Survival of death is a premise of fantasy fiction:
a ghost appears and speaks in Conan: Blood Of The Serpent by SM Stirling;
a deceased character is seen wandering in the hereafter in The King Of Ys by Poul and Karen Anderson;
some departed souls are summoned from Heaven to help the living in Operation Chaos by Poul Anderson.
Characters of the Andersons, of Stirling and, of course, of many other authors believe in Christianity etc and this affects what what they do and how they live. When Kossara Vymezal lies in state in a Cathedral before her burial, her bereaved fiance, Dominic Flandry, asks her for a sign... Her fellow Dennitzan Ortho-Christians canonize her.
I have done a better job of introducing this topic here than I had expected to.
11 comments:
I've been an atheist, an arid materialist, and an ethical nihilist since the age of 6 or so. I didn't have all the words to -express- it until later, but that was my outlook.
I think that this is the kind of issue on which we need to keep reviewing and maybe refining our views.
I am again realizing how little I know.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
A fellow SF writer, John Wright, was a very vehement atheist hostile to Christianity before his conversion to Catholicism. But, as a writer, Wright took it as a matter of professional honor to write accurately and fairly about Christianity and Christian characters in his pre-conversion stories.
Except for not being vehemently hostile you remind me of Wright, taking Christianity and Judaism seriously and treating them accurately in your stories.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, you have to get into your character's head. And atheism isn't my religion, so I don't feel driven to castigate competing faiths... 8-).
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That's good enough for gov't work! And I have come across self avowed atheists who treat their belief as a weird kind of religion--a phenomenon examined by Flannery O'Connor in one or her stories, featuring the Church of Christ Without Christ.
Been wondering when readers might see a Christian character in your Antonine Rome books. Christians would be able to come out of hiding when Marcus Aurelius repealed the anti-Christian laws, as Artorius persuaded him to think of doing.
Ad astra! Sean
Under the circumstances, someone who has already shown up in the story might be a Christian who is keeping his head down.
Kaor, Jim!
A very interesting notion, but that is possible! I didn't think of that. Even as early as the reign of Domitian (r. 81-96) there were rumors/speculations some of his own relatives were Christians.
Out of a million or so people in the Rome of Marcus Aurelius I don't think there were, as yet, many Christians--maybe 20,000?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: in the late 2nd century, Christians were still much less numerous than Jews -- probably there were between 100,000 and 200,000 in the entire empire, mostly in the east and mostly in cities.
It was the 2nd century, particularly after about 230, that saw the initial massive growth of Christianity. The Roman empire was in constant crisis, the economy collapsed, and there were incessant civil wars and invasions -- concentrating on the afterlife looked attractive.
Christians of that period expected the world to end and Jesus to return -soon-.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I don't really disagree--except I tend to think some estimates are too low. About 150,000-200,000 Christians in the reign of Marcus Aurelius sounds about right. And the Crisis of the Third Century must have seemed very apocalyptic to both pagans and Christians!
I also tend to think some people forget how varied and widespread the literature produced by Christians were, even in the first and second centuries AD. E.g., after the NT, there was the Didache (c. AD 70-80), Clement of Rome's Letter to the Corinthians (c. AD 90), the Letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch (C. AD 107), the works of the Christian philosopher Justin Martyr (died c. 155), the writings of apologists like Athenagoras of Athens during the reigns of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. To me, all this and others necessitates a certain "population density" to support such a literature.
Ad astra! Sean
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