the long struggle to understand the rainbow, the other Covenant; once the explanation was in, it did not explain,
except to show that every man sees his own rainbow, and what seems to stand in the sky is an optical illusion, not a theomorphism.
It is in the nature of the arrangement that the terms would vary in each individual case, and that if you are incapable of
determining where it is drawn for you – the line of demarcation – then, woe betide you, and that is that.’
Dear God, Father Domenico thought, all my life I have been an amateur of Roger Bacon and I never once saw that that was what
he meant to show by focusing his
Perspectiva
on the rainbow. Shall I have any more time to learn? I hope we are never tempted to make Monteith the director, or we shall
lose him to taking things out of the In box and putting them into the Out box, as we did Father Umberto –
‘Furthermore, it may well be still in existence,’ said Father Boucher. ‘As Father Domenico has already pointed out to Theron
Ware himself, we have heard of the alleged death of God only through the testimony of the most unreliable witness imaginable.
And it leaves many inconsistencies to be explained.
When
exactly is God supposed to have died? If it was as long ago as in Nietzsche’s time, why had His angels and ministers of light
seemed to know nothing of it in the interim? It’s unreasonable to suppose that they were simply keeping up a good front until
the battle actually broke out; Heaven simply isn’t that kind of an organisation. One would expect an absolute and perpetual
monarchy to break down upon the death of the monarch quite promptly, yet in point of fact wesaw no signs of any such thing until shortly after Christmas of this year.’
‘But we did see such signs at that time,’ Father Vance said.
‘True, but this only poses another logical dilemma: What happened to the Antichrist? Baphomet’s explanation that he had been
dispensed with as unnecessary to the victors, whose creature he would have been, doesn’t hold water. The Antichrist was to
have appeared
before
the battle, and if the defeat of God is all that recent, the prophecy should have been fulfilled; God still existed to compel
it.’
‘Matthew 11:14,’ Father Selahny said, in an unprecedented burst of intelligibility. The verse of which he was reminding them
referred to John the Baptist, and it said:
And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.
‘Yes,’ Father Domenico said, ‘I suppose it’s possible that the Antichrist might have come unrecognised. One always envisioned
people flocking to his banner openly, but the temptation would have been more subtle and perhaps more dangerous had he crept
past us, say in the guise of some popular philosopher, like that positive-thinking man in the States. Yet the proposal seems
to allow even less room than did the Covenant for the exercise of free will.’
There was a silence. At last, the director said: ‘The Essenes argued that one must think and experience all evil before one
can hope to perceive good.’
‘If this be true doctrine,’ Father Domenico said, ‘then it follows that God is indeed still alive, and that Theron Ware’s
experiment, and World War III, did not constitute Armageddon after all. What we may be confronted with instead is an Earthly
Purgatory, from which Grace, and perhaps even the Earthly Paradise, might be won. Dare we think so?’
‘We dare not think otherwise,’ said Father Vance. ‘The question is, how? Little that is in the New Testament, the teachings
of the Church or the Arcana seem very relevant to the present situation.’
‘No more is our traditional isolation,’ said Father Domenico. ‘Our only recourse now is to abandon it; to abandon our monastery
and our mountain, and go down into the world that we renounced when Charlemagne was but a princeling, to tryto win it back by works and witnessing. And if we may not do
except to show that every man sees his own rainbow, and what seems to stand in the sky is an optical illusion, not a theomorphism.
It is in the nature of the arrangement that the terms would vary in each individual case, and that if you are incapable of
determining where it is drawn for you – the line of demarcation – then, woe betide you, and that is that.’
Dear God, Father Domenico thought, all my life I have been an amateur of Roger Bacon and I never once saw that that was what
he meant to show by focusing his
Perspectiva
on the rainbow. Shall I have any more time to learn? I hope we are never tempted to make Monteith the director, or we shall
lose him to taking things out of the In box and putting them into the Out box, as we did Father Umberto –
‘Furthermore, it may well be still in existence,’ said Father Boucher. ‘As Father Domenico has already pointed out to Theron
Ware himself, we have heard of the alleged death of God only through the testimony of the most unreliable witness imaginable.
And it leaves many inconsistencies to be explained.
When
exactly is God supposed to have died? If it was as long ago as in Nietzsche’s time, why had His angels and ministers of light
seemed to know nothing of it in the interim? It’s unreasonable to suppose that they were simply keeping up a good front until
the battle actually broke out; Heaven simply isn’t that kind of an organisation. One would expect an absolute and perpetual
monarchy to break down upon the death of the monarch quite promptly, yet in point of fact wesaw no signs of any such thing until shortly after Christmas of this year.’
‘But we did see such signs at that time,’ Father Vance said.
‘True, but this only poses another logical dilemma: What happened to the Antichrist? Baphomet’s explanation that he had been
dispensed with as unnecessary to the victors, whose creature he would have been, doesn’t hold water. The Antichrist was to
have appeared
before
the battle, and if the defeat of God is all that recent, the prophecy should have been fulfilled; God still existed to compel
it.’
‘Matthew 11:14,’ Father Selahny said, in an unprecedented burst of intelligibility. The verse of which he was reminding them
referred to John the Baptist, and it said:
And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.
‘Yes,’ Father Domenico said, ‘I suppose it’s possible that the Antichrist might have come unrecognised. One always envisioned
people flocking to his banner openly, but the temptation would have been more subtle and perhaps more dangerous had he crept
past us, say in the guise of some popular philosopher, like that positive-thinking man in the States. Yet the proposal seems
to allow even less room than did the Covenant for the exercise of free will.’
There was a silence. At last, the director said: ‘The Essenes argued that one must think and experience all evil before one
can hope to perceive good.’
‘If this be true doctrine,’ Father Domenico said, ‘then it follows that God is indeed still alive, and that Theron Ware’s
experiment, and World War III, did not constitute Armageddon after all. What we may be confronted with instead is an Earthly
Purgatory, from which Grace, and perhaps even the Earthly Paradise, might be won. Dare we think so?’
‘We dare not think otherwise,’ said Father Vance. ‘The question is, how? Little that is in the New Testament, the teachings
of the Church or the Arcana seem very relevant to the present situation.’
‘No more is our traditional isolation,’ said Father Domenico. ‘Our only recourse now is to abandon it; to abandon our monastery
and our mountain, and go down into the world that we renounced when Charlemagne was but a princeling, to tryto win it back by works and witnessing. And if we may not do
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