Religious Tolerance? Guidelines for Christian behavior

In a previous post, I indicated that I believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation.

OK. So how should I act if I believe that?

1) I should love those who are not of my own faith, or of any faith. I should truly love them, unselfishly, and not just because I am trying to rack up some sort of score as winning others, but as detailed in 1 Corinthians 13, where Christ-like love is presented. That kind of love is a love that expects no reward. There is no excuse for persecution, or for ramming my beliefs down someone else's throat. In fact, I find good Biblical evidence that such behavior is not at all what Christ had in mind.

Am I always going to achieve that sort of love? I'm afraid not, but, God helping me, and me allowing God to help me, I can, at least some of the time, and should aim for it all the time.

2) I should try to represent Christ to the world, hoping that others will see some of Him in me, and be attracted to Him.

3) I should help those who are working to evangelize others toward belief in my own faith, by means consistent with the first two points above. (Sometimes called missionaries or evangelists.)

4) Related to 1) above, I should not attempt to have Christianity forced on others by my government. This applies, for one thing, to students in the public schools.
However, if Christianity is invited into those schools, in a way not inconsistent with the U. S. Constitution, I can help to present Christ, for example to after-school clubs attended with parental permission on a voluntary basis.

5) Again, related to 1), I should not oppose non-proselytizing behavior in public by those of other faiths, such as wearing of clothes or hair styles consistent with their particular religious beliefs, in public schools, or in the public in general, but I should expect that, say, wearing a shirt with a Bible reference would also be tolerated.

6) I should not expect laws specially favoring Christianity (or any other religion), in the U. S., where I am a citizen. I should not work to keep, in the law, tax exemptions for Christian churches, or Christian religious holidays, and other such special treatment, unless the law is equally helpful to those of other religions.

7) I should expect my government to work for religious freedom in other countries, in non-coercive ways. Such religious freedom should be for Christians, and also for those of other religions.

8) There seems to have been a tendency, in the past, to impose Christianity on a country or region by the sword, and expect all under that government to at least pretend to be Christians. This was deplorable, and should be, insofar as possible, repudiated. The current equivalent, in some Muslim countries, is also deplorable, and should be repudiated.
There are, occasionally, people who do this on a much smaller scale, forcing pliable individuals into some cult or other. That, too, is deplorable.

9) I've never experienced it, but the Christianity I follow should work well as a minority religion. In fact, it probably works better as a minority religion, rather than as one that operates as a majority.

Thanks for reading.

Religious Tolerance? Why I believe that Christ is the only Savior

Is Christ the only way to salvation? How tolerant of other beliefs should Christians be?

Tolerance, especially tolerance of the religious beliefs of others, is important enough that the Wikipedia has an article dedicated to it.

C. S. Lewis is often considered to be one of the most important Christian writers of the twentieth Century. Here's what David C. Downing had to say about this matter (in Into the Wardrobe: C. S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles, an important book about Lewis. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, an imprint of John Wiley & Sons, 2005):
. . . Lewis rejected both universalism and predestination as negations of free will. His position is better described as "inclusivism," the idea that Christ's reconciling work may sometimes apply even to those who are not aware of it. Lewis did not feel that he was being unorthodox in this matter. He refers several times in his letters to Christ's portrayal of judgement in which he welcomes those who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and visited the sick, saying that all such service done for the least of his brethren is accounted as service done to him. (84-5)

Note that Downing does not say that Lewis believed that salvation could be obtained without Christ. He did believe (As shown in The Last Battle, the final book in the Narnia series) in what Downing calls "inclusivism," which Downing explains in the previous quotation.

What does the Bible say? (I am taking, as a given, that, although we may not understand it perfectly, what the Bible says must be taken seriously, as the Word of God. I recognize that that, in itself, is religiously intolerant. So be it. One has to start somewhere. It seems to be as valid, and logical, as starting with what you want, or what you think God should have said.)

I believe that there is a sin problem in the world, and, particularly, in the humans who live in the world, including me. The Bible teaches that. So does today's news. Sin brings physical, and, more important, eternal spiritual death. Salvation means having sin forgiven, and being allowed to enter heaven. (I am aware of some of the controversies surrounding what sin is, and whether we can ever be free of it, but never mind.) The sin problem needs a solution. That solution, as presented in the New Testament, is Jesus Christ.

In Matthew 1:21, Jesus is called the savior. He is so called several times in the Bible.

Luke 2:22-32 describes Simeon's encounter with the infant Christ. In this passage, Simeon describes Christ as the Savior. Granted, Simeon is not reported as having said that Christ was the only Savior, but it seems pretty clear that he wasn't looking for any other means of salvation.

In John 8:12-30, John tells us that Jesus told the Pharisees that, unless they believed in His divinity, they would be condemned in their sins.

In John 10:1-18, Jesus explicitly describes Himself as the only way to salvation. He also predicts His death and resurrection, which brings up the question of why, if there is some other means of salvation, would Christ have been sent to die for us?"

In John 14:6b, Jesus says: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. . ." (ESV)

In Acts 4:1-12, Luke tells us that Peter spoke of Christ as the only way to salvation.

In Acts 10:34-43, Luke tells us that Peter told Cornelius that Christ makes forgiveness of sins possible.

In 1 Corinthians 3:11, Paul says that Christ is the only foundation.

In 1 Timothy 2, Paul tells us that God wants to solve the sin problem, and that we should pray that everyone will be saved. He says that doing pleases God:
3 This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. (ESV)

The meaning of some of the book of Revelation is not always clear, but it seems to clearly present Christ, the Son of God, as triumphant over all others, at the end of the world as we know it. For example, see Chapter 7, which describes a great multitude, from every ethnic group, worshiping the Lamb, Christ, and saying that salvation belongs to Him.

A reader might think "well, he started out with an intolerant belief, so it's no wonder that he finds what he expected to in the Bible." Fair enough. But, at the least, I hope any such reader will understand why many of those of us who call themselves Christians, and who believe that the Bible is the word of God, also believe that there is only one way to eternal salvation, namely belief on Christ Jesus as Savior and Lord.

I recognize that many people are uncomfortable with the last belief. However, someone once said that, if there were a hundred ways to salvation, humans would want, and expect there to be, one hundred and one.

In previous posts, I considered the matter of what Christians believe, and said a little bit about how they should behave.

In a subsequent post, I have mused about how I think that Christians should act, given a belief that Christ is the only savior.

Thanks for reading.

What Christians Believe: Behavior

In a previous post, I indicated that the Nicene Creed is often taken as a summary of what Christians believe. I pointed out that it says nothing about some pretty important things, such as sex, power, and money. Why not? Surely not because the Christians who adopted this creed were ignorant of behavior problems related to these things.

Perhaps they couldn't agree on sex, power, and money.

But, much more likely, they saw sexual, relational, and possession behavior as subordinate to the belief expressed in the creed, especially to the Lordship of Christ. The section on Christ begins by describing Him as Lord, and ends by saying that his kingdom will be eternal. It also calls him a judge.

If I truly accept Christ as my Lord, I should do what he wants me to, and not do what He doesn't. My sexual life should be above reproach. I should not abuse any power I might have over others, and I shouldn't seek power for its own sake. I should realize that there are things much more important than possessions, willingly share at least some of what I have with those who are less fortunate, and not make the pursuit of things the most important aspect of my life.

My Lord was once asked to indicate which of the many Old Testament commands was most important. Here's what 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (ESV)

If I don't do these things, I may be judged. Besides, my Lord said "So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets." (ESV)

Thanks for reading.

What Christians Believe

What do Christians believe? That's a good question, and the answer, whatever it may be, will certainly not please everyone. However, let me have a stab at it.

C. S. Lewis wrote Mere Christianity, a twentieth-century attempt to explain what Christians believe. He attempted, I believe successfully, to consider the beliefs that are common among Christians.

The Wikipedia tells us that a creed is "a statement or confession of belief," and that such creeds are often part of a religious service.

Two of the most important creeds in the history of Christianity are The Apostles' Creed, and, later in history, The Nicene Creed, which was developed from the earlier one. Many Christian denominations use one or the other of these creeds in their services, and one or the other (or both) of them are often used as a distillation of the beliefs common to Christians.

Here is the 1975 Ecumenical version of the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one God,

the Father, the Almighty

maker of heaven and earth,

of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

the only Son of God,

eternally begotten of the Father,

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made,

of one Being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us men and for our salvation

he came down from heaven:

by the power of the Holy Spirit

he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;

he suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again

in accordance with the Scriptures;

he ascended into heaven

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,

and his kingdom will have no end

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of Life,

who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.

He has spoken through the Prophets.

We believe in one holy catholic* and apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead,

and the life of the world to come. Amen.

*Protestants, take this word as meaning "universal," in other words the church world-wide, all the people who worship Christ as savior and Lord.

These 30 or so lines do, indeed, cover what strikes me as essential Christian beliefs, and I would say that if a person does not believe these things, such a person should not be called a Christian.

There are a couple of problems, however.

One of those problems has to do with the acceptance, or use, of one or the other of the two most important creeds by evangelical churches. There is little such use. Why? Not, I think, because evangelicals don't agree with the creeds. But evangelicals emphasize the Bible as the source of God's revelation, and these two creeds are not biblical. They were written after the last book of the Bible was written. It is also true that the creeds only speak of what Christians believe about God. They don't speak of how we know about God -- the means of revelation -- very much. True, the Nicene Creed does mention the scriptures, and could be taken as implying that its entirety comes from the Bible, but it doesn't say that.

It is also true that evangelicals largely have distanced themselves from formal rituals in worship, except, of course, that we have our own rituals. There is, I think, a fear that reciting the same thing, however good it may be, over and over, tends to turn it into a meaningless ritual. That danger is real. However, my personal view is that there is an even larger danger in not reminding ourselves of our core beliefs, perhaps not at every service, but often.

In evangelical services, the sermon is usually the high point. In other churches, the recitation of one of the two great creeds often is the high point.

Another problem with the Nicene Creed above is that it says nothing about Christian behavior. To state the obvious, it says nothing at all about sex, power, or money (and a lot of other things).

In subsequent posts, I hope to consider the issue raised in the previous paragraph. I also hope to consider the question of Christian tolerance, or intolerance -- must Christians believe that those from other faiths cannot be saved from eternal death? (The next post, on the matter of behavior, is here.)

Thanks for reading.

Ten recent books that claim that evolution and Christian faith are compatible

Steve Martin has posted a list of ten books that, in his opinion, are reasonably well-written (all by scientists) and "[promote] the compatibility between biological evolution and an Evangelical expression of the Christian faith"

See his post for the list. I've read some of these, and need to read some more. Unfortunately, several of these were published by obscure publishers, and may be difficult to find. One exception is The Language of God, by Francis Collins. The paperback version was published by the Free Press in 2007, with the hardback version published in 2006. Collins has recently retired from working several years as the US head of the Human Genome project. Because of his prominence, and the importance of the book, it should be found in most public libraries. If it isn't, ask them to add it to their collection. Although I haven't read all of the books on Martin's list, I would guess that the Collins book is the best one, for most readers.

I did a series of six posts on Collin's book. The last one of these is here.

Thanks for reading.

Can science and religion become integrated?

Can science and religion interact fruitfully with each other? I think so. I am not alone. Ian G. Barbour has been the leading voice, insisting that such cooperative interaction, or, as he puts it, Integration, is possible. He has categorized the possible interactions between science and religion as Conflict, Independence, Dialogue, and Integration, and argues that Integration is possible, and desirable. See here for scriptural reasons for Integration.

A recent issue of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science (not readily available on the Internet) considers Barbour's ideas.

Taede A. Smedes, in "Beyond Barbour or Back to Basics? The Future of Science-and-Religion and the Quest for Unity," in the March, 2008 issue, pages 235-258, has some serious criticisms of Barbour. So does Sjoerd L. Bonting, in "Is There a Future for the Dialogue?" (pp. 227-234). Bonting defines science as the natural sciences, only, excluding most psychology from the natural sciences. He says that the different areas of the natural sciences ". . . develop theories from observations and experiments, frequently aided by mathematics." Religion, however, is harder to pin down, says Bonting. Religion is:
. . . a phenomenon with several facets, such as experience of the transcendent and the sacred, belief, spirituality, mysticism, prayer, worship, moral awareness, and theology. Because of its multifaceted nature I claim that religion is not a suitable partner for the dialogue with science. (p. 228)

Barbour is not quenched. "Taking Science Seriously Without Scientism: A Response to Taede Smedes," (pp. 259-269) is his response. He concludes his contribution by expressing his continued optimism for future constructive interaction between science and religion.

If God is the author of the objects that science studies, and has also revealed Himself through the Judaeo-Christian religion, then surely there is a place for positive accommodation between them, and Christians ought to work toward such positive accomodation.

Thanks for reading.

Fantastic literature as a preferred medium for presenting Christian truth?

In a previous post, I considered aspects of Christianity in fantastic literature. I said that I did not think that fantastic literature was any more suitable than any other kind of literature for presenting fiction with a Christian world-view. However, in this post, I muse on the possibility that some Christian truths may be better presented in fantastic literature than in any other kind of fiction, and ask you, the reader, to respond, with other examples.

I believe that fantastic literature is an excellent place to portray an unfallen planet, inhabited by one or more unfallen rational, sentient species. C. S. Lewis did this superbly, in my opinion, in his Out of the Silent Planet (Malacandra had three such species). James Blish also considered this, from a different standpoint, in his A Case of Conscience.

Lilith, by George MacDonald, considers submission in ways that I am not sure would be possible in more realistic fiction.

Susan Palwick considers the matter of seeing Christ in other people in her The Necessary Beggar. The fantastic nature of the story makes this possible in a unique way -- the ghost of an alien speaks to a fundamentalist preacher and his faith is renewed.

I have discussed the question of vengeance in the works of Jack Vance, not because Vance writes from a Christian world-view -- he doesn't -- but because Vance uses fantasy to portray vengeance in many different ways.

Are there Christian truths that would lend themselves especially to portrayal in fantastic fiction? Are there authors who have used fantastic fiction especially well to consider some Christian truth? Let me know what you think, please.

Thanks for reading.

Templeton Foundation: "Does Science Make Belief in God Obsolete?"

My personal answer, of course, is "no!"

The Templeton Foundation has posted a web page, which I have not yet fully explored, with the title indicated above. There are statements from a variety of people, giving different answers. I expect that this will be an important resource on questions of faith and science.

I found the essay by philosopher Mary Midgley to be especially insightful. (The essays all seem to be brief.)

Thanks for reading.

Eifelheim, by Michael Flynn

Eifelheim, (New York, New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2006) by Michael Flynn, was a nominee for the Hugo Award in 2007. I try to keep up at least a nodding acquaintance with some of the Hugo and Nebula Award books, so I read Eifelheim, and I'm glad I did.

The Wikipedia article on the book is here. I confess -- I wrote a little of the article.

I didn't really expect to run into two important theological questions in Eifelheim, but I did. Flynn sets much of the book in Germany of the 1300s. That seems like a strange setting for a science fiction novel, but the reason so much of the book is set there is because it's about aliens crashing to earth at that time and place.

Flynn hangs two interesting theological questions on the encounter between aliens and medieval Germany. The first is, "Where is God when things go badly?" (The plague is one thing that goes badly, in this book. See here for another post, quoting Eifelheim, and an even more celebrated science fiction work, on this question.) The second question is, "Can aliens be converted to Christianity?" Flynn's answer is "yes." Some of the aliens become believers. Some of the humans think that this is monstrous, and some think that these conversions are miracles of God.

There are some more typical science fiction matters in the book. One of these is communication between species. The aliens don't look much like humans, and they don't speak as humans do. So Flynn considers communication from both technical and cultural angles. There are twenty-first century scientists in the book, and there are considerations of cosmology, and of historical research, and they are interesting.

To me, however, the real meat of the book is Flynn's portrayal of a German village, set in the Black Forest, in the 1300's. He seems to have done his homework. The various characters, peasants, soldiers, Lord, and priests, ring true. Especially, their religion rings true. As Flynn put it:
I have tried to depict the milieu of the mid-fourteenth century Rhineland as accurately as possible, but that is difficult enough to do for early twenty first-century America, let alone a time and place where the worldview was so different from our own categories of thought.
For one thing, they took Christianity seriously; in many ways, more seriously than modern Bible-thumpers. At the same time, they took it more matter-of-factly. (p. 315, "Historical Notes.") Flynn certainly took Christianity seriously in this book.

It was a good read, and, as I have said, it considered two deep, and interesting, theological questions. I'm sorry that it didn't win the Hugo.

See here for a post on extraterrestrial religion.

Thanks for reading.

Science versus Christianity? I don't think so.

A commenter on a previous post said, in part:

The scientist Stephen J. Gould said the world can be divided into two "majesteria." One is the physical world of evidence and experimentation. This is where science goes. The other is the world of thoughts and conjecture and belief. This is the world of religion. . . .

The creationism/evolution debate is caused by people leaving their magesteria. Creationism and Intelligent design are unscientific, just as denial of a soul is atheistic. Thus, unless people want Darwinism to be taught in Church, they must stop trying to insert Creationism and ID into science class. One is supported by fact, one by millenia of scripture. They cannot and should not be mixed.

The reference is to Stephen Jay Gould, one of the great popularizers of biological science of the late twentieth century. In Rocks of Ages, one of his many books, Gould proposed that science and religion are Non-Overlapping Magisteria -- each is legitimate, but they don't have anything important to say to each other. On the face of it, that's an attractive view. Science can't answer a lot of "why?" questions, and religion doesn't produce valid equations for gravitational attraction. However, there are some problems with such a view.

This scheme results in the trivialization of religion. Science, after all, is based on facts, and religion is only a matter of opinion, it is often said. In a way, that's true, but there are opinions in "science" that masquerade as facts. For religious persons, the things that are believed are also facts, although they can't be demonstrated experimentally.

For the Christian, there is another problem. That problem is that God has revealed Himself to us in multiple ways, and it is shortsighted and dangerous to ignore any of these ways. (I am not attempting to cover the subject of all the ways God is revealed to us in this post.) Why do I say this? Because of the Biblical evidence. Psalm 19 and Romans 1 tell us, respectively, that
1 The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
2 Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
4 Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.

and that "20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. . . ."

Not only that, but, as I was forcefully reminded in yesterday's sermon at the church I am presently attending:
Colossians 2:1 For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, 2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
(All quotes from the ESV)

If all treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in Christ, surely that includes knowledge about quarks and ecosystems, quartz and energy. How, then, can Christianity be isolated completely from science, or how can science be completely isolated from religion? I am not arguing that only Christians can do effective science, or that the New Testament is a primary text for courses in astrophysics or microbiology, but that Christ, the Bible, and scientific findings are all ways of knowing about God. Nor am I arguing that we correctly understand all scripture, or all scientific findings.

Ian Barbour has been a leader in what he calls integration of science and religion. I think that, rather than what Barbour calls "conflict" or "independence," is the proper relationship between these two important areas of human thought.

Thanks for reading.

Mourning, in Matthew 5:4

Matthew 5:4. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted--This "mourning" must not be taken loosely for that feeling which is wrung from men under pressure of the ills of life, nor yet strictly for sorrow on account of committed sins. Evidently it is that entire feeling which the sense of our spiritual poverty begets; and so the second beatitude is but the complement of the first. The one is the intellectual, the other the emotional aspect of the same thing. It is poverty of spirit that says, "I am undone"; and it is the mourning which this causes that makes it break forth in the form of a lamentation--"Woe is me! for I am undone." Hence this class are termed "mourners in Zion," or, as we might express it, religious mourners, in sharp contrast with all other sorts (Isa 61:1-3; 66:2). Religion, according to the Bible, is neither a set of intellectual convictions nor a bundle of emotional feelings, but a compound of both, the former giving birth to the latter. Thus closely do the first two beatitudes cohere. The mourners shall be "comforted." Even now they get beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Sowing in tears, they reap even here in joy. Still, all present comfort, even the best, is partial, interrupted, short-lived. But the days of our mourning shall soon be ended, and then God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes. Then, in the fullest sense, shall the mourners be "comforted." Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, by Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown. (Public Domain. Emphasis added.)

In church yesterday, the pastor said that the mourning of Matthew 5:4 is not to be taken as mourning for, say, the loss of a loved one. I decided to check this out, and found that, according to the commentary quoted, he was correct. This, to me, is a powerful passage.

Gene Wolfe's "Long Sun" books

Often, when I write about literary works, I try not to give away the plot, because I suppose that, once in a while, there may be someone reading this blog who has never read the work under discussion, but decides to try it. This post will be my first one about the four "Long Sun" novels by Gene Wolfe. In this case, the plot is so complex that I'm not sure that I could give it away. Let me rephrase that. The basic plot can be described in a sentence or two, but such sentences would leave out important and interesting parts of these stories. This is not surprising, since many critics, and readers, would say that Wolfe belongs on any reasonable short list of the best writers of fantastic literature who write in English. I will not try to hide the plot in the posts I write about these books.

Here's the basic plot: The Whorl is an enormous hollow spaceship, which is gradually deteriorating. Silk, a young priest, has a spiritual awakening, which culminates in his congregation leaving The Whorl at the end of the fourth book.

The four books are Nightside the Long Sun, Lake of the Long Sun (both 1993, and combined into Litany of the Long Sun, 1994) Caldé of the Long Sun (1994) and Exodus from the Long Sun (1996) which latter two were combined into Epiphany of the Long Sun (1997).

The population of the Whorl is large, probably at least millions, and lives on the inside of this giant space ship, which is mostly an enormous hollow space, with the people living in cities on the inside of the outer wall. (There are tunnels in the wall, and some people live in the tunnels.) The Long Sun is the object that illuminates the interior of the Whorl. It is an artificial sun, apparently suspended along the axis of the ship, and there is a mechanism which sequentially darkens parts of the Whorl's interior, so that there is night and day in this great ship.

Caldé is the title given to the ruler of Viron, the city where Silk lives. Although I can't determine the origin of the word, I would guess that Wolfe found it somewhere. He has a genius for finding obscure ones. Some used in these books are manteion, the house of worship of the religion of Viron; Maytera, the title of females dedicated to the service of the religion -- think nuns; Prolocutor, the head of the religion; Ayuntiamento, the government of Viron; and The Juzgado, the prison.

Here are some key on-line references about Gene Wolfe's "Long Sun" series.

The Wikipedia article is here.

Nick Gevers, Wolfe critic par excellence, has written about the four books, and about connections with Wolfe's other works. In this article, he presents evidence for such connections, and argues that Silk, the main character, is a Christ-figure. In this one, he considers Silk further, and also discusses augury, an important part of the books. (See here for the Wikipedia article on augury. This page discusses Augury in the ancient world.)

Dave Langford has written reviews of the books. These are found here.

Somewhat shorter articles on the series are found here and here, in web pages that also contain material on additional Wolfe works.

The author, Wolfe, has responded to some questions about the book, sometimes cryptically, sometimes more clearly.

I have posted about Wolfe previously, here.

Thanks for reading.