"John Salt" (1959/1985)

“The faith to move mountains is not an empty sophistry, not a hollow vessel of speech,” said Joshua.“There is a power, and we live by that power. The weakest of us live onthe accumulation of power, and those of us who are stronger add continually to that power store. I say to you that it is not a great thing to move a mountain. I say that tohold a mountain in being is a much greater thing?" -- — "John Salt"

“Be quiet.” Polder spoke softly but carryingly in his powerful and intricate voice. His right hand was raised in a gesture of power. In his left hand heheld an attribute, a camel goad. “Watch the mountain,” he said. The mountain moved. — Not to Mention Camels (1976)

Today, I want to consider how the Catholic–Protestant divide emerges in Lafferty’s short story “John Salt.” Read as a con game story—something in the vein of “Hands of the Man”—it's slight. But as a theological parable, it opens up on something deeper in his thought, and that’s where I want to begin.

Lafferty completed it in March 1959. He adapted it into a television play in 1961, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. Years later, he returned to the material and revised the story. The version most readers know was completed in 1984 and published the following year in Slipperty and Other Stories, a collection brought out by Chris Drumm. The largely unknown script version is powerful. It differs in a few details and leaves loose ends unresolved, keeping the pressure on the viewer to answer the story’s questions about faith and its role in the drama. This works as a parable, so in this respect, it’s the more daring artistic work. It would be good to see it in print someday.

The character John Salt appears elsewhere in Lafferty’s work—he has a cameo in “Boomer Flats,” and the next phase of his life is told in the playfully Protestant-titled “Faith Sufficient”—showing that the theological game Lafferty is playing here continues. But Salt’s first appearance is in “John Salt,” a story about low-church Protestantism gone off the rails.

Lafferty rarely confronts the reader with theological themes so directly, though he does at times. The street sermon in Fourth Mansions is one such moment—and it’s no decorative set piece. In “John Salt,” the talk of miracles and moving mountains points toward a question that becomes more complicated in Not to Mention Camels, especially in the difficult passages about what the mountain moving means and what happens to the novel’s protagonist afterward. Both works share a big idea: that seeing faith as primarily internal or psychological is a mistake.

The alternative is that faith is not primarily something one generates from within but something given. This has long been the Catholic Church’s position. It was clearly stated in Dei Filius at the First Vatican Council and restated in the Catechism: “Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him. Before this faith can be exercised, man must have the grace of God to move and assist him; he must have the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, §153).

There is also a supersessionist thread in this story, with a certain kind of Jewish prophetic voice being mapped onto Protestantism, and it seems thematically relevant to me that Joshua’s assistant is a man with a Jewish last name. But I want to set all that aside for now, as being too much for a blog post. The story centers on a rugged, self-styled faith healer named Joshua Halas (a “Levantine Lincoln”), once the simple John Salta name Lafferty tells us both God and the Devil always knew him by. Joshua travels with a small troupe, staging miraculous acts that appear to heal the sick and even raise the dead. His long-time assistant, Alex Carmmanages the illusions through expert makeup and effects. Mary Corsicana, a tired ex-prostitute linked to petty con artists, is reluctantly recruited as the latest “miracle.”

The con is simple: a harness made of blood-stopping piano wire, water-soluble bruises, and prop drugs from a pharmacist in Sapulpa. During a revival, Joshua attempts to heal Mary’s withered hand, which is, in effect, just a special effect. Blood returning to it should make it appear healed. But this time, something goes wrong. The hand stays withered. “I feel nothing,” Mary says. The crowd confirms it: “There is no change.” Joshua breaks. The narration spares no detail: “Then it was that Joshua went to pieces… Then he began to scream… He is not well yet.” This is the miracle in the story. It sets up Mary’s future and the John Salt readers will meet again in “Faith Sufficient.” The story ends with Mary, freed from a role she never wanted, finding peace. “Mary Corsicana still has a withered hand… she runs a pleasant business.” Etc.

This story belongs to an old tradition, stretching back to the medieval fabliaux and Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale, and forward into the modern world with works like Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry and HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones. But it would be a mistake to treat it as just another satire about religious fraud, or simply another of Lafferty’s stories about con men. It is something else—a strange and subtle parable about Christian justification, written before Lafferty had fully formed his identity as a writer of genre fiction.

Some of the story’s stranger elements—Joshua’s references to the Book of Enoch, his recognition of Muhammad as a “brother,” his use of the Qur’an during a revival in Ponca City, Oklahoma—are worth considering. They make the story far more radical than it might seem at first, as when Joshua shouts, “Know you all that there were other prophets than Jesus… one of my brothers wrote ‘Indeed we have readied Hell as the dwelling place for the unbelievers. And we will set Hell on that day before them!’”

What holds it all together? the question of how justification relates to faith. This may be the hardest topic in Christian theology outside the Atonement, and all I can offer here is a sketch. Still, I think it’s what Lafferty wants his readers to wrestle with. To get there, I’ll outline the basic difference between Catholic and Protestant views. It’ll be quick and rough, just enough to reach the heart of the debate. Even so, it doesn’t fully satisfy me. It's here to help make sense of how this issue haunts the story.

Both traditions agree that salvation comes by God’s grace and is received through faith in Jesus. But they describe that faith differently. Protestants, especially those in Reformation traditions, emphasize sola fide: that we are justified by faith alone. Good works matter, but only as a result of true faith, not as something that makes us right with God. Joshua hits this note when he talks about The Elect.

Catholics, on the other hand, teach that saving faith is “formed by love” (fides caritate formata). Grace enables trust in Christ, but also invites cooperation, through love, the sacraments, and good works, which truly shape and grow the believer’s righteousness. Protestants tend to say Christ’s righteousness is imputed to the believer at justification, while Catholics describe it as infused. a gift that begins something and continues through a process of transformation.

In short, Protestants tend to stress faith’s trust, apart from works, as what justifies. Catholics stress faith’s unity with love and the believer’s cooperation with grace. Both views are in play in the story, with Joshua being a parody of an extreme Protestant psychologization of faith as a font of power.

While Lafferty turns up the volume by pushing Joshua so far that he becomes a heretic, speaking from non-canonical texts and the Qur’an to manipulate his Okie crowd, many Protestants describe faith in psychological and volitional terms. It is an inward act of trusting Christ (fiducia), built on understanding the gospel (notitia) and agreeing to it (assensus). This trust often comes with a sense of personal assurance. The Spirit makes such faith possible, but the emphasis tends to fall on the believer’s conscious reliance on Christ’s promises.

Catholic theology frames faith differently. It treats faith as a supernatural gift, an infused virtue (habitus) by which the mind, moved by grace, assents to God’s truth because of God’s authority. This faith is given and sustained through the Church and the sacraments. It doesn’t require certainty to be real and is made complete, “formed,” by love.

Both views affirm that grace begins with God. But Protestants typically emphasize faith as the believer’s instrument for receiving grace. Catholics emphasize faith as grace itself, implanted and raised up in the soul.

So that is the deeper architecture of the story. In “John Salt,” Joshua Halas is an exaggerated example of the first view. Lafferty tells us that even as a young man selling potato peelers, he did it with Pentecostal flair. “He brought a pentecostal touch even to peddling potato peelers,” Alex says. Joshua becomes a preacher who claims that “The Mountains and the Seas and all the Universe are held in being by the Faith of the Elect… all sickness and maiming and insufficiency is from lack of faith.” That line reveals the story’s savage critique of a faith reduced to inner willpower or mental force—and sets the stage for the irony of Mary’s withered hand.

Much else is going on here, with young John Salt’s dismembering of the bull terrier and its connection to the resurrection and the life being an instance of what I have called iconographic insetting (“Concepts). Anyone who reads the story should have in mind the Gospel account of Jesus healing a withered hand, told in all three synoptics. Lafferty reverses that event. Mary’s hand remains withered forever. This is the real miracle: peace through redemptive suffering.

Lafferty writes, “Mary Corsicana still has a withered hand, and she will have it till the day she dies.” He tells us she now runs a small business: “Mary Corsicana’s Coffee Corner, Mountain-Grown Berries, North Slope Only. Gored Ox and Italian Bread.” In this, the short story version, Lafferty leaves the reader with the Eucharistic host, a comforting contrast to the teleplay, which ends

ALEXS REACHES UP AND TAKES THE LANTERN FROM THE SCAFFOLD. HE TAKES THE OTHER ONE FROMTHE FLOOR. HE EXTINGUISHES THE ONE AND TURNSTHE OTHER VERY LOW      ALEX     It is time to go, Mary. JOSHUA STILL SCREAMS TINNILY ABOVE.

Order	Phrase	Category	Source	Note
1	Raising a man from the dead	Biblical motif	New Testament (e.g., John 11; Acts 9)	General reference to resurrection miracles.
2	Faith to move mountains	Biblical	Matthew 17:20; 1 Corinthians 13:2	Hyperbolic image for the power of true faith.
3	Hold a mountain in being	Theological riff	Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3	Twist on God sustaining creation; claims sustaining > moving.
4	Levantine Lincoln	Historical/Cultural	Abraham Lincoln; Levant region	Compares Joshua’s look to Lincoln with a Middle Eastern cast.
5	Dynasthe piein to poterion? (Can ye drink of the cup?)	Biblical (Greek)	Mark 10:38; Matthew 20:22	Jesus’ question about sharing His suffering.
6	Led into the desert	Biblical	Exodus; Matthew 4:1	Desert as place of testing (Israel; Jesus’ temptation).
7	Striven with principalities	Biblical	Ephesians 6:12	Spiritual warfare against principalities and powers.
8	Woe to thee, Chorazin! Woe to thee, Bethsaida!	Biblical	Matthew 11:21	Jesus’ rebuke of unrepentant cities.
9	Woe to thee, Ponca City!	Geographic twist	Ponca City, Oklahoma	Modern stand-in for condemned biblical city.
10	Thou shalt be thrust down to Hell	Biblical	Matthew 11:23	Warning to Capernaum adapted to Ponca City.
11	If the miracles had been in Sodom… it would have remained	Biblical	Matthew 11:23–24	Sodom as archetype of condemned city.
12	An adulterous generation asks for a sign	Biblical	Matthew 16:4; 12:39	Jesus’ rebuke of sign-seekers.
13	If they will not believe Moses and the Prophets… not even a man risen from the dead	Biblical	Luke 16:31	Rich Man & Lazarus parable.
14	Where the Eagles are gathering	Biblical	Matthew 24:28; Luke 17:37	Apocalyptic proverb.
15	Withered hand (healing)	Biblical	Mark 3:1–5	Classic healing motif used for staged miracle.
16	Pentecostal touch	Religious movement	Pentecostalism (20th-century)	Fiery revivalist style applied to salesmanship.
17	Lightning of heaven (calling down fire)	Biblical motif	1 Kings 18; 2 Kings 1; Luke 9:54–55	Elijah’s fire / disciples’ zeal.
18	Magdaline	Biblical/cultural	Mary Magdalene	Alludes to ‘fallen woman’ turned penitent.
19	Evangel (of Joshua Halas)	Biblical/linguistic	Greek euangelion (‘gospel’)	Revival framed as gospel meeting.
20	Elect / elder elect	Biblical/theological	Romans 8:33; Colossians 3:12; 1 Peter 1:1–2	‘Chosen’ of God; cosmic scale here.
21	Archangel	Biblical/angelology	Jude 1:9; 1 Thessalonians 4:16	High-ranking angel.
22	Sons of God (not all fell)	Biblical/angelology	Genesis 6; Job 1–2	Fallen vs. faithful angels.
23	I will never die / countless ages lived	Legendary/Apocryphal	Echoes Enoch/Elijah	Immortality motif.
24	Raise a dead man	Biblical motif	Gospels; Acts	General claim of resurrection power.
25	Prester John	Medieval legend	Prester John (Priest-King)	Mythic monarch used to suggest longevity.
26	More blessed to give than to receive	Biblical	Acts 20:35	Saying of Jesus quoted by Paul.
27	The poor you will always have with you	Biblical	Matthew 26:11; Mark 14:7; John 12:8	Jesus’ remark about enduring poverty.
28	The rich man will come hardly into the Kingdom	Biblical	Matthew 19:23–24	Wealth as hindrance to salvation.
29	Other prophets than Jesus… ‘We have readied Hell… set Hell on that day’	Qur’anic	Qur’an 18:100–102 (paraphrase)	Hell prepared for unbelievers.
30	Gardens (admitted to the gardens)	Qur’anic trope	Qur’an (multiple)	Paradise imagery.
31	Bolts of the iron door in the pit	Biblical/apocalyptic	Revelation 9; Job 38:17	Abyss imagery of locked depths.
32	Nineveh did penance	Biblical	Jonah; Matthew 12:41	City repented and was spared.
33	Give you a sign… to help your unbelief	Biblical echo	Mark 9:24	Language of doubting father’s plea.
34	Living Water	Biblical	John 4:10; John 7:38	Spirit / eternal life metaphor.
35	We strive with Principalities and Powers	Biblical	Ephesians 6:12; Colossians 2:15	Explicit spiritual warfare phrasing.
36	Resurrection and the Life	Biblical	John 11:25	Jesus’ self-title.
37	Go out from her! (exorcism command)	Biblical motif	Mark 5:8; Luke 4:35	Casting out unclean spirits.
38	Everybody dies once	Biblical	Hebrews 9:27	Appointed for humans to die once.
39	Gored Ox (shop name)	Biblical law / idiom	Exodus 21:28–32; idiom ‘whose ox is gored’	Play on biblical legal phrase.