If I'm Calvinist, is God Hobbes? The You're Not the Pope of Me Doctrinal Kerfuffle

I'm the Pope of you!

If you had the misfortune to read If I'm Calvinist, is God Hobbes? Part 1 of this scholarly exegesis, no - that's not right - this Rabelasian road trip, yes, much better - you no doubt will have noted several inconsistencies, non sequiturs, logical conundrums and downright falsehoods. Good for you, if they're still alive, your Sunday School teachers will be so proud. Me? Couldn't care less. What concerns me is that I didn't fully explain why the Pope was so ticked at Calvin and his cranky co-conspirators. Yes, the Calvinists made a big deal of God's unapproachable, towering sovereignty but that wasn't primarily what frosted the Pope's beer mug. It was the insistence of Calvinists (and Lutherans, Zwingliites, Arians, Anglicans etc.) that the Pope had no authority from God to rule the church or compel the obedience of any Christian.

No. I'm the Pope of you!

'The "You're not the boss of me" doctrine was a direct assault on the power, perquisites and privileges of what by the 14th century had become the best gig in religion. It was such a good gig that different kings set up their own Popes to get in on all the fun. And you can understand why being a major league Roman Prelate was in such demand: you got to hang out in the south of France or Italy, A list celebrities kissed your pinkie ring, you presided over a religion that used excellent wine as it's primary sacrament, and you lived in a time where the practical definition of 'celibacy' was "sorry honey, you know I can't marry you but I'll pray that it's a boy". Sort of an all expense paid version of Porkys in man dresses. And not something to be given up just because some punk has spent too much time reading his Bible.

No! I'm the Pope of both of you!

And then there was the whole Antichrist thing.  I mean telling the guy that cashes Jesus' checks here on earth that he actually doesn't have signing authority for those accounts is liable to put the calmest Cote d'Azur popeboy in a state of heightened agitation. So yes, differences about the sovereignty of God, the nature of Salvation and the questionable fashion sense of wearing really tall hats all fed into the Pope's hostility .  But at the end of the day what they were really fighting over was custody of the Papal expense account.

Part 3: Leviathan or What Happens When You Pick On Tommy Hobbes

If I'm Calvinist is God Hobbes?

John Calvin 1509-1564 displaying the classic "L" is for Luthers symbol commonly used by Calvinists

mostly because it made Luther mad. In America the symbolism has evolved into men bearing large foam fingers preaching a degenerate form of the faith in crowded gladiator arenas on Sunday afternoons.  It replaced the pagan giant foam thumb used by

the Flavian emperors to speed up the pace of play in ancient Rome.

This is Part 1 of who knows how many parts.   Here is:  Part 2:  The 'You're not the Pope of me' doctrinal kerfuffle  and Part 3:  Leviathan or what happens when you pick on Tommy Hobbes.  And if you find this weird you may also want to be weirded out by my 'unique' (my Pastor's words) take on God in God 1.0.

I'm Presbyterian which means that I am Protestant, 'Reformed' (my ex says 'ha ha') and subscribe (while ignoring the increasingly strident renewal notices) to the Calvinist view of Christianity. It is a point of pride among Presbyterians that we can take almost an entire paragraph to introduce our religious credentials and that's even before we get to what type Presbyterian we are. For others field identification is simpler: Baptists say they're 'saved' and 'praise the Lord' a lot, Episcopalians don't talk about God but mix a mean sacramental Martini, Pentecostals jibberjabber and serious Catholics have lots of kids. Unless you're in Utah, then they're Mormons. Atheists are by far the easiest to ID: they tend to stand alone in the corner with a sour, resentful look. Getting stuck in a conversation with a militant Atheist can drive you to sacramental Episcopalianism.

To be a Calvinist  you have to believe in Tulips, no, not the flower and most definitely not Mick Jagger, although the Rolling Stones do give off a rather Hobbesian aura.  No, I'm talking about T.U.L.I.P. which any buck-Deacon in a one horse Presbyterian church knows stands for: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints - TULIP which of course was thought up in Holland where every damn business, house or idea had to have that stupid flower in it's name.  But Calvin was French and would have described it as: dépravation totale, l'élection inconditionnelle, l'expiation limitée, grâce irrésistible, et la persévérance des saints which would be DEEGP which makes no sense so be glad that TULIP won out.  Indeed John Calvin would be Jean but for the theologians of the 17th century who thought they'd get made fun of if they studied books with a girl's name or for that matter with a French guy's name.  Branding is everything.

I guess before I go any further I should lay out my credentials for opining on Calvinist Hobbesianism:  I am what is known as a 'Dozing' Presbyterian. There are three types of Presbyterians: Nosey, Posey and Dozy.  Nosey Presbyterians know their Bible, they tend to be preachers, teachers and older women and definitely know the difference between Calvin's Institutes and Confucius' Analects (hey anyone could make that mistake).  If you want to know what's going on in the church or anything for that matter, talk to the Noseys - they'll tell you.  And tell you and tell you.  By contrast Poseys tend to be Deacons and Elders, particularly ones that got there via the 'fast track' of ushering.  They generally look pretty impressive, having the command presence needed to shoehorn a 5 person family into a 4 person spot. But ask them a question about faith or truth or God and they get that blank, deacon in the headlights look and their hands instinctively clutch for the stack of programs that isn't there.  But if you want to get in and out of the building quick or get money with no probing, thoughtful questions asked, the Posey Presbyterian is your man - and in the more liberal denominations your woman too. But I'm a Dozy.  We're the foot soldiers of Presbyterianism, it's Bible fodder, if you will.  Dozys can always be identified after Sunday service by the broad, reddish mark made by resting our foreheads reverentially against the pew in front of us.  We have developed our knowledge of theology via osmosis, or more accurately dozemosis.  We make outstanding early childhood Sunday school teachers because our childlike ignorance allows us to relate to the little ones at their level.  "Yes Kaitlin, I know that when you sing Jesus Loves Me He loves you and when Connor sings it He loves Connor but I'm here to tell you that when I sing it He loves me more because I'm bigger. That's just the way He is!"

Well anyway, back to the deep thinking.  As I understand it, or in reality, probably dreamt it, a key principle in Calvinism is the Sovereignty of God or SOG.  SOG is the idea that God is really God.  Get it? He's not your invisible buddy, your copilot, your shrink or that pious pal who runs errands for you, he's the actual freaking God, the Big Numero Uno, The Creator of the Universe who judges the quick and the dead and if you're not quick about it, He'll darn sure make you dead.  Imagine your toughest boss crossed with Santa Claus - no not the "Ho Ho Ho" part, the "he knows when you've been bad or good part".  Have that in your head?  OK? Now imagine just how many days (hours) it would have taken him before he would have fired (or called the cops on) your ass.  That many?  Remember he knows when you've been lying too, that's more like it.  That's the kind of God we've got.  You see under SOG, God calls all the shots.  Even before the pool table's been built - He knows when you've been sleeping and knows when you're awake before you've been born.  And to say that He has a 'plan' for your life is like saying that my advice to President Kennedy to buy more life insurance after I had seen his assassination and then traveled back in time to be his insurance agent was just a 'lucky guess'.  SOG is that intense.

Thomas "Tommy" Hobbes on the first 

edition of his Big Book of Leviathan.

Hobbes is represented as the giant

King at the top.  This image is 

considered to be the earliest example

of a "Selfie" extant.  It will not surprise you that Hobbes was generally considered by those who knew him to be a 'pompous ass'.

Which is why I suppose it bugged the Pope so much.  After all, if you're the Pope you're supposed to be the 'Vicar' of Christ, meaning His representative here on Earth.  And while you are perfectly happy to have God be a hard ass the better to keep the faithless but fearful in line - you're pretty sure you don't have the chops to channel the Santa Claus role and frankly as God's Number 2, you'd like just a little more autonomy to run your own shop thank you very much.  I mean how can you really be the 'man with the plan' when everyone knows that God is already a few billion  years ahead of you.  Which is why Jean became John and got a Swiss passport: the Pope was that pissed.

It occurs to me that it's dinner time. And while I would never, ever sacrifice my commitment to The Truth for carnal pursuits it's just that we're having steak.  Besides I think this piece probably needs some serious quality control which is why it is called Part 1:  Provisionally Speculative Edition. To whet your appetite, I mean if the steak mention didn't do it, I've included an image of Hobbes' Leviathan to give you a sense of just how Hobbesian my world is going to get.  For what it's worth, here's Part 2:  The "You're not the Pope of me" doctrinal kerfuffle.

On Holland, England, Declarations of Independence and Crazy Ass Admirals

I've been watching Admiral on Netflix. Admiral is a Dutch film about the great Admiral de Ruyter who kicked the British Navy's ass in the 1600s (Brits make the best villains, it's the accent). The movie's great and it reminded me of three things. First of all, English and Dutch are very similar languages - Admiral has a lot of Dutch with English subtitles in it and with both there at once it's surprising to this monoglot English speaker how much I understand - I almost feel like I could be multilingual but......naaaah, who'm I kidding?

Second, American freedom is based upon a Dutch/English Joint Venture. The Dutch had the first modern Republic in the world so when the English finally got sick of their jackass Scottish kings they had a "Glorious Revolution" and turfed them out (The Brits were always good at PR - even back then they were thinking about the tourist trade) . But that meant they needed a new king for the tourists so they imported a slick Dutch model called William (which is a bit ironic because after all, another Willie had invaded England in 1066 and made them kowtow to him in French which no doubt frosted their ale mugs pretty badly). The key selling feature of this guy - aside from him being married to an English Princess - was that he was house trained, specifically House of Commons trained to be a Constitutional Monarch. It's this "Glorious Revolution and King Adoption" that the American revolutionaries based our Declaration of Independence as "Free Englishmen" on. If the Dutch hadn't bred house trained princes then we might have been in trouble.

The third thing that I noticed in this film was that everything comes full circle: the Dutch gave us the Republic thing, whacked a prince with a rolled up parchment until he was trained enough to not wee on Parliament so the English could give us the Glorious Revo idea. And what did we give them in return? The Errol Flynn maneuver whereby movie stars who are supposed to be playing sober captains and admirals instead behave like......well, jackass Scottish kings - forgetting their duty completely and running amuck like baboons with swords and capes. Which is precisely what this de Ruyter hepcat did in the movie.

So thanks Dutch dudes for the constitutional republicanism and capitalism and trade and all that and here's your ridiculous movie cliche in return. Let us know if you need anything else. We've got a really cool large breasted ingenue cliche we call Marilyn Monroe-ism that we can let go for cheap. Or if you're into mid century ass wiggling rock star cliches we can let Elvis' Pelvis go for a song.

Hello

Hello.

It's such a little word. 

Just five letters, two vowels.

Yet it travels farther than any other.

Reaching across canyons that divide us.

Where we sit alone, aloof, waiting to be rescued.

By the brave ones, the ones that dare risk the jump.

We watch and wait for them, in readiness to catch -

the life preserver that saves us from ourselves.

I'm grateful for all the brave souls.

Souls who reached out to me.

Souls like yours.

Bearing a word:

Hello.

This chick is nuts.

I'm waiting for a friend at this topless damn you smartphone spellchecker! I mean tapas bar. I'm sorry but I've been having knock down drag out fights with lady in my phone and I think the cyborg you know what is resorting to sabotage. She's extremely territorial and gets jealous at the slightest provocation. I decided to use the rental car's GPS lady rather than her (she's been deliberately routing me onto giant traffic jams because I turn her off at night but I have to, she won't stop beeping) and she threw a cyborg hissy fit. I'm searching for a nice boring Midwestern man avatar. This chick is nuts.

The Chain

He couldn't make the Wise One understand.

The chain was biting into his ankle.  The unbreakable chain that bound all the Continental children.  Up until now, it had been loose but some of the others had tipped over the edge into the abyss and now it was getting tight.

"Well of course there are problems" the Wise One said in an exasperated tone as he bit into a ripe peach he had just plucked from the tree. "Look at these peaches!".
"Yes, but the chain."
He looked down at the links around The Boy's ankle and their taughtness that stretched off into the distance connected to their friends and their friend's friends and others who were already gone. He looked at his own, which was as loose or looser than than The Boy's had been and shrugged.
"You worry too much."
"But it hurts!" The Boy said, straining against the chain. His shoes skipped a fraction of an inch as he pulled.
"You must be exaggerating because I don't see Cal or Jurgen squawking....." tossing the now exposed pit aside. "Things are just like they've always been, have a peach" proffering the ripe, beautiful fruit to The Boy who had both hands around the chain and his feet jammed and scrabbling the ground.

Off in the distance they could hear Cal and Jurgen laughing and calling back and forth to each other.  They were lying on the ground and their respective chains were dragging them slowly, ever so slowly but they didn't seem cut into their ankles the way it did The Boy's and anyway, they didn't seem to mind.

And the Wise One was right:  things were beautiful.  The trees were filled with fruit, the sky was a sparkling blue and there was a babbling brook darting and dancing all the way down to the abyss. The roar of the water as it fell in almost drowned out the cries and moans of those inside. The Slavic kids scrabbling at the steep sides, trying to stop their slide, the Asians, almost all boys, grim jaws set, climbing over the bodies of others clamped to the wall and the Bantu wails from all the little ones at the bottom - too young and weak to even begin to escape the dark, cold water.

A number of the children walked over to talk to The Boy and The Wise One - the ones without chains.  "Why do you have a chain?" they asked.
"Because we are Continentals!" The Wise One answered proudly.
"But you'll end up in the Abyss"
"No we won't" The Wise One said a little too defiantly as one of the littlest fell screaming down the side.
"Why don't you just unlock your lock? Take the chain off?"
The Boy winced but not from the pain of the chain in his skin but from the mention of the treason he planned.
"There is no key", The Wise One said.  "Well, to use a key wouldn't work", he finally admitted "because all of those other kids further down - the ones that don't realize what is happening to them - would fall in all the faster" he said with an intensity that belied his feigned nonchalance. "There is no choice, we must remain linked no matter what".
"Do you think you're your brother's keeper?" said the Free Leader incredulously.
"Yes, of course, we're the responsible ones"
"Then why are you letting the chain drag you all down to the abyss?  Do you like cold and darkness?"
"No, of course not. But this is what we've always done"
"That's a lie" shouted, The Boy - "There never used to be these tight chains, we all stayed together in the meadow and played but it's only been a little while since we were all chained together, ever since the abyss opened in the middle."
The Wise One rounded on him "for your own good, so you wouldn't stray. Please be quiet, you're making things worse" as The Boy's straining legs and shoes skipped again.

By the by The Wise One wandered off to debate with the Free Ones, he had so much slack in his chains he could walk the entire meadow.  The Boy, exhausted from his fight looked around furtively and digging in his pocket retrieved the golden key that they all had before they accepted the lock and the chain.  But many of the children had been careless or improvident and had lost or sold theirs.  Not The Boy. He looked at the key's gleam - it read in finely etched letters:  "Liberty".  All of a sudden a wail went up among some of the other tightly dragging children who jealously pointed at The Boy, chanting "key, key, key".  He frantically began trying to fit the key in the lock and release it but his hands were tired and bloody from the fight with his chain and he kept dropping it.

The Wise One looked up from his reverie, and called out the alarm to his still loosely chained friends.  As The Boy finally recovered the key one of them kicked it out of his hand and it flew far away....out of reach for the tightly chained Boy.
"Please, he begged, please give me my key back".
"No, you're not allowed to flee."
"For God sakes! I'm going to be dragged into the abyss, don't  you understand?  Please, please give me my key! It's mine! I saved it."
The Free Children came over, looking pensive.
"Well surely you'll help me, please just go get my key - it's right over there.  There's nothing they can do to you".
But they just stood there, staring.
"Why won't you help me?" The Boy cried out.
"We can't" Said the Largest of their group "Every child has to choose to be tied to a chain or to become truly free of their own accord.  We can't do anything except encourage.  It's every child for themselves".
The Boy sobbed as his shoes finally broke their friction connection with the ground and he landed unceremoniously on his back - moving a full half a foot Abyss-ward in the process.  He lay there softly crying as the chain dragged him towards his end.  After a while he began humming and laughing, talking to himself and smiling.

The Wise One turned to the Free Ones "See, I told you he wanted to stay chained" and walked away with his steadily shortening chain in tow.

Chainsaw Juggling

So I'm doing some chain sawing today - it's tough work cutting shrub branches - and I got to thinking about all of those other burly lumberjacks out there in their burly lumberjack outfits with matching burly lumberjack shoes and this is the thing: I don't think juggling running chainsaws is nearly as hard as they make it out to be. In fact I think it's quite simple: you just take a couple of chainsaws like these. Then you fire 'em up and duct tape the button thingy down so the chain keeps moving even though no one is holding the handle - what the faint of heart call a 'safety' feature. You do it just like this....then you hold them like this and toss one and then the other lickety split into the air and....oops.....dang.