Grace via Thomas Aquinas

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Thanks for all your replies. Right now, however, I only have the time to 
stubbornly follow my own thoughts. A few remarks:

It was no accident that I posted this on January 28, the name day of a 
certain author and one of its German readers.

Note that in the final paragraph of AD it also says: "For every wish to 
come true would mean that in the known Creation, good unsought and 
uncompensated would have evolved somehow, to become at least more 
accessible to us." (1085)

A "good unsought" refers us back to Lew's state of grace or epiphany. 
Which, on the other hand, in the eyes of Nate Privett makes him suitable 
for "Pinkerton work"...

Near the end of VL, in his attempt to kidnap Prairie, Brock Vond tries 
to bring about another false ascent: "'The key is rapture. Into the sky, 
and the world knows her no more." (VL, 376) Is it grace, as in Horst's 
case in BE, that Ronald Reagan at the very last moment calls the 
operation off? Prairie later regrets that Brock did not manage to carry 
her away.

For rapture in Aquinas, see:

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3175.htm

I would be very much interested in what the more philosophically minded 
have to say. Wittgenstein's "The world is all that is the case." as far 
as I can tell does not refer to things but to facts or states of 
affairs, and thus not to quiddity in Aquinas' sense.

Perhaps the key to understanding the role of grace and similar concepts 
of theological origin in Pynchon lies in accepting that, as is suggested 
in GR, the invisible powers are not necessarily angelic or divine, and 
certainly not necessarily benevolent. They have their own hierarchies 
and bureaucracies, as is suggested in GR -- an idea that I suspect has 
its origin in Aquinas and his disquisitions on angels and their 
hierarchies. Perhaps among these angelic or invisible bureaucracies a 
"Department for the Bestowing of Grace" may be found?

Aquinas on the "angelic degrees of hierarchies and orders":

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1108.htm

Concepts we commonly associate with Christian theology would in Pynchon 
then be linked to invisible and inscrutable powers giving and
withdrawing grace/participation in divinity at will (the Calvinist 
concept, also very Kafkaesque). But, and probably this would be my 
point, the Thomist model is very clearly a frame of reference and as 
such could be subject to further research.



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