Grace?

[ish mailian]

Thomas,

Theological concepts indeed. As far as I can tell, the key figure here
is Descartes, who studied with Jesuits, thus  Aristotle/Thomas and
then applied his Subjective *I*  to Thomas's defense of God's
existence, not to deny it, but, as his Meditations  argue, to shift
the proof of existence from God's Nature/Action to Man's thinking.

As far as I can tell, P does not use Grace or any other concept  to
make of Man a thinker who in the act of thought has an equivalency of
knowledge of the essences, that is to say, humans are not, even with
the shift to Descartes, privy to the knowledge of Thomas's God.

As far as what we or the Chums fly toward? Well, Grace, of course.
Something we move toward by God and God alone, something we may want
to know by can not. And since we can not know it, how can we know we
want it? Because it is God's will. or will be when He elects us. Of
course, this is why Pynchon finds the Preterit so compelling.

>
> In theological/philosophical terms, seeing things as they are means
> understanding things in their quiddity or "whatness", perceiving their
> essence and not their outward appearance. We know, from his essay on Sloth,
> that Pynchon is familiar with Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica (and Aquinas
> turns up in his writings as early as "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna").
>
> Cf.:
>
> "But the angelic and the Divine intellect, like all incorruptible things,
> have their perfection at once from the beginning. Hence the angelic and the
> Divine intellect have the entire knowledge of a thing at once and perfectly;
> and hence also in knowing the quiddity of a thing they know at once whatever
> we can know by composition, division, and reasoning. Therefore the human
> intellect knows by composition, division and reasoning. But the Divine
> intellect and the angelic intellect know, indeed, composition, division, and
> reasoning, not by the process itself, but by understanding the simple
> essence."
>
> Summa Theologica, I, Question 85, Article 5
>
> Against this background, seeing things in their quiddity would mean to see
> things like God or angels do, having "the entire knowledge of a thing at
> once and perfectly". Is this not the state of mind (or grace) that befalls
> Lew and that Gottfried aspires to?
>
> We don't know what "flying toward grace" means for the Chums, but we know
> that they have to shield their eyes against the revelation (against the
> day/light?) that is to come:
>
> "They will put on smoked goggles for the glory of what is coming to part the
> sky. They fly toward grace." (1085)
>
> As usual, exactly what kind of revelation is to be expected remains unsaid
> -- the blinding Glory of God, Rilke's terrifying angels, "the light beyond
> metaphor" (Derek Walcott)...
>
> I also hear echoes of Fausto Majistral's confessions, in particular "life's
> single lesson:  that there is more accident to it than a man
> can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane" and the task of the poet to
> invent "pious metaphor" to cloak the isolated and accidental nature of
> things.
>
> I suspect that Aquinas may also be helpful in understanding the "unsought
> good" becoming "more accessible" to us at the end of AtD. There seem to be
> some important theological concepts at play here.
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l