An Absence In Darksiders

There are many characters, loose events, and words blatantly borrowed from or inspired by the contents of the Bible in the Darksiders games.  Everything from the Seven Seals to the Four Horsemen to Lucifer are utilized, just differently than they are in the New Testament passages that refer to them.  Even the Destroyer, or Abaddon, the antagonist of the first game, is a title that parallels one in Revelation 9 for the angel of the Abyss.  There are also Old Testament references with the Nephalim and the Tree of Life, even if all of these things are given a slightly to greatly differing context in the metaphysics and story of Darksiders.  Then there is of course the Creator, the mysterious theistic being that created the multiverse of the series and then has seemingly retreated from interaction with its creation, something certain characters denounce him for and that motivates others to carry out his supposed will in his silence.

Again, these things that are mentioned in the Bible to varying extents are usually presented in a very different context in Darksiders that is obviously not the one the Bible itself uses.  There is no Charred Council among Biblical entities that keeps the peace between demons and angels or endorses the "balance" between supernatural powers that the Council pretends is the heart of morality.  That the Creator has not been perceivably active in a while, though, is actually closer to the Biblical description of God than almost everyone seems to think.  Unless the Bible only focuses on a handful of ways and times that God has intervened in human lives, Yahweh is not truly described as involving himself all that much with general humanity through direct action, and this would especially be the case if Earth and the human presence on the planet are millions or even billions of years old.

There is one thing that Darksiders has not included in any way up to this point in its four games, still: while there is a Creator and an Eden and demonic beings and seemingly some sort of unspecified moral will of the Creator, there is never any appearance or mention of a Messianic figure.  Darksiders ends up perhaps unintentionally exploring in its alternate pseudo-Christian reality what Christianity could be like without the Christological portion of its metaphysics and history.  Whereas the parts of the lore borrowed from Biblical theology are distorted but present, there simply is nothing in the series thus far about even an alternate version of the figure whose title Christianity derives its name from.  It is nonetheless true that the most foundational parts of Biblical philosophy do not in any way hinge on a Messianic being or salvation at all, for redemption is by logical necessity secondary to the core metaphysical nature of Yahweh and to the moral obligations that provide the opportunity for the optional mercies (mercy is inherently non-obligatory, so there could not be anything evil about God or humans forgoing it) of salvation.

Darksiders thus does dodge the popular misrepresentation of Christianity, not that the series is supposed to be anything more than a theological fantasy story inspired by the Bible, holding that it is salvation of sinful beings and salvation alone that is the core of the religion.  Salvation would neither be necessary nor possible without other more foundational things being true or existing first, and since salvation would be a mercy, it could not possibly be something any being, including God, should offer to anyone at all--unlike the obligation to not sin, which would be universal for every genuinely evil thing and must already exist and be violated for there to even be a need for salvation.  It is true that salvation is a vital part of Christianity in one sense even as it is true that salvation could not be anything other than secondary to more important matters.

Yahweh's moral nature does not depend on the life and sacrifice of Christ; it is actually the other way around, so that Christ's very existence and soteriological role is unecessary except in light of the central uncaused cause (it is absolutely unclear from the Bible if Jesus coexisted with Yahweh as a second uncaused cause without ever coming into existence), its moral nature, and humanity's general unwillingness to do that which is right and obligatory.  In this sense, Christianity changes very little in its most pivotal aspects and in the majority of its aspects without Christological components, although of course soteriology in particular would differ quite a bit if this was the case.  It is just that Darksiders never clarifies the moral nature of the Creator and thus the preceding, more foundational and vital philosophical aspects borrowed from Christianity themselves leave little to no place for salvation to even fit into the series lore as it currently has been revealed.