Summary of text [comment] page 19

[Judgment is intrinsic to Christ’s Theodrama.  What happened to Jesus wasn’t pretty.  What happened to Jesus was “God Judging the One Recognized as Himself”.  And what did Jesus do?  He submitted to that Judgment.  Yes, there is more than one meaning to the word “submission”.

Could God provide a more realistic and more fantastic image of our own judgment, where our souls, our specified conscience₁ and our dispositions₁, the only part of our selves that can be judged, become persons₂ in His Act of Recognition, thus defining His Final Judgment?]

A striking moment in the science fiction movie Watchmen (2009) cleverly and tenderly dramatizes the impossibility of a particular person.

Summary of text [comment] page 19

[The nextquestion is: Has a God who Judges been revealed?

Schoonenberg presumes so.   Let us take a look at his presumption from the perspective of Peirce’s categories (er, my view of that perspective).

Think about Jesus, “the One God Recognizes as Himself”, being miraculously conceived, then born as a human, from this apparently random woman.  Could God provide a more realistic and more fantastic image of our own “coming into being” from the realm of possibility?  Here we are.  Our own actuality is only reason why we do not recognize that each and every one of us is impossible.  Was Jesus any more impossible?

Jesus, like any one of us, had a conscience^specified₁ and dispositions₁.  Somehow, as he developed he knew that the Father Recognized Him.  In that Recognition, his soul occupied the same position as our souls after death.  The Person of Jesus, in a sense, accepted the mantle of our “waiting to be Recognized, and with that Recognition, Judged” simply because He was “the One the Father Recognized”.

“The One Who Recognizes₂” and “the One Who is Recognized₂” both belong to the realm of actuality.  What happened when it became more and more apparent that the Father recognized His Son?  Everyone was repelled in horror and drawn forward in fascination.

On the one hand, every think^group was revealed for what it would lead to: a mess of porridge cooked from human flesh.

On the other hand, we saw an image of think^divine that we could not even come close to comprehending.  All humanity has been drawn into the theological drama, the Theodrama, of God’s Self Recognition.]

Summary of text [comment] page 19

[The idea of God’s judgment implies that God is a mediator. A mediator brings actuality from possibility.  God brings “a thing that can be held accountable₂” out of the only items in the intersecting nested forms that can be judged, “one’s specified conscience₁ and trained dispositions₁”.

God₃ brings a person₂ from a soul₁ in the process of the final judgment₃.]

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[Ironically, this accounting is parodied in this life, when a think^group projects a think^{opposing_the_object} and conscience^anti-object onto a suspected enemy.

Anyone guilty of some minor infraction, being at the wrong place at the wrong time, or daring to think that ‘he’ could fix a problem, is suddenly held “responsible” as “a person who holds an evil ideology₃ and lives a false conscience₁”.  Often, the person is also accused of a gross, uncivil and tormented disposition₁.

Here, “two normal contexts₃ (think^pro-object₃ and law^denial₃)” constitute “the accused person₂ (giving ‘him’ a new body₂)” by bringing ‘him’ into relation with “the possibilities inherent in the accused actually having a conscience₁ and dispositions₁“.

The only caveat is that the accusers define the person’s conscience₁ and dispositions₁, rather than the person.  Thus, the mob, that great frothy beast (today, amplified through mainstream television and newspapers), turns on a soul who exists only in the realm of potential, as if the accused imaginary person was actual.

Look, our eyes can see an image of a real person being accused.  There ‘he’ is, on the television.  So it must be true.

In 2012, Mr. Romney never saw it coming.  The poor soul became the person he never was.  He was damned in a parody of divine judgment.  He was demonized by the projections of the accusers.

Mr. Romney still does not know what happened to him.  One wonders whether, in a farcical version of some tale written Edgar Allen Poe, he will awaken in his crypt.  Will he ever face the accusers?  Will the accusers ever face him?

“Responsibility” is “holding a possibility accountable”.  This “holding” can only be accomplished by “creating a context where possibility comes into relation with actuality”.  Think^pro-object creates those contexts by projecting think^anti-object onto innocent souls.

The question arises: Will God do the same at the Resurrection?

The answer is that He cannot.  God cannot lie to Himself.]

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[From the previous blog, God judges the deceased person.

In order to hold ‘him’ responsible, God reifies the soul as a person.  Conscience^specified₁ and the person’s trained dispositions₁ (the person’s soul) re-animate a body (site of action), constituting a person. In that re-animation, the person is judged.

What does that mean?

First, consider that, at the time of Judgment, the thirdness of the intersecting nested form is law^essential₃ (since acceptance or denial are no longer pertinent) and think^divine₃ (since any particular think^group has passed away long before the Resurrection).

Second, consider the way that a normal context works.  In our everyday lives, “law^essential₃ and think^divine₃” bring “a body, the site of human action₂” into relation with “the potential in one’s conscience^specified₁ and trained (but still natural) dispositions₁“.

Third, consider what these two points imply: A normal context judges as it brings the person into the realm of actuality.

This logic applies to everyday life and to any post-mortem existence for humans.  No matter what one imagines the constitution of existence after death, a judgment must occur, because the normal contexts of the afterlife are necessarily different than the normal contexts of everyday life.]

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[We can ask the question: When we die, what is there to judge?  The body cannot be judged.  It is dead. Re-animation would explicitly violate His Own Will that we be “who we are,” that is, “creatures”.  Death goes with the territory. Creatures do not die then come back to life.

One’s actions could be judged, but these actions are events in the past, therefore cannot be held responsible. “Responsibility” implies “a thing that can be held accountable”.  The actions were events, not things, so cannot be held accountable.

What about one’s think^group and its associated denials of law^essential?

Well, let us perform a thought experiment and suppose that, due to various bureaucratic machinations, God waits about 80 years (4 generations) before rendering judgment on any individual.  Imagine defending your bohemian lifestyle and cooperation with the eugenics movement, today, in 2012, when you died in 1932.  This think^group and denial of law^essential are a dead as you are.  Time renders us all parochial.

Well, now that we eliminated actions₂, law^essential₃ and think^group₃, what is left?

Only the specified conscience₁ and trained (but still natural) dispositions₁ remain as “things that can be held responsible”; that is, “judged”.

Are these not the characteristics that animate the body?  Do these not comprise the soul and bring the person to life? ]

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[So, at what point does our conscience^specified become unalterably fixed as either “free of coercion” or “lacking freedom”.

Here we begin to touch upon a spooky moment for most moderns.  This is the moment when we die.  Death is the final action that situates conscience^specified and whatever dispositions supported actions.]

Summary of text [comment] page 19

Schoonenberg wrote that the heart, the center of the person, is also the locus of the free decision for which ‘man’ is responsible.  Mesurable qualities do not make ‘man’ good or bad before God.  Nor do the consequences of ‘his’ actions.  Instead, God judges the response of the free person which takes shape in ‘his’ actions.

[How to translate this into the format of the intersecting nested forms?

Think₃(actions₂(conscience₁)) is the purely theoretical moral religious axis.  In order to be practical, actions­₂ specify conscience₁.  The specification is revealed in the way we live.

In the process of living, a particular conscience and set of dispositions (both exist in the realm of possibility) feel more and more real (as the range of possibilities becomes more limited and thus, predictable).  One’s actions make more and more sense (in that one can try to explain their predictable patterns).  The person seems to have made a choice.]

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Freedom, the order of the heart, has a peculiar moral and religious character.

The Church defended the concept of “free will” against various movements that have denied or redefined it.

Responsibility is intimately tied to free will.

[Here is one association:

Free will : conscience₁ (note that this is purely theoretical because, in order to underlie the actual, it must be specified within the parallel (exclusive yet interpellating) forms of the moral religious axis.  So far, the two most frequently used specifiers have been “free” and “lacking”.  Here, “free” means “not coerced” and “lacking” means “constrained by the symbolic order of think^group”.

Ironically, to many, conscience^lacking₁ appears to have greater “freedom” in the sense of “greater latitude”.

Why?

Think^group₃ denies the consequences of their actions (that is, the law^essential) and projects fault for unintended consequences on a mythic other, who (unknowingly and inadvertently) thwarts them.  In doing so, conscience^lacking avoids responsibility.

This raises the question: What is “responsibility”?]