Summary of text [comment] page 22

Schoonenberg continued by weaving two themes together.

Here is one: Sin is the violation of norms of the concrete world of creation, that is against God’s will and wisdom expressed in our nature.  Sin is against the essential laws of natural and supernatural reality.

Here is the other: Sin is a violation of the norms of the Covenant, the laws given to us by Moses.  These laws come from without and define our nature.  Sin is an offense against the positive laws of God’s will.

He ties these themes together by asserting that the “positive” laws (theme two) are justified by the “essential” laws (theme one).

[The statement that one type of law is justified by the other implies that one type of law puts the other into context.  Is this really the case?

Schoonenberg’s stylistic method of interlacing and tying together suggests otherwise.  “Justification” does not “interlace and tie together”.  The model of the intersecting nested forms performs this trick quite nicely.]