Christianity in The Heart of Thomas

[type_wild]

Oh you know you've reached some level of extraordinary nerdery when you google karlsruhe katholisch oder evangelisch even though FFS, what are the chances of some seventies shoujo artist knowing the goddamn difference and the implications of the ending are pretty goddamn clear. I mean. The genre draws back to a (widely assumed autobiographical) novel set in a French boarding school and we all know which version of Christianity belongs there.

By which of course Juli devotes his life to Christ after accepting that Thomas died for his sins.

Operating in a Western cultural canon hasn't yet demanded that I know Christianity beyond familiarity with the major mythology. I grew up (and still am) nominally Christian in a country that is culturally deeply tied to the Lutheran church, but with a population that is secular as all hell. We had a children's Bible that I read mainly becaues there was a lot of archeological fact illustrating how they'd really lived; I can geek on about the major OT stories better than honest-to-god Christians I know, but don't ask me to discuss theology. The final nail in my Jesus coffin was when a friend on the internet insisted that the nature of salvation was the exact opposit as what I was told by the priest who oversaw my confirmation.

And the mythology is sadly useless when it gets to dissecting the Christianity in Thomas. Only two Biblical stories are directly inferred: The Binding of Isaac, and Judas' betrayal, and both of them are used in ways that are... weird... if they're to work as parables in the story. That weirdness initially made me assume that the Christian imagery came out of strictly reading, not personal familiarity with the faith. However, the later growth of the Christ allegory was so rooted in the theology that I'm starting to wonder if we're not seeing Japanese Christianity at work here.

To summarise: On the last day of (dun dun duuuuuun) Easter Break, Thomas elects to end his life. I'm honestly a bit wary about using the word "suicide", with all its implications; because Thomas has no wish to die nor any grave mental issues. Thomas reasons that only his death will force Juli into aknowledging that Thomas' feelings for him are true, and Thomas' feelings will in turn save Juli from his self-enforced hell. The purpose of the suicide isn't Thomas dying, it is resurrecting Juli (it's shoujo logic, okay, not psychosis)

Juli, however, greets the news of Thomas' death - and Thomas' last letter to him - with cold rejection. He briefly recalls an incomplete and wrongly interpreted version of The Binding of Isaac, wondering if this was Thomas' inspiration. Only when Erich appears and starts digging into Thomas, is Juli forced into facing the truth: That Thomas' death was not a hearbroken child commiting suicide, but a sacrifice for the sake of a beloved person. And it takes until Erich professes both his and Oscar's love of Juli despite his "sins", for Juli to acknowledge Thomas' message: That he is loved unconditionally.

The second instance of "uh, that's not the moral I was taught in Sunday school" is that as Juli casts himself as Judas. And not just Judas as the symbol of mankind's inherent sin, but specifically the Judas who betrayed Christ. No less than twice does he slip the quote "that thou doest, do quickly". The first one in reaction to Erich rolling over and baring throat during one of their "I could kill you, you totally not Thomas, you" episodes; the second as Erich tells him to go comfort Oscar as the headmaster might or might not be dying. Both of these happen during episodes where Erich is displaying his willingness to sacrifice for the happiness of others: First he willingly submits his life if his murder will make Juli happy, second he gives up his "claim" to Juli for Oscar's sake (no, I don't see how Juli comforting Oscar is going to make him not return Erich's feelings, but the story has their classmates going "oh wow, Erich, handing such a catch over to your rival just like that", so I have to work with what I have)

Turning Thomas into Christ is a necessity because the logic behind Juli's self-hatred is all religious: He believes that he lost the "angel wings that grant passage into Heaven" - that is, the innocence that makes him worthy of salvation - because he was tortured into denying God. It's a frank metaphor for the Maiden who lost her innocence, particularly given the hideous self-blame: Juli willingly went to his tormenter because he was "drawn" to him despite knowing that he was a bad boy atheist. When he then was raped tormented and forced into denying God, it was clearly his own fault because he should've known better. Within that frame, the casting of himself as Judas makes some sense, at least as the archetypical symbol of sin and corruption - which Juli absolutely does ("all the other boys have wings; I, who have lost mine and cannot enter Heaven, am the Judas in their midsts"). But within the Western narrative as I know it, invoking Judas' is done with subtext of not any sin, but the very specific sin of betraying a friend for personal gain. Juli, precocious, well-read and religiously dutiful, would certainly be aware of these connotations - at least if his story had been told by someone with first-hand familiarity with western culture. When he casts himself as the betrayer of Christ because he "fell for temptation" and was horridly abused for it, it comes across as... okay, as if his understanding of the mythology is extraordinarily shallow. Or possibly comes out of a culture where I expect Christian mythology to be a peripheral element.

But the story of Juli's overcoming is absolutely one that is rooted in redemption. Juli hates himself because he is a bad person, and that any love given him by others is empty because no-one would love him if they knew the truth about him. Only when he accepts that Thomas loved him unconditionally, that Oscar loves him despite knowing the whole sordid story, that Erich loves him regardless of what sins he might or might not have commited, can Juli accept what he's preached to others: That God loves everyone, whether they're "worthy" of that love or not. Only then can he believe that his "sin" can be absolved.

And so he devotes his life to Christ because yeah, salvation and stuff and that is his way of staying true to Thomas.

There are some troubling implications here. The most glaring one is probably that Juli's trauma, as far as the story is concerned, is healed not by realising that he was innocent and holds no blame for what happened, but by some theological epiphany about God loving him despite the human weakness that lead him into being the victim of cruel people's wickedness.

If you're actually curious: Contemporary statistics say there are about equal numbers of Protestants and Catholics in Karlsruhe. Although Baden in the nineteenth century saw Catholics outweighting Protestants two to one, Karlsruhe was one of the few districts with a Protestant majority. But of course, Schlotterbach isn't actually in Karlsruhe but somewhere unspecified north of it, so who the hell even knows what things would be like a hundred and thirty years later. 2017 stats say Baden-Württemberg has 30% Protestants, 33% Catholics.

I also spent some quality wiki time trying to figure out if their giving their location as "Baden" rather than Baden-Württemberg could somehow be an indication of period, but the only post-WWII entity known as Baden only was further south (and ceased to exist when BaWü was founded in 1952, anyway). So the best indication of "when is this even happening" seems to be Siegfried's groovy sunglasses and flower power hair, unless someone can actually get something useful out of Julius' friend's car.

2020 ETA: According to our lord and saviors Google and Wikipedia, the only thing named "Schlotterbach" in Germany is a tributary to the the tributary to the tributary to some river in the district of Ravensburg, which is in fact in BaWü. On the opposite end of Bawû from Karlsruhe, though, so the real question remains how Hagio even found the name in the first place.