From: "James Wynn" 
Subject: RE: (urth) Some problems if the Pancreator/Outsider is theHoly Trinity
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 08:56:23 -0500

I really would NOT place a lot of weight on this particular statement of
Wolfe's in the quoted interview. It's just too difficult to reconcile the
other clues. I think there is no doubt when Wolfe was writing this
FUTURISTIC novel he imagined it in the future. I think the following
statement is more explanatory:
"I was toying with those ideas, I think, rather than trying to make sense of
them. Is our resurrection going to be in another universal cycle? Well, yes,
maybe it is. I don't know. We don't know what is really meant by the world
coming to an end, and God rolling up the sky like a carpet and all that. It
is all picturesque language. Figurative language to try to give a general
idea to an audience that would not be capable of understanding the
actuality. And I am not sure we are more capable of understanding that
actuality than they were. It is like the Genesis story. I don't believe in a
literal apple and I don't believe that literally biting into the fruit had
this effect but if you have to explain to a bunch of primitives how men
differ from animals and where men went wrong in differing from animals, this
is a pretty good way to do it."
"Toying" is an important word here. Based on the Wolfe answer I'm quoting
here, I'd say trying to make tBotNS fit with Christian theology in every way
(or most ways) is like trying to create a perpetual motion machine or trying
to rectify general relativity with quantum mechanics: It seems so logical
and straightforward, but then....

-- Crush
------------------------------------------------------
Matthew said:

But no, placing tBotNS in a distant past distresses me.  It's too complex.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
James Jordan wrote:

>JJ: This universe that you sought in Briah are part of it. Is that our
>universe? Or is that a universe that resurrected saints have set up in
the
>world to come as part of the cities that they made?
>GW: No. I thought of it as a long past universe. Something that we are
>repeating rather than something that we are.
>




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