I promised a "Furina is Jesus" post. It's kind of a shitpost but also it's not.
The theatre of the courtroom
I'll first have to note that law is a peculiar thing. It is created through practicing it.
It's not just the written rules, it's how we apply them, and who gets to write and rewrite them, and there's no solid foundation underneath.
It's supposed to be treated as immutable until it's suddenly not. Until an insurgence turns into a revolution or the divine right of kings becomes a symbolic relic of the past. In the mildest scenario a bunch of old farts just gather and vote for new rules. Sometimes the very same rules that give those old farts the right to decide rules.
A law remains a law as long as enough people agree to believe and enforce it. How much is "enough" is also debatable (often depends on the size of your army).
It is very much like theatre. Humans like it when the world is molded into coherent stories so they happily participate.
Furina making a show out of trials is not a perversion of law, it shows she understands its very nature.
Transgression and transcendence
Now back to Christianity. The essense of Christianity is transgression. No, seriously.
It's as punk as a religion can get. A god hanging out with publicans and harlots? Killing a god in the most humiliating way possible and being forgiven for it? Symbolically eating a god?
Such practices are usually reserved for small communities of a very special sort (*ahem* left-hand path tantrics*ahem*). It's the only religion I know that gleefully and unashamedly incorporates such things into rituals meant for the lay public.
(this is probably a good time to mention that I'm not Christian and it's a look of an outsider fascinated with philosophy of religion in general)
It's actually one of the real reasons a lot of pagans rejected Christianity so fiercely: it's spectacularly nonchalant in dealing with things that would be considered "unclean" by most archaic cultures.
As post-structuralist theories state, any attempt to establish a power structure, to set rules or to define self will also produce things that would seem unclean. Impure. Things that should be cast off. It's in the nature of our psyche. The concept of uncleanliness is one of the core mechanisms that allow our mind to function.
(I'll redirect you to Julia Kristeva and the concept she names abjection if you want to dive into it.
I also want to note that abjection and horror go side by side and it makes a lot of sense that Fontaine is also the Lovecraftian expansion)
And what did Christianity do? It subtly removed the importance of "cleanliness". The gravity of it. It established as the norm that norms can be redefined and transcended. That the outcasts and the sinners are not to be forgotten.
It fucking changed the rules of how human psyche and society function. Added an extra possible move.
A sin can be forgiven. A criminal executed in the most ignominious way can turn out to be a god. You never truly know. And also anything can be made clean. Go wash it kitten.
(and yes, I know a lot of modern Christians practice the opposite of what I describe. I'm not a fan of these folks too. doesn't matter. the possibility is there. it's glorious. also horrifying and a bit disgusting)
That dude from two thousand years ago
I often see people calling a "Jesus figure" anyone who is sacrificed to save others. Or anyone who is reborn. The thing is, this is not how it works.
A god dying and being reborn is the oldest myth on this planet. Last time I checked it was connected to the sun worship, day/night cycle and winter solstice rituals (although it could have changed and also I didn't check very thoroughly). In any way, it predates Christianity by millennia.
Sacrificing all kinds of things and beings to get something in return or to offer gods something else in your stead is also pretty old and very much not Christian.
The unique beauty of that story is that a supreme being, ultimately more worthy than any human, wilfully chose to sacrifice himself for lowly mortals. Actually, allowed them to betray and kill him. And then forgave them.
Do you see how it ties to the previous section? It defied the previoisly established world order (where gods were incomparably more important than humans). It created a paradox. It broke the rules, or rather it destroyed the rules.
Theological debates aside, on a symbolic level it pretty much destroyed the old concept of sin and the idea of a fundamental difference between a god and a human. Everything a paradox touches stops being fully real and needs to be redefined (ceci n'est pas une pipe).
'Sin' doesn't mean the same thing anymore, and 'god' doesn't mean the same thing anymore, even 'death' means a different thing now. The world just starts to function differently after a story like that happens or is told.
(since it only needs to mess up the symbolic order it doesn't even need to happen, only to be told and believed)
And there we have it. A Jesus figure should establish new rules. Preferably better ones. It's someone who fundamentally changes the world with their sacrifice.
That's also where we get back to "law is established by practice". That was the process of establishing a new law.
(this is also why I dislike the idea of Childe as a Jesus figure. he is not a supreme being, he's not the type to sacrifice himself for people he perceives as lower than him, and he is not integrated into society enough for his death to establish new rules. he can still die and be reborn in a new quality, he can even change the world in some way but that would be a different type of story)
Fontaine's prophecy speaks of all Fontainians being born with some kind of 'sin'. And the way Neuvilette is talking to the pool of primordial water in 4.1 implies that its ability to dissolve Fontainians is not some kind of natural law but an intentional wrathful act.
And Varunada Lazurite (we know that ascension materials contain the final lines of the archon quest) says this:
"My ideals have no stains.
I must correct you. People here bear no sins in the eyes of the gods... Only laws and the Tribunal can judge someone.
They can judge even me. So praise my magnificence and purity."
I assume the solution will not be simply killing the eldritch whale or "cleansing" the sin or locking the sea away.
I think Furina will in some way redefine what is considered a sin, or how it should be judged, or who gets to administer judgement. She will create new rules for the world. Probably by dying in some way (temporarily or symbolically) to create a paradox.
(maybe we'll also get to learn that death in Teyvat is not true death)
As I said at the beginning, she understands the law and the very nature of law very well, probably better than Neuvilette. Who else would be better suited for this task.
And no one will notice the beauty and insanity of her gesture, like no one really noticed with that guy two thousand years ago. They'll just think things got fixed because they sacrificed Someone Important.
But that's all right. She'll forgive them.
