that is an imagining of oneself standing before God in danger of Hell: 
"Horrors! Horrors! ... I am a sinner, deserving punishment. See, the 
accused stands before the tremendous Judge.... Terrible is the severity 
of the Judge. Torments without end, without interval, without respite, 
horrible tortures." Note that this fear wasn't just for bad people, but 
everyone---it was a critical part of what faith was supposed to be.

The torture of Christ became just as important as the Death itself, as 
Christians were told to try to experience his suffering as a path to 
salvation. Gerard believed that just looking at "the Mediator hanging on 
the cross" would protect one from Satan. Death after suffering became 
the gift brought by Christ---not everlasting life, as it was originally 
conceived. Peter Damian preached self-mutilation to his followers. The 
point is that torture was not a great thing Christ did for "us" or even 
a bad thing done TO Christ for "us" but rather an excellent thing we 
should be so lucky to experience ourselves. (Mel Gibson is of this school.)

4. Minor Correspondences
---Hildegard of Bingen pushed back against much of this theology. But I 
will only note that she often spoke of divine /viriditas, /or "greening 
power," as something people can partake of through love. (Love was 
another concept severely twisted by Anslem's atonement theology, but 
that's another topic.) Makes me think of the Green Man, of course, and 
also of Paradise, the original incarnation of God's love for Man and 
Christ's promise to those he saves, since that is his Urth. (Green, to 
me, is Paradise with snakes.)

---Abelard fought against Anselm with some success but was defeated. He 
is known for his affair with the nun (later abbess) Heloise, in which he 
was castrated by agents of Heloise's noble uncle. This reminds me of the 
castrated/lame heroes of The Golden Bough, and of course of Severian's 
predecessor as Autarch; Severian himself is lame. Their affair reminds 
me vaguely of Severian and Thecla; Abelard wrote frankly of it in his 
autobiography (framed as a series of letters to his friends), and it is 
generally considered one of the great love stories of all time.

(The connection between "lame" and "castrated" is the theory that when a 
hero in literature is wounded in the "thigh," that really means he's 
been rendered, er, drastically impotent---or at least that the two are 
related by proximity. A king who cannot ride and fight may still be able 
to sire an heir, but he's still cursed. BTW, has anyone wondered why 
Severian and Valeria never had an heir?)

5. What's the Point?
If _I_ were researching Catholicism to decide if I wanted to join it, I 
would ask some hard questions. Many of the above remarks deal with 
cliches familiar to anyone who went to Catholic school or saw a movie 
about it. But I'd want to know the position of the Church on 
authoritarianism, torture, terror, propaganda, and so on. Are these 
still OK? or are they renounced? Does the Church still glorify an 
ancient method of execution? These are real issues from that 
perspective, because some church fathers actually participated, if 
indirectly, in mass murder. We still experience the consequences of the 
Crusades: imperialism, racism, authoritarianism. And I would research 
these events and learn about them.

My hypothesis is that, much as Wolfe has written about Celtic and 
Germanic mythology as a step toward a true understanding of the divine 
in a bewildering and difficult world, so perhaps should the Christian 
theology of this period also be understood as a misunderstanding---an 
inadequate and misguided attempt at the same.

Wolfe's Conciliator myth is not a version of it but a distillation of 
its symbolic elements. If Severian does represent reconciliation, he 
represents reconciliation by force, with its attendant needless 
suffering and death. It remains unclear after UOTNS whether mankind is 
actually uplifted by his existence or not, but he himself becomes a god, 
fulfilling Athanasius's prediction.


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