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[Here is the comedic part of that story.

During the Middle Ages, right before the Reformation, printed indulgences almost became the world’s first fiat currency.

What an amazing, inadvertent, combination of printed paper and wishful thinking that would have been.

It was sort of like the euro and the dollar today, but with this caveat:

Indulgences were printed to prepare for tomorrow for the sins of today.

Euros and dollars are printed in order for the sovereign powers to sin for today. Who cares if tomorrow will pay?]

[Similarly, in biology, no creature can be reduced to cause and effect with respect to either its own entirety or the entirety of other creatures.

This is readily apparent when one creature is free to respond to another.

Some modern gnostics contextualize these responses as divine, “the ecology”, or more comprehensively, “Gaia”.

In technical terms:

Gaia₃(spontaneous order and creature₂( potential of creatures freely responding to one another₁))]

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[The appeal of indulgences was obvious. You could buy a few indulgences in order to… um … indulge yourself. No treasure box of indulgences could keep you from going to hell for the big ones, the mortal sins, but they could ease the way for the little pleasures. They could make little sins appear as little pleasures.

After all, the reason why one purchases an indulgence is “to mitigate God’s wrath, His Judgment in the afterlife”. The purchase admits the transgression. The purchase in no way condones the person’s sinful actions (or inactions). Yet, the purchase fosters … delinquency.

Ironically, the word “indulgence” took on “the meaning, presence and message associated with the purchase of the printed indulgence”.

A ducat could buy you one less day in purgatory and a little more fun today.]

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What is that something?

“The something that must be redeemed” is “delinquency”.

How so?

One reason why a person falls into temptation is lack of maturity. A delinquent’s confession may conceal as well as reveal. “The sinner who renounces ‘his’ sin” must still pay a price; that is, must still grow up, even though ‘he’ no longer faces damnation.

This brings us to the old issue of indulgences, which “remit punishments in purgatory” for “payment today”.

Indulgences allow the penitent to “pay up in this life” for “transgressions committed in this life”, rather than pay in the next life.

Indulgences promote delinquency.

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The coincidence of punishment and sin does not remove the judicial aspect, the divine punishment.

A person who has renounced sin and confessed is still held accountable. ‘He’ is still under scrutiny until something has been paid or redeemed.

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[One difference between think^group and think^divine is that think^group may tell you what you want to hear, even though you may deny wanting to hear the message.

Think^group often calls for sensible construction.

Think^divine rarely tells you what you want to hear. Instead, it may tell you what you need to know, such as, “be patient”. Or it may tell you something that you cannot sensibly figure out.

Think^divine often calls for social construction.]

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[At the start of the first section of chapter 2, Schoonenberg’s comments already call to mind “the message underlying the word ‘religion'”. The dual vertical axis is characteristic of our current Lebenswelt.]

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The state of grace goes with a good attitude, which is something like a reward. The state of sin goes with a bad attitude, which is something like a punishment.

The sin itself hardens the attitudes [conscious^lacking] and habituates certain beliefs [think^group]. This itself is a punishment.

In contrast, the rewarding moral life is marked by wise attitudes [conscience^free] and a habituation of character-building beliefs [think^divine].

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Chapter 2 is titled “The Sequels of Sin”.

The first section is titled “Sin in itself as punishment”. This section examines more closely the conclusion “that it is not God who punishes sin, but sin punishes itself”.

From a judicial perspective, there is a sequence. A wrongdoing is followed by punishment.

From the perspective of decision, a sin and its punishment coincide, because the sin habituates behaviors and attitudes associated with a state of sin.

The state of self-destruction is not impenetrable to interpellation. The sin is always challenged by grace, just as grace is always challenged by temptations.