Patristics and Sample Chapters of The Last Centurion by John Ringo

John Ringo is an odd bird, even by comparison to the normal oddness of science fiction writers. Ringo can write really really good, bad, and creepily-unwholesome-I-need-a-shower books. Often inside the same cover. So I was more than a bit hesitant to check out the sample chapters for his upcoming book, but I did.

Anyway, I have good news. The sample chapters of The Last Centurion do not involve anything creepy. They do involve vast amounts of infodumps on real life issues combined with sf. This is the sort of near-nonfiction that a lot of sf fans enjoy, because we like absorbing large amounts of data while slotting it into what we already know. (Some people say this means too little character development. I think that, properly done, the information a character likes to impart and how he does it can define their personality. But even if it’s generic, I usually enjoy it.)

In this case, the topic is “What Not to Do in Pandemics”.

Here comes the patristics angle.

In Ringo’s fictional pandemic, the US has an unusually high survival rate despite a lot of bad decisions. This is due in large part to the way surviving Americans take care of their neighbors.

What came to my mind is that his “high trust society” and “voluntary random social alliances” are very largely the same thing as “Christians trying to be Good Samaritans”. Early Christians took care of their neighbors during the ancient pandemics, even though their neighbors couldn’t be expected to take care of them. Even though their neighbors probably thought they were creepy malefici and mathematici, and quite likely had lobbied to have them killed for offending the gods and causing earthquakes. This is why a lot of neighbors, who survived the pandemics with the help of the creepy cross-cultists next door, suddenly found the Christian religion. In great numbers.

Anywhere that Christianity has been followed heartily, you see this same behavior. The problem is that Europe in De Tocqueville’s time was a weak sort of Christendom. A lot of bad stuff had happened — wars, schisms, culture wars, religious wars, etc. The Enlightenment had followed, and that meant that many people thought they were too smart to be religious. Governments were highly suspicious of religions of which they disapproved, but almost as suspicious of the religion they were supposed to affirm. Your neighbors’ parents or grandparents probably had tried to kill your family patriarchs, and lectured them about their shameful belief that good works pleased God, to boot. So a lot of people did their best to stay away from religion, and a lot of people didn’t see a priest or a minister very often. Safer to stay home on Sunday. So traditional religious life was at a low ebb in most of Europe even before all the revolutions started. Those were the societies that DeTocqueville knew — the battered remnants of what had been.

Many immigrants came to America either to build their idea of a truly Christian society, to escape persecution and go somewhere it was safe to be their brand of Christian (or Jew, for that matter — Jews also believed that God commanded them to do certain acts of mercy and other mitzvahs). We know this! It’s not a secret. So it’s no surprise that what DeTocqueville saw was indeed a Christian society. Maybe a little standoffish, granted, but a lot of people who came here had dreamed of being left alone. (Or of having elbow room and a fresh start — the other big reason people came.) The Deist and non-denominational language used in public life and our founding documents probably ties in somewhere — by making it easier for folks of very different sects to share natural law, sort out a common theology of national purpose, and to pray together. Having the ability for outsiders to choose American citizenship makes the association voluntary, and naturalization is almost like a baptism. It’s not an analogy you want to take too far, but it’s not entirely wrong. As Chesterton pointed out, “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence….”

The Constitution has its say, too. “….establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity….” It’s all about love your neighbor as yourself, and treat him as you would be treated. Common. General. Ourselves and our. “We the People” is very close to the assembly of Israel and the ecclesia of Christendom.

So there’s your “random” social association. It’s not random association at all, if the vast majority of a society believes in some sense that all people are your neighbors and all Americans, like all Christians, are your brothers. If you’re here, you’re chosen and have chosen — you’re one of us. That assumption is sometimes stretched to breaking point, but it’s still there in our minds.

It’s not surprising that, in the next chapter, Ringo provides an example of how churches are one of our great strengths during emergencies. Even in a pandemic that would throw local areas back on their own resources, churches would be a great resource.

However, he goes the very long way around, instead of quoting Paul: “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat.’ We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.”

(Btw, if Mr. Ringo should read this — it’s the “teller” in the bank, and the “cashier” in the grocery store. You probably hit the delete key a bit too hard.) 🙂