One observation in James Taranto’s recent WSJ post in reaction to Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” remark caught my eye:
As Mollie Hemingway suggests, “They are irredeemable†is a strange thing for a professed Christian to say about anybody. Theology aside, it is a shocking thing for someone who aspires to the powers of the presidency to say about fellow Americans, even if she rightly thinks they hold deplorable views.
The emphasis is mine.
But that’s not true. Some Christian denominations, Calvinists for example, believe that humanity is divided into two groups. The elect are the beneficiaries of “unconditional election” to salvation. It doesn’t really matter what they do because they are predestined to be saved. The damned on the other hand are subject to “reprobation”, i.e. they are predestined for eternal damnation. You can tell the difference between the elect and the damned because the elect prosper. If Hillary Clinton really does believe that it explains an enormous amount.
Interestingly, as a child Donald Trump attended the church led by the late Norman Vincent Peale who wrote the best-seller The Power of Positive Thinking which I find telling. Mr. Trump’s version of positive thinking is highly skewed, presumably some would say perverted, but that, too, explains a lot.
I think that Mr. Taranto’s closing explication of Sec. Clinton’s remark is probably accurate:
In the context of the administrative state, the image of the “basket†actually is an evocative one.
Imagine a midlevel worker in some federal agency whose job is to review and sort files. On her desk sit three wire baskets. One is an inbox; each morning it is filled with a stack of folders containing personal information about known or suspected Trump supporters.
After reading the contents of each file, the worker places it in one of the other baskets, marked “Pitiables†and “Deplorables.†At the end of the workday, the folders in the former basket are refiled. The deplorables’ folders are packed up in a box and sent along to another agency for further action.
What kind of action? There are many possibilities. Some are more deplorable than others.
If elected to the presidency, Hillary Clinton won’t just be the president of her supporters or of the Democratic Party. She will be President of the United States including the deplorables and the pitiables. The president is not “prophet-in-chief”. Leading Americans into the light is not the president’s job. If they’re irredeemable, that’s impossible anyway.
The picture at the top of the page is “The Damned and the Elect” by Luca Signorelli from the Brizio chapel of the Orvieto Cathedral in Orvieto, Italy, painted between 1499 and 1504.
I think its rather that the notion of “irredeemable” is not a Christian one. Jesus Christ is the Redeemer; to assert someone or something is beyond redemption is to say they are beyond the power of Christ. Calvin would not have asserted anyone was beyond Christ’s power.
Also, its doubtful that Clinton has much religious Calvinist views — she was raised and is a Methodist, and they reject Calvin’s views on predestination and election. That is, her formal religious associations are with a form of evangelicalism that is optimistic about spreading and ultimate acceptance of religious views by all.
from Life in the Son by John Calvin
But that passage is no different or at least little different from Augustine on predestination — God has provided for “the condemnation of those whom in His justice He has predestined to punishment, and to the salvation of those whom in His mercy He has predestined to grace.” (Augustine’s ENCHIRIDION, Ch. 100)
The thing has already been decided, and not all will be saved. The important point is that there is no way of knowing one’s own fate, even if it has already been decided. Hillary Clinton, nor any human, knows whether someone is damned, nor whether as Augustine emphasizes seeming disobedience to God’s will is not working for a good, but unknown purpose. Man is not omnipotent.
The two peoples differ in that the elect are born again and that [the rebirth ]is from above , just like your initial birth you have no part in its determination so is the rebirth. The man born again does not at all continue in his ways as before , rather he now exults in and exalts his GOD and redeemer for the faith given him at his rebirth and chooses to live accordingly.