02/14/14

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.3I

Summary of text [comment] page 19

Freedom, the order of the heart, has a peculiar moral and religious character.

The Church defended the concept of “free will” against various movements that have denied or redefined it.

Responsibility is intimately tied to free will.

[Here is one association:

Free will : conscience1 (note that this is purely theoretical because, in order to underlie the actual, it must be specified within the parallel (exclusive yet interpellating) forms of the moral religious axis.  So far, the two most frequently used specifiers have been “free” and “lacking”.  Here, “free” means “not coerced” and “lacking” means “constrained by the symbolic order of thinkgroup”.

Ironically, to many, consciencelacking1 appears to have greater “freedom” in the sense of “greater latitude”.

Why?

Thinkgroup3 denies the consequences of their actions (that is, the lawessential) and projects fault for unintended consequences on a mythic other, who (unknowingly and inadvertently) thwarts them.  In doing so, consciencelacking avoids responsibility.

This raises the question: What is “responsibility”?]

02/13/14

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.3H

Summary of text [comment] page 18

New Testament writers also point to the doctrine of conscience as the inner norm for “what is good and sinful” for pagans, who have no Law (Rom 2:12-15).

[Just as the contextualization of actions through lawessential trains one’s dispositions, the contextualization of actions through the Law (thinkdivine) trains one’s conscience to be free.

The pagans had no Law.  But, they did have independent thinkgroups.  Thinkpagans were constituted independently of the Mosaic Tradition.  They did not form in order to exploit the Mosaic Tradition.  There were no barriers to coming close, or finding features, of thinkdivine.  Consequently, many pagans had consciences that came remarkably close to the Scriptural ideal of consciencefree.

This precisely is the intuition behind a little book by Simone Weil, Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks, published in the United States in 1958 by Beacon Press.]

02/12/14

Thoughts on Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.3G4

[How does love fit into this picture?  Thinkdivine trains consciencefree by favoring actions that belong to a moral religious context.  Thinkdivine brings virtuous acts into relation with consciencefree.

Lawessential trains our dispositions by placing our actions into a normal context.  If one desires to follow a thinkdivine but does not allow lawessential to speak to those dispositions that require training, then one is not really following thinkdivine.]

With this in mind, consider this snippet from Schoonenberg’s reference: 1 Cor 13.

“And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”

02/11/14

Thoughts on Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.3G3

[The drawback of “putting one’s heart before God” is that God will not tell the sinner “what ‘he’ wants to hear”.

The virtue of “placing one’s heart before God” is that the person comes closer to contextualizing ‘his’ actions through both thinkdivine and lawessential.   Only by aligning oneself ( that is, one’s actions2(consciencefree1)) ) with thinkdivine, does one start to see the consequences of one’s own and other’s actions ( that is, lawessential ).]

02/10/14

Thoughts on Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.3G2

[In the time of Jesus, the exterior cultivation of ritual purity constituted a thinkpro-obect. It exhibited the relations of a thinkgolden_calf to a (projected) thinkscapegoat . It spoke a language that maintained the mask of lawdenial.

The take home lesson is that the sinner’s dispositions are situated by transgressions through both thinkpro-object and lawdenial.

The sinner hears what ‘he’ wants to hear.]

02/6/14

Thoughts on Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.3F3

[The hypocrite must establish that the cause lies elsewhere.

This is precisely why Rene Girard’s observations of the sociological importance of the scapegoat have such pertinence.

The hypocritical golden calf preserves ‘his’ innocence through the creation of a scapegoat.

The charade lasts until the moment when lawessential can no longer be denied and the kingdom collapses.]

02/5/14

Thoughts on Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.3F2

[Hypocrisy follows a roundabout pathway to denial.

The hypocrite engages in transgressions.  These transgressions can be described on the moral religious axis as thinkgroup3(sin2(consciencelacking1)).  The hypocritice does not proselytize ‘his’ thinkgroup.

Why?

‘His’ thinkgroup is parasitic to a sovereign that thinkdivine has empowered.  The hypocrite does not pay the price for ‘his’ actions and directs resources to ‘himself’.]

As the consequences of the transgressions (of hypocrites) become more and more apparent, the sovereign may face a choice.  The sovereign may recognize that the hypocrites saps ‘his’ ability to maintain sovereign functions or ‘he’ may fail to recognize what is happening.  Either way, members of a parasitic thinkgroup will insist that they are not responsible.

Moreover, they will insist that the cause of the problems cannot be understood as lawessential3(transgressions2(dispositions1)). Thus, the denial of lawessential underlies hypocrisy.]

02/3/14

Thoughts on Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.3E

Summary of text [comment] page 18

In addition to saying that evil thoughts in the heart produce sin, Jesus said that “all these evil things come from within and they defile the man  (Mark 7:21).”

[ Notably,  thinkgroup3(sin2(consciencelacking1)) denies the natural consequences, the lawessential3, that contextualizes transgressions.  Lawdenial3 brings sin2 into relation with dispositions1.  The moral religious nested form empowers the natural philosophic nested form.

Does the denial of lawessential3 and the resulting trained dispositions equate to “defilement”?

Consider leprosy, a classic Scriptural sign of defilement.  Some types of leprosy consist in “the loss of the feeling of touch” through disease.  The person is not aware ‘he’ is injuring ‘himself’.  So injuries continue until tissue breaks down.

In parallel, the sinner loses ‘his’ “sense of touch” by habitually denying lawessential.

The sinner loses touch with thinkdivine3( virtue2( consciencefree1)).]