predestination & the preterite
Monte Davis
modavis at bellatlantic.net
Wed Jul 9 17:22:55 CDT 1997
Remember that Augustine, after a Christian childhood (bless you, Monica)
spent fifteen years or so as a Manichaean -- then swung back with all the
redoubled ambivalence of a de-conversion.
Manichaeism had a short run around the Mediterranean, and is remembered
chiefly as a label applied (mostly sloppily) to Christian heresies. But it
did last for a thousand years or more in places from Persia to China... and
it was *extremely* heavy on the division into the elect, the "lay"
Manichees (with at least a shot at elect status), and the deeply,
double-dyed damned remainder of humanity.
It also had its own rococo elaborations of Gnostic cosmology and
eschatology (which hardly needed it, if you ask me)... and lots of
purification to find the divine spark within, which was unaccountably
dropped into this corrupt old world, etc.
Anyway, just wanted to note that the spectrum of "Calvinist" doctrines had
been well explored long before Jean C. preached, or the first proto-Mynheer
looked speculatively at those mud flats on the Rhine delta.
-Monte <Gwenhidwyite Buddhist, third class>
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