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Forum URL: http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi
Forum Name: Neon Exodus Evangelion
Topic ID: 295
Message ID: 16
#16, RE: Apotheosis Now: Anniversary Retrospective
Posted by Mercutio on Apr-03-16 at 11:14 AM
In response to message #14
LAST EDITED ON Apr-03-16 AT 11:17 AM (EDT)
 
>You've been doing a lot of quoting of In Nomine (which I don't really
>know much about), but you seem to be lacking in understanding of basic
>Christian theology.

Except NXE doesn't take place in a world where basic Christian theology applies. It takes place in the context of In Nomine.

In Nomine is a world where one of the worlds major religions was founded by a rogue angel because of a political spat between her and her colleagues. It's a world where people can end up in Hell on accident because Heaven either fucked up or didn't care. It's a world where the archangels who are putatively on the side of good and the nearest beings to divine grace we're ever likely to encounter are neither smarter, nor wiser, nor particularly more enlightened than regular human beings. It's a world where a nontrivial number of the other angels are racist assholes who regard humans with disdain and think our creation might have been a huge mistake, where God is an extremely absentee landlord who has outsourced a lot of running of the war on earth to this pack of crazy people, and where Archangels can commit acts of horrific genocide and the worst thing that happens to'em is they get recalled to the higher heavens.

That's the world we are dealing with. It bears only a passing resemblance to traditional Christian theology.

>This is about grace. Of course Lucifer
>doesn't deserve to go back to heaven. Under common Christian thought,
>none of us deserves admission. In the absence of God's grace, every
>last one of us deserves to go to Hell -- you, me, and even D.J. But
>he was forgiven with divine grace, and restored to his authority.

This is true, but just because something is common doesn't make it universal. The modern conception of Hell and what you have to do to avoid it, especially under a lot of incredibly toxic American Protestant hermeneutics, has almost no basis in actual scripture and would be regarded with a mixture of amusement and horror by many Christian thinkers in times past.

That said, even if you accept this as true, the concept of a God who has pre-emptively decided we're all going to suffer horribly for eternity unless we jump through his hoops says uncomplimentary and horrifying things about said God.

-Merc
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