luminosity: (So Real)

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posted by [personal profile] luminosity at 03:44pm on 09/10/2003
Lovely post, which has touched on many of my thoughts about the Spike situation, only so much more articulately. Spike cries for justice, but he forgets that he has been the recipient of the flip side of that coin--mercy. He really doesn't want justice because it seems that "justice" is that he'll go to hell. It's a very immature part of Spike's personality, IMO, to demand justice without giving mercy (to him) its due.

This subject also touches on another theory of mine re the Jossverse--vessels of destruction. Some characters are just damned. Period. No matter what they do. And vice versa. Although there is room for redemption, we don't really know what that entails, and if anyone (excepting Darla, IMO) can obtain it.
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Double Predestination?

posted by [identity profile] revdorothyl.livejournal.com at 10:00pm on 14/10/2003
Thanks for your thoughtful comments! I'm so glad you mentioned the "mercy" thing -- as I was driving down the road later that day, I had ample time to think, "Oh! Of course! I was supposed to connect Angel's comments about mercy being stronger than conviction in last week's episode to this week's cries for justice. Duh!" (a 9-hour drive always gives one plenty of time to think of what one should have seen or said or done). I think you're right that Spike is totally forgetting about or discounting (not being a great thinker, and all) the mercy that's been shown to him, including all the times that Buffy could have killed him but didn't, even before he started fighting the good fight.

As for Spike being a vessel of destruction (which I can't help reading in a Calvinist light, whatever the Apostle Paul might have intended to say about that), I hope that's not what's going on. I hope he isn't predestined to be damned, no matter how hard he fights for salvation. I'm not saying that there isn't a little buried Calvinism in the Jossverse, and particularly in that corner of it inhabited by Angel and his crew, but I'm loath to believe that's what's going on here. Of course, I could be wrong.

BTW, if there are vessels of destruction in the Jossverse, does that also mean that there are vessels of salvation, predestined to be saved no thanks to themselves? It's a fascinating train of thought you raise.
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