resurrecting a 2002 thread that posits an alternative lineage for Sev

Brad Henry · 02 Oct 2014, 14:04 · from 2014-October.txt.gz

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From: bradhenry101 at gmail.com (Brad Henry)
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2014 10:04:29 -0400
Subject: (urth) resurrecting a 2002 thread that posits an alternative
 lineage for Sev
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And part of catholic teaching is that saints are not simply 'controlled by
christ' in their working of miracles (many saints have performed miracles
like severian') but they are in the process of 'theosis' (or, sometimes
called 'divination'), being made into gods, that culminates in their
resurrection to immortality. It is a christian quip: "God became man, so
that man might become (a) god." The traditional biblical cite for this is 2
Peter 1.3-4.

On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 9:47 AM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is obvious, but for me the miracles make him pretty explicitly a
> Judeo-Christian wonderworker/savior with a little sin and torture thrown in
> for good measure (bleeding from the forehead when he sees the many
> eye-winged butterfly, turning water to wine, resurrecting the dead,
> healing, carrying a huge cross shaped torture device which is occasionally
> planted in the ground, being tempted by Satan almost verbatim (but never,
> say, transforming into an animal like a Pagan god)) - my earliest
> impression when I was a young boy was not that he was a normal person but a
> Christ.  The pagan gods are the unnatural creatures in New Sun whose
> mythologies are incorporated and transformed into Christian stories [such
> as the flood and the story of Genesis]. (At least throughout The Book of
> the New Sun).
>
> I never fancied Sev ordinary. While clearly Wolfe loves playing with
> mythical creatures, the importance of his Catholicism to his works
> shouldn't be understated.
>
> On Thursday, October 2, 2014, Lee <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> >On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 7:35 AM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Severian is a (pagan) god. He has a presentiment of it at the beginning
>> of his story but by the end
>>
>> of Citadel, we are meant to understand that he was The Conciliator and he
>> will be The New Sun.
>>
>>
>> By the end of Urth of the New Sun we also understand that in addition to
>> his superhuman healing
>>
>> powers, he was also worshipped as Apu Punchau, he can breathe underwater,
>> he can travel through time
>>
>>  he is immortal (though not invulnerable), and at the very end he once
>> again finds himself worshipped as
>>
>> a god.
>>
>
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