R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 116

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is one of my favorite authors. But most Americans today won’t recognize his name. He died August 3, 2008. He was 89 years old. He had been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970, an award he had not been able to accept until 1974 when he was expelled from the Soviet Union.

I had first learned about him from the news while I still in high school. I followed his travails with some interest. When it was announced that his book, The Gulag Archipelago had been published, I made a point of getting a copy and reading it. It was an enormous book of small print filling over six hundred pages in paperback. A few years later, I learned that it was only the first of three volumes. I subsequently read the other two volumes, too; they were equally hefty.

The Gulag Archipelago described the Soviet system of labor camps which were spread out like little islands across the face of the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn spoke of the history and character of the system, both from his research, as well as his first hand experience of living in a concentration camp for eight years after having been arrested for something he wrote to a friend in a letter while he was serving as a soldier in the Soviet army near the end of the Second World War. The book had a profound impact on my understanding of the Soviet Union. But I also developed a great interest in Russian literature, and wound up reading Tolstoy and Dostoevsky as well.

Over the years, I have read most of Solzhenitsyn’s other books, ranging from Cancer Ward—his experiences of being treated for his cancer following his release from the Gulag, but while he was still sentenced to internal exile—to One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which tells the tale of one prisoner in a concentration camp, describing a single, rather ordinary day in the camp, from the time he got up in the morning, until the time he went to bed at night. It is a relatively short book, the only book of Solzhenitsyn’s which was ever published in the Soviet Union. It was published during the era of Khrushchev, and it was for that book that he won the Nobel Prize. All of Solzhenitsyn’s other books were first published outside his homeland. Not until the collapse of the Communist state in 1991 would his other books become officially published and available in his homeland.

Expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, he spent the next twenty years living in exile in Vermont. Finally, in 1994 he was able to return to his transformed country, where he settled in a house outside of Moscow. Ironically, the house had once belonged to a member of the KGB from the time of Stalin, the era when he was first arrested.

In college as an undergraduate, I took a course my senior year in the history of Russia, focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One of the required texts for the course was Solzhenitsyn’s first volume of The Gulag Archipelago. When my wife took the course a few years later, it was still required reading. She didn’t much like it and unsurprisingly she rejected my offer to let her read the subsequent two volumes.

Enjoying the writings of a Russian author is an acquired taste. My wife never developed it. Still, I believe the effort in reading Solzhenitsyn’s work is worthwhile. Of his books, I would recommend that those new to him should start with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. The book is short and fascinating. Then, Solzhenitsyn’s memoir, The Oak and the Calf, is quite accessible to those who haven’t before read Russian literature. His other works of fiction should come next. The Gulag Archipelago is an academic, in-depth history of a horrible system: it is not an easy to read tome, but will reward those who put in the effort to study it.

Although Solzhenitsyn’s death was front page news in many newspapers in 2008, the reality was that for most who read about him, his obituary was their first exposure to his life and his work. Since the collapse of the regime that arrested and oppressed him, few think about what he and millions of others endured. Over the seventy year history of the Soviet Union, the communists were responsible for the deaths of twenty million men, women and children. Communism is at least as evil and reprehensible as Nazism. It appalls me that old communists and Marxists are still revered on many college campuses. Communism, Marxism and Marxists should be as reviled as the Nazis.

In fact, more people have died at the hands of communist governments than have died from any other political ideal or movement. According to the Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, edited by Stéphane Courtois and published by Harvard University Press in 1999, all told, about 94 million people were murdered by communist systems, with the bulk of those deaths coming from the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.

Fragments

People sometimes approach writers and offer them ideas. As if authors have any shortage of such things. I have more ideas than I have time for. More ideas than I can seem to focus on. At this very moment I’ve got four novels in serious need of rewriting: Spring of Goliath, a historical novel about the Mongol defeat on September 3, 1260 at the Spring of Goliath in what is today Israel, the first battle that the Mongols ever lost. Had the Mongols won, Islam would likely have ceased to exist, while the Mongols would have converted en mass to Christianity. Of course, the Mongols would also likely have devastated Europe and prevented everything from the Reformation to the Renaissance from ever happening.

I’m also rewriting Hacker’s Apprentice, the story of a couple of homeless guys who inadvertently overhear a wizard casting a spell. They get caught up in a search for the underlying programming code of the universe. Centuries of incantations by numberless wizards has created patches and hacks and odd subroutines in the universe’s programming. It seems to be destabilizing and is in danger of crashing. Has the universe been backed up recently? What happens if it reboots?

Then there is the novel Bent Anvil, a murder-mystery and science fiction novel set in a world where the corporation FourWinds (and its competitors) have set up a system where everyone and everything is “backed up.” If you die, if your house burns down, no problem: FourWinds will restore both you and it. Every ten years or so you get a body restore, so you never get old. Backups of yourself are made at least once a month; they are kept on file permanently. Convicted criminals are not incarcerated; they are reverted to an earlier backup, before they committed the crime, with all backups following the crime erased. Repeat offenders may suffer reversion back to their childhoods. But what happens when a B movie starlet’s body is found in a dumpster? And she doesn’t remember dying and there’s no record of her death and restoration in the system logs of FourWinds. It reveals a conspiracy by those who oppose the backup process, who feel that heaven has been stolen from them. They want to destroy FourWinds and restore death and reopen the gate to Paradise.

Best of All Worlds is another novel that needs rewriting: The protagonist, Albes Forlen has come to reject a belief in God following the tragic death of his son. He is a successful musician and author, with close ties to the entertainment industry in Southern California. An unexpected and mysterious visitor, the Wayfarer, appears at his door one day. Together they begin an experiment with history, to see if they can fix some of the most obvious and glaring mistakes, focusing first on trying to keep Hitler from destroying six million Jews. So they kidnap him as an infant and get a nice Rabbi and his wife to adopt him. Things don’t turn out quite as expected. Other experiments in changing history follow, resulting in even less satisfying outcomes; eventually, Albes tries to save his son’s life. The novel focuses on the question: if you could do it all over again, would you? If you could change the tragedies and mistakes in your life, would it make things better–or worse? Is this really the best of all possible worlds?

I’m in the process of writing a new novel called Cold, set on a tidally locked planet orbiting a red dwarf; it’s inhabitants live on the daylight side of the world, with no concept of day and night, and who never sleep. They have no concept of a year, and no nothing beyond the fact that their world is round and the backside is frozen and eternally dark. In an era roughly equivalent to the end of the 19th century, a scientific expedition sets out to explore the cold side for the first time.

And then there are all the fragments and starts of novels that I have written outlines for, that I have written the opening scene for, or maybe even a few chapters of. In going through my “novel” sub-directory tonight, I noticed a bunch of them. Here are some fragments. I wonder if I’ll ever get around to doing anything with them:

Thomas

Chapter One

“That doesn’t seem like a good idea.” Thomas frowned at the campfire.

Jesus’ face danced with orange and shadows from the flames. He was twirling a long stick with his left hand. “Like you would ever think it’s a good idea.” His lip twitched in a half-smile.

“They tried to kill you last time we went there.” Thomas poked at a glowing ember with his own stick. “I’ve been talking to people here, listening to them. The support here is strong. If we build on that base, then maybe in another six months…”

“We go tomorrow.” Jesus tossed the stick at the fire. Sparks showered the dark sky.

“But they’ll try to kill you again.”

“That’s the whole point, Thomas.”

* * *

The Instant Age

Chapter One

Not all human beings live but three score and ten years. Some are mutants that can never die.

This does not necessarily make them nice people, however.

It reminds you, in case you ever forgot, that some people really need to die.

And the sooner the better.

Or if that isn’t possible, just a prison that would never let them out would just barely do. Ordinary methods of punishment were not fatal, not even beheading. Ian had found that out the hard way. He shuddered at the memory. He suspected that more modern possibilities, such as being vaporized by an atomic blast at close range, or simply being tossed into a wood chipper might do it, but he wouldn’t bet on it. Though there was one person he wouldn’t mind testing that and any other methods out on. Sequentially.

Ian’s thoughts skittered away from him; he tried to gather them back together. Especially, he tried not keep them from traversing such well-worn paths. Letting them go there never did him any good, and just left him in a bad mood.

And he didn’t want to be in a bad mood. Not here. Not now.

The sounds from the bathroom indicated his new bride was just about done doing whatever it was that new brides did just before joining their new husbands for the first time in bed.

As quaint and old fashioned as it was, there was nothing better than marrying a virgin and waiting until the wedding night for the first time. Delayed pleasures were the grandest of all. So few seemed to appreciate that any more in the Instant age. But then, fast food was considered haute cuisine, so what could he expect?

For the briefest moment, the nearly two dozen previous wedding nights flitted through his mind, in sequential order, each similar to the previous encounter, though the difference between the first and the here and now spanned a radical difference in honeymoon styles, not to mention just a hair over two thousand years. And, except for the first night, so very long ago that it hardly seemed real, he had always been the actor, pretending that he, too, was a virgin. Only with his first wife did he not have to act. Trysta.

Long dead.

Had to try not to let his mind drift down that path, either. It was his honeymoon. Be happy. Everyone was always happy on their honeymoon, and it had been long enough. Far too long.

Grief was a permanent guest in his home. Sometimes he could pretend he wasn’t there, but pretending changed not a thing about reality.

His new bride exited the bathroom and framed herself at the foot of the bed, hands spread, a triumphant grin on her face.

“You’re so beautiful!” he managed to say. And then he blanked on her name. But by then she was in his arms.

* * *

“Sophie, dearest,” he began, interrupting himself with a sip of coffee. He remembered her name now. They were seated on the same side of a booth in the restaurant tucked off the lobby of their hotel in Tiberias. He let his eyes momentarily drift toward the window and caught a glint of the morning sunlight off the rippling waters of Lake Kinerret.

“It’s early; I don’t want to think about it. Let’s enjoy the moment, Ian.” Her mouth was set in a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “We can finish breakfast without rushing.”

The waitress appeared, pad in hand. “Ready to order?”

* * *

Unmerited

Chapter One

“Did you bring me the papers?” Paul lifted his right index finger and stroked the side of his nose gently, relieving a sudden and intense itch. As he lowered it, he brushed at the offending black hair that had displaced itself and caused the itch to begin with.

The man he was staring at twisted his mouth, pouted his lips and made a quick shake of his head. “No.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I thought you should know.”

“Know?”

Jonas’ face remained mildly twisted, but then, that seemed to fit his general disposition. “Miriam and her daughter are in custody.”

Paul let out a sigh. “That’s very good news. Ananias and the rest of the Sanhedrin will be pleased, too. I think.”

* * *

And there at at least twelve others–I kind of got overwhelmed and stopped counting: some mostly done, some with multiple chapters, some only bare outlines, some barely an idea quickly typed and filed on my hard drive. I’ll never want for something to write, to rewrite. The frustrating thing about it all is 1) finding time to do it all 2) coming up with some way of working through each of them 3) being able to focus on anything long enough to finish it, and finally 4) I’m constantly coming up with new ideas that I write down, think about, and find myself fiddling with. I don’t approach these things in order. Some ideas cut ahead in line, and insist on my working on them first. So some of these ideas have been waiting around a long time. Some of these stories will never get written; they’ll be stillborn things. And they’ll hang over my head making me feel guilty for not getting around to them, even as I rush off on other tangents.

And that’s just novel length fiction; then there are the short stories, some finished, some needing rewriting, some bare ideas. And the nonfiction books. And essays.

It’s a flood overwhelming me and I’m barely treading water.

I don’t need any more ideas. But they’ll keep coming. I can’t shut off the spigot. But I don’t suppose I’ll actually drown, either.

So please, if you have an idea for a story, for a novel, for a nonfiction book–just write it yourself.

Year of the Dragon

It may not seem like it, but the world changed on May 31, 2012. Less than a year after the Space Shuttles were retired, an American spaceship had once again reached the space station and returned safely. Launched on a Falcon 9 rocket on May 22, the flight had been practically trouble-free. It had delivered more than a thousand pounds worth of cargo to the station, and had returned with more than 1400 pounds.

Since this was a test mission, the Dragon was not fully loaded in either direction. But once it goes into regular service later this year, it is capable of hauling about 13,000 pounds to orbit and returning with more than 6600 pounds.

Of all the currently flying spaceships, Dragon is the only one that can return materials back to Earth. The other cargo ships—the Russian Progress, the European Space Agency’s Automated Transfer Vehicle, and the Japanese HTV can only take materials into orbit. They can never return to Earth. Only Dragon can survive reentry and land safely—and then be reused over and over again.

This flight of the Dragon was described as the first commercial flight to the space station. But some critics have asked: haven’t all of America’s spaceships been built by private companies such as Boeing or Lockheed? How is this product from SpaceX any different?

When the government buys a rocket from Boeing, not only has the government told Boeing in some detail exactly what it wants, it has supervised the design and construction of said rocket very carefully. More significantly, the contract Boeing has with the government is what is called a “cost-plus” contract. That is, Boeing gets the government to not only pay for the rocket and all its development costs, it also gets the government to pay for any and all cost overruns. If something goes wrong during development, the government will cough up ever more money to cover all the costs. If it turns out that Boeing can’t provide the product at their originally predicted cost, the government must fork over the extra money Boeing decides it needs.

With SpaceX, the contract doesn’t work that way. SpaceX developed both the Falcon 9 and the Dragon mostly on their own dime. The government did not dictate the design and it did not closely supervise the building. More importantly, SpaceX gets paid only the originally agreed upon price. If SpaceX should have trouble, should get behind, should have an accident, SpaceX has to eat the cost. If SpaceX underestimated how much it would cost to produce the spacecraft, SpaceX loses money. The government won’t bail them out.

Let’s put it this way. Let’s pretend that when you buy something, you buy it the way the government normally buys things. Say you want to buy a bicycle. You go to Wal-Mart, tell them what you want, supervise them as they build it, and then pay them for it. When you get home with the bike, you suddenly get a call from Wal-Mart: “You need to send us another hundred dollars. Our operating expenses have gone through the roof this quarter.” And then, six months later, you get another call, “We’re having trouble making the chain work on these new models. We need another thousand dollars from you.” That’s how it works for the government with most things it buys from Boeing or Lockheed, whether fighter jets or rockets.

Not so with SpaceX. The government is merely purchasing a service from SpaceX. SpaceX developed the Falcon 9 on its own, initially using only its own money, designing everything itself. In fact, everything from the engines to the electronics of the spaceship is designed and built in their Hawthorn plant in Southern California. NASA told them what they needed to have to human rate the craft, and what it needed to have in order to dock with the Space Station; but otherwise, NASA had nothing to do with the development and design of the rocket. SpaceX was founded in 2002; it didn’t get any money from NASA until 2006, long after the company had designed and started building the rockets. And the government is not SpaceX’s only customer. They have almost 4 billion dollars in flight orders from a variety of corporations and foreign governments. The Falcon 9, the Dragons—they all still belong to SpaceX. From the government’s point of view, it’s sort of like renting a car at the airport, or paying FedX to deliver a package.

NASA will pay SpaceX as it succeeds in delivering at least 12 cargo ships to the station (with the potential for more later if NASA remains satisfied with their work). And later, after multiple cargo deliveries, SpaceX intends to add seats and a life-support system to the Dragon so it can start ferrying human beings to the station and elsewhere. The company ultimately plans to make human trips to Mars both common and affordable. In fact, getting people to Mars was the reason Elon Musk founded the company. Delivering cargo to the space station is merely a way to make some money and get some practice so SpaceX can reach its long term goal.

And that’s why what happened on May 31, 2012 is so remarkable. Space travel has been turned into a simple and ordinary business.

And that will ultimately make spaceflight both cheap and common. Someday you won’t find spaceships any more exotic than UPS trucks or a jet planes. Another cargo ship reaching the space station might not seem so special. But twenty years ago, who knew how important the internet would become?

Buy My Books

You do not have to own a physical Kindle in order to read Kindle eBooks. Amazon gives away for free a Kindle app for any computer-like gadget you might own. Do you have an Android phone? There’s a free Kindle app for that. An iPhone? A Blackberry? A Windows phone? There are free apps for all of those. Do you have a tablet? Whether it’s Android, Windows 8, or an iPad, there’s an app for that. If you own a computer, whether it runs Windows or whether it’s a Mac, there’s a free Kindle app for that, too. They even make it possible for you to read Kindle books in your web browser. The same is mostly true for the competing eBook readers such as the Nook or the Kobo.

But if you would like to read any of my eBooks, for the time being, you have to use the Kindle or one of the free Kindle apps.

In addition to the four non-fiction books I’ve published with traditional publishers (such as Reader’s Digest Books and Thomas Nelson) I have seventeen eBooks for the Kindle and free Kindle app.

Two of those books are non-fiction—and like my traditionally published works, religious: The Complaint of Jacob, and What Would Satan Do? The Devil’s Theology.

The Complaint of Jacob deals with the old question, “If God is good and all powerful, then why do bad things happen?” Jacob certainly had bad things happen to him. His one true love, Rachael, had died in childbirth. Then Joseph, her firstborn had apparently been killed and eaten by an animal. Twenty-five years later, when Jacob had sent his remaining children to Egypt to buy food in order to stave off starvation from a multi-year famine, a tyrant there took one of his sons, Simeon, and tossed him in prison. Simon’s freedom was dependent on Jacob sending the one remaining son of his beloved Rachael down to Egypt. Beside himself with grief, Jacob reacts with despair in Genesis 42:36:

Their father Jacob said to them, “You have deprived me of my children. Joseph is no more and Simeon is no more, and now you want to take Benjamin. Everything is against me!”

From his perspective, from the perspective of his sons standing around him, the circumstances of Jacob’s life made his complaint that everything was against him seem completely reasonable and perfectly understandable.

But in reality, Jacob’s words couldn’t be more wrong. Despite the fact that his words seemed so obviously, unassailably true to him, we the readers of this little episode know something that Jacob doesn’t: we know that Joseph is not only not dead, but that he is that tyrant in Egypt, then the most powerful and most wealthy nation on the planet. Rather than everything being against him, things couldn’t have been better. His son Joseph is alive, rich and powerful. But Jacob won’t learn just how good his life actually is for another year.

His perspective on reality was way off.

So how does this apply to us? Perhaps our problem isn’t the hurricane of life; perhaps it is only a problem of our perspective, too.

My other non-fiction eBook is What Would Satan Do? The Devil’s Theology. It considers the question of what Satan believes about God, Jesus, the Bible, sin, the church, life and death. Surprisingly, the Devil’s beliefs are mostly the same as that of most Christians.

If you enjoy science fiction, you might enjoy reading some of the 15 novels I’ve written. Be aware that they are definitely not for children. They contain language and situations that one might find in an R rated movie. Given that I’m a theologian, they also contain religious themes and concepts. So: if you are offended by religion, violence, sex or bad words, then my novels might not be your cup of tea. But if you enjoy most contemporary science fiction, you’ll be fine.

If you happen to be an Amazon Prime member, you can borrow one eBook for free each month. And yes, I still get paid if you borrow a book instead of buy it. Also, notice that each eBook on Amazon allows you to see and read the first few pages—so you can read a bit of each of my books first to see if any seem interesting to you.

How do you find my books on Amazon? Just type my last name into the search bar. Or visit my author page on Amazon.

And, please, if you do read one of my books, put up a short review on Amazon; it might help with future sales. Unless you discover you hate it. In which case, why don’t you just keep it to yourself, okay?

So far, this indie publishing experiment in eBooks that the science fiction author Sarah A. Hoyt encouraged me to try is working out the way she told me it would.

And remember: if you have written something that you’d like to share with the world, it costs you nothing but time to sign up with Amazon and publish an eBook for yourself. They even give you free instructions on how to do it. You retain full rights and full control over whatever you put up on Amazon. Your royalty rate is 70 per cent of the cover price, versus 10 percent with a traditional publisher. It won’t hurt you or your prospects with a traditional publisher. In fact, it might make you a bit of change: certainly more than you’ll make if you keep that manuscript of yours just sitting in a box under your bed.

Arrogance

A certain televangelist with the last name Robertson once opened his mouth a few years ago. As is usually the case when this happens, he quickly put his foot in it. How did he manage this? He said that the then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s massive stroke could be God’s punishment for Israel giving up territory in a bid for peace.

The founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network told viewers of his “700 Club” that Sharon was “dividing God’s land,” even though, he claimed, that the Bible says doing so invites “God’s enmity.” Robertson then added, “I would say woe to any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course.” And just so no one would doubt that he was being as rude possible, Robertson went on and noted that former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated after similar attempts to make peace. Robertson said God’s message is, “This land belongs to me. You’d better leave it alone.”

I have to wonder once again why Robertson can’t learn to keep his mouth closed. If God was really in the business of punishing people for being “bad” as Pat Robertson believes, well…what I’m thinking isn’t very nice. Robertson apologized a week later. The timing was interesting, since it came just moments after Israel announced that they’d decided doing business with Robertson was not a good idea, canceling a fifty million dollar deal he’d made with them.

Of course Pat Robertson is not alone in being rude. Unsurprisingly, many public figures have a taste for their own feet. On a day when we celebrated the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr., the then mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, suggested that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, together with other storms that year were a sign that “God is mad at America” and at black communities, too, for tearing themselves apart with violence and political infighting. “Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it’s destroyed and put stress on this country,”

I would suggest that neither of these two political opposites should be considered experts in theology. They instead illustrate a common error in human affairs: people who mistake their own personal likes and dislikes as somehow being a reflection of God’s personal likes and dislikes.

You don’t like an individual’s decisions in the realm of politics? According to Nagin and Robertson, then surely God must dislike him just as much as you do, and surely, unlike your own pure motives, the motives of your opponent must be completely slimy and reprehensible and selfish—even criminal. Your opponent, since he advocates different policies than you do, must not care about the poor, or the suffering or about anything that is good and right. In fact, your opponent must be an enemy of God. And since your beliefs are so obviously aligned with God’s will, and your opponent’s beliefs are so clearly not like your beliefs, your opponent obviously is, has been or will be cursed by God for all his misdeeds, lousy beliefs, and poor choices. Worse, because of his errors, everyone else is going to suffer too. Therefore, he must be opposed and made to shut up.

It is remarkable the number of people who are convinced that they know what God thinks, and it is equally remarkable that what God thinks seems to be precisely what they think.

What arrogance. And what presumption.

When something bad happens, there are those who take delight at looking at the horror and pronouncing that it is a judgment against the people who suffered. You got robbed? Well, they say, you shouldn’t have been carrying so much cash in your wallet. You got raped? Well, such people argue, if only you had been wearing a burka then you wouldn’t have had any trouble. You got murdered? Well, the cheerful critic insists, what did you expect going to that convenience store at night? It’s all your fault and you know it.

And meanwhile, the wonderful people who brought us 911 are saying exactly the same sorts of things that Robertson and Nagin are saying. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, together with the leaders of Al Quaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas, the terrorist organizations, believe that Sharon was being judged by God. They also have stated their belief that the hurricanes were evidence of God’s judgment on America. They are convinced that these bad things have happened because of American and Israeli policies.

Yeah, right. So if we only did what Robertson and Nagin and those like them told us to do, then all our problems would go away? I’ve got some free advice for Robertson and Nagin and anyone else tempted to say similar thoughtless things. Next time you start talking, look around and if a bunch of terrorists are nodding in agreement, saying “Amen” and “preach it, brother,” maybe you need to rethink what you’re saying. Or better yet, when someone gets ill, or something bad happens, why not simply say, “we’ll be praying you.” Or, “here, let me help you.” And, “we’ll try our best to keep something like this from happening again.” Saying “God’s mad at you and you deserved it” strikes me as more than just a little wrong.

Authority

Some time ago I received an email from someone who had a few questions for me as a Baptist and as a theologian:

Where did Jesus give instructions that the Christian faith should be based exclusively on a book?

Where did he tell his apostles to write anything down?

Where in the New Testament do the apostles tell future generations that the Christian faith will be based on a book?

Where in the Bible is God’s word restricted only to what is written down?

Where in the Bible do we find an inspired and infallible list of books that should belong in the Bible?

Where, in the Bible, does it say that the Bible is our only rule of faith? (And don’t quote 2 Timothy 3:16, which does not say that ONLY Scripture is inspired of God.)

How do we know, from the Bible alone, that the individual books of the New Testament are inspired, even when the make no claim to be inspired?

If the authors of the New Testament believed in sola Scriptura, why did they sometimes draw on oral tradition as authoritative and as God’s Word (Matt. 2:23; 23:2; 1 Corinthians 10:4; 1 Peter 3:19; Jude 9, Rev. 14:15)?

If the books of the NT are “self-authenticating through the ministry of the Holy Spirit to each individual,” then why was there confusion in the early Church over which books were inspired, with some books being rejected by the majority?

How did the early church evangelize and overthrow the Roman Empire, survive and prosper almost 350 years, without knowing for sure which books belong in the canon of Scripture?

Who in the church had the authority to determine which books belonged in the NT canon and to make this decision binding on all Christians? If nobody has this authority, then can I remove or add books to the canon on my own authority?

Why do Protestant scholars recognize the early Church concils at Hippo and Carthage as the first instances in which the NT canon was officially ratified, but ignore the fact that those same councils ratified the OT canon used by the Catholic Church today but abandoned by Protestants at the Reformation?

Why do Protestants follow post-apostolic Jewish decisions on the boundaries of the OT canon (after the destruction of Jerusalem), rather than the decision of the Church founded by Jesus Christ?

If Christianity is a “book religion,” how did it flourish during the first 1,500 years of Church history when the vast majority of people were illiterate?

If the early Church believed in sola Scriptura, why do the creeds of the early Church always say “we believe in the holy, catholic Church,” and not “we believe in the Bible alone?”

I believe that those are excellent questions and I so here are my rather random, incomplete, and scattered thoughts and answers to these questions:

The early creeds also fail to mention that the pope is supreme or that the church is the authority for faith and practice. Protestants (or at least Baptists) do not view creeds as authoritative, anyhow. What was the purpose of the creeds, anyhow? But to give a basic summary of what Christians believed in contrast to the paganism around them.

Underlying (and not clearly articulated) presupposition here by Catholic theology: church councils, pronouncements of the Pope ex cathedra, and the Bible are the triad on which authority for faith and practice rest. The authority of church councils and the ex cathedra pronouncements of the Pope rests on the presupposition that the authority wielded by the apostles was passed down through the church.

Yet, consider conflicting evidence:

The Council of Jerusalem forbade the eating of food sacrificed to idols (Acts 15:20, 29, and 21:25), yet Paul didn’t feel particularly constrained by what the Council of Jerusalem said (1 Corinthians 8).

Paul felt no compulsion about publicly disagreeing with Peter over the issue of eating with Gentiles and following Jewish dietary regulations, and seemed not particularly enamored by the “pillars” of the church (Galatians 2:2-21).

Where does the New Testament tell us that the church, or church councils have the authority claimed for them in Catholic theology?

The practice of Jesus and the apostles demonstrates that the Bible was considered ultimately authoritative. Jesus’ interaction with the Jewish establishment centered on the issue of authority: their traditions, vs. the actual statements of scripture. Are we to say that Christian tradition is somehow authoritative, while the pronouncements of the Jewish tradition were automatically not? What is the fundamental difference?

What Jesus taught, and what the apostles taught is presented as authoritative. All we have left of them is what is contained in the New Testament. If they were authoritative in person, then their written correspondence should likewise be authoritative. But the issue is not the authority of the Bible. The issue is whether the councils, church, and pope are an equal authority. Where does the Bible, the known authority, add the church, its councils, and the pope as an authority equal to it?

Protestants point out that the church councils at Hippo and Carthage recognized the current New Testament cannon. Protestants do not suggest that such recognition is authoritative or binding. Protestants would argue that by their nature, the New Testament works are scripture, whether we recognize them or not. You as an individual are free to choose to accept or dispute any part of scripture you want. Your disputing has no effect on the nature of that scripture, however, one way or the other.

The church and the individuals in the church function without knowing well or having at their disposal the Bible. And that is certainly true and remains true. But that is not because of the authority and outer form and structure of the church. Rather, it is a consequence of the simple fact that Christians have the Holy Spirit of God living inside of them. That is how it is we become Christians and have been transformed. The special work of the Spirit began on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2) and as Peter pointed out there, fulfills the promises of the Old Testament prophets.

Particularly, the New Testament or Covenant that we have in Christ was predicted by the prophet Jeremiah and became real for Christians on the day of Pentecost:

The days are coming, declares the Lord,

when I will make a new covenant

with the people of Israel

and with the people of Judah.

9 It will not be like the covenant

I made with their ancestors

when I took them by the hand

to lead them out of Egypt,

because they did not remain faithful to my covenant,

and I turned away from them,

declares the Lord.

10 This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel

after that time, declares the Lord.

I will put my laws in their minds

and write them on their hearts.

I will be their God,

and they will be my people.

11 No longer will they teach their neighbor,

or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’

because they will all know me,

from the least of them to the greatest.

12 For I will forgive their wickedness

and will remember their sins no more. (Hebrews 8:8–12 quoting Jeremiah 31:31-34)

The law of God is in our minds and hearts because God is there in our minds and hearts. We don’t need to teach our neighbor to “Know the Lord” because the Lord lives inside of him or her. Many Baptists and other protestants still have trouble coming to grips with just how transformative the coming of God’s Spirit is for individual Christians.

Nevertheless, ignorance of the Bible does not lessen the Bible’s authority. Besides, did the average Christian of the first centuries know all the pronouncements of all the councils, bishops and popes? Did they know any of them? And yet, the average Christian would have heard some of the words of scripture proclaimed every Sunday in their churches.

The issue is not the day-to-day functioning of the church or believers, but what their final authority might be. The rule, the guide, in Protestant thinking, is the Bible as the final arbiter. Even the church councils have a tendency to wind up quoting the Bible, as do the bishops and popes whenever they speak on matters of faith and doctrine..

The Name of God

God’s name is singular: he only has one: Yahweh. All the other words are designations or descriptions, like referring to myself as “theologian” or “author” or “annoying.” But neither of those is my name.

Some people have nick names. And in some respect, God’s name is a nick name. How so?

The reason we have names is because there are a lot of human beings. We need something to call each other by besides “hey you.” But there is only one God. He does not need a name, therefore.

But Moses was steeped in polytheism, as were the Israelites (and their ancestors); thus, the question Moses asks of God in Exodus is in the context of that polytheistic setting and mindset. He wants to know which God he’s talking to, so he can let the people know, since they will be curious about that.

The foundational passage for God’s name occurs in Exodus, at the burning bush, when God asks Moses to go back to Israel to lead his people to the Promised Land.

Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”

15 God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’

“This is my name forever,

the name you shall call me

from generation to generation. (Exodus 3:13-15)

God’s name is written with four letters (yod, he, vav, he) and thus God’s name is sometimes referred to as the tetragramaton (a four letter word).

His name is a third person imperfect of the verb to be; I AM in verse 14 is the same verb, to be, but it is the first person imperfect form.

The form of the third person imperfect used for God’s name is the archaic form, with a vav instead of what was used later (and is used elsewhere throughout the Bible), a yod.

In the ten commandments, in Exodus 20:7, God tells the people not to “misuse” his name (or to “use it in vain”). The Jewish people developed the habit of building hedges around the law; that is, in order to avoid breaking one of God’s commands, they added other commands that if followed, would prevent you from even getting in a position to violate God’s commandment. So for instance the command in Exodus 23:19, 34:26 and Deuteronomy 14:21 to not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk is the basis for the kosher regulations that milk and meat products can never be mixed; some even use separate dishes, cooking pots, and utensils for milk and meat products and some even go the extreme of having entirely separate kitchens for the two products.

Thus, the Jewish people built a hedge around the commandment not to misuse God’s name by deciding that God’s name must never be pronounced.

Thus, whenever his name was seen in the biblical text, instead of saying God’s name, Yahweh, they said the word adonai, which in Hebrew meant “lord” or “master”. That then became a synonym for God and eventually came to be used exclusively for him; in Jewish thinking, that word was the same as the word “God.”

In the 600s AD, when the vowel system was developed in Tiberias by the Masoretes, they enshrined the no pronunciation rule by “mispointing” the divine name by putting the vowels for adonai in place of the vowels for Yahweh and putting two vowels upon one consonant, an impossibility by the rules of vowel pointing laid down by the Masoretes. Thus, not only was the rule that God’s name was not to be spoken, by doing this they made the name unpronounceable in fact.

But…

When gentiles first learned to read Hebrew, the rules for God’s name didn’t initially stick and so God’s name was transliterated, which is how the word “Jehovah” came to exist. It is a misreading by early translators, but it has stuck. And the tradition of never saying God’s name has passed on to gentile students of Hebrew in every seminary and Bible college in the United States. When I took Hebrew, I was taught—at a Baptist school—not to pronounce God’s name, but instead to say “adonai.”

And you’ll notice that all English translations, instead of putting God’s name in the OT, put the word LORD, all in capitals. Or, sometimes, the word GOD all in capitals, to signify that it is God’s name there.

When the Bible was translated into Greek in the 200s BC, the tradition was already firmly in place, so that every time God’s name appeared, it was transformed into the Greek word for Lord: kurios.

Some bad theology has grown from this. Although this word is a word that normally in Greek would mean “lord” or “boss” or “master”, when it is used in place of God’s name by Jewish people, it loses that sense and simply means “God”, just as for most English speakers it is simply another word for God. In New Testament usage, it has become a technical term with a specialized meaning: it just means “God.” Just as the Greek word “ecclesia” developed a technical meaning for Christians; although in Greek it meant a political assembly, among Christians it took on the meaning “church.”

Thus, by the time of the NT, Jewish people (and then Christians) refused the annual oath to Caesar, when all Romans were required to utter the phrase “Caesar is Lord.” Which, for Jews and Christians was the same as saying “Caesar is God.” They refused and the Roman Empire had given Jewish people an exemption (since the Romans didn’t want never ending rioting).

Thus, in the NT when Jesus is called “Lord” he is not being called master, or boss, he is simply being called God. The odd concept of “lordship salvation” is based on a misunderstanding of the Bible’s use of the term.

* * *

After Moses gets to Egypt and performs his first two signs, Pharoah rejects him and adds more work on the people, so that now the people are mad at him too. Moses complains to God about the situation and then God reassures Moses that everything will work out. During the comforting process, God comments:

In Exodus 6:2-3:

God also said to Moses, “I am the LORD. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, l but by my name the LORD n I did not make myself fully known to them.

At first glance, this seems very odd, since we find God’s name appearing repeatedly in the book of Genesis from its first appearance at Genesis 2:4—and then on and on; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all use the word. But in Exodus 6:2-3, we are told they didn’t know the name.

What gives?

The author of Genesis, writing after the time of Exodus 6:2-3, wanted his readers to know that the God of their forefathers, the patriarchs, were worshipping the same God that had rescued them from Egypt. The God who created the world was the same God that had parted the Red Sea and fed them mana for 40 years. The God in whose image they had been created was the same God that the Levitical priests sacrificed their sin offerings to in the Tabernacle and then the Temple.

It is anachronistic and not “literal” in the mouths of the patriarchs; but putting the name back upon their lips serves and important theological purpose.

Accident

Disasters arrive without warning. And they often arrive gently, like the merest tap on your shoulder. It’s only when you turn around, that you realize just how bad it is.

On the twentieth of June at 12:02 PM I got an odd text from my oldest daughter: “I broke the car.” My first thought was that something had gone wrong with it, such as a warning light popping on, or maybe a flat tire.

But soon, I discovered just what her text meant. About a mile from our house, as my daughter was driving along at about 45 miles per hour (which was the speed limit) she entered an intersection. The light was green.

But at the moment my daughter entered the intersection, a woman in another car decided to turn left right in front of her. The other driver failed to notice that someone—my daughter—was coming the other way.

My daughter stepped on her brake and swerved in a desperate attempt to miss the inattentive driver, doing exactly what she’d been taught to do in her driver’s education class. Unfortunately, despite her best effort, my daughter could not miss the other car completely, given the laws of physics.

Had my daughter not reacted as quickly as she had—remarkable given how little time she had—she would have slammed straight into the side of that woman’s car. As it was, she smacked its back end, taking out the right front end of her own car, putting it into a spin, and deploying her airbag.

Thankfully, neither my daughter nor the other driver were injured significantly in the accident. My daughter sustained a small bruise on her right knee and strained the muscles in her abdomen. That was probably from her seatbelt locking up as it was designed to do.

The police arrived relatively quickly, along with other emergency vehicles. Neither my daughter’s car nor the other driver’s car were in drivable conditions.

The police officer who helped my daughter let her know that the other driver was the one that was at fault. He expressed surprise at how calm and collected my daughter was. She didn’t panic at all.

My daughter’s boyfriend picked her up and brought her home. I contacted our insurance company immediately and let them know what had happened.

And so the process of recovering from the accident began.

Most thankfully, the other driver had insurance. In fact, we were in contact with the other driver’s insurance within an hour—long before the other driver. In fact, for the next three days, the other insurance company could not get hold of their client. Despite that, and despite our description of the accident, and despite our insurance company’s efforts, the other insurance company was initially reluctant to accept any responsibility. However, once they got the police report—about a week after the accident—their reluctance evaporated. They accepted full liability.

Even when things go smoothly—and things did go remarkably smoothly—there are still annoyances when an accident happens.

There was the complexity of getting a rental car.

Despite the fact that our insurance company was paying for the rental car, we still had to put down a deposit of fifty dollars. Then, after my daughter went back to her grandmother’s house (where she is staying, since her college is near there) the rental car started having rather significant mechanical problems: the steering was wonky and it shimmied weirdly at freeway speeds. So my wife had to go down to Orange County and help my daughter exchange it for a different rental car; my daughter couldn’t do that on her own, since the insurance is in our names.

Thankfully, there was no additional expense in replacing the rental car, beyond that involved in my wife making a hundred mile round trip.

Then there was the complexity of our deductible. Since the other driver was at fault, we had been led to believe that we would not have to pay a deductible. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Instead, we had to pay it first. Then we got to wait for the other insurance company to pay our insurance company for everything that our insurance company was initially forking out, and the deductible we were forking out. Once the other insurance company paid up, then, and only then, would our deductible be reimbursed.

Still, that was mostly just an annoyance, since it took barely a month from the time we paid the deductible until the time it was reimbursed. Thus, in the end, we were out no money at all. Nevertheless, it was an unanticipated and unplanned expense that wrought havoc with our cash flow.

All in all, the process couldn’t have gone much smoother than it did. Certainly it would have been preferable had there been no accident at all. But our health insurance took care of my daughter’s examination after the accident and the pain killers that were prescribed to her. The other insurance company paid off on all of that. And happily, my daughter was essentially undamaged. Though she remains a bit nervous as she approaches intersections.

Her car was repaired perfectly within only two weeks’ time. One would never know, looking at her vehicle, that it ever sustained 7100 dollars’ worth of damage.

In the end, the only consequence of an accident that could have been far, far worse, was the temporary disruption: the attention it required, the time it required, the stress, and the temporary outlay of money, since recovered. Our insurance took care of things just as insurance companies are supposed to. Insurance is well worth the cost.

Three Blind Mice

One day when my middle daughter and I were sitting and waiting in her pediatrician’s office, she noticed a painting on the wall of a children’s nursery rhyme. And we wondered who had written it, what it might be about, and when might it have been composed. So I did a bit of research by way of Google and Wikipedia. The children’s song Three Blind Mice was first published four hundred years ago this year, in 1609. The song appeared in Deuteromelia or The Seconde part of Musicks Melodie. The words in 1609 were not exactly the same as those in the current version of the song:

Three Blinde Mice, three Blinde Mice,

Dame Iulian, Dame Iulian,

The Miller and his merry olde Wife,

she scrapte her tripe; licke thou the knife.

Three Blinde Mice, three Blinde Mice.

“Dame Iulian” is the Dame Julian also known as Julian of Norwich who lived from 1342 to 1416. She is best known for her book, Revelations of Divine Love (or Showings). She lived in times of turmoil and rejected the prevailing notion that suffering was a punishment from God. Instead, she believed that God loved people and wanted to save everyone. One of her best known quotations is the phrase, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,” as an answer to the question some have about what God will do with those who have never heard of Jesus or the Gospel.

As to why she appears in this song? No one knows.

Why is her name spelled “Iulian” rather than “Julian” in the song? For that we do have an answer. It’s because the letter “J” was the last letter to be added to the alphabet. “J” was originally simply an alternative version of “I.” The first English-language book to make a clear distinction between “I” and “J” was published in 1634. Since the lyrics “Dame Iulian” appear in a book of 1609, obviously “J” had not, as yet, come into common use.

The word “scrapte” is equivalent to modern English “scraped.” “Tripe” means the “entrails” or “belly” and given the context in the song, most likely means “belly” there. Metaphorically it was sometimes used contemptuously of a person. “Licke” is simply an older spelling of “lick.” Thou, of course, is equivalent to “you.”

The modern lyrics of the tune are different, of course:

Three blind mice. Three blind mice

See how they run. See how they run.

They all ran after the farmer’s wife,

Who cut off their tails with a carving knife,

Did you ever see such a sight in your life,

As three blind mice?

The book that first had the tune in it, Deuteromelia, was one of three collections of folk music edited by one Thomas Ravescroft. He was an English composer and editor most well known for compiling collections of British folk tunes. Pammelia, the first volume, was also published in 1609. The third volume, Melismata didn’t come out until 1611. Some have suggested that Ravenscroft was the author of the original lyrics for Three Blind Mice which is certainly possible since he was a composer of music himself, though his own original works are mostly forgotten today. His known, but rarely performed, compositions include eleven anthems, three motets for five voices and four fantasias for viols.

The time of Ravenscroft’s birth is uncertain. Sources put it at either 1582 or 1592. Given that the later date would make him a teenager when Deuteromelia was published, I believe it is more likely that his real birth year is closer to 1582. He also wrote a treatise on music theory, A Briefe Discourse of the True (but Neglected) Use of Charact’ring the Degrees, published in London in 1614.

As for the best-known piece of music that Ravenscroft is associated with, Three Blind Mice, there has been a lot of speculation regarding the possible hidden meanings in the song. Some have suggested that the “farmer’s wife” is a veiled reference to Queen Mary I of England. She supposedly blinded and executed three Protestant bishops. Unfortunately for the theory, the three bishops, Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer were not, in fact, blinded. Instead they were burned at the stake. Beyond that, there’s the simple fact that the lyrics are dated a few years after Mary had died, so it’s hard to see why a song would have been made up about her at such a late date. Others have suggested that the song somehow references the beliefs of Julian of Norwich, since she is mentioned in the original lyrics.

The tune from the song Three Blind Mice has been adapted and reused by later composers. For instance, Joseph Haydn used the theme in the fourth movement of his Symphony 83 (La Poule) around 1785 or 86. More recently, Three Blind Mice was used as the theme song for The Three Stooges.

In both hockey and basketball, since there are three referees, the phrase “Three Blind Mice” is used sometimes as an insult against bad refs. At high school games, bands have occasionally been known to play the song whenever the referees make a call that is unpopular. Playing the song in such circumstances, of course, is frowned upon and considered unsportsmanlike behavior.

It used to be that there were only three umpires in baseball, instead of the four used today. In the first half of the twentieth century, the Brooklyn Dodgers had a band called the Ebbets Field “Sym-phony” led by Jack “Shorty” Laurice. It started playing “Three Blind Mice” whenever the umpires would walk out onto the field. Eventually, however, the baseball league ordered the team to stop doing that since it annoyed the umpires.

What If?

One of my favorite kinds of science fiction is a subgenre known as “alternate history.” The authors of this sort of science fiction ask the “what if” questions of history: what if the North had lost the battle at Gettysburg? What if the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had failed? What if Hitler had developed the atomic bomb first? The science fiction author Harry Turtledove has built his career on asking such “what if” questions.

Turtledove was trained as a historian and received his PhD from UCLA in Byzantine History in 1977. He’s written such novels as Ruled Britannia, in which he assumed the Spanish Armada had not been destroyed in a storm and so had successfully invaded and conquered England. What would England be like after that? What might that have done to the kinds of plays that Shakespeare would write? Historians call these sort of “what if” questions that Turtledove turned into fiction as “counterfactual history.” That is, history that didn’t actually happen. The value of counterfactual history in the academic setting of working historians is that it allows them to think carefully and deeply about the turning points in history. There are many moments in our past, both recent and distant, where a minor change would have had profound repercussions.

Although science fiction writers enjoy writing alternate histories where the Nazis won, professional historians who have examined the realities of the Second World War, for instance in the 1997 book What If? Strategic Alternatives of WWII, conclude that there was really no possibility of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan ever winning the war in the long run. Certainly battles could have ended differently, the war might have taken longer to conclude, but in the end, the overwhelming industrial strength of the United States ensured America’s ultimate victory.

Likewise, any examination of the Civil War shows the southern states inevitably losing, usually much faster than they actually did in the real world. That the Civil War lasted as long as it did is primarily due to the combination of the superior talent of certain Southern generals combined with a string of incredibly incompetent Northern generals. The only hope the South had for victory was if England had joined the war on their side. Although England had no love for the United States and would not have minded seeing the union destroyed, England had even less love for the institution of slavery, making the southern cause very unpopular.

One of the most fertile fields for counterfactual history revolves around the American Revolution; a good book discussing some of the issues and possibilities is What If?: The World’s Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, edited by Robert Cowley. That book points out that the victory of the Americans over the British was so very unlikely that every battle, every turning point, if altered even slightly, results in a British victory. In point of fact, had not one very improbable event after another happened, the United States would have been stillborn. That our nation exists as an independent republic is one of the most remarkably unlikely events in all of human history.

To look at just one example from Cowley’s book: just as England was saved by the weather when an unexpected storm sent the Spanish invasion fleet to the bottom of the ocean, foggy weather saved the American Revolution. The first major battle of the American Revolution, the Battle of Long Island, occurred at the end of August, 1776. After defeating the British at the Siege of Boston on March 17, 1776, George Washington had brought the Continental Army to defend New York City. At the time, New York City was located only on the southern end of Manhattan Island. He established his defenses and then waited for the British to attack.

In July, the British, commanded by General William Howe, landed a few miles across the harbor on Staten Island. Over the next month, they slowly reinforced until by August there were thirty-two thousand British troops in complete control of the entrance to New York Harbor.

On August 22, the British landed on Long Island, across The Narrows from Staten Island and across the East River from Manhattan. After five days of waiting, the British attacked the American defenses. The Americans were doomed if they tried to stand and fight, and so Washington decided to evacuate his army of nine thousand soldiers on the night of August 29-30.

Washington and his army were surrounded on Brooklyn Heights with the East River to their backs. If the wind shifted, the British ships could have sailed up the East River and destroyed the Americans.

By about 9 PM Washington had begun the evacuation. Artillery, supplies, and troops were all being evacuated across the river by boat but it did not go as fast as Washington had hoped. The night dragged on and with many troops left in danger, sunrise was fast approaching. But then, unexpectedly, just before the sun came up, a thick fog settled in. Thus, the rest of the evacuation from the British remained concealed.

As the morning wore on, the British became suspicious of the odd silence across the way. The British finally sent patrols to search the area. While they were arriving, Washington, hidden by the fog, stepped onto the last boat and sailed away. By 7 AM, he and all nine thousand of his troops had been evacuated without a single life lost.

It had not been foggy the night before. It was not foggy the night after. And it normally wasn’t foggy there that time of the year. But when they needed it most, the fog rolled in.

If not for the unexpected arrival of the fog, the American revolution would have ended that night and the Americas would have remained a part of the British Empire. But Washington and his army escaped, so they could fight again another day.