Free will/Calvinism in a nutshell

[psychic_serpent]

No: HPFGUIDX 78572

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Melanie " <mss4a at c...> wrote:
> Sounds like Dumbledore's something of a Calvinist (at least as far 
> as believing in predestination goes). Consequently, I'd like to 
> shift gears and try to explain predestination in a way that 
> hopefully makes some sense and will allow us to make peace with the 
> concept.

<snip> 
 
> Now, narrow down the range of choices even further. Let's say that, 
> at any given moment in my life, I have only one real choice -- even 
> though it seems to me like I have several. I make my choices 
> willingly, therefore I am responsible for my choices. Even though I 
> was not actually *free* to choose the things I did *not* end up 
> choosing, I made all my choices willingly.
> 
> I'm sure someone out there can explain it better, but I hope that 
> made sense.

No, that explanation does very nicely.  In fact, I wouldn't be 
surprised if this was the very thing to which she was referring when 
she talked about worrying that people will work out what will happen 
in the books if they know very much about her religious affiliation.  
As she is a member of the Church of Scotland, which essentially makes 
her a Presbyterian, that would possibly imply that she does in fact 
believe in predestination (although this isn't necessarily so just 
because it's a well-known tenet of the church--I'm a Presbyterian 
too, and my personal jury is still out on this).  However, if this 
does carry over into the series, this could mean that now that we 
have a Prophecy, we should fully expect it to come true.  In OotP she 
even has the Divination-skeptic, Hermione, talking about REAL 
Prophecies.  And Harry certainly seems to believe it will come true 
(or he wouldn't have been quite so depressed at the end of OotP, IMO.)

In fact, one might even look on her choice of time travel styles as 
illustrative of her philosophy concerning this issue.  Perhaps PoA 
gave us all of the information we needed about it.  When Harry made 
choices during the time-travel sequence, he did in fact decide what 
he was going to do and did it.  It wasn't that he had no choice--but 
what occurred was going to occur no matter what.  (In fact, it had 
already happened, since he'd gone back in time.)  In some other 
people's time travel stories alternate universes can be spawned; not 
so in hers, as far as we have seen (or at least not when one uses a 
Time Turner).  Events were always going to unfold in a particular 
way, and just because Harry didn't know that Buckbeak wasn't executed 
until he traveled through time didn't mean it was ever any 
different.  I think a good Calvinist would heartily approve of her 
time-travel sequence in PoA. <g>

--Barb

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