Wolfe and Catholicism

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 01 Dec 2004, 09:51 · from 2004-December.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Wed Dec  1 09:51:28 2004
Subject: (urth) Wolfe and Catholicism
In-Reply-To: <BAY14-F362D49736FABDE8C32E08AF4BF0 at phx.gbl>
References: <20041130204636.5373A37CED at sitemail.everyone.net>
	<BAY14-F362D49736FABDE8C32E08AF4BF0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <1f76173704120109513c1f06d9 at mail.gmail.com>

Eric -

as one of the list's token Catholics I tend to agree with you that
"Christianity doesn't exist." More accurately (and I think this is
pretty close to what Kierkegaard was gatting at) you can't, in
this life, "be a Christian," you can only "be in the process of
becoming a Christian" - but then that makes the referent of the
word "Christian" an ideal rather than a real object, and so the
word "Christian" in the context of the "real" world (or the "world
that is the case") becomes someone who "is in the process of 
becoming" a Christian-in-the-ideal-sense.

Given how many blatant references (analogies, allegories,
whatever) to the Christ-story Wolfe packs into his stories, and
especially the Solar stories, it's difficult, not to say somewhat
obtuse, _not_ to read them as in-some-sense "Christian" 
stories. The difficulty arises when someone tries to define just
_how_, especially when one tries to make too simple of a call
-- Wolfe himself has repeatedly denied that any of his heroes
are "Christ figures," by which he appears to mean nothing more
than that he would not want anyone to confuse them with the
unique historical Messianic Person; I think that it's reasonable
to call Severian, Silk, and the Narrator "Christ figures" in the
same sense that Moses, Samuel, and Samson all "figure"
Christ in traditional (Catholic) readings of the Old Testament.

--Dan'l

-- 
www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
"Saddam would still be in power if he were the President
of the United States, and the world would be a lot better off."
     -- The Forty-Third President, 10/8/04

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