Day Three - June, 2011 CSFF Blog Tour, Darkness Follows

Darkness Follows by Mike Dellosso
Published by Realms, Lake Mary, FL

In this final post, I would like to touch on two things, Dellosso’s writing and the question of what makes Christian fiction, Christian.

The writing is average. Character development is key for any novel to be good. For me, none of the characters drew much empathy. Evoking empathy always goes back to how life-like the characters become in the imagination of the reader. If the reader lives out the character in his mind, the author has done his job well. Certainly, the success of that has a lot to do with the reader, but I think it has more to do with the writer. Granted, creating good characters is not easy and most of us have to work hard at it. I don’t think the characters in Darkness Follows rise much above those that are commonly found in Christian fiction today. My favorite example of good characterization is George Polivka’s Blaggard’s Moon. His is a high standard, and we would all do well to try and meet it. That doesn’t mean we emulate Polivka. But we should study him (and others who equally qualify) to see what factors and techniques he uses that make his characters so good, and strive to use them within the complex of our own personality, vocabulary, temperament, and style.

Having said that the characters drew little empathy from me, I confess that I liked Dellosso’s characters of Symon and his victims, the latter of whom (excluding the state trooper, Ned Coleman) were cameo appearances. Short-lived (no pun intended) but memorable. The fact that they were murdered didn’t elicit empathy because they weren’t around long enough. Even so, they were vivid and interesting.

One of the things all writers commonly make use of is simile. I find simile to be a good litmus of an author’s writing ability. Good writers use simile that fits the situation or mood without excessive verbiage. Bad writers don’t. Using appropriate simile is difficult. When done well, it is like the brushstroke that finishes the masterpiece. When not done well, it is like spinach topping on your least favorite ice cream. Darkness Follows has too much of the latter.

...his words trailed off like a column of smoke into a starless sky. (p 37)
...tickling Molly’s skin like insect legs. (p 50)
Questions, like day-old bug bites, nagged him. (p 57)
Those words rushed back from the past like a winter wind... (p 130)
His hands quivered like the last leaves of autumn buffeted by a stiff November wind. (p 166)
The bullet pierced Symon’s palm like an awl through leather... (p 260)

It’s not that these don’t give us a vivid picture, I think they do. But they just don’t fit and some are overstated. Words trailing off like a column of smoke is good, but the starless sky adds nothing and hampers the effect. Insect legs on Molly’s skin probably wouldn’t tickle, but they sure would draw a reaction. Day-old bug bites presumably itch, but how does itching carry the imagery of nagging. What is the connection between the sudden recollection of a conversation (real or imagined) and a winter wind? Leaves buffeted by a stiff November wind don’t quiver; they thrash about. A speeding bullet through a palm is nothing like the slow-pressured force that pushes an awl through leather.

To be fair, there were some fine examples of simile; here are two:

The line began to move like a segmented worm... (p 83)
A memory, like a gunshot, exploded in Symon’s mind... (p 83)

The question, What makes ‘Christian fiction,’ Christian? is a crucial one. As writers of Christian fiction, we want to get this right. For me, Christian fiction is not truly Christian unless it pointedly and clearly brings in the salient truths of the gospel. One may argue that such a definition is too narrow. Some would say that it should include any fiction written by Christians, predominately for Christians, and does not require a heavy emphasis on the gospel itself. Wholesome themes - love, faithfulness, kindness, graciousness, humility, forgiveness - essentially the fruits of the Spirit delineated by Paul in Galatians 5:22 are sufficient to mark the literary work as Christian. These themes are good, and they are Christian, but they are genuinely so only when they are understood in the light of the Gospel. Christ came to save sinners, not from hell primarily, but from their sins, which has implications not only for one’s eternal destiny, but also for this life. Christ saves his people from their sins, transforming them into a people who grieve over their sin, repent continuously, recognize the deceitfulness of their own sinful hearts, and in an ongoing manner, humbly seek the mercy and grace of the One who saves them that they may overcome worldliness and carnality. As overcomers, they manifest the fruit of the Spirit. Bringing these truths out is what qualifies a novel to be worthy of Christian classification.

This does not mean a Christian can’t write purely for entertainment. Nor does it mean that all the elements of the Christian faith must be treated with equal emphasis. As an image-bearer of God, writing good fiction, creating a world of fiction (reflecting God’s creativeness), even if there is no effort to include Gospel truths, is a worthy vocation, and one that honors God. But if it does not pointedly bring out the truths of the Gospel, let’s not call it Christian.

Darkness Follows is anemically Christian. It mentions the love of Jesus, but doesn’t tell the reader what that means. It provides a contrast between good and evil, but the most pagan of literary works does that because it is impossible to avoid. The Christian novel should show why it is unavoidable through a strong Gospel oriented story.

Dellosso’s novel is dark, and alarmingly so in several places. That in itself doesn’t disqualify it as Christian. What severely damages its qualification as Christian is that the Gospel is absent. Merely including Eva’s need to tell her daddy that Jesus loves him fails to qualify the novel as Christian. Stephen King could write a novel like that, but no one would think of it as Christian.

Many in the world and the professing Church have been told that Jesus loves them yet have none of the grace of God that transforms them from sinner to saint because they misunderstand what that love is. These do not see God’s love side by side with God’s holy hatred of them as sinners (Psalm 5:5) who are under divine condemnation and are powerless to do anything about it because they are dead in their sins (Ephesians 2:1). They don’t understand that their hope is not in any inherent goodness they think they have, nor in any value they think God sees in them. They don’t see that their only hope is in the atonement of Christ through which they may be saved from their sin and sinfulness. Without the clear, pointed presence of the Gospel in a novel, the novel is not Christian.


Participant Links
Mike Dellosso Website
Darkness Follows on Amazon


Thanks to Realms Publishing for kindly providing a copy of Darkness Follows for review on the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour.

Day Two - June, 2011 CSFF Blog Tour, Darkness Follows

Darkness Follows by Mike Dellosso
Published by Realms, Lake Mary, FL

WARNING: THIS ARTICLE IS A SPOILER.

Some may regard the issues I bring out in this article to be much ado about nothing, but I think they are important and have a direct bearing on the quality of the story.

The psychopathic mystery character I mentioned in the Day One post is known as Symon (that was what the voice on the phone called him) but his real name comes to him in a rush after he has gone down from a rifle shot that ‘pierced his palm like an awl through leather.’ Curled in pain on the ground, Symon has another flashback, of having been shot once before, and of a woman kneeling over him mouthing his name, Albert.

His full name is Albert Drake, and the denouement chapter seventy-three contains a transcript of a talk show, Mitch Lewis Live, whose guest is Lucretia Billows, presumably the woman Symon recalls mouthing his name. Based on the transcript the two characters, Albert Drake and Sam Travis were both brainwashed by a Marxist group (the Marxist Brotherhood), and we are to infer from this, I believe, the brainwashing is responsible for the strange behavior of both.

This fits appropriately with Drake who can remember nothing earlier than two months prior although, over the brief time-span of the novel, recollections of his childhood, involvement with the Marxist group, and of his own daughter come back in bits and pieces. His instructions (to kidnap Sam Travis’s daughter, Eva, as a hostage to ensure Sam’s complicity with the assassination attempt) are from a voice over the phone most likely a member of the Marxist group. In the pursuit of the kidnapping, Drake, without feeling (which he finds troublesome), murders six people who live in the Gettysburg area.

Looking back over the book, Sam Travis’s brainwashing can be taken as a factor in his behavior and strange experiences, but some of those experiences have an other-worldly feel, and intentionally so, I think, by the author. They are meant to be taken at face value as truly other-worldly. As such, these particular experiences are not attributable to brainwashing. Rather than finding a lucid explanation for them, their presence is puzzling.

To see this, we have to step back a little and try to see the brainwashing of Sam Travis in the context of the big picture, beginning with the prologue.

Samuel Whiting, the inaugural figure of the prologue, is a historic personality, a Captain of the Union Army at Gettysburg. He is writing in his journal, and the content of his writing is given only in general terms. However, I believe we are to infer from the modern day entries Sam Travis makes in his daughter’s notebook (journal entries as though authored by Captain Whiting, but actually written in Sam Travis’s hand) that the Captain wrote of his despair over the needless death and suffering of the battle for which he blames President Lincoln. While writing, a mysterious darkness engulfs the Captain. The reader has the sense that that darkness plays a significant role in his decision to assassinate President Lincoln, an intuition that is more and more confirmed as the novel unfolds. The point here - there is an other-worldly presence at the outset, the darkness, that enshrouds the Union Captain.

In the present day, Sam Travis, as noted, composes journal entries as if written by Captain Whiting, but does so unconsciously. I wonder, is this meant to be the result of his brainwashing, or something else? That explanation might be discounted if we consider the final chapters where it becomes known that the real Captain Whiting is a relative of Sam’s (a great, great, great uncle) and that he is not the only one in the family to have been insane (‘gone off the deep end’, p 274) There is a darkness that has been in the family which affected not only Whiting, but also Sam’s brother, Tommy (a chilling psycho), and Sam himself. If the darkness that followed his family into the present day is the cause of Sam’s ‘trance writing’ in his daughter’s notebook, then Sam is a golden find for the Marxists, and their brainwashing techniques would have had to be, I think, quite sophisticated to make use of it.

But the reason given for Sam’s enlistment as related by Lucretia Billows is that Albert (Symon, the psycho murderer) didn’t have the skills the Marxists needed, and Sam Travis did. Those skills presumably are his expertise with the rifle. Lucretia also notes that the Marxists became involved with the occult and that it was at their deepest involvement when they began to work on Sam. Was it through the occult they were able to discern Sam’s dark side and manipulate it? If so, that would that have been a useful point, which could have been more obviously developed in the story. But we don’t know for sure and are left guessing, which for some may be acceptable, but it leaves me unsatisfied.

It may be that the author deliberately, without spelling it out, intends for the trance writing to be an aspect of the insanity complex that follows Sam’s family, because the symptoms of it appear back in the original scene with Captain Whiting:

After dipping the tip of his quill into an inkwell, he put the tip to the paper and began to write. The words flowed from his hand, though they were not born of him... His quill moved across the paper more rapidly now, the point carving words--vitriol--at an alarming pace. p. 1, 2

If Dellosso intentionally depicts Captain Whiting to be induced with trance writing and purposely meant it to be one of the insanity elements that are passed down through the family and to have it reappear in Sam Travis’s case, I must say that is ingenious.

But here’s what I find confusing. The Marxist group presumably brainwashed Sam Travis, just as they did Albert Drake. When, where, and how is absent and unexplained and would not only have made the story cohere better, but also provided ample opportunity to develop Sam Travis’s character and psyche more thoroughly, a problem I find with most of the characters in the book (Symon excepted to some degree).

If perchance we are reading too much into Lucretia Billows talk show account, and Sam Travis was not brainwashed, it is not clear at all what the Marxists did do in an effort to use his expertise as a shooter in their plan to assassinate the presidential hopeful, Stephen Lincoln. So I wonder how Sam came to the decision to assassinate the target. Was it because of brainwashing or because of the darkness (expressed through the trance writing and, near the end, through a psychological manifestation of his dead brother, Tommy)? Or was it both? Did the Marxist group become aware of Sam’s bent toward a dark side, connect it to Samuel Whiting and the inherent proclivity to trance writing, and so brainwash him in such a way as to use that? It was essentially Sam Travis’s unconscious journal entries that brought him to the conclusion that he should assassinate Senator Lincoln. Was that a result of brainwashing with the unintentional but fortunate (for the Marxist group) side effect of the trance writing, or was the Marxist group aware of the trance writing trait and intended all along to use the brainwashing toward that end. Who knows, it’s not unequivocally connected if that is so. And again, if it were intentional, it would have been a fantastic opportunity to bring the story to a deeper and more mature development.

Here is another matter which is a loose end that I think should have been resolved. In the first chapter, Sam hallucinates (maybe) and hears the Gettysburg battle going on around his home. This might be the result of brainwashing, but the surreal bullet that shattered the window loudly enough to awaken his daughter and wife who are sound asleep upstairs is never found by Sam’s wife or the state trooper, Ned Coleman. What actually shattered the window is never explained (as far as I remember) and though at first it seemed to be significant, it never comes to mean anything. It also lends support to the possibility that the sounds of the Gettysburg battle were not purely mental but also involved external, other-worldly forces as well, which if so, was likewise ignored in the rest of the book.

The appearances of Tommy, Sam Travis’s dead brother, might be attributable to brainwashing, especially given the traumatic experience of having to kill his own brother to save his mother and father from a grisly murder at Tommy’s hands. So Sam’s hallucinatory experiences of Tommy’s manifestations are understandable from that point. But Sam also sees Jacob, albeit not until the climax is about to unfold. Jacob is not a by-product of the brainwashing and not intended to be a hallucinatory figment. Jacob is truly other-worldly, though a benign figure.

Jacob, until the final chapters, is an invisible friend of Eva, taken to be a make-believe playmate by her parents, but the reader is left with the strong impression that he is real. Jacob continually encourages Eva to tell her daddy that she loves him. He even reveals that her dad is going to do something very bad, and that she needs to pray for him.

The reality of Jacob is confirmed when he appears to Sam and assists him in finding his way to his daughter and her abductor, Symon. The confusion for me is that if Jacob, in the end, is not restricted to intervene through Eva only, why did he not do so directly with Sam from the start?

All of these may be making a mountain out of a molehill but the author who thinks through his story thoroughly, works such issues out. Granted, one can probably find inconsistencies and dangling themes in the best works, but I think these in Darkness Follows could have been handled better.

Participant Links
Mike Dellosso Website
Darkness Follows on Amazon


Thanks to Realms Publishing for kindly providing a copy of Darkness Follows for review on the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour.

Darkness Follows by Mike Dellosso, Day One - June, 2011 CSFF Blog Tour

Darkness Follows by Mike Dellosso
Published by Realms, Lake Mary, FL

Darkness Follows by Mike Dellosso is a novel that incorporates elements amenable to suspense: mystery, intrigue, and dark psychological intensity.

The setting is Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the battle site of the bloodiest conflict of the American Civil War and the greatest artillery barrage on the North American continent. The prologue introduces Samuel Whiting, a captain of the Union Army in his tent at the end of a bloody day of fighting. He is disillusioned about the cause of the war and the way in which it is being fought. He takes up his pen and writes in his journal. As he writes, the words come quickly and with ease though they are not ‘born of him, but of something else, something dark and sinister, something to which he had finally given himself.” (p 2) Captain Whiting detects a dark, shadowy presence in the tent with him, accompanied by a low moaning wind that snuffs out the light of his writing candle and leaves him in darkness. This establishes intrigue at the outset and contains the kernel that ultimately binds various threads together, although there are some threads left dangling.

In the first chapter, the scene shifts to modern day Gettysburg, and the night scene of Sam Travis who awakens from a bad dream that has terrified him. The only hint of what the dream was about is the mention of his brother and a shot, and Sam Travis’s post-dream recollection of a voice in the past, ‘You did what you had to do, son.’

Sam rises for a drink of water assuring his wife Molly that he’s all right. He checks on their seven-year-old daughter Eva, who is soundly sleeping in her room. Sam moves on to the bathroom were he splashes down his face with water and studies the scar on his face in the mirror. The scar signifies something happened, which has made the last six months very trying for the Travis family.

Then Sam Travis hears a voice from downstairs calling his name. He recognizes it as the voice of his dead brother, Tommy. Sam has been hearing Tommy’s voice quite a bit lately, “a hundred ghostly times since the accident that had turned his own brain to mush. The doctor called them auditory hallucinations.”

Later, a mystery figure comes into the book, who doesn’t know who he is and is a psychopath who finds it troubling that he feels no remorse or guilt for the murders he commits. He asks all his victims if they have ever seen him, or know who he is - there is none who does. He recollects on a variety of occasions a voice on the telephone giving him instructions as to what he is to do, but he doesn’t know whose voice it is though he is compelled to follow it. These instructions include something he is to do to Sam and Molly’s daughter, Eva.

There is a Senator who recently has had a conversion from the liberal principles of the Democratic Party and become a Republican making him the leading Republican presidential hopeful.

The Senator (whose name I withhold lest it catalytically gives away too much), Sam Travis, the mystery psycho, and Eva all come together in a climactic ending that leaves one scratching his head, until he continues on and reads the post-climactic chapters, which, for the most part brings satisfying resolution to the puzzlements.

One more figure, a character that Eva sees, but no one else, whose name is Jacob and informs Eva that her Dad is afraid and needs her prayers. After a time, Sam and Molly become more and more concerned about Eva’s conversations with Jacob (Molly overhears one) and Eva’s insistence that Jacob, who is ‘all shiny like someone dipped him in glue and rolled him in sparkles,’ (p 50) is real.

The intrigue builds on a variety of fronts, and centers around the dark and morose.

Molly’s childhood was marred by a verbally abusive father.

The mystery figure, stymied about who he is, dredges up images and conversations that help bring his past back, though it is all quite disconnected. His father beat his mother and raped his sister. A woman laughs at him, another shoots him. Eventually he realizes he was married and has a daughter. The knowledge of a daughter has the tendency to bring mild restraint to his otherwise unbridled, murderous rage.

Sam Travis recalls his childhood in bits and pieces throughout the story, revealing his horribly disturbed brother, Tommy, and a frightening secret. He finds mysterious entries in his own hand in his daughter’s composition book which appear to be the entries of Samuel Whiting, dated during the Battle of Gettysburg, expressing a continuing mental descent into a despondent and darkened abyss, and eventually, to a resolution to kill the President.

The story qualifies as suspense, but it has the feel of being rushed. There are many places where a slower development of a situation or character would have been an enhancement. As an example, much of what takes place in the first chapter comes too fast. A case in point is what comes on the second page of the first chapter where already, without preparation for the reader or transition, Sam hears the voice of his dead brother, Tommy. To me, it feels out of joint and awkward.

In only a few places did I like the writing. On the whole, I found it average. If I can follow through and post each day of the Tour, my aim on the second day is to discuss Dellosso’s writing in a little more detail, both the good and the bad, and identify things that I think were puzzling. On the third, I want to say something briefly about the ‘Christian’ nature of the book.



Participant Links
Mike Dellosso Website
Darkness Follows on Amazon


Thanks to Realms Publishing for kindly providing a copy of Darkness Follows for review on the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour.

Love Wins: A Critical Review – Part 1

God’s Love and The Cross


Given the title, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, and the content of the book, I am confident that Rob Bell’s foundational thesis is buried in a statement he makes regarding hell:

We do ourselves great harm when we confuse the very essence of God, which is love, with the very real consequences of rejecting and resisting that love, which creates what we call hell. (p 177)

Rob Bell’s thesis is that the very essence of God is love. The word 'very' has several meanings, but the way in which he uses it here is a common use, and it means ‘complete and absolute.’ He is using this to describe the essence of God, that is, what God is in his being. To say that the very essence of God is love is to say everything that God is in and of himself is nothing else than love. Love controls God; nothing He does, thinks, says is contrary to love because it is impossible to be otherwise without contradicting Himself.

This verges on saying that Love is God, but I doubt that Bell would go that far. God is a Trinitarian being, one essence that exists in three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. I can agree from a Trinitarian perspective that the very essence of God is love because each person of that one essence loves the other supremely. But that is not what Bell is talking about. He is talking about God’s love toward objects outside the inter-Trinitarian fellowship. He is talking about God’s love for his creation and in particular for that creature made in his image, man and woman.

To say simply that very essence of God is love is to make a statement that is not very clear and raises a serious question, If God is completely and absolutely love, does that mean He has no other attributes?

I readily admit that is an absurd question, but the asking of it points to the absurdity of the idea that God in his essence is completely and absolutely love in relation to his creation. The very fact that by divine fiat (God said, ‘Let there be light.’) God brought the creation into being out of nothing clearly reveals his omnipotence and omniscience not to mention his sovereignty (Romans 1:20; Psalm 19:1-4a).

I think Bell would affirm these attributes to one degree or another. But in doing so, he faces some serious challenges, which he either glosses over or ignores outright.

If God does have these other attributes then how can Bell be so dogmatic that love is the essential attribute of God? If the attributes of omnipotence and omniscience are granted, then we must also consider other attributes such as God’s holiness and justice (seeing that the Bible does so, Psalm 99:3, 5, 9; Isaiah 6:3; Habakkuk 1:13; 2 Timothy 4:8; Revelation 4:8; 6:10; 16:7; 19:2).

I mention holiness and justice in particular because I think Bell does not understand them aright and therefore does not appreciate their impact on the very things he talks about in his book: heaven, hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived. Bell’s flawed conception of these unfavorably affects his view on the love of God and divine punishment.

Bell’s position is one-sided. It is not the love of God alone that has direct implications for punishment, but the holiness and justice of God do as well. If God is utterly holy and absolutely just how can He not hold men accountable for their sins and inflict everlasting pain and suffering for their heinous offenses against Himself?

Bell’s answer on the one hand is that God simply cannot do that, for that kind of God, who would consign a man to unending torment for sins committed during a mere life-time, is unloving and cruel.

Of all the billions of people who have ever lived, will only a select number “make it to a better place” and every single other person suffer in torment and punishment forever? Is this acceptable to God? Has God created millions of people over tens of thousands of years who are going to spend eternity in anguish? Can God do this or even allow this, and still claim to be a loving God? (p 2)

The biblical answer to each of these questions is a resounding Yes! and I plan to show how so in a later article.

On the other hand, Bell’s answer that prohibits everlasting punishment is the cross of Christ, but his assessment of the cross is superficial. He spends no time exegeting the passages that he cites, he simply states the text without any explanation of its meaning in terms of its context or corpus of belief held by the writer. Regarding the cross he tallies so-called metaphors that the New Testament writers use to explain the cross. It is a sacrifice that does away with all other sacrifices (pp 123-126), reconciles all things to God (p 125), pays the price to free guilty sinners (p 126), destroys death and overcomes the world, (p 126), and buys back (redeems) something that was lost (p 127). Bell is very earnest to convey the idea that these metaphors were adequate for their time and place in history and culture, but we should not be limited to them:

The point, then, isn’t to narrow it [the meaning of the cross] to one particular metaphor, image, explanation, or mechanism. To elevate one over the others, to insist that there’s a “correct” or “right” one, is to miss the brilliant, creative work these first Christians were doing when they used these images and metaphors. They were reading their world, looking for ways to communicate this epic event in ways their listeners could grasp.

The point then, as it is now, is Jesus. The divine in flesh and blood. He’s where the life is. (p 129)

If I understand Bell’s message here, the so-called use of metaphor makes all the New Testament renderings of the meaning of the cross dated. Important as they were in their time, they are not so useful for us now. Their real usefulness in the New Testament world, as it should be now, is to make a point about something deeper, and that point is “...Jesus...where the life is.” An arcane pronouncement, which Bell makes no diligent effort to elucidate.

To place the various perspectives of the New Testament writers of the cross on the ash heap of outworn metaphors and images is telling of Bell’s superficiality when it comes to hermeneutics (the interpretation of scripture). It is particularly exposed with the metaphor of sacrifice. Bell cites Hebrews 9:26 as an example:

We read in Hebrews 9 that Jesus “has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.” (p 123)

Bell explains this as a metaphor to counter the centuries old practice of pagan ritual sacrifice whereby a peaceful relationship between us and the gods was hopefully attained:

That’s how it worked. Offer something, show that you’re serious, make amends, find favor, and then hope that was enough to get what you needed.

So when the writer of Hebrews insisted that Jesus was the last sacrifice ever needed, that was a revolutionary idea. To make that claim in those days? Stunning. Unprecedented.

Whole cultures centered around keeping the gods pleased. This was obviously a very costly, time-consuming ordeal, not to mention an anxiety-producing one. You never knew if you’d fully pleased the gods and paid the debt properly. And now the writer is announcing that those days are over because of Jesus dying on the cross. Done away with. Gone. Irrelevant.

The psychological impact alone would have been extraordinary - no more anxiety, no more worry, no more stress, no more wondering if the gods were pleased with you or ready to strike you down. There was no more need for any of that sacrifice, because Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice that thoroughly pleased the only God who ever mattered. (pp 124, 125)

For the New Testament writers, sacrifice was not a figure of speech by which the pagan might come to understand the folly of his ritual and abate his fear of never appeasing the gods. Nor was the imagery of sacrifice a random notion that seemed a likely choice to make Jesus intellectually or culturally palatable to his hearers.

Sacrifice was not a metaphor. Sacrifice rose out of the history of redemption, namely, the sacrificial system of the Old Testament. For the writer to the Hebrews, the cross is without meaning if it is not understood in the light of Old Testament sacrifice, and if Bell had been honest to include the context of the verse he cites, he would have had to bring the meaning of Old Testament sacrifice into the sacrifice of Christ:

Of this, John Murray writes:

It lies on the face of the New Testament that Christ’s work is construed as sacrifice. And the only question is: what notion of sacrifice governs the pervasive use of the term sacrifice as it is applied to the work of Christ? This question can be answered only by determining what was the notion of sacrifice entertained by the New Testament speakers and writers. Steeped as these were in the language and ideas of the Old Testament, there is but one direction in which to seek their interpretation of the meaning and effect of sacrifice. (Redemption Accomplished And Applied, p 24).

Murray then expounds the meaning of sacrifice on the basis of the Old Testament ritual, in particular, the Day of Atonement.

I am making a special point regarding Bell’s hermeneutic because it should throw up a red flag. If he so blithely misconstrues the purpose of New Testament writers in the explanation of the cross in this one aspect - sacrifice - can he be trusted with his assessment on other aspects. Does he have any real understanding of the nature and scope of Christ’s death as the once-for-all satisfaction for the just punishment of God for the sins of his people? Does he truly understand the meaning of 1 Peter 2:24:

Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes you were healed.

Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour (February 2011) - Day Three

The God Hater, by Bill Myers.


Thanks to Simon and Schuster who kindly provided a copy of the book for review on the CSFF blog tour.

The success of the ‘project’ that Travis, Rebecca, and Hugh are involved in stands or falls on the preservation of free will. Whatever goes into the making of that world, or into a solution that addresses a problem, it must not influence the choice that a cyber-human may personally make and, by extension, what the collective community may agree to do.

It is curious that no one ever deduced that, given such a definition of free will, the programmer violated it with the first If..Then statement. A computer program of any complexity will have what are called conditional statements, that is, if a condition proves to be true then one course of action will follow; but if it is false, another course. It is decision-making at a very low level. Given the same set of information and conditions, a computer program will do exactly the same thing every time, without fail. It has no other choice because it has no mind of its own.

The cyber-world of Alpha at its innermost being is a complex of rote execution making every aspect of it a slave of unalterable habit. Yet, out of this rose characters who attained “emotions, pattern recognition, free will, the ability to hold contradictory views.” (p 45) Granted, they did not rise by a cyber-evolutionary mechanism; Travis says outright that he created them. But it is uncanny that such a versatile, intelligent, and freethinking cyber-entity could possibly come into being out of a make-up that is thoroughly bound to the will of another, regardless of how intelligent the ‘other’ is.

What exactly is free will? Must there be absolutely no outside influence in order for a decision to classify as having been made purely out of a free will? If that were so, there would be no such thing as free will.

A choice made out of free will does not mean it is a choice made blindly. My son may be considering three colleges to attend, and I may have a strong opinion about a certain one, offering argument after argument as to why that should be his choice. Even if those arguments prove effective, and my son chooses that college, his free will has not been violated. He freely chooses that college because, for whatever reason, that is the school that he wants to attend. It is his choice. I did not make the choice for him. Even if I threatened to disown him if he chose another, and as a result he chose contrary to what he would prefer, he is still exercising the choice freely. No one else is making the decision; it is his and his alone.

That’s why Adam’s deflection of blame to Eve is disingenuous, "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate," Genesis 3:12. External influences did not absolve Adam’s guilt - he made the choice to listen to Eve and eat of the fruit. The same thing can be said for Eve - she listened to the serpent, was deceived by him, but it was her choice to eat in disobedience to what God had said. The serpent was unable to force Adam or Eve to eat against their will. It had to be the choice of each alone. Otherwise, they would not have been accountable, and man would not have fallen.

How heinous it is then, when we read of the King of Tyre (Lucifer/Satan): “You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you.” Ezekiel 28:15. A being made perfect in every way and having nothing but the most advantageous external influences was found at a point in time to have iniquity within. Unfathomable mystery. No wonder there is no purpose of God for his recovery.

So then, free will does not exclude external influences.

Free will and the Sinner

The scriptures say that there is none who does good (Romans 3:12) and that the carnal mind (the mind devoid of the Spirit of God and therefore unregenerate and unconverted) “is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be,” Romans 8:7; and “those who are in the flesh cannot please God,” Romans 8:8.

If the sinner is unable to do good, then he has not the free will to do good. But he does have the free will to do evil. He can only sin, and the choice to sin and the manner of sin is out of his own free will. No one forces the sinner to sin; he does so freely of his own choice and not of another.

Free will and the Saint

The saint is truly free, that is, he has the ability to choose good and resist evil. As a sinner, one can only sin; as a saint, one has a choice, to resist the temptation to sin, and do the good; or to succumb to temptation, and do the wrong.

The Cyber-Incarnation

There may be some mystery about the transfer of Nicholas’s personality into a newly created cyber-human, but the mystery is only that of a limited understanding of what and how nanobots work. And when all is said and done, the real Nicholas is still a real human, and nothing of him or in him is united to the digital Nicholas.

The mystery of the incarnation of the Son is not resolved through a keen knowledge of physics. The union of God and man in one person defies explanation; it is comprehensible in that one can conceive of a unity of the divine and human, but it is incomprehensible in that the unity itself is inexplicable.

The apparently supernatural power that the digital Nicholas exercised was ad hoc, programmed to meet an unexpected exigency in the cyber-world. The power of the incarnate Christ was for the most part not his own as the Second Person of the Trinity. Part of the humility of the incarnation was the reliance upon God the Holy Spirit to perform miraculous works, just as any human miracle worker of God did. The Spirit’s attendance of Christ is well documented, and because Christ's extraordinary works of power had its source in the Holy Spirit (not his own), the accusation of the Jewish leaders that Christ performed his wonders by the power of Satan was an unforgiveable blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

The transfer of information to the cyber Nicholas explains his apparently instant knowledge about events and persons whom he had never met. In the New Testament, we have a peek into the nature of the communication between the Father and the Son. In John 12:28, Christ asks the Father to glorify his name, to which the Father responds audibly, in a voice some took for thunder, “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.” Jesus explains that the voice was for their (the people who heard the voice) sakes. On that one occasion, it pleased the Father that others heard what Christ heard constantly.

The God Hater confronts the reader with some heavy philosophical and theological ideas. Whether these would be a challenge to the Atheist's faith, I'm not sure. But it may cause him to pause and think about some things that he never thought about before, and that could be the starting point of a journey to understanding.

The God Hater book link
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Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour (February 2011) - Day Two

The God Hater, by Bill Myers.


Mr. Myers lays out a disclaimer in his author’s note: Then there’s that whole pesky issue of allegories. They only capture pieces of truth and are way too slippery to do much more. So, just as I would encourage you not to base your science upon this [the novel’s] science, the same should go for your theology. As I said in my novel Eli...if something doesn’t sound right or sticks in your throat, don’t waste your time reading this. Go to the original Source and see what it says.

This statement implies two things: that (a) at least some of the theology behind The God Hater may be wrong or (b) though it is not wrong, it is either confusing or contrary to the reader’s own views, in which case the reader is advised to go to the Bible and investigate the point of disagreement or confusion.

This brings us face-to-face with the constant concern of every Christian writer, that he conveys accurately the teaching of scripture on any given theological subject. Granted, there are theological truths that are difficult to understand, as Peter reveals about some of Paul’s epistles (2 Peter 3:16). And since we are not inspired writers in the same way that the holy apostles and prophets of the New Testament were (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20, 21), we cannot guarantee that what we write is completely accurate.

Nevertheless, it is our responsibility to be as accurate and faithful to the truth of scripture as possible. If we find that we have difficulty in conveying that truth in the context of our novel, or through the imagery of its characters and events as in the genre Christian fantasy, it is better to abandon the effort and pursue something different.

A major difficulty for me is the employment of a Christ figure. Donita K. Paul’s Paladin of Dragonspell is an example. I found the character Paladin repulsive. The New Testament Christ was the one who declared (exegeted) the Father in all of his ways such that even a facial expression was revelatory, let alone body language. Paladin was a buddy-buddy type of fellow having none of the sacred sobriety of the biblical Christ. It is a questionable decision to include such a figure because it runs the risk of not conveying the character of God accurately; it tends to create a god in our image. It approaches blasphemy. A more extreme example is The Shack (Wm. Paul Young, a million-copy best seller), in which the three Persons of the Holy Trinity are fleshed out in terms of trite, crass behavior and profane human interactions, and the theology, in my estimation, is heretical blasphemy.

I want to trace broadly the events that take place in The God Hater from initial creation of a cyber-world to the intrusion into that world in the form of a cyber-incarnation. This is to provide a context for some thoughts on certain theological points that are affected by those events. Those thoughts will appear in my third post for this blog tour.

The cyber-world (c-world) is initially characterized by artificially intelligent cyber-humans (c-humans) capable of emotions, pattern recognition, free will, and holding contradictory views (p. 45). There must be no external interference. The free will of the c-human cannot be violated. Each philosophical system must grow organically from within the system (p. 67). This reduces to a survival-of-the-fittest mentality and as a result, c-world ends in self-extinction; c-humans kill each other off in the effort to survive (p 66).

Solution #1
Introduce dualism, the awareness that there is the material/physical on the one hand and the spiritual/metaphysical on the other. In Dr. Nicholas Mackenzie’s words, it is “the understanding that there are higher thoughts with higher standards than a simple materialistic world.” And, “It’s a belief in a greater good without the tyranny of a meddling dictator.” Travis’s lay interpretation is, “Just give them a sense of a greater reality.” Rebecca’s enhancement to Travis’s understanding is to give them “an interconnectedness to that Reality. They need to feel that what they do affects everything-- including themselves.” (pp 80, 81).

Solution #1 Fails
Exercising free will, c-humanity chooses nature over technology, i.e., nature is sacred and must not be meddled with. Travis astutely summarizes the three possibilities with regard to nature: (a) It is divine, (b) there is no difference between it and c-humanity, or (c) it is not real. Whatever view one takes, there is no compelling need to exercise authority over it (p. 97). As a result, rats are allowed to run wild leading to rampant disease, which results in the eventual extinction of c-humanity.

Solution #2
Rebecca postulates that the c-humans must not only be told about another reality (our world) but also about the humans of that world, about us, and that we have the answers for their survival. This is not considered cheating because it is telling the truth. Nicholas Mackenzie, the atheist philosopher, grudgingly acknowledges this inwardly:

“Nicholas’s jaw tightened. She was right, of course. The solution couldn’t be more obvious. At least now. And he hated it. He hated every aspect of it. An outside intelligence, a god, offering them assistance from outside their model. But it was true. They were watching and they could assist. Like it or not, that was the whole truth. And if Nicholas stood for anything, it was truth. Everything else was just fantasy and make-believe.” (p 100)

Again, free will must be preserved. Just inform c-humanity of our existence and give simple guidelines, nothing more (p 103).

The Implementation of Solution #2
Through Travis’s ingenious programming, Nicholas is able to speak directly to Alpha, a c-human (the cyber equivalent of Nicholas’s son who was killed years earlier) and thusly reveals his existence as Programmer, who programmed Alpha’s world. The immediate response of Alpha was to ask, “What do you want?” Programmer’s (Nicholas’s) reply is to exercise authority over his world. Alpha is sacred because he was programmed like real humans. The rats are not sacred; they are the cause of their dying. Alpha’s response to this revelation and charge is to react violently toward the rats and destroy them. Alpha is further charged to treat other c-humans as sacred, treat them as he would treat Programmer. (p 113-115)

The expectation is that Alpha would expound upon the basic rules of Programmer and apply them to various situations. This is exactly what happens. Alpha begins to develop a system of interpretation and application of Programmer’s basic Law. Programmer is elevated to a deity and a temple is erected in his honor.

The Introduction of The Virus
Rebecca places doubt in the mind of the c-woman, Saida, wife of Alpha, to question the authority of Programmer’s law and think of how appealing it would be to decide for herself what is right and wrong. She leads Saida to the back of the Temple where she presents a wealth of information via the internet. Saida and a growing number of others are drawn to this source of unlimited knowledge. Now, c-humanity has an alternate guide, based on an alternate source of knowledge from which they can pick and choose as they please. Programmer’s Law is no longer absolutely authoritative.

The Need for Personal Intervention, the Cyber-Incarnation
The virus infected c-humanity internally, in their minds. To erase it would be to interfere with their thinking and therefore with their free-will. The alternative is that someone speaks to them directly, that is:

“We create another member of their community. We download one of our own personalities into it so we can talk to them face-to-face; show them how they’re supposed to live.”

“You’re not serious?”

“Sure. That way, they still have free will. But instead of laying a bunch more rules on them, our guy talks to them in person. He stresses how important it is to resist the virus and follow our instructions. And--this is the kicker--he shows them how to live those instructions the way we originally intended.”
...
“It’s impossible to adequately capture every nuance of truth with words. To convey the truths of life...you have to live that life.” (p 143-144)

Dr. Nicholas Mackenzie’s mind is recorded (via nanobots) and transferred into a newly created c-human. The c-human is the cyber-incarnation of Mackenzie.

The Nature of the Cyber-Incarnation

(1) Otherworldly insight. c-Mackenzie receives instant information about his world and certain individuals in it. He learns of personal things about his fellow c-humans that are known only to them. He knows what is in c-man:

Travis continued, “She ran away when they tried making her pay on the Grid. Ever since, she’s been living with whoever gives her life units.”

Nicholas motioned to the main screen, where the image of himself and the girl were still frozen. “Go ahead and tell him that. Let him know.”

This time Travis gave no argument as he worked the keys. “Transferring her bio to him now.”

When he’d finished, he hit another key, bringing the original scene back to life.
...
Nicholas blinked. With his sudden information, he addressed the girl. “You were just a child, Dortha. It was not your fault.”

Her eyes widened, then squinted suspiciously. “How do you know me?” (p 172)

(2) Otherworldly power. c-Mackenzie receives the ability to heal from Travis who programs it into his cyber makeup. But to heal, the pain of the injury must be transferred somewhere else in order to keep the integrity of the program. It can’t be transferred to a rock, because the rock can’t feel the pain. It can’t be transferred to the one who inflicted the pain because it would coerce them into obeying out of fear and destroy their free will. The only solution is to transfer it to the one who heals, to c-Mackenzie himself. But in order for it to be fair to c-Mackenzie, it must be voluntary; he must be made aware of the suffering it will cause him, and he must freely choose to take the suffering on himself. (p 195)

Free will is a recurrent them in this overview, and I would like to discuss it in my next post. Additionally, I would like to comment on the nature of the cyber-incarnation as opposed to the biblical incarnation.

Thanks to Simon and Schuster who kindly provided a copy of the book for review on the CSFF blog tour.

The God Hater book link
Author’s web site
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CSFF Blog Tour Participants

Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour (February 2011) - Day One.

The God Hater, by Bill Myers.

Thanks to Simon and Schuster who kindly provided a copy of the book for review on the CSFF blog tour.

Artificial intelligence is the pursuit of both fantasy and science. The God Hater by Bill Myers, is a literary effort of the former, whose purpose is to bring salient truths to light regarding the nature and character of man, human free will, and the existence of God.

The story begins with a locally televised show called God Talk where one of the main characters of the novel first appears, Dr Nicholas Mackenzie, atheist and professor of philosophy at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He proceeds to embarrass and demolish another guest, a pastor of a large church who is on the show to talk about his new book. Mackenzie argues the well-worn favorite objections of atheism to religion. Interestingly, those objections are briefly addressed later in the book, not by a Christian, but a former student whose faith was destroyed by Mackenzie himself.

Another main character is Dr Annie Brooks who teaches Molecular Biology and is a fellow professor at UCSB. Annie is a Christian, albeit a single mother. Annie and Nicholas are actually friends though their antithetical world and life views clash from time to time in the classroom. Nicholas visits Annie periodically having a special interest in her son, Rusty, having lost his own son years earlier.

The third personality is Travis (Nicholas’s brother) who becomes involved in a research project funded by a ‘bazillionaire,’ as Travis describes him. The project succeeds in creating a computer program akin to today’s games but in which the cyber-characters are far more advanced having “artificial intelligence...emotions, pattern recognition, free will, the ability to hold contradictory views,” (p. 41) and so on. The purpose of the project is to provide industry with a test environment to determine what to expect from the consumer, i.e., how will a certain product fare.

The project runs into its problems early on. Cyber-mankind knows only of the basic premise, survival of the fittest, which is exercised consistently always resulting in self-extermination. With no intervention allowed by the developers, and with no other input, the cyber-humans always destroy themselves. Travis brings his philosopher brother in to resolve the problem. The single restriction: there must be no violation of the cyber-humans' free will.

To get beyond this, Nicholas offers the solution to make the cyber-humans aware of a greater reality, introducing brute dualism, the view that there are two realities, the physical and metaphysical. This doesn’t violate the cyber-human’s free will, it simply makes them aware of non-physical realities and it is to be their choice alone as to how to live in light of it. Nicholas is convinced this will change the pattern of self-extinction.

This fails also, and Nicholas is called in again. The problem is that the cyber-world chooses to hold ‘nature’ in highest esteem and therefore allows it to carry on without intrusion. This leads to the spread of disease through rats who run free. Eventually, cyber-mankind dies out through pestilence.

Nicholas ponders the problem and comes up with a solution that he’s not entirely comfortable with: make cyber-humanity aware of a higher authority, the authority of Programmer (Nicholas, though he is not actually the programmer), who in turn charges the cyber-humans to take control and become stewards of their own world. The rationale: they, the cyber-humans, are more sacred than the world (nature) itself; they must exercise authority over it.

This too has its problems and the solutions that follow come uncomfortably closer and closer to a theistic view, so much so that eventually one from Programmer’s world enters into the world in cyber-incarnated form. The incarnate personality is none less than Dr Mackenzie himself.

Interwoven into this is corporate espionage and betrayal, and the intriguing factor that the key cyber-human is Mackenzie’s own lost son who becomes the authoritative interpreter and applier of Programmer’s decree.

Non-Christian and Christian philosophy constantly clash, though the language used to express this is dubiously similar to biblical language. The incredulity of the language is especially stark as it is used by non-Christian characters (e.g., “You are sacred because you are programmed to be like us”;  “Treat one another as though you are sacred. Treat one another as you would treat me.”)

The novel presents the reader with a number of profound philosophical issues with the intent to demonstrate that the resolution of those issues is found only through a Christian, biblical approach. Yet this is done in such a non-technical way that the average reader, with some effort, can readily sort them out.

The story itself makes the book a fair page-turner. This in spite of the characters being stereotypical and predictable, and the writing itself, average.

The God Hater book link
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