Let's think about Byron the Bulb

[Ian Livingston]

The scene regarding preterition that comes most pertinent to me is the
seance scene in GR when Leni sits in the corner for Peter Sachsa's
channeling of Walter Rathenau.  The elect here seem to be upper-middle class
Nazis and their ilk.  The preterite should, thus, include Leni, but she is -
pardon the double negative - exempt from preterition by her association with
the medium.  Rathenau actually reverses the role early in the seance by
stating that the Nazis, by cause of their limited interest in finding only
legitimation for their "cartelized" state, are actually the preterite here.
So to whom is Rathenau speaking?  Leni is there without any real mission
greater than to seek safe haven for herself and Ilse, "a dream of
gentleness, light, her criminal heart redeemed...." (158 Penguin edition.)
The great illumination in this sequence is Rathenau's instruction to his
audience that they "must ask two questions.  First, what is the real nature
of synthesis?  And then, what is the real nature of control?" (170.)  I read
this as a clue to identifying the elect and the preterite.  Synthesis is
linking.  For instance, just a few pages later, in the Christmas Day
exchange between Pointsman and Gwenhidwy, the bugs that eat Gwenhidwy's
lentils are described as "agents of unification" for their inclination to
pierce "hard interfaces."  Unification is the Erotic impulse, the combining
of elements to make complex wholes.  Therefore the way to election is via
"piercing" the "hard interfaces" to the "tranquil world: the temperature and
humidity staying nearly steady, the day's cycles damped to only a soft easy
sway of light, gold to antique-gold to shadows and back again" until "the
crying of the infant reache[s] you... as bursts of energy from the invisible
distance, nearly unsensed, often ignored.  Your savior, you see...."
(176-7.)  These alchemical conditions imply a sort of controlled, womb-like
environment wherein synthesis can take place.  And synthesis seems paramount
to salvation, redemption.  Is this an invitation to contemplation?  A little
old fashioned navel-gazing?  Hm.

I confess I have not read Calvin and thus am not qualified to comment on his
philosophy, but this thread has raised my curiosity.  What is Calvin's
actual teaching on preterition v. election?  (That omnipresent v. again....)


On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 8:35 AM, Michael Bailey <
michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:

> Bryan Snyder wrote:
> > Really one is either aware of their own "election" or "preterition"
>
> or, perhaps, one asserts one's election and the preterition of others
>
> which (though I was brought up Presbyterian) I think is something
> Calvin invented (or, if not invented, stated more baldly and at greater
> length
> than anyone thitherto) but is a horribly mangly malice-aforethought
> twisting
> of Jesus' thought: the last shall be first.  The Beatitudes.  The
> Golden Rule, for Christ's sake!
>
> Showing up in the Adenoid episode of GR, and the old millstream episode of
> M&D,
> in Pynchon, the introduction of a new hazard (election then becoming
> "distance from the Adenoid") or a disruptive technology (election then
> becoming
> the land deed to a stretch of water with a gradient that can turn a mill)
> plays havoc with established patterns of election and preterition...
>
> also the idea of rejection the interpellation of being preterite, or
> intercepting
> it by embracing one's preterition, while not invented by P, is used to
> great effect...
>
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