From: Kieran Mullen <kieran@brigit.nhn.ou.edu>
Subject: (urth) Re:  Digest urth.v025.n001
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1999 12:51:21 

>--------------- MESSAGE urth.v025.n001.7 ---------------

>From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey@stic.net>
>Subject: Ex-lurker
>Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1999 04:02:26 -0500
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

>    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

>Roy

     No, absolutely not.  That is unconditional love.  It is *not*
predestination.  

     Predestination would be "the Outsider had assured him that the future
was crystalline, never to be changed by any act of his, no matter how
iniquitous or how meritorious,"  which Wolfe did not say.

     Universalism (the doctrine or belief that all men will be saved, or
made happy, in the future state) is also not considered a form of
predestination save in a trivial sense.

              Kieran "not a theologian, but I play one on TV" Mullen


 Kieran Mullen                         email: kieran@mail.nhn.ou.edu
 Dept. of Physics and Astronomy        phone: (405) 325-3961
 The University of Oklahoma            FAX: (405) 325-7557
 Norman, OK 73019, USA                 http://www.nhn.ou.edu/~kieran/

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