Grace again. Misc.

[Mark Kohut]

All interesting, of course. 

But Pynchon is Catholic, not Protestant, not Calvinist. 

"Puritan" perhaps, as America is/was in his formative years and beyond, and before-- as many have written about.  Roth, The Last Puritan or THE PURITAN MIND, Larzer Ziff for examples, Ziff who tries to subtilize all the paradoxes and their hidden places in America and our minds. 

In Weber, Catholic Spain was a Spirit of Capitalism failure, just misc. 

Sent from my iPad

> On Aug 4, 2017, at 3:36 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> 
> The earliest appearance in the scriptures of the word has the usage of favor: Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. This use appears several times in Genesis and though some say it means mercy it seems to more specifically mean favor.( hence disgraced means shamed/lost from favor) So there is a Hebrew word( chen)meaning favor that is used  frequently in the Torah and is taken up in the new testament 
> by both the gospel writer of the book of John ( the law came by Moses, but grace and truth through Jesus)  and by Paul, who dominates theological interpretation of the life of Jesus( whom he never met, and appeared to know little of his  teachings as presented in the Gospels) .  Paul was multi lingual as a preacher to Greeks, Syrians, Romans and was steeped in Hebrew, the scriptures,Phariseeism and probably Aramaic. It seems likely that he was taking the core concept and word from Genesis and giving it a particularly Christian mystical spin. Paul is the source of the concept of predetermination of the destiny of the individual to be either saved or lost.  That concept was challenged at the time by James, the brother of Jesus and leader of the early church in Jerusalem who did not care for Paul’s teachings, but again Paul dominates the churches interpretation  especially among the Protestants. For many protestants grace became the dividing line between salvation and damnation with this idea being most clearly enunciated by Calvin. The Puritans were Calvinists and P’s personal lineage though with an heretical streak.. 
> 
> I agree with David Morris that despite this weighty background, Pynchon plays with the linguistic nuances that the word( grace of a dancer, graceful exit, graciuos host)  has acquired including letting  the Puritan heritage play out its role among the characters he creates. One must be careful to not overly connect the language of a pyncho character with his own beliefs or language. 
> 
> Luther and Calvin derive their concept of grace, Luther as a function of loving parental abundance and the" finished work of Christ “ and Calvin more mechanistically as a kind of prearranged divine mathematics, from Paul.  
> 
> I spent a lot of years with the Bible and came away with some knowledge but little love for its sway in human affairs or my own life. The Pauine concept of grace and its theological explication seems diseased to me, a way of giving up agency and justifying powerful bullies. I personally use the word only when it is clear I am talking about elegant flow in art or physical movement. That human experience of the transcendent includes mercy and the renewal that mercy brings seems natural and does not  require a lot of theological pyrotechnics.  We don’t need to spend our lives going back and forth on the same bus going one way then the other. Just get off the bus and live.
> 
> I see Pynchon as a humane satirist, a chronicler of alternative history from an outsider perspective, and wildly liberated spinner of 3 dimensional stories that include mythos, conspracy theory,  colorful but credible fiction, and historic events in fairly equal measure.
> 
> 
>> On Jul 29, 2017, at 3:28 PM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> You are the native speaker, Mark, but I would say it's bullshit if you don't provide context. What kind of grace? You have disgrace, you have clumsiness, I'm sure you have more opposites of grace. 
>> 
>> 2017-07-29 21:11 GMT+02:00 Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com>:
>> I suggest "trump"
>> From: Mark Kohut
>> Sent: ‎7/‎29/‎2017 20:06
>> To: pynchon -l
>> Subject: Grace again. Misc.
>> 
>> Gracelessness is an absence of grace, but the English language lacks a word for the opposite of grace.--Cass Sunstein, very recent essay.
>> 
> 
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