The Light Of The Seven

In Game of Thrones, the Seven is a deity followed by adherents of the religion called the Faith of the Seven.  I, as I have done with other aspects of the show, wish to dissect the epistemological and metaphysical concepts involved in the religion.  The Seven is worshipped in buildings called septas, presided over by septons and septas (male and female clergy members respectively).  Conceptually, the ideas in the religion are actually derived loosely from Christianity and Catholicism.

Author George R.R. Martin intriguingly modeled the Seven after a version of Christian Trinitarianism [1] that resembles modalism, a take on the Trinity where the three different divine figures in Christianity are described as three different aspects of the same being, like a person wearing three different sets of clothing is just the same person with three distinct outward appearances (as an aside, the Bible teaches neither modalism nor the popular conception of the Trinity [2], despite the latter having deeply infiltrated evangelical theology).  In Game of Thrones the Seven are referred to both as a collective entity or as if they are seven different deities, depending on the context and speaker, though the religion itself describes the Seven as a single deity.  The Seven thus avoids the kind of objections that can be legitimately raised against contemporary Trinitarianism.

Does the Seven have reality on its side?  Is it real in Game of Thrones?  A faction called the Faith Militant certainly acts like it, the Faith Militant being a forceful branch of the Faith of the Seven that actively punishes people for miscellaneous actions that the religion condemns as sins, such as Cersei's adulterous incest [3].  There is no evidence whatsoever mentioned in the series for the existence of the Seven in-universe, and thus there is no basis for the Faith Militant to impose their values on others.

This means that the most that followers of the Faith of the Seven can appeal to are private convictions, subjective inner feelings of spiritual confirmation, traditions, and social support--they cannot actually demonstrate that the religion is true as an overall system, whatever their level of zealousness or commitment.  There is also no basis for the secular people of King's Landing (the city holding the Iron Throne that the War of the Five Kings is fought over) to object to the Faith Militant's behaviors, since, like the followers of the Seven, all they can appeal to also reduces down to subjective pangs of conscience, tradition, or consensus.

However, there is evidence, but certainly not proof, that a deity called the Lord of Light exists in the Game of Thrones reality (I have written about this before [4]).  A rival religion seems to have the epistemic advantage over the religion associated with the Seven.  Since the evidence for the Lord of Light--also called R'hllor--surpasses the evidence for the Seven, R'hllor is the deity with, at the very least, a seemingly higher probability of existing.

The light of the Seven, however bright its followers believe it to be, is epistemologically dim at best.  Even if it was a true religion in-universe, some of its subscribers or supporters simply use it to obtain political or social power for themselves (like Cersei for a time, before the Faith Militant turned against her).  As with actual religions that operate in the real world, the Faith of the Seven can be hijacked for reasons that are tangential to the core doctrines of the religion.  When the crown and the clergy clash civilians must take shelter from the two institutions intended to protect them from harm.


[1].  http://ew.com/article/2015/05/24/game-thrones-george-rr-martin-religion/

[2].  See here:
A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/08/a-refutation-of-trinitarianism-part-1.html
B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/09/a-refutation-of-trinitarianism-part-2.html
C.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/10/a-refutation-of-trinitarianism-part-3.html

[3].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/cerseis-punishment-and-hosea-23.html

[4].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/moral-skepticism-in-westeros-revisited.html