Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.1BL

[I want to loop back to the image of recognition developed in the past few blogs.

This loop connects to these two ideas:

“I am the one who recognizes” parallels the Father.

“Myself is the one who is recognized” parallels the Son.

These two persons (“the one who recognizes” and “the one who is recognized”) are dyadic. They belong to Secondness. They both emerge from the monadic realm of potential. They are both brought into relation with potential by a normal context, the third element of a triadic relation.

Who is the normal context, if not the Holy Spirit? Is the animating principle a person (Me? I? You? Them? Nobody?) or an institution (Family? Tribe? Nation? Society? Television? A god among gods?)3?

The list of candidates in the parenthesis is not exhaustive, but it is suggestive.

As one moves further and further away from God, one evokes lesser and lesser powers as the normal context.]