God doesn't want you? Story doesn't particularly want god...

[beccaelizabeth]

Someone in a window I now seem to have closed mentioned in passing that crosses and holy water don't really work very well. That is, if your goal is to destroy vampires, they aren't very effective. Sure, they burn, but the burns heal. And crosses mostly just make a vampire keep back. The only time they actually kill is if they end up right in a vampires heart, like if they stake them with a cross, or if the swallowed holy water burns through. In other words, if they do the exact same things you have to do with any chunk of wood.

If you start out with the idea of an all powerful Christian god being the reason the holy symbols work, it seems a bit... underpowered.

I mean in AD&D if you're a high enough level cleric you just destroy undead from a distance, whoosh, bit of prayer and they're all gone.

Reckon that would work in the Buffyverse?

If there are a whole bunch of powers competing, then it makes a bit of sense - cross-power and vamp-power get in a fight, cross-power has a bit of an edge so gets that cowering effect, but vamp power fights back.

But if any one deity is supposed to be omnipotent... well, basically you're back to the problem of the existence of evil, only more so. Because supernatural power is pushing back supernatural power, so god is doing something about it, but not a whole heck of a lot.

So you end up with the idea, god doesn't actually want to destroy vampires. On account of, if an omnipotent god wants to destroy something, then destroyed it is.

So why does that god want vampires around???

Why smallpox, basically. Ends up a tricky theological problem.

If you start with a whole bunch of smaller and more specialised godlikes, then the problem is different. Antibiotics are specific, and the other dudes are finding ways out around the edges all the time. Or, theres a goddess can keep vampires from your door, but the only goddess of vampire slaying is incarnate.

And the cross and holy water thing? Well, they might not do much more than plain old stakes, but the bit more they do is enough to save lives. In ways that don't kill anyone, which seems appropriate for a god with a bunch of commandments about don't kill and turn the other cheek.

But if its meant to be non-violent, why does it burn?
I have this theory that actually, its not god doing the ouching at all. It is the demon, rejecting god. Wouldn't do to let Angel get too close to all these redemption symbols, might get away from the demon. So make the body ouch, to keep the soul in the clutches of the demon.



All this being not particularly canon, just wandering around speculations.


And the reason it isn't in canon is because the parts that are important to us are the choices the characters make. Crosses and holy water are tools to them. As soon as we start getting into what gods are doing, what choices gods make and what their priorities are, then gods become characters. And then they have to get written in in interesting ways. I guess somewhere around then you end up with Hercules or Xena. Not that I've watched much of either show. But the gods are players there, making choices and stuff, so they're characters.

If we want to concentrate on like Buffy and Angel and such, the gods don't be being characters, any more than like the president would be. Any more than the dude that makes the guns in action movies. Because they aren't who the story is about.

Comments

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Very interesting speculations--how about taking the thread over to the churchofjoss comm?

There are various possibilities for balancing a creator god and the existence of evil--including positing that the material world was created by evil divinities; that there were various creative powers, with different agendas; and that, so to speak, evil is all part of the ecology, like forest fires that clear the way for new growth.

[beccaelizabeth]

I found the churchofjoss and put a link there.
Now I have this urge to put all kinds of disclaimers all over this stuff, like about how I haven't read a philosophy book for ages.

That 'created by evil' kind of fits the Buffyverse 'used to belong to demons' bit. The plural on 'higher powers' fits the competing agendas thing.

The ecology thing always kind of bugged me. I mean, there's this god who can do loaves and fishes out of thin air, it kind of makes it look weird that there's a need for a balanced ecology, you know?

personally I figure everything is chaos and stuff just happens, but that is a little bit like going *shrugs*

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I find Shaw's position very persuasive: that Creation is ongoing, it didn't just happen once and stop there, and that people are needed to help get things back into order.

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

I'm so with you there! When I first took Christian Believer and was presented with this idea I was amazed at how obvious it was. Creation is not some closed story that happened x number of years ago, it's happening right now.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

It also makes God look a little less egotistical by saying that intelligent life was created not just to love and serve God, but to assist in the ongoing Creation.

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

From the Christian perspective (which is the only one I've got a good handle on) God wanted companions not some kind of soulless yes men.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I like what Lewis said in The Screwtape Letters--that God doesn't want cattle who can become food, but servants who can become sons.

[beccaelizabeth]

God wanted companions
*thinks Firefly*
puts a whole different spin on that...

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

That's too funny! Okay, let's call that an unfortunate word choice. :)

[electricalgwen.livejournal.com]

Well, there's a highly developed Christian imagery of the church as the "Bride of Christ", so maybe not that incongruous an interpretation *g*

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

I find it hard to argue about the efficacy of God versus other divine or demonic powers. From the Christian perspective, you are quite right, if an omnipotent God wants a demon gone, it's gone, and that is related multiple times in the Bible. In reality, I think the existence of evil is largely due to the existence of free will. Evil exists because if you can only make right and good choices you're a robot, not a independent individual. Sometimes choices aren't evil or bad but they have bad consequences.

Enough reality, onto the Buffyverse! I really liked what you said about Angel and crosses. He does seem to be particularly effected by them, a fact about which Darla tormented him, telling him God didn't want him. In contrast, I remember Spike laying on a cross in Beneath You. True, you could see smoke rising off of him but the next time we saw him no marks were in evidence as if he were seriously burned. Then in Destiny Angel can't pick up the huge cross, while Spike picks it up and hits him with it! I could spend all day speculating about why Spike seems less effected than Angel but, if I might borrow part of your theory, Angel's demon is in competition with his soul, while Spike's is in reasonable harmony with his.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Souled!Angel gets much more screentime than Souled!Spike, and one consequence is that although both Angel and Spike have a *lot* to be remorseful about, Angel spends a lot more time brooding when we can see him.

[shadowscast.livejournal.com]

I always interpreted the Spike vs. Angel cross thing a different way. The crosses burned both of them—it's, like unalterable vampire physics or something—but at certain times Spike was more willing than Angel to let himself be burned.

When Spike whaps Angel with the cross in "Destiny" (which I have to confess was a moment I enjoyed very much!), you can see the smoke rising from Spike's hands. He's willing to withstand the pain because the goal is important enough to him. In "Beneath You," I saw his draping himself on the cross as a basically suicidal act. On the other hand, Angel does run barefoot over a floor made of crosses in an attempt to save Darla in "The Trial."

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

Oh I'm not disputing that! It's made obvious in both Beneath You and Destiny that the crosses burn Spike. As you say, it's an unalterable element of vampire physics. I'm just saying that, it appears, they hurt Angel more, or more accurately, he reacts to them more violently. I adored the moment Spike hit him with the cross as well.

[totallypinkrock.livejournal.com]

While vampires definitely have a fire theme going (everything BURNS them! ??), stakes symbolize a connection to the earth. Given that, in many cultures, a vampire is basically a risen corpse, being hit in the heart with a chunk of wood re-establishes a connection to nature, "tying" the creature to Earth once more. And, I guess, if you're tied to nature, you can't be undead? Hm.

Actually, yeah, let's stick with this idea for a second. Vampires are in a bit of a fix: for all their power, and depending on local mythology, they're hemmed in by sun, blood, running water, crosses, holy water, garlic... the list goes on! Most or all of these things have some connection to the divine, to nature, or something like it. As for garlic, I've long thought that might just be a joke about how bad it smells, but there's probably more to it than that.

The sun: great symbol of life's cycle and the passage of time. Also fits thematically with the idea of vampires as evil/darkness/etc.
Running water: same thing! Only this fits more in the vein (ha!) of vampires as stagnant, not just dead and evil.
Crosses and such are pretty self-explanatory.
Wooden stakes: if we imagine the vampire in a trap or a closed-off space, we would frame it with the Sun and a river. Within that space, the vampire may exist. If you manage to "catch" a vampire with a symbol of nature (a stick), then maybe that's a way to re-attach it to the natural cycle again.

Of course, the legends (and 'verses) vary on what stakes do. In Buffy, it's crystal-clear. But stakes might instead merely incapacitate, which could be a sort of "re-naturalizing" of the vampire's physical body: it acts like a corpse once more. The same might be said for *poof*ing away into ash upon staking, which could be Death catching up and collecting back payments.

Ah, mythology.

"Blood! Blood for Hecate!" - Hellboy

[totallypinkrock.livejournal.com]

While blood is practically a staple of the mythological monstrous diet, there's a lot of imagery and mood there: predation instead of communal human effort, a certain savagery to it, the lack of one's own blood as another rhythm or cycle that one can't access... hm.

[kindkit.livejournal.com]

My theory (since I don't believe that there's a God, in the monotheistic sense, in the Jossverse) is that crosses work because the cross is, in its pre-Christian origin, a solar symbol. That originary meaning, plus all the light/darkness imagery embedded in Christianity, makes the cross effective against vampires even though vampirism clearly predates Christianity. It works through symbolism, because magic itself, in the sense I understand it (I'm not a believer in real-world magic, but I know a little bit about, for instance, magical belief in the European Renaissance) works through symbolism and metaphor.

I suppose holy water could be seen as working the same way--it's a symbol of a religion whose symbols are all about light conquering darkness.

Still, it annoys me that Joss never once suggested that symbols of other religious traditions might be effective against vampires. (Why wouldn't the star of David, a protective symbols, have worked for Willow, for instance?) Part of Joss's Religion = Catholicism thing, I guess.

[electricalgwen.livejournal.com]

Why wouldn't the star of David, a protective symbol, have worked for Willow, for instance?

I've wondered that. I think there are a couple of different possible explanations, and they tie into other people's comments about symbolism and power. Not only is there the question of why people can't use their own religious symbols or tools (Star of David, athame, whatever), but why characters who as far as I can tell are essentially atheist/agnostic can use Christian symbols and have them work. It therefore can't have to do with the belief of the wielder.

Does it have to do with the belief of the vampire? Similar to the way that a curse may kill a human through the power of fear alone? Or is it a shared belief? One very good fic I read a long time back but cannot recall title/author of, has Wesley and Spike meeting and talking in a bar; Wes is playing with the saltshaker and says something like, "I could probably burn you with this salt if I truly believed that it would." How are our beliefs translated into physical (metaphysical) effects on the world around us? Are they?

I'm intrigued to see the interest in this topic, and to hear about Church of Joss and the WriterCon panel that discussed these issues (sadly I wasn't there) - I wrote a fic back around Easter ("Resurgens") that explored some of the things I thought were interesting, about symbols and salvation etc., and I actually put "Religion is discussed" in the Warnings: section because I was worried about offending people (or at least, making them feel tricked into reading something they didn't expect or want to read..) It's nice to see that there are others who like to talk about these things (and do so in a respectful way, though I have found that to be true of nearly everyone I've met in this fandom.)

Oh, and I really like the idea that the "dusting" of a vampire is Death catching up. (There's a bit of a problem with explaining the "poof"-ing of the newly-risen, whose corpses shouldn't even be getting gooey yet, let alone ashes and dust, but as said, perhaps "back payments"!)