[Is there a flaw in these metaphors?
Can we regard ourselves from a distance of our own making?
Can we broadcast the signal that we want to receive?
Consider Eve.
She needed the serpent to broadcast her own thoughts.]
[Photon absorption serves as a metaphor for interpellation.
A person receives (absorbs) a broadcast message. The message interpellates the whole person. When the person receives the signal, “she” hears a call.
It is as if ‘religion’ broadcasts a waveform that matches the receiver of the human mind.
Religion addresses us from a distance.
In order to do this, there must be a distance.
This is where God, the Other, comes in.
God provides the space for regarding ourselves.]
[The message underlying the word ‘religion’ resonates with the whole person as modeled by the intersecting nested form. It is like a broadcast composed of an electromagnetic signal.
Electrical and magnetic fields alternate at right angles. As one field becomes actual, the other becomes potential.
The photon moves at the speed of light.
Then a receiver absorbs its energy. The receiver receives the information of the photon’s existence.]
[Would Schoonenberg have labeled the same actuality: the whole person?
The conflict between the whole person and God’s revelation is manifest in the double vertical axes.
The horizontal axis remains one. Its normal context is lawessential.
However, one may denote the horizontal axis according to the conditions of the intersecting vertical axis. One can write of lawacceptance or lawdenial, depending on dominance of one or the other vertical axis.]
[How to Define the Word ‘Religion’ offers another viewpoint.
The message underlying the word religion is an intersection.
The intersection consists of a nested form for reason, the divided vertical axes, and a nested form for the body, the horizontal axis.
I label the single actuality composed of human thought and human action: ‘what is virtue and what is sin’.]
Summary of text [comment] page 82
[Does Schoonenberg’s speculation cohere with Augustine’s concept of original sin?
An Archaeology of the Fall describes one consistency.
Eve, like the rest of us, heard what she wanted to hear.
What did she want to hear?
The serpent talked as if it were a projection of Eve’s unconscious mind.
Does the difference between flesh (passion) and reason capture the serpent’s words?
Or is ‘flesh and reason’ opposed to ‘the spirit of God’s command’?
To me, the latter option prevails.
First, it seems that the latter difference matches the serpent itself. ‘Flesh (presence) and reason (meaning)’ reflect the message underlying ‘the image of a talking serpent’.
Second, consider way the serpent seduced Eve. It started with sensuality and ended with reason.]
[Today, in the third and fourth generation after Schoonenberg wrote, ‘the symbolic order of big government liberalism’ is … unzipping.
Schoonenberg aimed to show that another Scriptural contrast, ‘the whole person against God’s law’, could support the actuality of the term ‘concupiscence’.
Today, his work stands in testimony to fully zipped Modernism.]
[Of course, the hypothesis of the first singularity changes all that.]
Summary of text [comment] page 82
[Schoonenberg made clear that Church doctrine is not wrong.
Instead, it has been rendered less relevant due to civilizational circumstances.
In 7764 U0’, Original Sin was labeled mythology (defined by Modernism as equivalent to all other ancient origin stories).
Specialized modern languages (or discourses) set ‘mythology’ into a framework of ‘true’ versus ‘false’ in regards to actuality. Such is the scientific point of view. The Story of the Fall could not support the actuality of the term ‘concupiscence’.
The modern placement was both true (versus false) and deceptive (versus true).
‘Mythology’ may be false in contrast to experimentally verifiable true. But, ‘mythology’ is not make believe in contrast to scientifically believable. Instead, ‘mythology’ is true as opposed to deceptive or deceptive as opposed to true.]
