Abstract
This article will explore the connection between Lois McMaster Bujold’s novella “The Borders of Infinity,” the Aristotelian theory of habitus as developed further in the letters of the Apostle Paul and by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and the four senses of interpretation of scripture first conceived in antiquity and later refined by medieval philosophers. Habitus as a durable disposition, state, or condition (Aristotle) is a structured and structuring social practice or set of social practices (Bourdieu) that Paul’s letters are described figuratively as armor or a garment (a “habit” or clothing, like that worn by priests, monks, and nuns). Moreover, habitus as Bourdieu defines the word generates new dispositions toward and socially defined possibilities for the future, which the Christian interpretative tradition is represented by anagogy, the component of the four senses that outline the possibilities that also outlines future possibilities for justice and salvation. In Bujold’s “The Borders of Infinity,” Miles appears in a prison camp set up by the Cetagandan Empire to free its prisons and create a resistance army to fight the Cetagandans. But he also bears the stigmata of a soldier, marks created by wearing combat armor. It declares his habitus, and his vocation as a solder who, like a Christian wearing the armor of God (as Paul would put it), is one who comes to liberate, to save, and to bring justice. He is therefore readily interpreted as a figure of Christ, or Messianic figure. But the novella puts this into question as the efficacy of the four senses is put into doubt, demanding that the reader ask whether Miles is the cause of a Messianic and Christian interpretation of his story, or its effect.
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