Summary of text [comment] page 25

Sin is a sign of inner conscience and disposition.  Signs reveal and veil.  If one sees a sinful act, one cannot determine the perpetrator’s inner conscience and dispositions as a permanent, solid, thing.

[Both sin and virtue are actualities that emerge from conscience and dispositions.  Since the conscience is composed of exclusive yet interpellating realms, sometimes it is hard to pin the specification down.

Well, Schoonenberg’s caution notwithstanding, there comes a time when habitual expression makes the specification clear.  The training of the dispositions adds further evidence.  Conscience becomes specified as “lacking” freedom or “free”.

How does this happen?

At some point, actuality binds the realm of possibility.  When we habitually engage in sinful or virtuous behaviors, we come to a point where actuality specifies possibility. The “lacking” in conscience^lacking and the “free” in conscience^free reflect how we train ourselves.  We learn to ignore or hold onto freedom.  We habituate our consciences to be “a slave to some concupiscence or cruelty” or to be “free and virtuous”.

Thus conscience^specified could also be written conscience^habituated.

The limitation of the extent of possibility by repetitive behaviors raises questions that are oddly addressed in the topic that Schoonenberg turned to next: What is the relation between “venial” and “mortal” sin?]

[The first item to note about the movie, Brazil, is that the object that brings society into organization is purely nonsensical.  The object is “security”, which makes no sense at all, since the security apparatus tortures and kills innocent people, attempting to identify members of the resistance.

This nonsensical object resonates with Rene Girard’s “conflictual mimesis”, where a mimetic rivalry loses sight of “what they were fighting over” (acquisitive mimesis) and focuses purely on confronting the demonic other (think^anti-object).  In conflictual mimesis, each rival appears as a double with respect to the other.

Brazil artfully points out that the one of the doubles does not have to actually exist.  The “rival” (here, the terroristic resistance) may be the projection of an anti-object by a pro-object sovereign.  This explains why innocent people are rounded up and tortured while the security apparatus can never find the terrorists.

Do the terrorists even exist?

Well, they must be. Bombs are going off everywhere.  Or maybe, the bombs are overloaded environmental conditioning ducts.

The second item to note is that think^divine makes it appearance through dreamy fantasies that interpellate the hero’s impossible journey.  Recall, the relation between “the denial of law^essential” and “law^essential” is that of “impossibility”.

As the movie goes, the dream is actualized, by a synchronic event, and this leads to madness (chaos) and capture (control), fulfilling the logic of think^pro-object, stigmatizing and punishing the naïve, confused and innocent think^anti-object hero.

The third item to note is that the only option for the subject is withdrawal into Nothingness.  In Nothingness, the hero finds salvation.  In Nothingness, the security apparatus blames the victim.

Here, Rene Girard has spoken most eloquently on the uniqueness of Christ as the way into the Nothingness of the Eclipse of Think^divine.]

Summary of text [comment] pages 24 & 25

[Consider the movie, Brazil.

Brazil dramatizes the exclusive and interpellating character of think^group and think^divine plus its closure when a think^group gains sovereign power and mutates into think^pro-object and (the projection of) think^anti-object.

Brazil imaginatively captures the conditions of closure after the transubstantiation of think^group.

There are apparently only two groups.   Think^pro-object is capricious, bureaucratic, cruel and the only game in town.  Think^anti-object is the terroristic resistance.

The terrorists are never captured and provide the rationale for totalitarianism.  Innocent people are killed, apparently by both parties, the security forces and the resistance.]

[As long as think^group and think^divine are exclusive yet interpellating, not every sin promotes the Antichrist.

Once a think^group attains sovereign power and perversity reigns.  Once transgressions are fully justified through the instrumentality of think^pro-object, then every sin promotes the Antichrist.  The sinner becomes an instrument of “the object that brings all subjects into organization”.]

[An entertaining but disturbing cinematic portrayal of the material and spiritual deformation of think^group appears in the movie Pulp Fiction.   One (criminal) character is spooked by a miracle.  The other is not.]

[Here, Schoonenberg appears to meld Christ and think^divine.

The vertical parallel axes of think^divine and think^group are inherently unstable, in that they are exclusive yet interpellating.

The think^divine nested form may be regarded as formative.

The think^group nested form may be regarded as formative, but it may also be deformative.

A think^group nested form may be deformative in two ways.

One is material.  The sinful pursuit of material advantage favors a self-justification₃(concupiscence₂(₁)).  Sometimes, this complex is spooked by blasphemy₃(cruelty₂(₁)).

The other is spiritual.  A think^group strives to attain sovereign power in order to dictate an organizational objective for all society.  Blasphemy₃(cruelty₂(₁)) becomes the norm.  Yet, both everything and nothing spooks these idolaters.  They are paranoid.  They feel invulnerable.

Both types of deformation are parasitic and fully capable of taking over the host.]

Summary of text [comment] pages 24 & 25

Sin is against God and the world (as it participates in the history of salvation through God’s grace).  Sin is against Christ.  So the dynamic is a positive feedback where God’s grace flows more and more abundantly at the same time that sin drives more and more dramatically to the rejection of Christ.

The history of Israel shows precisely this dynamic.

Christ’s coming on Earth initiated a positive feedback that will bring forth the Antichrist as the embodiment of sin.

Does that mean that every sin categorically promotes the Antichrist?

No.

Sin is situational, even though it comes from the heart, the core of our personhood and freedom.   Conditions are always a factor.  But outer manifestations are signs of inner conscience and dispositions.  Signs can both reveal and veil.

For Schoonenberg, this much has unfolded:  The sin against the Holy Spirit draws the individual into extreme consequences [into an sovereign^infra religion that excludes think^divine] and bars ‘him’ from every path to salvation.

[Schoonenberg’s conclusion resonates with Zizek’s definition of “perversity”, as “one who transgresses (think^divine) while acting as an instrument of a think^group“.

It also parallels Ted Peter’s 7 steps to radical evil, where the final state is blasphemy^­₃(cruelty₂(₁)).  Blasphemy₃ is idolatry.  Idolatry elevates one’s think^group into a think^pro-object that eclipses think^divine.

Blasphemy₃ contextualizes cruel action₂.  Blasphemy₃ brings cruelty₂ into relation with “the possibilities inherent in self-justification(concupiscence())₁”.

Self-justification₃(concupiscence₂(₁)) parallels think^group(sin(conscience^lacking)).]

Summary of text [comment] page 24

Bultman repeatedly argued that sinfulness belongs to the lapsedness of the past and redemption is an openness to the future.

[Bultman presumes that the future is the history of salvation, that is, of increasing delineation of think^divine.

This makes sense in the fact that, when a think^group fails and law^essential runs its course, the emotional and cognitive reactions inform subsequent sacred prohibitions.  The failure and re-establishment of order is enshrined in sacred rituals.

No one wants that to happen again.]

If Christ and the prophets most fully reveal [think^divine], then the “history of salvation” is the unfolding of “what Biblical revelation means”.

On the other hand, one can also argue that the words of prophets and of Jesus the Christ were only taken seriously after everything they predicted came true.  After the first, and then the second, respectively, temple was destroyed, how could anyone deny the truth?

Perhaps, there is a simultaneous looking forward as well as back in the gift of think^divine.]

[Outside of history, law^denial is conjured through Progressive think^group.  Think^group expresses imaginary pictures, primordial images that cannot be challenged, of “the anticipated consequences of the imposition of their organizational objectives”.  These primordial images add to an exclusion already exercised by controlling the language.  These divorced people must be happy, they got a “no fault divorce”.

After all, what do the words “fault” and “marriage” mean in a world of “no fault divorce”?

Take a few moments and toy with the antihistorical and farcical primordial image of “a fault free divorce”.   Human relationships like a little plastic toys.  Sometimes toys break and it is nobody’s fault.  You shop for another one.  See.  It’s pretty and new again.

Not.

The Primordial Images of American Progressive Elites informs attitudes of conscience^lacking and trains the dispositions.  No fault divorce undermines prudence and trains the dispositions in the arts of deception.  The next relationship is never pretty and new again.

American Progressive Elites cannot imagine, much less articulate, the debilitating unfolding of law^essential that follows the eclipse of traditional marriage.]