Open Source Theology

Carver discovered over 300 uses for the peanut and hundreds more for sweet potatoes, soybeans, and pecans. He revolutionized Southern agriculture and could have become one of the wealthiest men in America. He refused.

When asked why he wouldn't patent his discoveries, Carver replied:

"God gave them to me. How can I sell them to someone else?"

Carver saw his work as a conversation with the Creator. Every morning he walked into his laboratory and asked God what to reveal that day. He understood that his brilliance was a gift — and that gifts are meant to be shared, not monetized.

Thomas Edison offered Carver a salary that would be worth over a million dollars today. Carver turned it down. He lived simply, taught freely, and died having changed the world without extracting a dime from the knowledge God gave him.

Bach composed over 1,100 works — cantatas, fugues, concertos, and some of the most complex music ever written. On nearly every manuscript, he inscribed three letters: S.D.G. — Soli Deo Gloria, "To God alone be the glory."

He didn't write music to build a brand. He wrote music as an act of worship. His manuscripts weren't guarded trade secrets — they were copied, shared, studied, and built upon by every generation of musicians that followed.

What Bach did with those manuscripts shaped the very language of music. His Well-Tempered Clavier — 48 preludes and fugues cycling through all 24 major and minor keys — was a proof of concept for equal temperament, the tuning system that made modern music possible. Before Bach championed it, keyboards could only sound good in a handful of keys. He showed the world that every key could sing. Every piano, every guitar, every orchestra today is tuned to the system Bach helped establish.

His work on counterpoint — the art of weaving independent melodic lines into a unified whole — became the foundation of Western harmony. Haydn studied Bach. Mozart, upon hearing Bach's motets, said "Now, here is something one can learn from." Beethoven was raised on the Well-Tempered Clavier and called Bach the "original father of harmony." Every composer who followed built on the framework Bach laid down.

The reason his influence runs this deep is inseparable from the fact that his work was freely shared. Bach's manuscripts were copied by his students, circulated among musicians, and studied by anyone who wanted to learn. When Felix Mendelssohn revived Bach's St. Matthew Passion in 1829 — nearly 80 years after Bach's death — it was possible only because the manuscripts had been preserved and passed along freely. That single performance sparked a Bach revival that continues to this day.

Modern musical theory — functional harmony, voice leading, modulation, the entire tonal system that underpins everything from symphonies to jazz to film scores — traces a direct line back to Bach. Not because he patented a method or licensed a theory, but because he offered it to God and God gave it to the world.

Today, every music student on Earth studies Bach. His gift to God became a gift to all of humanity — not because someone marketed it, but because truth and beauty, once released, find their own way.

Carver and Bach aren't outliers. They belong to a long line of people who understood that knowledge hoarded is knowledge wasted:

• The monastic scribes spent their lives copying scripture and preserving knowledge through the Dark Ages — not for profit, but because they believed truth should survive.
• Jonas Salk refused to patent the polio vaccine. When asked who owned it, he said: "The people. Could you patent the sun?" His decision made the vaccine accessible worldwide and saved millions of lives.
• William Tyndale was executed for translating the Bible into English. His crime was making God's word accessible to ordinary people. The establishment wanted to keep scripture locked behind Latin and institutional control. Tyndale believed everyone deserved to read it for themselves.
• Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and gave it away. He could have patented the most transformative technology of the 20th century. Instead, he released it freely — and it changed everything.

The pattern is consistent across centuries and disciplines: the people who change the world the most are the ones who give their work away.