Sherry Chandler » The Elect (Not Necessarily the Elected)
The Elect (Not Necessarily the Elected)
…Calvin’s wrinkle was to argue that, since salvation and damnation were preordained, the elect, the saved, would feel the call of God in their worldly lives and therefore would work successfully in their various callings. God’s will, according to Calvin’s writings and their elabortion after his death, was absolute, and nothing an individual might desire or do could change it. What necessarily follows is that those who were successful in their worldly endeavors were so through divine will, while those who were unsuccessful were clearly damned. In [Max] Weber’s reading, Calvinism was a purely rational, unmystical, unmagical religion in which God was omnipotent and people were powerless. Some were bound for eternal bliss and some for eternal hellfire, their lives on earth logically demonstrating which group they belonged to: God backed the winners.
— Tom Lutz, Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers and Bums in America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2006)
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4 Comments
1. charlie replies at 5th June 2006, 2:13 pm :
Hobbes, on the other hand, had a much less rigid view of creation.
2. sherry replies at 5th June 2006, 2:37 pm :
Hey, Charlie. Were you a fan of Calvin & Hobbes, the comic strip?
3. Charlie replies at 6th June 2006, 10:16 am :
Nope. Calvin and Hobbes, the philosophers.
4. sherry replies at 8th June 2006, 6:25 pm :
Well, I’ll have to admit, Charlie, that I learned all the philosophy I know from Calvin & Hobbes the comic strip. http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/
Though I was raised a Southern Baptist, I was always more of a John Wesley kinda gal: saved by Grace (once I would have thought that was Grace Slick).
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