From: James Jordan <jbjordan4@home.com>
Subject: RE: (whorl) Destroying Inhumi
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 12:18:26 

At 09:05 AM 4/26/2001 -0700, Blattid wrote:
> > Practically, such blood could be deposited in blood banks,
> > analogous to Christ's deposit of His blood in the Eucharist.
>
>Not the Catholic (& therefore Lupine) understanding of the
>Eucharist. In the Eucharist, the Sacrifice of the Messiah is
>-- not reenacted, but made present, in a sense which transcends
>time and space: thus, the blood which the wine becomes is not
>blood "deposited" in some mystical blood bank, but actually bled
>at that (eternal, universal, non-temporal) moment. This is, btw,
>analogous to the original Passover, in which the message is "God
>did so-and-so for us" -- not "for our ancestors," but "for us";
>in eating the Passover, a Jew of this day and age is mystically
>present at the original Exodus. All the People of Israel are
>present at Sinai.
         Well sure. That's being more precise than I was being, but I think 
the analogy fits either way. As you probably know there is more than one 
version of "transubstantiation" in RC thought today, but whether Wolfe 
would agree completely with the particulars you set out or not, the basic 
notion is the same.


>A somewhat subtler objection is "if the secret will reduce
>the inhumi to mindless beasts, the Love One Another hypothesis
>won't work _because_ humans will voluntarily give their blood
>to the inhumi." Ahhh, but the inhumi to whom they give their
>blood become human (at least in spirit); so the only pure inhumi
>are, precisely, the mindless beasts. This, of course, is true
>even as Horn speaks: Krait, Jahlee, Fava, etc., are in fact human
>in spirit. But they represent danger _because_ the kind of human
>they have become is not a being of Agape; and the "weapon" is
>"too heavy to weild" _because_ humans, _not_ loving each other,
>will not voluntarily give their blood to the inhumi anyway. It
>is "too heavy to weild:" it is not practical (in the Fallen World,
>in which Blue, Green, Urth, and the _Whorl_ all inhere) to suppose
>that humans will as-a-race become Agape-driven, and so they cannot
>even lift the "sword" that would destroy the inhumi _as a threat_.

         Agree. Some inhumi become humi, others revert to animals.

> > That's no accident: In Christian thought the Eucharist is eating
> > and drinking Christ's death into oneself, so that one can die to
> > one's own evil and be born anew, over and over again.
>
>My own understanding is a bit different from the "over and over
>again" you cite here -- Catholicism, as I understand it, teaches
>not that the Eucharist is rebirth (that happens at Baptism), but
>of the process by which we are gradually sanctified, con-formed
>to the Image of Christ. By analogy, repeated feeding from
>Agapistic humans would gradually sanctify the inhumi, and con-form
>them to Agape.

         Either way. I think ultimately it is pretty much the same thing. 
We must "die" to sin daily, and be "raised" daily, so being "born anew" 
daily stems from the Baptismal beginning.


>Ummmm. I _think_ the root of the word is not "human (ex _homo_)"
>but "humus." The prefix "in" is ambiguous, and can mean "not" or
>simply "in." Thus, the inhumi are "not-Earthly," and, at the same
>time, thay are the "in-Earth," the Buried, in at least the sense
>of "hidden," but becoming horrifically literal in the marketplace
>of Gaon.

         Well, Wolfe has his pregnant puns, and surely "inhumi" also 
connotes "inhumane."

         I think we are in essential agreement.

Nutria


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