Calvinism

[foxmoth at qnet.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 23594

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Aberforth's Goat" <Aberforths_Goat at Y...> 
wrote:

a wonderful post, but very long to quote, so I'll cut to the chase

> I was referring to (1). The school division, with the good guys in
> Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Gryffindor and the bad guys in Slytherin, suggests
> a kind of predestination. <<snip>>
> 
 in Harry's world you would just have to check out a guy's school
> transcripts for a read on his fundamental moral status.
> 
> That leads to the two questions on my mind: (1) Is Potter's world really this way? 
	 Dumbledore doesn't seem to think so...he says that predicting the 
future is a very difficult business...so how could the Sorting Hat do 
it? One's Hogwarts house is hardly a predictor of one's fate in the 
afterlife (all four houses have their ghosts). Potterverse souls can be 
lost (to dementors), shared, possessed...can they be saved? We don't 
know. It's clear that the Potterites believe that innocent people can 
be attacked and devoured by Dementors...I think a Calvinist would have 
trouble with that.

2) Would it bother us if the people in Harry's world have a fixed--and 
manifest--moral destiny? Would Jo's world be more or less appealing to 
us if we knew that the canon Draco is basically and inalterably evil 
and headed for the sulfurous pit? Would we be disappointed to assume 
that Harry notonly won't wander over to the dark side, but *can't*  
because he's basically and inalterably good? This may be more of a 
philosophical question than an aesthetic one, but it would certainly 
impinge on the books' universal appeal.
> 
> Those are the questions that are bugging me.
"
 Now doubtless, Jo has already written the end of her story, and in 
that sense, the characters do have a fixed destiny. Whether they are 
destined for the sulfurous pit is another matter, mostly because we 
don't know that the Potterverse contains a sulfurous pit.  There's an 
afterlife,  but we don't know if there's a final judgement awaiting 
anybody. What would be most satisfying to me is if it were left to the 
reader to decide. Then we could go on debating about Snape's twisted 
psyche for generations.

Pippin