And also Nick,
Two years ago, when I lived alone in that fateful apartment where I wrote my first twenty-nine letters to you, I picked up a sheet of paper and began writing down a a free-flowing chart of Christian topics. It took several days to complete. I had a goal of writing down every imaginable theme that I could touch upon in my book series, which was about God, which meant that it was about everything. The scope of what I planned to write was huge. The result of my completed chart looked a little bit like this one, except around four or five times more cluttered. I wrote down everything that I wrote down here, plus a comprehensive list of other things that ultimately had new meaning when seen through a Christian light, from wine-tasting to eminent domain.
That chart still exists out there somewhere. I'm sure it's at my mother's house, under a pile of other papers, because I remember seeing it while shuffling through other notes. I actually had pans for putting it up on this blog someday. That didn't happen, and what you're getting is this list that keeps things at their basics.
The reason I revisited the idea of this chart is because I though, "If you're going to write a story about one Christian subject, what other subjects do you need to cover in order to explore that one subject as thoroughly as possible?" Every story has its themes, and then there are the sub-themes. As it turns out, the answer to my question is "all of them."
This is where I get nerdy, because I'm tying this whole thing to an engineered logical language called Lojban.
The basic premise of Lojban grammar is that it's based off of predicate logic. A Lojban statement follows the pattern of [(argument1)(argument2)(argument3)(argument4)(predicate relationship)]. These statements are called bridi. The arguments are called sumti, and the predicate relationships are called selbri. With me so far?
Alright, so let's comme up with a random statement. Let's say that I said, in Lojban, [John Mitchell Lojban English cu tavla]. What do all of those words mean? What purpose do they fill within the bridi? That is determined by the selbri (cu tavla). "Cu" marks the beginning of a selbri, and the selbri in this case is tavla. Tavla is the element of the statement that defines the relationship between all of the prior words. The word tavla predicated a speaking relationship, and the pattern for tavla statements is "this is a speaking relationship, therefore we know that there is a speaker (argument1), and that there must be someone being spoken to (argument2), and there must be a subject being spoken about (argument3), and the speaking must be in some sort of language (argument4)." To translate my original statement, I basically said "John talks to Mitchell about Lojban in English."
When making this statement, one doesn't have to fill in all of the arguments, but it's implicitly understood that all of them are there. Perhaps the arguments are unknown, or they are obvious. In any case, the existence of one necessitates the existence of the others. For example, I could just make the elliptical statement that argument1 is talking, in which case I say [John cu tavla]. This basically translates as "There exists a speaker, known as John (who speaks to someone about something in some language)," or more simply, "John speaks."
In English, the only elliptical statements that we can make are those with the subject and the predicate. However, I could also make an elliptical statement with only the audience, and say something that translates to "Speaks Mitchell," or more fully, "There exists an audience consisting of Mitchell (who is spoken to by someone, on some topic, inn some language." I could also say "Speaks (about) Lojban" or "Speaks English." All of these, by their very nature, assume that there is, in the broadest sense, a speaker, an audience, a subject, and a language.
When defining each of the arguments, they are each defined by their relationship with the other arguments in the predicate relationship. So ve tavla, which means "the fourth argument in the tavla relationship," would have to be fully defined as not just "a language," but more fully as "the spoken language of a speaker for an audience about a subject." Due to the nature of the selbri, we have to specifically refer to spoken languages when using the term ve tavla as an argument.
Let's talk about how one can create an argument by modifying a selbri. The word klama refers to the selbri relationship "There exists a go-er (argument1), which therefore means that there is a destination (argument2), which also requires a rout (argument3), and a means of transportation (argument4)." Let me put in a few words, then, and some of them are going to be Lojban words, so bear with me. [ve tavla Quebec ocean klama cu klama]. Translation: "The language travelled to Quebec across the ocean via the means of the go-ers." I put the words that were originally in Lojban in italics. To put it in a far more extended English, I could say "There exists the fourth argument of the tavla relationship, which is the spoken language(s) of a speaker(s) intended for an audience(s) (which, by the way, may or may not be themselves), which is also the first argument in the klama relationship and therefore the go-er, which goes/comes to the destination of Quebec, across the route of the ocean, using as a means of transportation the first argument of the klama relationship, which is the go-er(s) who, like the language, travel to a destination by a means by some unspecified other means of transportation."
Can you see how each argument within the predicate relationship also implies another predicate relationship? In theory, if you were to fill in every detail possible, you'd keep on going on forever until you had a cumbersome, but otherwise completely unambiguous statement that told you not only that a travelers brought their language to Quebec with them, but probably everything about that language, and the history of the travelers, and the history and geography and culture of Quebec, and list of every species of fish known to swim in the Atlantic Ocean.
Are you getting an idea of what a predicate relationship is? I hope so, because this thing is pretty hard to describe without charts and diagrams, which I'm not about to draw up for se tavla.
Anyway, I'd imagine that the Lojban word "cevni," which mean refers to a selbri relationship in which the first argument is "god," would imply a predicate relationship with an awful lot of arguments.
[There exists a (god), according to (believers), of (nature), with (personality), who (does things that he is capable of doing, by his nature, and inclined to do, by his personality), who is glorious by (standard of glory), who claims (people) as his own, whose existence implies (certain things about humanity), who has (a given relationship with some humans), and (a certain different relationship with other humans), who is understood by (a certain means of understanding . . . ect.]
You'd probably get something that included everything on my flow chart.
I remember one reading 1 Corinthians 14:19, in which Paul said that he would rather speak five intelligible words that would spread the Gospel than thousands of unintelligible words in tongues. I once shared this this verse, and it ticked off a biblicist who said that I was preaching blasphemy to suggest that the Gospel could be shared in just five words, and that in order to be saved someone had to absolutely read all of the words of the Law and instructions for Christian living. But I do believe that if you just share some of the most important Christian particulars, then you're really shared everything else. All the rest is implicit after certain key details have been revealed. I believe that so long as you can impress upon someone what Grace is, that all the rest will come with time. They will develop a theology, a sense of holiness, a sense of relationship, simply by exploring Grace. So perhaps, in most cases, people would need more than five words, but if they're taught the basics of Jesus' ministry, which reveal His character, and also the revelations of God, such as His existence as a Trinity, that are particular and not things that we could have come up with through philosophy, most of the rest will come to people as they explore the related truths that these particular revelations predicate. First and foremost, they should see the character of God in these things and see that His character is defined by Grace.
Soli Deo Gloria,
John
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