Summary of text [comment] pages 54 and 55

Along with the questions of responsibility and freedom, there is the question of evil itself.

[We already encountered “the idea that metaphysical limitations and physical challenges are implicit to every spontaneous order”. These evils describe “actuality slipping back into possibility”. They are a necessary part of any spontaneous order. Otherwise, a spontaneous order would no longer dynamically bring possibility into actuality. The spontaneous order would become static.]

Summary of text [comment] pages 53 and 54

Why doesn’t God just destroy evil people?

These types of questions were raised in the 16th and 17th centuries, when the so-called Renaissance was trending into the so-called Enlightenment.

[Of course, these questions were misleading. They pretended that God’s freedom and fairness were actualities that could contradict one another.

Instead, fairness puts actions into context. Actions situate freedom.

God’s existence encompasses all modes of causality.

God’s existence includes normal context, actuality, and potential.

God does not induce sin, even though God supports a world in which evil exists.

God supports a world in which we are free.]

[Only in the realm of possibility can a god be fair and unfair at the same time.]

Summary of text [comment] pages 53 and 54

Scripture teaches that evil comes into play as “God continually causes the world to exist”.

All the examples in the previous blogs are about the creatures that God created.

We are autonomic selves acting while God sustains us.

What would happen if God were to withhold his sustaining activity.

What if God stopped supporting the existence of one human creature engaged in evil actions?

We would question our freedom and the fairness of God’s judgment.]

Summary of text [comment] pages 53 and 54

Does God affect sin? Does God cause it, since he is the universal cause?

In Scripture, Yahweh hardened the Pharaoh’s heart. Yahweh inspired David to hold a census, then punished David for it. Paul noted that God can harden the heart of whoever he wills.

In the Lords prayer, we recite “lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil”.

In contrast, the epistle of James claims that God cannot tempt.

Schoonenberg concluded: The seriousness of sin corresponds to the earnestness with which God is our God. God’s seriousness goes together with our powerlessness to reach the transcendent God in his own being. Contrition must be accompanied by adoration.

Summary of text [comment] page 52

Does sin affect God?

[Well, we did crucify Him. Would that count as “affecting”?

On the other hand, we only crucified Jesus, “the Person who the Father Recognizes₂“. I suspect that upset “the Person who Recognizes₂“. But it could not alter “the Person₃” who brings “the actuality of God₂” into relation with “God’s own Potential₁“.

Without Peirce’s three categories, Schoonenberg struggled to describe how our sins do and do not affect God.

If our sins did not affect God, then He would not be in relation with us. We would merely be creatures in a Deist universe.

If our sins could create or destroy gods, our gods would merely be extensions of ourselves.

Peirce’s categories allow us to see how our sins affect God in the realm of actuality, but not in the realms of mediation and potential.

Our sins affect the Father and the Son.]

[The last blog brings me to image of the list. Ink has been written on paper. I could say that the ink and the paper are omnipotent since any list could have been written. There are three names on the list: Holy Spirit (in the transcendence column) and Father & Son (in the immanence column). These correspond to the three persons in One God. The three persons cover thirdness and secondness. The three persons in the list cover two of the three categories of existence. They cover normal context and actuality.

What about possibility?

The One List is like the One God because it reminds us that “there is a list in the first place”. That list speaks of potential. A pen is poised above paper. Any list can be written.

Here is an image of the mystery of God. A pen is poised above paper. This image calls to mind what R.R. Reno says about Genesis: The Bible tells about the future.

The mystery of God is inclusive and allows contradictions.]

[Let me take a blog to reconsider this metaphor of a list with two columns: transcendence and immanence.

Under immanence, I write “the Father and the Son”. Why? Both appear to be actual. Secondness contains two elements. Both elements are actual. One element accounts for the other.

Under transcendence, I write “the Holy Spirit”. The Holy Spirit goes with thirdness because it expresses the relation binding the Father to the Son.

This relation goes with the mystery of God. The Holy Spirit₃ brings “the Father and Son₂” into relation with “the Omnipotence of God₁”.]

[Yes, it is even worse than anything Paul describes in his Letter to the Romans. It is more disgraceful than anything Mohammed describes in sura 5. Christians are just as susceptible to disorientation as anyone else in the Lebenswelt of unconstrained complexity. And they know it.

Why?

They are baptized into awareness.

This is one reason why Christians are so interested in understanding sin.

This is one reason why the modern world is so much more dangerous since Christians have lost interest in understanding sin.]