Determinism & Apocolypse: the Grim Irony of Our Fortunate Fall

[Michael Bailey]

alice wellintown  wrote:
>
> >From 'The Gnostic Pynchon' Dwight Eddins, (1990)
>
> Pynchon specifically identifies Calvinism, and in particular
> the Puritanism of Slothrop's New England forebears, as the
> precursor of this modern religion of death--an
> identification echoed by Voegelin's analysis of Puritanism
> as a form of gnosticism.

apologies if this is an ignorant question, but I have various good
excuses for not reading TGP...
my curiosity is, Gnosticism as opposed to, or compared to, what?

Gnosticism to me is Dead-Sea-Scrolls-there-can-be-some-direct-knowledge-of-
God-achieved-by-discipline-(possibly-esoteric)

If the Calvinists and Hobbesists embodied a mystical tradition in a polis
in a way that is a cognate of the Essenes,

what other tradition or directive or impulse was there that they
ignored to do this?

is there not a substantial mystical basis behind orthodox Papism and
Judaism, and maybe even British "common law",
to such an extent that these schools could also fulfill the definition
of gnostical teachings?



-- 
Like other sounds of the 60s, that of coffee percolating is mellower
than what we hear today
(still working on this phrase)