From: "Alex David Groce" <adgroce@eos.ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) Ex-lurker
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1999 10:34:51 

On Apr 6,  4:02am, Roy C. Lackey wrote:
>     As for the logic of what came when; in a circular, time-travel story,
> one point on the circumference is about as good as another. If the circle is
> broken at any point, the whole thing collapses. I don't have a better answer
> than that; I don't know that there is one. If there is one, it may be
> related to Wolfe's views on predestination. I don't know whether or not the
> views expressed by Silk could be taken as Wolfe's, but on the second page of
> chapter V of _Nightside_ he has Silk thinking:
> 
>     "...the Outsider had assured him that his regard for him was eternal and
> perfect, never to be changed by any act of his, no matter how iniquitous or
> how meritorious."
> 
>     Now _that_ is predestination, pure and simple. FWIW

	Maybe.  But notice the word "eternal"--which would imply the solution
of St. Augustine, that "predestination" means that God's knowledge is outside
time, which is a creation, and therefore perfect foreknowledge doesn't mean
compulsion.  And "regard" is a tricky point too--as far as I'm aware, orthodox
theology of most varieties has God loving everybody always and perfectly--but
people can reject the love.  I would, given Wolfe's Catholicism and general
emphasis on an almost existential freedom, be surprised if he believes in a
Calvinist or similar form of predestination--I'd suspect he falls heavily, even
within the Catholic schools of thought, into the free-will camp.
-- 
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (adgroce@eos.ncsu.edu)
Senior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)
'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President
608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce

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