Looking at Daniel Houck’s Book (2020) “Aquinas, Original Sin and the Challenge of Evolution” (Part 15 of 23)

0149 Is there another way to say this?

There is no distinction between nature and supernature.

Say what?

This is unfathomable.  Even Aristotle distinguishes physics from metaphysics.

0150 Yet, I can visualize grace, as a real element in contiguity with another real element, nature, by dissolving the separation between nature and supernature that is held dear by our current civilization.

Once we insist that nature and supernature are not only distinct, but independent, the judgment precipitates as a hypothetical actuality.

What ought to be [contiguity] what is.

0151 What word should I use to label the contiguity?

How about “inflows”?

All we have to do is let go of our intellectual fixation.

0152 In our postmodern civilization, the actuality, grace [inflows] nature, is hypothetical.

What is a hypothetical?

Hypo- means “under”.  -Thetical indicates “a placement or a proposition”.  So, a hypothesis underlies a thesis.

0153 What is that thesis?  What is that placement?  What is that proposition?

Ah, it must be a phantasm2b.

0154 Grace [inflows] nature stands below the thesis, placement and proposition inherent to the phantasm2b.

0155 Here is a picture of how grace applies to the sign-object of the specifying sign in human subjectivity.

0156 In the Lebenswelt that we evolved ingrace [inflows] nature is a foundation for perceptive soul [informs] reactive body2b.

In the normal context of natural selection3, we adapt2 into the niche of triadic relations1.

0157 There are three actualities implicated in interventional and specifying signs.

Nature’s broadcasts2c are sign-vehicles for interventional signs (SVi).

Sensations and feelings2a are sign-objects for interventional signs (SOi) and sign-vehicles for specifying signs (SVs).  The content-level actuality2a evolves to capture nature’s significations through the active body and sensate soul.  Capturerequires preternatural awareness.

Phantasms2b are sign-objects for specifying signs (SOs).  Phantasms2b consist of guesses, notions and propositions that virtually situate sensations and feelings2a.  The reactive body2b is trained by a perceptive soul2b under the operations of both grace and nature.  The hylomorphic structure of the phantasm2b parallels the actuality of grace [inflows] nature.

0158 These three actualities may be arranged into one interscope as interventional and specifying signs.

Behold, the interscope for human subjectivity as a sensorium of transcendence.

See Eric Voegelin’s book, The New Science of Politics, for that exoteric reference.

This diagram corresponds to signification in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  Clearly, there is a missing sign.  The exemplar sign binds the situation and perspective levels.  The exemplar sign-relation co-evolves with interventional and specifying sign-relations.  Yet, it is not required in this discussion of the hylomorphic realness of grace [inflows] nature.

0159 Now, I want to add two small, but insightful, substitutions.

On the content-level of this one interscope, I replace the normal context of what is happening3a with the more evocative, mirror of the world3a.  I replace the potential of ‘something’1a with the possibility of ‘something in the mirror’1a.