"'After all I have done for them, the saints keep on booting me in the soul like this.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, Trader To The Stars (New York, 1966), pp. 115-159 AT p. 120.
Notice how polytheism reasserts itself, especially on a new frontier. James Blish's interstellar traders swear by the gods of all stars.
One pagan attitude is that there is indeed a single remote supreme power but that it is too remote for everyday dealings so that it makes more sense to invoke beings that are more limited but also more proximate: gods, or saints, of particular places or provenances. Van Rijn refers to St. Dismas and also, at the end of "Margin of Profit," to Mercury, god of thieves.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
But, of course, assuming other races have Fallen, we should expect a variety of what I believe to be errors, such as polytheism.
No, what makes orthodox Christianity so unique is how close God is to us, so close that He became incarnate as man to die on the Cross for us. But that does not mean the saints don't also have a legitimate role as our friends and helpers.
Ad astra! Sean
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