Explaining Kierkegaard to My Calvinist Friend Whilst Drinking Beer in 1996

My side of the conversation:

ahoy
eetz sweell mon
Back in the emerald city
slimeville
ha — arteest at werk
art — i saw this on a stamp today — “is whatever you can get away with”
but the fellow downtown apparently didn’t get away with whatever it was
poor sod
do you have your ale? in hand?
I have double black stout, finally got around to it, plus some Grant’s Celtic (low-cal, right)
lol (laughing out loud)
she needs to get online
she can have the amiga when your done
but she’ll have PC envy
oh, i found these pretzels wh rival Capone’s when Capones had pretzels (th good ole days)
yep, frozen, just pop one in the zapper
yeah,
I forget, something like two dozen I think (costco quantity)
yes, Port Arthur Hot Chinese Mustard, but it isn’t that potent, i’ll have to seek out something stronger
mmm … sounds glorious
so it comes in powder form?
okay, i’ll look for it — so, PCs …
lolligagging. hoohaw.
So, when will the deed be done, the check be signed?
from? I don’t know much about em except that I looked in the window one saturday when I wanted an ethernet terminator and cdnt find one.
uh huh.
yea! woo woo, bravo, good enuf, (whistles), Wind95 rules, snd card? 6x CDROM. cybersex and whistles and belles.
16-bit? yeah. I think that’s fairly standard, so it probly is.
But it’s 2MB, right? That’s more than standard, wh is usually one, wh means you shd have good video speed. for intensive graphics and such.
64 the year you wer born
Aged to perfection, perfect deriliction.
But not extinction.
Death is the best dancing partner.
please go on
i knew it was, because she loves you
but lets not get into THAT
ahha
uhhuh. Paintshop Pro you can download and try out for thirty days (or longer). Yeah. That’s the cat’s meow of graphics programs (I’m guessing). They have a myriad of different versions depending on how much you want to shell out.
you shd since yr into graphics
very servicable. Then, there are Internet related programs, all the best of wh you can download as share or free ware.
yes 2.02 (who knows what the 02 is) Possibly, although that’s in Beta (testing) still I think. It incorporates 3D and stuff. I haven’t looked into it yet, since I’m still tweaking win95 and struggling w a mere 500MB hard drive.
Yes, you have to make some hard choices. Delete old programs w abandon.
Well, 2 GB shd give you some breathing room.
maybe that’s what the .02 signifies (Netscape wise — like a drug addict needs his fix like 02)
yeah … that wd help if you cd see as you create
Tight, but it is starting to feel like home, you know you look at the walls and the painted-over trim and windows and you love it because it is home. Strange but true.
And last night I was lying on my back on the full extent of my floor space and it seemed, looking up at my ceiling, that I had incredible amounts of space, more than enough.
That’s News to me. they havent bothered to call me.
Yeah, not even for library work, but rather a technology specialist for the Humanities depts. wh cd be kinda cool.
s’just information. I’m beyond or something getting hopes up at this point. But pleasantly so.
Not that I’m w/out hope, not at all.
I’ve been thinking about applying for a job at the psychic online network.
Well, that cd be a real ministry (grinning sheepishly)
w/gloves and protective headgear?
Sounds healthy, in a perverse (post?)Xian way.
lolliwaggling
It was okay. I did what I meant to do, wh was to just hang w my mom and be cheerful and outwardly focused. But now, I’m back in my own situation. It was nice to have an excuse to forget about myself for awhile actually. And I think my mom appreciated it and that it actually even helped her get a little more of a foothold on whatever it is that’s getting her down.
well, the timing worked out. i needed just as much as she needed, so maybe the good lord’s was doing one of his switcharoo things, crafty fellow.
You just grope along w faith, hope and love and that’s the best you can do in this life
grope and pray
hey, everyone always gets on Calvin’s case for “double-predestination” right?
Do you care to comment, but before you do, I was looking at what Aquinas wrote on the subject in the Summa and he is pretty much saying the same, although he modifies it by saying the damned are still responsible, just as you I think said or paraphrased Calvin as saying, but (to ramble on a bit more) another friend of mine (errant calvinist) said that it’s not really scriptural, God may harden hearts (like Pharaoh’s) but it never literally says God hardens hearts unto damnation or sumsuch. end of ramble
But god made nature scuse me
ah ha
very good go on
Good. Now, wd Calvin agree (you don’t have to pretend to be Calvin’s PR guy or anyting) with the sort of thing that’s often bandied about (e.g. by C.s Lewis) viz that since Christ died for all, grace is extended to all, and it is only by a refusal of the will (of the individual) that damnation occurs? I’m guessing the answer is no.
Yeah, insofar as anything does when you get into this area of discussion … I think you’re right that it is not ours to worry over, and moreover that we can’t really figure it out completely from our vantage point.
… That’s good. And, I mean, I’m with you on the point of emphasizing God’s Sovereignty, I can go w that, but at the same time, I appreciate the other strand in Xian tradition wh might be called humanistic and wh emphasizes, under God, the sovereignty of each person — Every Man a King, again… by the way, I wanted to try to recapture those lyrics I was forgetting … may I?
Do you rmember my last attempt at singing on Talk?
re Huey Long.
Yes… Randy Newman okay here goes
The kingfish, kingfish …
I’m a cracker , you one too
gonna take good care of you
there are many frenchman in New Orleans
in New Orleans there are frenchmen everywhere
youre house cd burn down, youre baby cd drown
wdnt one a them frenchmen care …

that’s all
not enough beer
i’m just finishing 1 pint 6 fl oz bottle
may have to run to kitchen for a Celtic ale and another pretzel
Yeah, it’s not bad really, light but aromatic 99 calories
You may be thinking of Grant’s Scottish Ale, wh is very much like that?
Which? I think it’s pale. Definitely more on the pale side, although heavier than a lot of pales I’ve encountered.
Yes. I haven’t had it in awhile, but I remember liking it. It’s more biting than Guiness — you know how guiness has a sort of starkness about it? Not like that.
Bad boy. okay, i’m going to go “off keyboard momentarily”
go check on the Allympics
I stand corrected, the Celtic is rather darklooking
dark brn ale
It does have that same sort of grab-th-mouth taste, a sort of gluey taste not unlike the Scottish version
Does that mean, like, aftertaste?
Yes, but milder as befits a Celtic sensibility
7 or so, i like the celtic cross on the label, that pushes it over into the 7 zone, otherwise it might be a 6.5
And the judge from Ireland? Gives it a1.3
Right. w his mother’s dear mother’s milllk
Javol.
We just are civil to each other, pleasant enough, wh is fine. She has some other guys on her trail, and I feel for em.
She is charming, tis true, she doesnot lack charm in her way, but these guys I have no doubt (as 99% of the guy populace) are far more ruthless than I in what they are pursuing and I think her Chinese ethics are impenetrable so they will be chagrinned.
oooh , well, yeah, but not for long. Her younger sister, from what she has told me, is pretty americanized.
As Luther was quoted to say, mankind is like a drunken peasant, you help him on one side of the horse and he falls off the other side.
That’s true.
In Kierkegaardian terms, Communism exists purely in the ethical sphere. American exists primarily in the esthetic sphere. But rising above both spheres (and drawing them in) is the religious, i.e. the sphere of faith.
yeah. also, just the basics of sensory nature, sensuality removed from morality, like paganism or like Don Juan.
Kierk spoke of “esthetic damnation” but he didn’t have much to say for stopping at the ethical either.
That was aesthetic damnation
i.e. living in the basement of your life, disregarding … well, like the passage in one of Paul’s letters where he says something like “they worship the Belly” — that’s aeshetic damnation.
SK saw his writings as a process of leading readers through the spheres (seductively) to be finally confronted with the possibility of faith — thus he referred to some of his books as “esthetic” –i.e. not really his fully formulated understanding, but the truth within that sphere. And appealing to a sort of lowest common denominator. But with a view of leading the unsuspecting reader on.
It’s true these terms take on their own life in his writings, but it grows on you. The meaning you probably hold is not abandoned but enfolded into it I think. He referred to himself as a “kind of poet” and highly valued the esthetic, but just didn’t want to stop there, at beauty and artifice and such.
Kurt Russell?
I forget.
I think he was like what you describe in a lot of ways. He had a very structured and playful (medieaval like) mind in contrast to the age in wh he lived — but he had a powerful consciousness of the failings of the age and so much of his stuff is reactionary to that.
Well, he reacted against Hegelianism, first, and his reaction much applies to the sort of scientism (worship of science and experts at the expense of the individual); secondly he reacted against the Danish church (LUtheran) wh he thought was a great compromise and a sham and only an approximation of Xianity and worst of all dishonest about it, presenting itself as Xianity — wh (not of course) but any form of Xianity wh conforms itself to the culture, wh is always a temptation, case in point being “mainline” xianity today.
I guess I mean theological liberalism, or the churches wh assimilate into the prevailing cultural trends instead of hanging tight to the gospel.
yeah, it seems like it.
Interesting question. … he died in the middle of his “attack” (pamphlets and such) on the church. It is more an attack than a proposal, but he certainly proposed things as well, I think it was prior to the attack. He wrote things like “Works of Love,” and “Training in Xianity” where he expressed what it means to *live* as a Xian — not really defending orthodoxy per se, although I think he was definitely orthodox, but his emphasis was on how it shd be lived. and in taking stabs at the bloated targets he saw before him.
I think so, although he also spoke of being a “corrective” and going further the other way, or rather being overly stern in his attack because that’s what was needed.
An abortionist of bad ideas?
yeah
right, so …
you want to be mr spot on too
in yr own way
yeah … I agree … there is something appealing about a crusade
True, … there’s a funny story about when he was a child, sitting at the dinner table
he raised his fork and said, “I am a fork and I will stick you”
I hate to break up this party, but I’m supposed to be picking up Henri
Too bad he doesnt exist online then he cd just join us here
I think we’d have to use IRC
yeah, that’d be a gas
at home, it’s his night off, so I agreed to go to the Mandarin Gate for old times sake
right, we have to make our police presence known again
Next mon. shd work for me methinks.
hoo aww
OK, I’ll try

Auf Wieder sehen

RM seining auf
ciao