Grace again. Misc.

[David Morris]

Wow! You are proposing a thesis in your Paul/Calvin predestination parallel
that I'd never thought of.  I can't recall where Paul proposed
predestination.  Can you point me to that text?

Paul seems to have supplied all the strident text presently used by
religious right to condemn homosexuality.  Not a good start.  Jesus never
condemned sexual practices.  Quite the opposite.  So fuck Paul!  Also, fuck
Calvin!

David Morris

On Fri, Aug 4, 2017 at 2:38 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.
> >
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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