Let's think about Byron the Bulb

[David Payne]

On Sat, 10 May 2008 (16:40:35 -0400) Jill (grladams at teleport.com) wrote:

> Let's compare. The dodo gets killed off, so it is _elect_ or is it
> _preterite_? The multiple choice answer is b, preterite. But does the dodo
> metaphor extend out to all the people who would be killed by the bad
> cruisaders [...] Calling the elect the Chosen people always makes me think of the Jews,
> yknow, complicating matters in that they got gassed, the chosen people got
> gassed [...] I think the elect and preterite thing always confuses me because there's a
> radical point where it flips back in on itself, paints itself into a corner
> and struggles with words words words

Brilliant posting, Jill! Let's keep extending the dodo metaphor. If the dodo are the preterite (because they were killed rather than passed over), then their killers were god. Which, they were not. The preterite/elect only flip-flop because those who record history call themselves the chosen, and fate being fickle, history turns and the "chosen" are in gas chambers.

Now if there is a god and she really has selected the elect, then these sorts of flip-flops do not happen, tho it may appear so to mortals who read the invisible hand of god in every turn of events, unable to read the entire history which is yet to be written.

At the risk of stating the obvious, if we had a copy of On Preterition we might know more about TRP's thoughts on the topic. I suppose that I should not assume that we've all been turning back to this same passage in GR (which casts William Slothrop as Judas Priest?):

      William [Slothrop] must've been waiting for the one pig that wouldn't die, that would validate all the ones who'd had to, all his Gadarene swine who'd rushed into extinction like lemmings, possessed not by demons but by trust for men, which the men kept betraying . . . possessed by innocence they couldn't lose . . . by faith in William as another variety of pig, at home with the Earth, sharing the same gift of life. . . .
     He wrote a long tract about it presently, called On Preterition. It had to be published in England, and is among the first books to've been not only banned but also ceremonially burned in Boston. Nobody wanted to hear about all the Preterite, the many God passes over when he chooses a few for salvation. William argued holiness for these "second Sheep," without whom there'd be no elect. You can bet the Elect in Boston were pissed off about that. And it got worse. William felt that what Jesus was for the elect, Judas Iscariot was for the Preterite. Everything in the Creation has its equal and opposite counterpart. How can Jesus be an exception? could we feel for him anything but horror in the face of the unnatural, the extracreational? Well, if he is the son of man, and if what we feel is not horror but love, then we have to love Judas too. Right? How William avoided being burned for heresy, nobody knows. He must've had connections. They did finally 86 him out of Massachusetts Bay Colony—he thought about Rhode Island for a while but decided he wasn't that keen on an-tinomians either. So finally he sailed back to Old England, not in disgrace so much as despondency, and that's where he died [...]
     Could he have been the fork in the road America never took, the singular point she jumped the wrong way from? Suppose the Slothrop-ite heresy had had the time to consolidate and prosper? Might there have been fewer crimes in the name of Jesus, and more mercy in the name of Judas Iscariot? 
_________________________________________________________________
With Windows Live for mobile, your contacts travel with you.
http://www.windowslive.com/mobile/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_mobile_052008