Calvinism

[caliburncy at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 23616

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Amanda Lewanski <editor at t...> wrote:
> Just to toss out a thought on choice. It depends on where you sit.
> 
> Even in a perfectly Calvinist, predestined world, the inhabitants
> thereof would *still* believe they were using free will. They 
haven't
> read the ending, they're caught in a perspective necessarily limited 
by
> their participation in the drama, and as such, their choices are 
just
> that--choices. They themselves do not know whether they are elect or
> not. That their fate is predestined is not therefore relevant, since
> they can't really know and must still make the best choices they 
can.
> 
> So I'm not sure whether establishing that the characters actually 
made
> choices or not is relevant; characters would make choices anyway. 
Isn't
> the point that the choices they make reveal them, not whether they 
truly
> make choices?
> 
> --Amanda, struggling to remember her Milton and loving this
> hairsplitting thread!

I believe Amanda's right that the existence of choice/free will 
doesn't rule out predestination where Calvinism is concerned--although 
in other circumstances I would certainly think it would.  This is why 
Calvinism has always been a little bogus to me.  You'll have to 
forgive me as my knowledge of Calvinism isn't up to snuff any more (at 
one point I knew much more about this), but as I recall your choices 
revealed to others around you whether you were elect or not.  So it's 
like you couldn't change your destination, but people still chose to 
act in a certain way that reflected that they were probably elect.  I 
know I didn't explain that clearly.  Sorry about that.

Anyway, I do think that Snape kind of causes problems with the idea 
that all Slytherins are doomed.  Because as you said, Mike, if you 
stray from the path, but later return to it, you would still be elect. 
 It seems to me that Snape, though he may have strayed, is basically 
good enough to argue that he is elect.  I suppose he might change his 
colors again and become evil and negate this--but I doubt it so I'm 
really not planning on this contigency.  Maybe you addressed and 
refuted this already.  I've read the entire thread pretty much as it 
was posted, by even in the short span of time since then my memory is 
already waning.  I'll have to go through it a second time, I guess, 
and check and see.

-Luke