The Fate of Prophets
by Philip Ekstrom
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
part 1
An Encounter
“But it doesn’t work that way!” Andrew said it quietly to himself. He didn’t want to interrupt the speaker and make a scene. But a few people seated around him heard it, and one of them was Paul Cornu, the assistant... well, the assistant minister, one might say.
They were at Luther House, an old private residence north of campus that now served as a student religious center, a sort of mission to the University. The original living room and dining room of the house were two ends of the same large space. It was now half-full of folding chairs, and most of the chairs held a university student. A short, greying man in a clerical collar stood facing them and talking about miracles.
The speaker eventually finished and invited questions. There were a few, and then it ended. Some students remained seated in clusters, talking. Most of the rest drifted toward the refreshments.
Andrew stood quietly, frowning. He looked ready to turn and leave as Paul moved over to him.
“Hello, I’m Paul Cornu.”
“Andrew Cantwell. I’ve heard you talk. You’re the only one I always enjoy.”
“Thanks! I heard your comment, and I’m curious. How does it work?”
“Sorry to be rude. Actually, I’m not up for an argument just now.”
“No argument in sight. I really want to know what you are thinking.”
Andrew’s frown returned, and then softened. “Alright. How should I say this?”
Paul waited quietly. After a pause, Andrew began: “Even if there is a God, and even if he is paying attention to the world, he always obeys the rules he has made for it.”
“So: no miracles.”
“No little ones. No suspending the rules so that Sally can pass that test, or even so that her little brother won’t die. The whole universe seems like a miracle and a wonderful one but, wherever it came from, there are now rules for it. Once we discover a rule, we find that nature always obeys that rule. That’s how we can tell when we have one. Throw a rock and it always comes back down. Always. And so on.”
“But human situations are not as simple as physics.”
“Sure. Much too complicated. We can’t see the future very well. Someone may be very worried about a situation he sees ahead and, much to his amazement, he gets through it okay. But most people get through most things pretty well even if they can’t see in advance how they will or remember afterward just how they did. No matter how surprising this is to the poor worrier, it’s not uncommon. Much less is it miraculous.”
Paul made no reply but stood, indecisive. A dozen conversations sputtered and flowed around them. Finally: “We need to talk.”
* * *
First meeting
The Bell Street Tavern was a student hangout down by the water. When Andrew arrived, he found Paul already sitting in a booth, glass in hand, with a pitcher and a second glass on the table in front of him. Andrew sat, poured, and took a long drink. “Ahhh. Just right on a hot day.”
“How did the history paper go?”
“Finished it last night. It felt pretty good. My excursion out of campus nerd-ville seems to be working out.”
Paul smiled. “My own excursion out of psychology into chemistry also worked out pretty well, but I didn’t go far in. Just enough to satisfy the distribution requirement.” He took another swallow of beer. “Ready to talk about miracles?”
“I suppose. Not sure I have much more to say.”
“Then tell me about yourself. If you find our speakers so hard to bear, why do you keep coming?”
“They are usually not bad. Sometimes they are exciting, or at least surprising. The approach to religious feeling through art and literature and drama is new to me. Now and then one of your speakers comes out with something like ‘secular salvation’ when talking about a play, and I think: ‘Can you even say that?’ I sure couldn’t at home, and that kind of thing still startles me. One way or another, I keep coming back for more.”
Andrew drank a little beer slowly while musing. “I spent a while with the Quakers, and some time with the Unitarians. They both have a wonderful community spirit and a great sense of social justice, good people to have in the world, but no pageantry, and especially the Quakers have no theology to speak of. You Lutherans really do have a theological structure, and I’d like to make one of those work.”
“So, intellect is your home ground while the emotional and affective part of religion is attractive but new to you?”
“Yeah, I suppose so. I was raised to be religious and, for a long time, I thought I was. Small-town Protestant with a stiff old conservative for a preacher. God’s frozen people. Lots of duty, not much joy. But it came apart on me.”
Andrew turned and faced Paul more directly. “Here’s a real turning point. I must have been an early teen. One Sunday, the pastor set out to explain why Jesus had to be born and then get killed to — I don’t know — to balance some kind of cosmic account so God could forgive us. The pastor really tried to be logical, and I perked up. In my family it would never do to ask a basic question like that. I’d probably be told to read the Bible more and to be better at my devotions. Or something. So here it was: one of the things I really wanted to understand but somehow knew not to ask about.
“About halfway through the sermon, I realized that he didn’t know the answer, either! Not in any terms that I would find useful. I was on my own if I was going to make sense of it.”
Andrew leaned back against the padded back rest of the booth. “There are things that I love about religion, and they are usually quite foreign to my childhood experience. I often listen to evensong at the cathedral on the radio Sunday evenings. Sometimes I go there and participate: sit in a pew, kneel, and all that. I can just hear the monks singing that same office a thousand years ago, and it echoes down the centuries. But, intellectually, it makes no sense anymore.”
He took another deep drink and sat there, again musing. “I’m not sure I knew all of that before I said it.”
“So, it’s an emotional pull and an intellectual push away,” said Paul. “How would you re-do the intellectual part to make it work for you?”
“Funny you should ask. I tried writing a modern version of the creation stories in Genesis. The original is not bad if you let it be symbolic, but people keep trying to take it literally. All right then, how about a version you really could take literally? I tried to keep in all the majesty while making it consistent with our best understanding today.”
“And how did it go?”
“Well. Uh. Not too bad.”
“Could I see it?”
* * *
Origins
In the beginning was light, held in a little space. Bright and hot was that light. Matter arose from the light and returned to the light.
Space grew larger, and the light waned. Matter still came of the light, and gave its substance back, but some matter remained, and of that remnant are all things made.
Matter that came from the light was at first of an airy kind, and could form neither water nor stone, nor the body of any living thing. There was yet no eye to see the light nor spirit to know of it, and nowhere was any solid place.
Still space grew, and it grows today. The light dimmed, and it dims today. The time of first light passed, and darkness arose, but the remnants of that light may still be seen by those who look well with the eye and the hand and the mind.
Matter gathered into clouds, and of those clouds came the first stars. Stars burned and gave light, and a new brightness shone out in the fading of the first light. The largest stars flared brightly and returned their substance to the clouds. In their burning and in their ending, they changed the matter in them and made from it that matter which we now know.
Then new stars came of the clouds, and again some flared and died. In their generations, there came to be planets with the stars. So it was that the sun formed from its cloud, a star like other stars, and with it was the earth, made from the remnant of the first stars.
The earth was hot, and its very stones were melted, but it cooled and there came rain. Then there was light, and a solid place, and the waters, yet on earth was there no eye to see the light and no spirit to know of it.
In the water came the first life, in the sea and in the waters by the sea, made of water, and the land, and light of the sun. The first living things were small, of a kind not now to be found. They barely lived, but from them came offspring that prospered.
Then by slow change there came new kinds. From the first living thing, and from the first kinds of living things, came all kinds now found on the land, and in the air, and in the sea. For the mark of those that first thrived is written in all things that now live. It may be seen by those who look well with the eye, and the hand, and the mind.
The new kinds were first single and small. Then did single beings join to make groups which lived and died together as one body.
And it came to pass that there were hunters and hunted, living things that were food for others, and living things that ate them. For the action of one was against another. One shaded the light from another or ate the food of another or the substance of its body. Living things did die, and whole kinds did die, but some did better suit the conditions of their place and time, and their offspring filled the earth and the sea. The price of their strengthening was paid by the weak and by the unlucky, and the offspring of those are not found.
Some living things did join as separate bodies but in one group, knowing each other and acting together. And thus came spirit into the world, for to know another and to act together is the beginning of spirit. Spirit served both those that hunted and those that were prey. It grew in living beings as their generations came, and some in which spirit was the most strong did prosper. And the hunted came to know that it died, and the hunter to know that it killed.
Then was there light, and the land and the sea, and eye to see it, and spirit to know of it.
Of those in which spirit was strong came mankind. It is a mark of mankind to live in groups and act together. For every man may act as he will in some things which are his own, but most of his life is not his own. For this price a man must pay, that his acts are bounded by others. But with this price mankind buys a terrible strength. Weak is man in tooth and arm. A lion may kill him easily. Yet mankind is strong, and lions still live only because mankind permits it.
* * *
Copyright © 2025 by Philip Ekstrom
