Jason Pratt said...
“Yeah, Steve was more than a little testy with me, too, when Thomas Talbott and I were discussing universalism with the Triablogue crew…”
“He's referring to the discussion with Talbott that I linked to. Frankly, his review of your book is a lot more temperate than the denigration of me he posted up on Triablogue…”
“As for getting off light--at least he didn't start hurling invective about you being some Satanic-level blasphemer pretending to use orthodox theology to mislead people.”
On the one hand, Jason Pratt holds out hope that everyone will be saved. God would literally be Satanic if he didn’t try to save Nazis who turn Jews into lampshades.
On the other hand, we’re treated to this crybaby rhetoric when Jason Pratt feels that he’s been verbally abused. The poor thing!
Universalism is like a lady’s club in which they politely debate the optimistic fate of Josef Mengele and Vlad the Impaler over tea and watercress. It’s such a civilized debate inside the lady’s club. No one every raises her voice. One lump or two?
But if someone barges into the lady’s club and says something “denigrating,” well, that’s very indecorous and hard on the nerves. How could people be so mean to sweet old Jason and interrupt her pretty little speech about how God wouldn’t be God unless he rescued Vlad the Impaler from hell? Why, it’s downright rude! What’s the world coming to?
Jason Pratt is to universalism what Leonard Bernstein was to the Black Panthers. He inhabits his theological dollhouse, where he can wax expansive about his hypothetical compassion for the damned—as long as no one in the real world hurts his feelings by talking disrespectful to him. One wonders what would happen to his cosmic philanthropy if someone tried to turn him into a lampshade.
Hm, found this a month after the fact. Oh, well. (My fault, not Steve's.)
ReplyDeleteOddly, for someone with such a whiny thin skin as I apparently have, I actually wrote the following things in regard to Steve's diatribe against me, in the giant thread over at DangIdea:
"He’s doing what he thinks is right. Not very eptly, but still. I don’t have anything against him on that score. (Also, I did say some provocative things. Not always what Steve represented me as saying, but still some provocative things.)"
I also excused the vitriol of Steve's comments against me by writing, "[H]e sees me as a threat to other people’s salvation, like Satan... [I]t isn’t hard [given Steve's theological proclivities] to see why he would think I’m blaspheming God, and thus am someone he should hate. No one is tolerant of Ebola virus, and Steve thinks I’m the spiritual equivalent of Ebola. q.e.d."
And again, when an annoyed commenter complained that Steve had treated me as a "theological scoundrel", I wrote, "Not really my place to feel good about myself. {s} Considering that I think I have no advantage even over Satan, even in my penitence (we’re still both intentional rebels), he can’t really say anything worse than what I already believe to be true about myself."
It's very peculiar that a crybaby whose poor nerves are as affronted at indecorousness, as I am, would go out of his way to defend and excuse Steve for his own indecorousnesses against me.
(As for my remarks being rhetoric, I thought they were factual descriptions from previous experience cautioning Gregory that he ought to be thankful because it might get worse. Which, incidentally, it did. {s})
JRP