Summary of text [comment] page 82
[Both Paul and John’s letters endeavored to make sense of the mythos of Jesus the Christ. Each author tried to figure out the Logos. The question before them was:
What was meaning, guarantee and message underlying this revelation?]
Summary of text [comment] page 82
[The entire person, body and soul, was vulnerable to hearing what I want to hear and acting against the good (of thinkdivine and lawessential).]
Summary of text [comment] page 82
[ The re-ordination of the symbolic order during the first century of Christianity applies to Greek as well.
The original Greek opposition between ‘flesh’ and ‘reason’ had the same drawbacks as the original Semitic opposition of ‘flesh’ and ‘God’s law (that is, what one felt in one’s bones)’.
The drawback, in an age of Empire, was that one’s reason and one’s blood & bones could betray the truth. They were not as reliable as once imagined. One could betray one’s own people, and one’s own God, through reason and blood & bones, just as easily as through flesh and … um … flesh.
Both metaphors were adopted by the ruling elites to fashion idols (of ‘who they were’).
In Greece, the rulers became ‘paragons of reason’.
In Israel, the rulers became ‘the blood and bones of Yahweh’s cult’.]
Summary of text [comment] page 82
Schoonenberg considered ‘the flesh’ in the context of concupiscence and bondage.
He asked: How does this word appear in history?
The term ‘flesh’ derives in part from the Greek world. The Greeks came to see that ‘the flesh’ was opposed to ‘reason’.
In the Old Testament, ‘the flesh’ was opposed to ‘the Providence of God’.
[Notably, Schoonenberg did not mention the older opposition, flesh versus blood & bones. Obviously, blood & bones were attuned to the Providence of God.]
In the New Testament, flesh joins desire as ‘belonging to the world’ as opposed to ‘belonging to the Father (1 John 2:16)’.
Schoonenberg concluded that ‘concupiscence’ is a pejorative term that represents the tendency toward sin within man or mankind as it stands under sin.
[If this is the mythos, then what is the logos?
What is the reference to be constructed on ‘the miracle of Paul’s insightful use of words ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’?
If the word ‘flesh’ veils the history of ‘flesh and bones’, then a discussion of concupiscence does not follow, as it does here, in Schoonenberg’s book.
Instead, a discussion of the nested form self-justification3( concupiscence2(1)) might better apply. A similar discussion appears in my blogs on Ted Peter’s book Radical Evil.
But even that is not enough. Here an even bigger question:
What does it mean to live in a world where the meanings of words can reconfigure like a flock of birds as the seasons change?]
Summary of text [comment] page 81
[Speech-alone words are birds in flight.
Paul searched for words in a language that was changing, like a flock of birds at the change of season.
Every bird veiled its own history. Every bird differed from every other bird.
The entire flock flew differently, each bird in its own way.
Paul spied one set of differences, ‘flesh as opposed to spirit’.
He seized upon it, freezing the moment, as well as each bird’s veiled history.]
[This is a core insight in An Archaeology of the Fall.
We always feel, in our bones, that words are referential.
We always feel that words mean what they say.
We always project reference into spoken and written words.
Then, we learn that even the word ‘bones’ is simply a placeholder in a system of differences.
The symbolic order of speech alone talk is not anchored.
Horrors.]
[‘The Old Testament image of ‘the bones’, the scaffolding, always longing to stand before the Lord, like consciencefree’, had been emptied by the very religion that preached God’s Covenant.
When Paul decried the ‘sins of the flesh’, he could, just as well, have called them ‘sins of the bones’.
If the bones cannot stand before the Lord, then nothing, in humans, stands firm.]
Summary of text [comment] page 81
[Allow me to recap the previous blogs.
Schoonenberg did not see that Paul’s parole ‘flesh’ veiled the corruption of the Old Testament term ‘flesh and bones’.
Once one sees this option, then the enumeration of spiritual sins as ‘carnal’ makes perfect sense.
In addition, Schoonenberg did not conceive of the idea that Paul wrote at a time when language was changing ordination. The entire system of differences was in flux. Such a concept simply had not impacted Holland in the early 1960s.
‘Paul’s use of the term ‘flesh’‘ and ‘Christianity’s plain interpretation of Paul’s words’, thus constituted a prophecy; a truth awaiting a moment of surprise, when the mythos opens and the logos is revealed.]
Summary of text [comment] page 81
[Schoonenberg was not engaged in a creative enterprise. He earnestly took Paul at his word, without suspecting that words can radically change over time.
Schoonenberg understood that Paul presented the ‘flesh’ and the ‘carnal’ as thoroughly evil, unable to understand God’s mysteries, and ruled by sin.
Schoonenberg next raised the topics of concupiscence and bondage.]
