In the morning, Kaleva says, "do you want to get some breakfast and then go to the library? --Or, uh, riding? Or promenading in the city? Or hunting-- I guess not hunting--"

"The library would be great! If that's okay with you."

Kaleva bounces and then he looks self-conscious and stops. "Yeah! Uh, I'll show you to the library and get you some bread? Normally I take books to the woods so that no one can make me go to lessons but um I think I have something I want to research actually."

"Okay. I want to read as much as I can about recent history and how your afterlife setup works, and see if the French Bible is the same as ours if you have one."

Lev collects bread and cheese and berries from the kitchen, with extra cheese for Bruce and sausages for Kaleva, and then disappears into the stacks. 

Bruce eats his berries first so that he cannot get any on the books and then dives into the stacks himself. How is this place organized? 

By topic, although the organizational system is different than the Dewey Decimal System!

Here's Religion, and there's a section on Christianity; a few shelves over is History.

(Kaleva is not far away looking at Psychology.)

What have they got on Christianity? He really wants to see if their Bible is the same, especially genesis so he can figure out if they had something different going on with their Fall and what the implications are for their salvation if they did.

Books about Christianity include:

-Christianity: The First Thousand Years
-Twelve Hard Questions For Christians
-Cold-Case Christianity: A Detective Investigates The Case for Christianity (by Basil of Baker Street)
-A History of Christianity in France
-Faith Hope Love: The Essentials of Christianity
-How Christianity Saved Civilization... And Why It Must Do So Again
-Exploring The Pagan Roots of Christianity

Genesis matches up almost perfectly except that it takes place in Peru and keeps referencing llamas. 

Some of these look like they might have written by heathens. But of course a country of mostly heathens wouldn't know to ban books that threaten their citizens' souls. He's very curious what heathens write, now, and he can't actually get any more damned, and nobody here is likely to arrest him and nobody at home is going to find out, and he's very curious . . . he's definitely going to read all of these, but he starts with "Twelve Hard Questions for Christians." He finds a corner in the back of the stacks to read it, where he should be able to hear anyone coming before they can see him, and sticks it inside the copy of "Faith Hope Love" just in case.

The twelve hard questions for Christians are:

1. Why do the gods exist, why weren't they mentioned in the Bible, and why do they claim the world was created in a way totally unlike the way Christianity claims it was?
2. Why do people go to an afterlife nothing like the described Christian afterlife?
3. Where do stars come from?  
4. Why is it possible to be mistaken about what God says?
5. Why doesn't God concretely act in the world?
6. Why didn't God tell everyone about His plan for salvation?
7. Why does God command in the Bible actions well-known to be evil?
8. Why do Christians perform actions well-known to be evil when they are commanded by God?
9. Why did God stop performing miracles as soon as miracles could be studied?
10. Why do reliable studies show that prayer has no effect?
11. Why does magical study show that Communion is identical to bread?
12. Why are there Christian priests on the Isle of the Lost?

Okay yup this book was definitely written by a heathen. It's like the feeling of skipping class to go birdwatching times a thousand. Also he doesn't have any paper to take notes on but if he goes looking for some then someone might see him, and that would probably be fine but nope.

1: Either the "gods" here are demons, or they weren't involved in the events of the Bible, but the latter is weird because the Bible covers a lot of time and you'd expect any powerful beings around to get involved somewhere. Really it's very odd how much of the Bible is the same when everything else is so different.

2: Bruce has no idea and really wants to know! 

3: Is there some reason why God wouldn't have created the stars here? What? This makes no sense and he needs a book on astronomy.

4: It's always possible to be mistaken about anything. People are mistaken about things all the time. Sometimes people pray and think God is guiding them to do a thing and actually it's just their own selfish impulses.

5, 9, and 10: What???? Does God not act in the world here??? That's extremely weird and kind of disturbing, does that mean if someone gets an incurable disease there's just no hope for them at all? Maybe the author is just making things up.

6: It is pretty weird that Christianity didn't spread effectively here, but if there are actually no miracles--no healings, no gifts of languages--then maybe missionaries would have had a harder time.

7: Someone who actually had faith in God's goodness would have the immediate response that the author is wrong about what's evil. Bruce just has uncertainty and pain.

8, 10, and 12: Humans are fallen and do evil. Being saved doesn't make you not a sinner, unfortunately; it just makes you forgiven.

11: What would Communion be if it wasn't bread? It's bread. And wine. Wasn't there some obscure early heresy saying that a miracle happened every time it got consecrated? Maybe the author talked to a heretic and got confused.

Bruce puts Twelve Questions back on the shelf and starts Christianity: the First Thousand Years.

Christianity: the First Thousand Years is a history book! The author describes Christianity as originating as an obscure Jewish heresy and speculates extensively about whether there was a historical Jesus. The New Testament is characterized as a book that was put together over the course of hundreds of years, instead of being written by the Apostles; manuscript texts are mentioned, and the author occasionally says that a mistranslation of a verse was probably the original version. It describes theological findings as happening more-or-less as political compromises instead of by a process of divine inspiration. The hierarchy seems very different here; there's a person called a "pope" who's the Bishop of Rome in Italy and everyone has to pay attention to him. (In practice, since locations keep getting cut off from each other by fairies, the local Archbishop is usually the most powerful member of the hierarchy.) Reading the Bible was forbidden because people will misinterpret it; the Bible was translated by heretics. If you pay the church money it will sell you an indulgence and forgive your sins.

The author believes, as a matter of course, that murdering everyone who won't convert to Christianity is evil, and that the Inquisition is evil, and that torture is evil, and offhandedly refers to Hell as an absurdly immoral doctrine.

Oh wow this is a heathen book too, he somehow failed to expect that.

Jesus was definitely a Jew and preached to Jews first, that's the same. Everything else is weird. The part about the New Testament being compiled over centuries would be a very strange thing to make up, at least in Bruce's world where the original manuscripts, in consistent handwriting and miraculously protected from decay, are on display in the great museum-church in Jerusalem.

The church here seems both more centralized and less coherent; again a strange lack of divine guidance. Forbidding people from reading the Bible is awful, but not beyond his imagination; people have done similar and worse things back home. Even selling forgiveness of sins was tried once, briefly; if he remembers his history textbook correctly it lasted about three months before the earth swallowed up everyone involved.

Murdering people who don't convert to Christianity is definitely evil. Even if they're threatening to lead a greater number of people astray it's the lesser of two evils at best; you're supposed to convert them if you possibly can. This world seems to have had a worse Inquisition than his, because there were more heathens around, and it looks like it might have escalated farther than was necessary to protect people even worse than the one back home did, which is awful. He wishes he knew why God didn't make His word clear to everyone here like he did at home. Maybe some of the books by Christians will explain what these heathen authors are getting wrong and it will all make sense, not that everything has ever made sense before.

Does the author say what they mean about Hell being an immoral doctrine? If it exists, how can it be immoral to believe in it?

Torturing people is evil! Worshiping someone evil is also evil!

The idea that if God is evil worshipping him is also evil is novel and disquieting. He spends a while thinking it over, but keeps getting stuck on "If morality isn't another word for what God wants, what actually is it?". He looks through Faith Hope Love: The Essentials of Christianity next. That one definitely sounds like it was written by a Christian and like it might give him some clue about whether there are really fewer miracles here than back home.

Faith Hope Love appears to be under the impression that Christianity is less an actually true fact and more a helpful story you can tell yourself to feel happy and be a good person. It is also pretty clear that Hell is a mistaken doctrine, because God is a God of Love and no God of Love would eternally torment everyone. Obviously.

Wow. What. This is . . . he didn't realize it was possible to think you were Christian and be mistaken. Not even "think you're saved and be mistaken"; this author doesn't seem especially concerned with their own salvation at all. Even if it was legal to publish this at home, nobody would buy it because it's just wrong about the facts. Which, in a roundabout way, does sort of suggest that the other book's thing about the absence of miracles might be true. If there were no prophets to reiterate God's doctrine, no divine hand guiding theologians to truth and striking down those who speak falsehoods in His name, who knows what sorts of confusion could build up over two thousand years? God, have You truly forsaken this world? Why? It's the closest he's come to praying in years; he thought he had given up asking why. He certainly isn't expecting an answer.

Do any of these books appear to have been written by actual Christians, as in people who believe that a good God created the world and sent His Son to redeem it and have accepted that redemption?

The only one that even appears to be trying is How Christianity Saved Civilization... And Why It Must Do So Again and that's mostly focused on why enslaving nonhumans and keeping the children of villains on the Isle is a good idea. 

Does it have a theological or practical justification for either of those? Presumably the right answer on both of those questions is whatever makes it easier to spread the good news to the nonhumans and children in question.

Enslaving nonhumans is good because God only saved humans and He created the nonhumans to be our servants! Keeping the children of villains on the Isle is good because God's justice involves punishing the evildoer even unto the fourth generation.

Kaleva hesitantly sits six inches away from Bruce.

Bruce is lousy at ethics but he kind of suspects everyone in this world is too, and the idea that there are souls that don't have the option to accept Jesus is suspicious. Except the people who died before Jesus didn't get the option in a different way, so, maybe? Even if enslaving nonhumans is right he'd still kind of rather not, but that's not news, he's unrepentantly sinful. 

"Oh. Hi Kaleva. Say, do people who believe in the Underworld think dead nonhumans--animals and fairies and whatnot--go there too?"

"I don't think anyone knows? --Uh. I was reading about nightmares."

Ah, crap. "Okay."