The possible ways to break Church doctrine

I'd like to speculate about the possible ways to break the Church religious doctrine. As it currently presented, even after the Charis&Co won the war and destroyed the Go4 power base, it would be a awfully hard work to actually turn the main doctrine - especially considering that the Church of Charis ultimately based on the same doctrine as the main Church.

The problem is, that the Safehold simply haven't any other religious of philosophy as example. There wasn't any "previous" period, like ancient Egypt, or Greece, or Rome, there isn't any "other" countries, like Earth China, or India, or Ottoman Turkey to make an example. Worse, it's clearly impossible even to consider them, because the Safeholdian has a complete maps of their world.

So, the main problem have two parts: 1) how to present any doctrinal changes to the peoples, 2) what changes would NOT be considered as the outlying heresy by the peoples?

The first problem, i think, may be solved in therms of "hidden country", like Earth Shangri-La and Belovodie myths. In safeholdian therms, it would be something like "the communites of righteous peoples, that isolated themselves from the mortal world temptations and corruptions in the Mountains of Light" After all, if the Seijin's are trained in hidden commutines, then there must be someone who trained them, and someone who feed both of them! So, the idea with the "righteous teachers from the Mountain of Light", that gave peoples some... uncommon philosophy, would probably work good.

The second problem is harder. But i think, there is at least one breach in the doctrine that may work. As i recall, the "Writ" teach that the even Shan-Wei wasn't initially evil, and turned to evil only by her pride. And the other pint of the "Writ" is the even a heretic can find the divine salvation by repentance and remorse, if i not mistaken.

So... the question that theoretically may be able to shake a little the Church doctrine, is the "if the Shan-Wei would truly remorse for her actions, would she be forgiven? " This may be plausible even in current doctrine, so this question wouldn't be considered (at least not by all Safeholdian) as a outlying heresy. And it may be the first step to move the whole doctrine.

Dilandu wrote:The first problem, i think, may be solved in therms of "hidden country", like Earth Shangri-La and Belovodie myths. In safeholdian therms, it would be something like "the communites of righteous peoples, that isolated themselves from the mortal world temptations and corruptions in the Mountains of Light" After all, if the Seijin's are trained in hidden commutines, then there must be someone who trained them, and someone who feed both of them! So, the idea with the "righteous teachers from the Mountain of Light", that gave peoples some... uncommon philosophy, would probably work good.

No.

The ultimate goal is to reveal the truth and expose the lies. You can't do that and say "oh, by the way we kind of lied about this coming from those righteous teachers from the Mountain of Light."

This is why Merlin has been careful never to outright lie nor claim to be a Seijin.

Hi Dilandu,

Kudos for some very important and interesting theological points with a possible approach.

Whether Shan-wei can feel full remorse and truly repent, then receive full heavenly forgiveness seems to me to be obvious to the church; since they argue the whole punishment is to free the soul sooner, so eventual eternal forgiveness seems potentially quite in line with what we know of their doctrine, NTM beyond any mortal concern of the CoGA or vicarate doing their duty to enforce the punishment here on Safehold.

RFC as a lay Methodist preacher may use the opportunity to reiterate some points that underlay all his works.

The fascination with Seijins would certainly encourage readership across all of Safehold, and while the problems probably aren't going to be new to the CoGA's seminaries, putting such questions to the whole literate public, with no wrong answers any more, ought to generate some new thinking among a lot of people, exactly what Merlin wants.

I doubt they'd be his ideas, rather leaving that to Maikel and the Brotherhood of St Zherneau, and Paityr of course to formulate the 'teachings of the righteous' regarding tolerance and other ways of thinking.

The danger would come from people trying to find these religious refuges, as likely additional pilgrimage sites, and NOT finding any.

Then you have put yourself in the same false position as the temple and vicarate, from which you may never recover.

I also think the revelations regarding Seijin St Khody will help tremendously in getting most people to rethink their religious convictions.

L

Dilandu wrote:I'd like to speculate about the possible ways to break the Church religious doctrine. As it currently presented, even after the Charis&Co won the war and destroyed the Go4 power base, it would be a awfully hard work to actually turn the main doctrine - especially considering that the Church of Charis ultimately based on the same doctrine as the main Church.

The problem is, that the Safehold simply haven't any other religious of philosophy as example. There wasn't any "previous" period, like ancient Egypt, or Greece, or Rome, there isn't any "other" countries, like Earth China, or India, or Ottoman Turkey to make an example. Worse, it's clearly impossible even to consider them, because the Safeholdian has a complete maps of their world.

So, the main problem have two parts: 1) how to present any doctrinal changes to the peoples, 2) what changes would NOT be considered as the outlying heresy by the peoples?

The first problem, i think, may be solved in therms of "hidden country", like Earth Shangri-La and Belovodie myths. In safeholdian therms, it would be something like "the communites of righteous peoples, that isolated themselves from the mortal world temptations and corruptions in the Mountains of Light" After all, if the Seijin's are trained in hidden commutines, then there must be someone who trained them, and someone who feed both of them! So, the idea with the "righteous teachers from the Mountain of Light", that gave peoples some... uncommon philosophy, would probably work good.

The second problem is harder. But i think, there is at least one breach in the doctrine that may work. As i recall, the "Writ" teach that the even Shan-Wei wasn't initially evil, and turned to evil only by her pride. And the other pint of the "Writ" is the even a heretic can find the divine salvation by repentance and remorse, if i not mistaken.

So... the question that theoretically may be able to shake a little the Church doctrine, is the "if the Shan-Wei would truly remorse for her actions, would she be forgiven? " This may be plausible even in current doctrine, so this question wouldn't be considered (at least not by all Safeholdian) as a outlying heresy. And it may be the first step to move the whole doctrine.

Actually, I think the way to do it is the way Charis is doing it NOW.

Draw a line in the sand.

On one side, place everything that's actually moral and good about Church doctrine.

On the other side, put all the bad stuff.

How do you know what to on which side of the line? That's what the war is defining.

On the one side, we have Charis which actually insists on being honorable, merciful, tolerant, and following the Rules of War, but has chucked out blind obedience to Church hierarchy and wariness about change and the punishments of Schueler.

On the other, we have the Group of Four and the Council of Vicars who insist on the primacy of their authority at all costs, chucking out any rule in the Writ that doesn't support that goal, and inflicts the most horribly punishments on anyone who so much as looks like they're questioning Church authority.

In many ways, Charis is just as guilty as the Temple hierarchy of picking and choosing what parts of the Writ they want to follow and ignoring the parts they don't.

And guess what? The Writ even includes a rule that lets them do just that! It's the rule that sometimes you have to ignore a rule and do bad things for the "Greater Good". Obviously, it's a rule used by tyrants to hide their being tyrants and used alot by Temple Loyalists to justify their actions.

But that rule is such a double edged sword because it can and has been argued that breaking the "Obey Mother Church!" rule is also for the "Greater Good". IOW, the rule that allows the Temple to violate the Writ whenever obeying the Writ would be inconvenient also undermines the Temple's own authority.

Seriously, it's like one of those puzzle games where Step 1 is "Don't do any of the other steps!" I couldn't believe such a thing had been put in the Writ itself given how it could be abused to justify ANYTHING, even rebellion.

Greyman wrote:No.

The ultimate goal is to reveal the truth and expose the lies. You can't do that and say "oh, by the way we kind of lied about this coming from those righteous teachers from the Mountain of Light."

This is why Merlin has been careful never to outright lie nor claim to be a Seijin.

The problem is, that the truth is way too big to chew for ultimate majority of Safehold population. And any attmept to put the truth BEFORE the Church doctrine would be broken, would end only in the religious carnage on the such scale, which horrify even Clyntah.

Simply: the truth is too big. The only way to put it in mind without risking the catastrophical consequenses, it to divide the truth on small fragment, that the humans would be able to manage. And so, at least SOME lie would be inevitable.

After all, ALL the truth is relative. There is simply no such thing as ultimate truth for all. And the politic always include at least a part of lie.

lyonheart wrote:The danger would come from people trying to find these religious refuges, as likely additional pilgrimage sites, and NOT finding any.

Then you have put yourself in the same false position as the temple and vicarate, from which you may never recover.

Well, it's a problem, of course, but it is a manageable one. Firstly, we could always make a point that this mountain retreats are hidden by God will from the majority of mortals, and only true pure souls may even try to find them.

Secondly, the mountains is pretty dangerous. At least some part of "piligrims" would unfortunately die, of course, and there would undoubtly the legends, that they found the sacred lands and stay here.

And, thirdly, SOME (small)part of piligrims would be able to comprehend the full truth. So they may be invited to the Inner Circle, and "send to the mortal world" to work as "nlightened teachers" themsevles.

And by the time the Safehold would be able to comprehend the full truth - and it wouldn't be tomorrow - the legends of the "hidden land of tecahers" would be considered no more than a part of folclore.

Dilandu wrote:"the communites of righteous peoples, that isolated themselves from the mortal world temptations and corruptions in the Mountains of Light" After all, if the Seijin's are trained in hidden commutines, then there must be someone who trained them, and someone who feed both of them! So, the idea with the "righteous teachers from the Mountain of Light", that gave peoples some... uncommon philosophy, would probably work good.

Rumor like this could start some real Atlantis craze, on even bigger scale than ours. After all, we know that person who wrote about Atlantis was, first, author of philosophy mixed with fiction, and, more importantly, was not and Atlantean. But what if somebody who comes from such secret communities tells you they exist?

Dilandu wrote:So... the question that theoretically may be able to shake a little the Church doctrine, is the "if the Shan-Wei would truly remorse for her actions, would she be forgiven? "

That's... a really good idea, IMO. There were some ideas about taking the Shan-wei's advocate angle before (my favourite is the opera about the fall of Shan-wei), and such an assault (although not too visible one, or "Shain-wei is corrupting us!" screams are bound to happen) can truly start eroding the doctrine.

On the subject of armor-piercing questions, here's my idea for later: Why didn't archangels react when they saw what the Church is doing? It was asked before, but always in privacy of one's soul. I wonder about the consequences of asking it in the public.

Kakai wrote:
On the subject of armor-piercing questions, here's my idea for later: Why didn't archangels react when they saw what the Church is doing? It was asked before, but always in privacy of one's soul. I wonder about the consequences of asking it in the public.

Exactly good question!

You do not show truth and dispel lies by piling new lies atop the old ones.
All you'd accomplish would be that no one believes anything you say.

What's going on in Safehold is probably the safest approach: pick people who can digest the truth, reveal it to them, and eventually you will have enough of them in key positions, that when the full truth is made public, they can help bring the situation under control.

At which point, if Cayleb and Sharleyan are still in power (don't forget - 20 years till "the angels return") and if the problem of the orbital bombardment station is solved (maybe by accessing its remote control center in the Temple, using the Key of Schueler), the people may privately think whatever.

The science will advance, the economy will advance, there will soon be electricity, airplanes, TV, Internet, you name it. At which point people will see the obvious truth, or their children will.

Fast forward one or two generations, which will be born and raised without the omnipresent influence of traditional Church, and they will be a lot more receptive to the truth.

Dilandu wrote:

Kakai wrote:
On the subject of armor-piercing questions, here's my idea for later: Why didn't archangels react when they saw what the Church is doing? It was asked before, but always in privacy of one's soul. I wonder about the consequences of asking it in the public.

Exactly good question!

It is a good question - but it's also not hard to answer. Behold: The Archangels did act - they blessed Charis with the people and resources and battle-luck it needed to survive and overthrow the corrupt, sinful cabal that had taken control of the Church. How else do you explain the unprecedentedly enormous amount of technological growth the Charisians underwent, and the astonishingly high success rate of the new technologies they adopted? There clearly was some supernatural entity aiding them, and since they won it had to have been God.

You might ask, why didn't the Archangels put in a personal appearance? There are three possible answers:
1) They did - in the persons of the myriad "seijins" supporting the Charisians. Remember, Merlin and company never explicitly label themselves as seijins; they claim to be people with some of the abilities attributed to seijins - and also some abilities not attributed to seijins. Archangels in disguise could fit that bill!
2) They wanted mankind to fix things on their own for some reason - perhaps as a way to counter the corruption of mankind's spirit that occurred after Shan-wei's fall.
3) They were unable to do so. It may be that, though they were physically present on Safehold during the days immediately after the Creation, they are unable to make a physical return after leaving this world.