Chateau Lloyd

A major figure in American Protestantism died last week and I had never heard of him before.   That's life in Catholic circles, I guess, but I was interested to see what he preached and it turns out he was an actual Nestorian as well as a Calvinist.

Also a Dispensationalist and believer in Cessationism, so four heresies in one.

Americans treat religion as just another product, and part of that is creating a brand and differentiating yourself from other brands.  Yes, there are established denominations, but those usually have some sort of hierarchy and one can reach the top only after years of work even then there is little actual power.

For those with a more entrepreneurial spirit, founding one's own church is the way to go, and there are many examples of successful preachers who started with a single small church and built a mighty empire thanks to their charisma, stage presence and ability to turn a phrase.

What these men (and they are overwhelmingly men) do not typically have is much in the way of theology.  Their goal is to differentiate themselves from other denominations, not push long-established truths.  This leads to further fragmentation in Protestantism as new (or old) doctrines have to be introduced.

That's how the long-forgotten doctrine of the Nestorians has risen from the theological graveyard.  Similarly, Calvinism isn't enough; there must also be Dispensationalism and Cessationism as well.

That latter belief is interesting insofar as it can be used to explain the paucity of Protestant miracles and dismiss the abundance of Catholic and Orthodox ones, which are attributed to the devil.  How miraculous healing in Christ's name facilitates evil is unclear to me, but it's the only cope they have.

Similarly, the need to denigrate the Blessed Virgin Mary and declare her an ordinary, unexceptional woman who had lots of other kids opens the back door to Nestorianism, because the natural conclusion is that Christ's human nature was separate from His divine nature.  Thus, a normal, unremarkable woman gave birth to a normal kid, and then the divine nature arrived separately after He emerged from the womb.

Adding in Dispensationalism also makes sense as it's a uniquely American creation and Calvinism seems to be gaining ground among Protestants as Mainline denominations stumble.  Calvinism is bracing, stern, and placed a heavy emphasis on condemnation, which goes against the popular grain.  It is a welcome contrast to "nice" Christianity.

This combination results in a stridently anti-Catholic belief system, which is also very American.

As with all empires, the succession is always a delicate time, and I'll be interested to see how that plays out.

During the pandemic, many bishops offered a dispensation from the obligation to attend Sunday Mass.  In many cases, this was because local authorities had imposed lockdowns, but there was also a great fear (especially among the elderly) that going out into any kind of gathering could lead to death by the dread disease.

But the Bishop of San Bernadino, Alberto Rojas, is taking this in a different direction, offering a dispensation to illegal aliens who fear arrest and deportation if they go to Mass.

This is a remarkable development.  In recent years, the US Catholic Bishops have been increasingly strident on violating American immigration law.  The continually declare it "broken" without once offering any suggestions for improvement.  This is because they cannot come out and declare that unlimited immigration is their goal because there is simply no doctrinal justification for doing that.  The Church has long recognized the rights of nations and kingdoms to defend their borders and to control who enters and joins their polity.

Much of the Old Testament is about Israel defending itself and trying to keep its identity among a host of larger foreign peoples.  The Catholic Church itself has been instrumental in defending Christian lands from Muslim invasions.  Were these actions wrong?

This also is an amazing declaration of civil disobedience, which normally the Church will authorize only in the gravest of circumstances.  People who enter the country - any country - without permission are breaking the law.  Why is the good bishop protecting them from the consequences of their action?  Again, is the bishop saying that American borders are now a nullity, and that there is a Christian duty to help anyone who wishes to enter?

A great many people - including the USCCB - has convinced itself that unlimited migration is a good thing, and that the clear, document hardships illegal aliens impose on the host nation either do not exist, or are simply a price that must be paid to do good works.  It is robbing Peter to pay Paul.  

Unlimited migration brings a host of diseases from unvaccinated populations, overstrains hospitals and schools, drives up housing prices and crushes wages, particularly among unskilled or semi-skilled laborers.  It benefits the upper classes with cheap servants, boosts profits for the rich, but wrecks the native poor.  It is harder to imagine a more cruel policy dressed up in virtue, but here we are.

As part of my retro-gaming, I picked up a reprint of the D&D Gazetteer for the Grand Duchy of Karameikos.  It's a handy book, with a good amount of information and proposed adventures.

Because it was designed to mate with other published modules, it even includes a handy guide to integrating them into the campaign.

The Gazetteer series was a setting in a box, if you will, and TSR cranked them out.  Maybe it cranked too many out, because to a certain extent, the company was competing with itself.

At any rate the Gazetteers offered a unified world that was already put into D&D gaming stats.  No assembly required.

The various kingdoms were obviously derived from medieval or other fantasy properties, but that only adds to their utility.  Thus, the Grand Duchy is something of a stand-in for a Slavic nation colonized by Greco-Roman elites.  The setting purposefully has an unfinished feel so that characters have plenty of room to established their own strongholds and engage in royal politics.

All of that is swell.  There is even a discussion of coinage and how D&D oversells the use of gold, which tell me that author Aaron Alston knows a bit about history.

Alas, Alston also bought into the conventional 1980s scholarship that all accounts are unreliable and the truth is always different from what was written down.  The book contains players' sections and referee sections, and there is always a difference.

What was most disappointing is that the "real" version of history is always more mundane.  The players will hear of three god-like tribal founders, but then the Dungeon Master learns that it was all made up by the tribes as part of their mythical history.

This garbage has always pissed me off.  How can anyone prove that?  These are just secular historians with weird theories, not actual science.  What makes it even worse is that this is a fantasy game!  The whole point is to encounter legendary heroes, not use socio-economic data to explain the rise and fall of communities.  

There are actual spells that allow high-ranking spell-users to contact the gods or other immortal creatures, so these "fake legends" would have been destroyed instantly.  The rules for gods are similar - you can't pray to a myth and get your spells replenished.  Someone has to have the power to answer the prayer.

This is what happens when secular wannabe scholars try to rationalize a world with goblins, giant spiders, dragons and rust monsters.

Is it useful?  Very much so.  I will probably buy more, but I will also make a point of always choosing the legend over some dim, gray "reality."

Almost two weeks ago I broke a molar, and the resulting filling and shifts to my bite has resulted in moments of extreme pain.  Even when things are calm, the slightest pressure on a particular tooth is met with immediate agony.  No, it's not a cavity, it's just sore from being banged around.  I've been back to get the bite adjusted and it is somewhat better, but until the inflammation goes down, even a perfect alignment will hurt.

Thus: no burgers or hot dogs on the grill for me!  I'll spend the fourth eating soft food and soups.

God is clearly helping me to value chewing, and the lesson is a good one.  We take simple things like walking, using both hands, even breathing without congestion for granted.  Then something happens and our prayers shift to earnest entreaties to restore these humble functions.

Other than gratitude, another outcome is to treat the underlying condition, and I have in fact bought a mouth guard, which brought great relief last night.  It was the first night since the ordeal began of uninterrupted sleep.  This gives me hope that it won't be long for the last remnants of pain are gone.

In the meantime, I will enjoy mostly liquid Independence Day.

I recently finished Graham Greene's The Quiet American and was not sure what to expect.  It's odd to do a review of a book written in 1955, but I think the political and religious environment has shifted considerably from when it was written.

In any event, I found Greene's writing to be somewhat cynical, with a good element of English contempt for Americal moralizing, but nothing directed at the titular "American" was undeserved.  

It is true that a man like Alden Pyle is likely obsolete.  It is doubtful that one will find Yankee New Englander so steeped in American Protestantism and patriotism at this late date.  That archetype has crumbled, but the Ivy League is still producing ideological fanatics, although they are more often against their nation than for it.

Fowler - the jaded English reporter - is still out there, though fading from the scene.  Most journalists are airheads who are spoon-fed stories by various governments and NGOs.  Not many want to see 'the front' or want to break open the truth about whatever is happening.  Mostly they want clickbait and their own million subscriber podcast.  But I digress.

As to the core question, I think Graham told a truth as he understood it about the early phase of the Vietnam War.  Southeast Asia was in turmoil and no one had particularly clean hands.  It was all well and good to be anti-colonial, but that road ultimately led to the Killing Fields of Cambodia.  Indeed, during the 1980s there was quite a lot of discussion about the ethical tradeoffs of statecraft, from The Killing Fields to The Year of Living Dangerously.

What sets The Quiet American apart is Greene's interest in the people rather than the policies.  A recurring theme of his work is people struggling to find God, and that is very much in evidence here.

Like all of his work it is engaging and absorbing, a true page-turner.  The description is vivid and evocative, and that makes the moral debates of the time seem fresh rather than lost to the past.

Indeed, as I remarked above, Alden Pyle as a type has passed, but one need only look at the moralizing of the Ukraine War protagonists, and their completely callous attitude to the loss of human life to see that their twisted mentality lives on.

Not quite a year ago I started a Dungeons and Dragons campaign based on older books and using maps only for reference rather than tactical movement.

The game sputtered out, but we're starting it again, and this time I'm fully embracing retro-gaming by buying some of the "Gazetteers" to help me build out a setting.

This is not my first encounter with Basic D&D's campaign environment.  Module X1 Isle of Dread was part of the boxed set, and I subsequently bought Drums on Fire Mountain, which was designed by Games Workshop staff when they were serving as TSR's UK licensee.

Unfortunately, by the time the gazetteers came out, I was fully committed to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, which had its own settings and modules.  This was one of the oddities of TSR - the urge to compete with itself.  Indeed, the company grew wild and a failure to do any kind of rational bookkeeping or properly manage the product lines eventually resulted in its failure and takeover.

In practical terms, I didn't have enough money to buy both AD&D and D&D books, and since AD&D was pushing the edge on complexity, that's where I went.  Now seems like a good time to see what I missed.  Just like watching old TV shows, sometimes going back to an old game opens up new takes on it, and a better understanding of how it works.

Certainly I'm much less interested in detail or complexity than I was.  My game design choices now lean towards minimalism, and so using older, less complicated books dovetails quite nicely with my simplified, narrative-based combat resolution.

Through a series of coincidences, I learned about War Trophies: Weapons from Vietnam by Keith Seafield and ordered a copy.

This is a self-publish work of very high physical quality, though (as is often the case) it would have benefitted greatly from an experienced editor.

The work is a series of vignettes about weapon brought home as war trophies from the Vietnam War.  It is lavishly illustrated, but the weapons get much less attention than the men who brought them back.  This is where better edition could have linked the stories, which are listed in a table of contents without any page numbers.

Some sort of narrative describing the logistics of the war from the Communist perspective would also have been helpful.

All that being said, it is of great interest to collectors because it describes how weapons were brought back through dozens of examples.  There are photographs of the paperwork, reports, and one gets a clear view of the process by which so many weapons could return to the US.

One generally thinks of Vietnamese weapons being of Chinese or Russian manufacture, but there was a ton of weapons floating around Southeast Asia, the detritus of world wars, civil wars and the Cold War.  Thus, there are many SKS carbines, but also Luger pistols, French and even American service weapons from previous conflicts.

Thus, while not as comprehensive as I would have liked, it has thrown much-needed light on a little-researched topic.

The calendar cycle has conspired to place Fathers Day adjacent to June 14, which incorporates both Flag Day and the birthday of the United States Army.  The alignment is appropriate.

In our current era, all three have been disparaged by the elites of society.  Flags are just rags on a pole, more likely to be burned than protected.  The Army itself is a horrible, patriarchal organization that needs to be completely feminized and run on "green energy" to be worthwhile.

And fathers?  They are the absolute worst.  For most of my life I've heard sneering at The Patriarchy without any clear idea of what would feasibly replace it - or what exactly is wrong with it.  Spiritually speaking, it is a stand-in for the restraints of faith and custom, as well as biology.  This is why so many "feminists" demand that men who "identify" as women be fully treated as female, despite overwhelming and obvious evidence that they have a massive competitive advantage in athletics.

Oddly, these zealots are willing to burn down everything around it in terms of federal funding to keep their strange anti-faith in place.

The  250th Anniversary of the US Army highlighted the obvious: wars are a male activity, always have been, and always will be.  The post-war flirtation with gender integration has failed.

Similarly, the notion that shredding all moral and cultural restraints on women would make them happier has also been completely discredited.  Women have never been more miserable.

The answer to this problem is to return to what worked - intact families, faith, and tradition.  Much of the Boomer mentality was to throw away that which irritated them, and to hell with the consequences.  It is no wonder that their children and grandchildren are now rejecting the entire project.

This weekend encapsulates what is needed - a love of country, veneration of its symbols, and the importance of fathers as the protector of the family.

I know that the anniversaries ending in "5" and "0" are supposed to be the important once, but all of them count for something.

I entered the Catholic Church on Pentecost all those years ago, and I am still a work in progress.  There is a lot going on in the faith, and just when you think you've got it all, you find even more.

I get why my grandparents continued to study religion right up until the end.  There was so much to learn.

To put it another way, I have changed a lot since 2006, and that applies to faith as much as anything else.

Religion did not particularly interest me when I was young.  It was boring, judgmental and anyway God was probably a nice guy and cut us all some slack.

I don't that view was purely a function of youth, by the way.  I think society was objectively more moral than it has become.  Back then, transvestites were mocked and men who entered the women's rest room were subject to arrest, not praise.

Things happen for a reason, and it's increasingly clear that we all needed an awakening of sorts.  We certainly got one.

I will say that the pontificate of the late Francis showed how damaging a bad pope could be, but also the limits to that damage.  Pope Leo is a completely different sort, very much his own man, but his faith is deep, profound and respectful.

He is the type of pope who would have been unremarkable but for Francis, and so we are treasuring him all the more.

I think that is true of a lot of our traditions and prayers.  There is a hunger to get back to basics, and rediscover what has been temporarily misplaced.  I see that Europe is now seeing huge crowds of young people hiking to cathedrals and record numbers of conversions.  That's the hunger we need.

I'm more than halfway through Brant Pitre's The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ, and I'm already speed-running it.  Normally, I do that on something that I don't really enjoy and want to just get out of the way, but in this case, Pitre's arguments are so solid, so well-reasoned, that I need only glance at them to see how valid they are.

What draws me forward is a desire to see the next way he will take a rhetorical axe-handle to the arguments of bogus "Bible scholars" like Bart Ehrman.

Four years ago the Lord of Spirits podcast highlighted the intellectual dishonesty and obvious bias of these fake academics, and it's refreshing to see them get pulverized using chapter and verse.

This continues to irritate me, in large part because if the same "scientific" method were applied to secular histories, nothing could be authenticated.

One of the critiques Erhman and his cohorts use against the Gospels is the (shaky) assumption that they were written long after the fact, and therefore suspect.

I hate to break it to Herrdoktorprofesser Erhman, but most histories are like that.  There is no reason to doubt the factual content of Walls of Men simply because I wasn't alive 4,500 years ago.  There are things call "sources" and also oral traditions that are extremely valuable in determining what happened in the past.

I swear, these knuckleheads what photos of the Apostles holding up a newspaper from AD 34 to verify their claims.

Anyhow, it's a quick read, and worth the effort, especially if one wants to shut down an modern know-it-all atheist.