[Excubitoris Chapter] God Does Not Forgive: A Rejection of the Recent Concept of Forgivable Generational Inherited Sin

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
41

No. Because you seem to be operating on an idea that the debt so society ends at complete conversion. It does not. The debt to society never ends, not even for the highest of Holders.

We are given great rewards as a class, but it is in return for a family history of great service to God and to Amarr and in expectation of a future career of equally great service that justifies the reward.

A Holder who just accepts their reward without also accepting the obligation to maintain and enhance the strength of their holding so that it can provide service to Amarr deserves to lose their rank and privilege.

On the other end, a serf who serves a holder is also given a place in the society of faith that is based upon their ancestor’s deeds. Their starting point is inherited, where they end up is earned. If they exceed the expectations for their station they should be promoted to whatever position allows them to best serve Society. When a Holder lies and tells faithful slaves that they are actually criminal slaves, that Holder steals from society as a whole by wasting a resource that could have made Amarr stronger.

As for generational sin being an old concept, you are somewhat correct, it is an old heresy. What is new is the heterodox idea that it exists, but can be worked off and that it diminishes with time in some way. What’s new is any idea that it’s somehow something that can be diluted through sufficient mixed blood, which is just absurd and I am sorry to hear you were ever taught such nonsense. But that hard version of Generational Sin that predates the transactional redemptive variation is an old heresy, not an old orthodox belief. Their views were first rejected before Amarr were even in space. There would be no Udorian Saints, or even freed people. if their view of inherited sin had been accepted.

The True Amarr are chosen in Orthodox Amarr belief. From what I see, you see their being chosen as a condemnation of everyone else, rather than an elevation of those whose ancestors were chosen to be the last surviving bearers of the true message of God.

We are chosen to do a great task on behalf of the divine, but that does not mean that those we saved from the dark are dirty or impure. Far from it, the many true faithful who have been liberated from the darkness of the Long Dark, are an incredible gift to Amarr and they are most certainly not impure.

5 Likes
42

So why don’t they?

2 Likes
43

They do.

2 Likes
44

But then we are getting into something far beyond Debt Slaves. If what you mean is ‘they inherit the class but can work their way out of that class’, I do not know that I could consider that to be ‘working off a debt’, so much as, well, their family having been lowered to the status of slave by their criminal ancestor and the need to work their way back into good graces. Debt Slave has a meaning more associated to me with money, or those who sell themselves into slavery for monetary reasons, or otherwise making up for the crimes committed (eg rebuilding a community destroyed by a particular member of that community). Repairing the damage done by the crime, in whatever form is necessary to achieve that.

Of course, even with a definition of inheriting the class, the starting point, and being able to earn a higher one, such is incredibly rare in modern Amarr. What you argue for is most certainly not what is happening. If it was, then again, I don’t see many staying slaves past a handful of generations. It is clear, if we are to see things from your beliefs, that the Holder class has become massively corrupt. And so we again come to slavery being a source of massive abuse.

That, or the debt owed is so vast that it might as well be generational sin.

Again, only if you view it as the exact crime being inherited, when it is instead their relation to the criminal that is inherited, a befouled essence. Those born of tattered souls and fallen bloodlines can still Reclaim themselves and become righteous servants of God, even saints, in spite of their roots. This is not a matter of forgiveness, but of worthiness in spite of their blood. The sin worked off isn’t the original crime, which will never be forgiven nor forgotten, but the shadow that crime left on the bloodline.

Then again, you will also find, and have always been able to find, plenty of Amarr who believe there never should have been Udorian saints, or Minmatar ones, or even Khanid ones. Countless people who believe the lot of all that are not True Amarr is to serve, to never be freed from slavery, as punishment for the failure of their bloodlines. This is not new, nor have I seen much example of it being seen as heretical. Heterodoxy at worst, and practically orthodoxy in many places. Afterall, by most conventional Amarrian beliefs, no non-True Amarr can ever become True, nor can they ever become Chosen. Their bloodlines are forever stained by the original apostasy of their ancestors. Even by Salvationist beliefs, this remains true. You might call that elevation of goodness, rather than condemnation of badness, but the two go hand in hand.

This sort of belief would not get you far where I come from.

A handful of exceptions don’t change that the vast majority go unpunished. And that is a very sizeable number, by what you have defined as righteous and unrighteous behavior.

1 Like
45

I have already clarified earlier in the thread that I was not using the term in a capitalistic sense, but in an inherited obligation to society sense. But I can see why that reading of the concept could have happened given how I used the phrase initially.

46

Going back a bit to a point I overlooked.

What part of Mercy implies Forgiveness? Mercy is choosing to be less harsh than the act justifies, it does not mean forgetting the act happened or forgiving said act.

But your worldview is so simple. There is no room for the greater good in your ideology, only your self centered conception of what is right based on your personal experiences. Showing mercy to one sinner, as is the Emperor’s right as a figure of Limitless Mercy, and through that act preventing the corruption of billions is not perfect enough for you, so it must be outright evil.

But aside from the rightly guided servants of Amarr, this world is broken. The work of Amarr to bring everything into the Light of God is ongoing and not yet complete. And the reality of that is that good and evil are often mixed and hard to disentangle from each other. The Amarr Order is the God-Given mechanism for that disentangling, but it has been greatly undermined by Sani Sabik lies. It will take generations of work to undo the damage done by the Blood Chancellor and his Ilk, and some of that work will be unpalatable.

But people attempting to corrupt the system does not make the divinely ordained system bad, it just means we have opposition to defeat and a great deal of work to do to keep Amarr strong and work for the continuation of God’s mission for Amarr.

2 Likes
47

Here is your error. Or one of them. If God has created one people that they might glorify him in their obedience and other that might only glorify him in their destruction, what right has the created to say to his creator that he is unjust?

48

You might want to read the next paragraph there:

Though that said, like any true Amarr, I don’t believe in your Red Lie’s genocidal nonsense about a race destined only for destruction.

5 Likes
49

And even if we were to accept that kind of idiocy, something being created with the intention of injustice does not make it any less unjust, or abrogate the ability of observers to label the entity fashioning that injustice as ‘unjust’, ‘evil’, ‘unworthy’ and far, far worse things which would all still be entirely accurate.

Evil being bigger and stronger than you doesn’t make it any less evil. It just means you need to fight harder, longer.

50

It is not preventing the corruption of billions.

It is enabling it.

51

I must admit, Lord Lok’ri, that you seem to have taken an exceedingly narrow view of the Amarrian theology on this topic in my eyes. The first part of your message speaks to truth, yes: We Amarr are also subject to the consequences - being ‘pushed outside the light’, as you say it. Never since those times have even Amarr been, in unison and totality, inherently worthy of salvation.

The second part, however, I find troubling: You inherently attach the idea of salvific slavery to that of one where it is only the crimes of ancestors which must be atoned for, not the actions of the individual’s soul. Then, you follow on this by claiming that forgiveness and mercy is unattainable. It is a core element of this Faith that only through great works can the soul be redeemed. I am surprised you forget this, as it is something the very oath sworn upon taking the mantle of Holder:

Give strength to my hands, O God, to wipe away all stain, so that I may be able to serve you in purity of mind and body.
Lord, set Avetat the staff of salvation in my hand to fend off all the assaults of Molok.
Purify me, Lord, and cleanse my heart so that, washed in the Blood of the Ancients, so that I may be able to lead the people in purity of mind and body.
Lord, gird me with the belt of purity and extinguish my fleshly desires, that the virtues of reverence and service may abide within me.
Lord, restore Avetat the crown of immortality, which I lost through the collusion of our first parents, and, unworthy as I am to approach Thy sacred mysteries, may I yet gain eternal joy.

God does forgive, for these things could not be returned ever if guilt for them were always born. Forgiveness may not be easily attained, may not be quickly attained - but it can be attained. It is by the works we do, the actions we take to advance His commands in this temporal world, which we may obtain forgiveness for this or other sins before him.

As my esteemed colleague Archbishop Baracca notes, we are warned that “Woe is the soul” who dares to “knock twice” at the gates of salvation. Yet this is exactly what we ask of God - that He return the glorious state from which we have already turned once. This would be clearly meaningless were it not for some aspect of forgiveness and mercy not existing in Him.

7 Likes
52

That is decidedly not the Oath I swore as a Holder. While I have seen it sworn once by House Torash, it is far from the standard oath (there is no one standard oath) and it is certainly not scripture.

Among the genre of Holder Oaths it is also quite bizarre. it’s rhetoric about Ametat and Avetat stands out especially as those were certainly not lost due to the “collusion of our first parents,” and no one of the Holder class has any claim upon the Imperial Regalia of Amash-Akura. There should not, in fact, be any connection between Ametat and Avetat and the beginning of the Long Dark, as the Imperial Regalia are objects from many millennia after Gheinok’s exodus.

I am somewhat concerned by the idea that Amarr also turned away from God that I think I am seeing from both you and Constantin. It almost sounds as if you both believe that the Prophet Gheinok was a sinner who also needed to be forgiven? I hope I am simply misreading you.

Those who were non-Amarr turned away from the darkness, certainly, but Amarr did not. Most fell, “yet one flame remained, and within this flame, the Lord found faith renewed. Casting the others into obscurity, the Lord turned to the one.” When everyone else on the old world fell, Gheinok and those who listened to the great prophet did not, they followed him and “Gheinok led his people on the great exodus, to the land of our Salvation, to the land of God, to the land of his Chosen, to Athra.”

I also cannot understand your reading of Missions 5:14. When you say that we are asking to return to something that we turned away from, it is as if you think there is some original sin of which all, even the Amarr are still guilty. If this is truly what you are implying, I do not believe that it is a supportable position. We are not asking God for a second chance, far from it, we are not trying to redeem Amarr, but rather to bring the message of Amarr to all of creation.

It is the job of the Chosen to continue carrying out the divine mission that God set forth for us thousands upon thousands of years ago, starting with Gheinok and then continuing through all the glorious Emperors of the Holy Amarr Empire. We must preserve the divine revelations. We must obey God’s decrees. We must cultivate the divine light of God. We must bring the message of the faith to the universe and give those who suffer in the dark their chance to make a different choice than the one their ancestors did. Not because we are offering them a second chance, but because they are not their ancestors and as such they have not been offered a first chance.

3 Likes
53

Okay, so:

I think part of my confusion is that you’re really attached to this idea of generational slavery and debt slavery being very different, while I—and apparently most of the responders here—see no difference because no matter what it is, there’s still something immaterial being passed on from parents to children.

At least in my point of view, it isn’t the nature of what’s being passed on that’s important. It’s the fact that you say a newborn baby comes into the world with any kind of debt, with any kind of sin, and that’s abhorrent to me. A child is the most beautiful, innocent thing that the world can be given.

There was a pretty misogynistic comment about “mother’s milk” being the medium through which this sin is given to the child to bear, which leads me to my next question: What about the sins that Amarrian parents pass on to their babies? Maybe they cheated someone in the past, or maybe they supported an unjust cause out of naïveté, or maybe they are Holders who don’t manage their holdings properly, or maybe they support an unjust and deeply racist society that engages in harmful rhetoric and human rights abuses, or maybe they doubt Scriptures or something. Because as much as your idealism likes to elevate “true Amarr” to this mythical platform of cleanliness, you must admit, realistically, that the vast majority of Amarr have made some sort of misstep in their lives. That’s what being human is about.

So do these sins get passed on to Amarrian children? If so, why don’t they have to endure slavery like those of my kin, among other races?

Or is slavery-as-debt-punishment reserved only for those cultures that are different from yours?

2 Likes
54

I should mention here that you can stain your family’s name, such that the story follows to your children. That may be more of a social convention, though. To your point, nobility is passed down the same way as all other social states. However, that’s not uncommon in the cluster. Most children I know of are born subject to their parents’ circumstances (the only notable exceptions I know of being vat children).

1 Like
55

Amarrians sometimes commit crimes like everyone else. In our society that can result in the guilty party being enslaved and if their debt is great enough that can pass along to their family. A factor in those cases is often the social status of the individual. Speaking from personal experience, in the first criminal case I got involved in as a Holder, the perpetrator was True Amarr.

1 Like
56

Let’s say a slave child costs 5000 coins in lost productivity of their mother, and a further 5000 coins in expenses, food, clothing, education etc, each year till the age of, in the interests of round numbers, 19.
So that’s 100,000 coins in expenses that their holder has incurred. So let’s say they can be put to work doing something that earns their holder 10,000 coins a year. And let’s say they continue to cost the same 5000 coins in expenses. So they’d be paid off before the age of 40.
We can see from this, that their Holder is being negligent if they do not consider that slave eligible for freedom. They’ve paid off the expenses incurred, and have had nearly 40 years of education. If that is not sufficient, then you have to wonder at the competence of their Holder in the role of educator.

1 Like
57

I am hardly an Amarrian theologician, but if I understand the Admiral’s original essey correctly, the “debt” individuals owe in his model is not some amount they need to still pay, but more like duty owed to society. Individuals are born to a “Divine Order”, and they owe to that order to live up to their position.

It is like a twisted version of andesh - you are born to a clan, to a place in a clan, have a particular Mark, so you have a particular Fate to fulfill, and trying to do so is andesh, straying from that path is ohnesh. Just instead of trials to prove your worth and freedom to choose if you walk away from yours or not, they see it as the ‘Fate’ of some people to force the andesh choices on other people, which is obviously ■■■■■■■■. Loyalty not freely given is worth nothing.

3 Likes
58

Sin does not get inherited. It cannot, as N. Mithra aptly demonstrated.

But True Amarr do fall and when they do they are made into criminal slaves. And their children are then also born into servitude.

Also, the phrase where I mentioned learning to do evil with mother’s milk, the context was in cultures teaching people to be evil. I certainly was not suggesting that nourishment sources were source of that evil, that would be absurd, but rather that a child of the Long Dark will be taught their corrupted culture that denies God from the very beginning of their lives. Sin is not inherited, it is individual, but the inclination to sin can be taught.

3 Likes
59

My culture is not “corrupted” or “evil” just because it is different from yours.

60

I’d like firstly to thank Chapter Master Lok’ri for his insight and perspective, and to echo his rejection of what seems to be a dangerously transactional view of scripture.

If as many of us believe, a sin is an offence to God; the premise of this heterodoxy, that whatever the sins of their ancestor, God be offended at any child for their own birth is contrary to reasonableness.

The truth is that most slaves are not considered to be damned (thus forgiveness is unnecessary), it is simply that privileges in the Empire are a matter of heritage, and slowly earned. It serves Amarr poorly for those who do merely what they ought, however faithfully; to be elevated.

Rather we should seek to elevate those of rare or exceptional deed, those who can serve as exemplar to those they surpass, and who will draw from the rite carrying that light and strength with them as they serve Holy Amarr in a greater capacity.