[An entertaining but disturbing cinematic portrayal of the material and spiritual deformation of thinkgroup appears in the movie Pulp Fiction. One (criminal) character is spooked by a miracle. The other is not.]
[Here, Schoonenberg appears to meld Christ and thinkdivine.
The vertical parallel axes of thinkdivine and thinkgroup are inherently unstable, in that they are exclusive yet interpellating.
The thinkdivine nested form may be regarded as formative.
The thinkgroup nested form may be regarded as formative, but it may also be deformative.
A thinkgroup nested form may be deformative in two ways.
One is material. The sinful pursuit of material advantage favors a self-justification3(concupiscence2(1)). Sometimes, this complex is spooked by blasphemy3(cruelty2(1)).
The other is spiritual. A thinkgroup strives to attain sovereign power in order to dictate an organizational objective for all society. Blasphemy3(cruelty2(1)) becomes the norm. Yet, both everything and nothing spooks these idolaters. They are paranoid. They feel invulnerable.
Both types of deformation are parasitic and fully capable of taking over the host.]
Summary of text [comment] pages 24 & 25
Sin is against God and the world (as it participates in the history of salvation through God’s grace). Sin is against Christ. So the dynamic is a positive feedback where God’s grace flows more and more abundantly at the same time that sin drives more and more dramatically to the rejection of Christ.
The history of Israel shows precisely this dynamic.
Christ’s coming on Earth initiated a positive feedback that will bring forth the Antichrist as the embodiment of sin.
Does that mean that every sin categorically promotes the Antichrist?
No.
Sin is situational, even though it comes from the heart, the core of our personhood and freedom. Conditions are always a factor. But outer manifestations are signs of inner conscience and dispositions. Signs can both reveal and veil.
For Schoonenberg, this much has unfolded: The sin against the Holy Spirit draws the individual into extreme consequences [into an sovereigninfra religion that excludes thinkdivine] and bars ‘him’ from every path to salvation.
[Schoonenberg’s conclusion resonates with Zizek’s definition of “perversity”, as “one who transgresses (thinkdivine) while acting as an instrument of a thinkgroup“.
It also parallels Ted Peter’s 7 steps to radical evil, where the final state is blasphemy3(cruelty2(1)). Blasphemy3 is idolatry. Idolatry elevates one’s thinkgroup into a thinkpro-object that eclipses thinkdivine.
Blasphemy3 contextualizes cruel action2. Blasphemy3 brings cruelty2 into relation with “the possibilities inherent in self-justification(concupiscence())1”.
Self-justification3(concupiscence2(1)) parallels thinkgroup(sin(consciencelacking)).]
Summary of text [comment] page 24
Bultman repeatedly argued that sinfulness belongs to the lapsedness of the past and redemption is an openness to the future.
[Bultman presumes that the future is the history of salvation, that is, of increasing delineation of thinkdivine.
This makes sense in the fact that, when a thinkgroup fails and lawessential runs its course, the emotional and cognitive reactions inform subsequent sacred prohibitions. The failure and re-establishment of order is enshrined in sacred rituals.
No one wants that to happen again.]
If Christ and the prophets most fully reveal [thinkdivine], then the “history of salvation” is the unfolding of “what Biblical revelation means”.
On the other hand, one can also argue that the words of prophets and of Jesus the Christ were only taken seriously after everything they predicted came true. After the first, and then the second, respectively, temple was destroyed, how could anyone deny the truth?
Perhaps, there is a simultaneous looking forward as well as back in the gift of thinkdivine.]
[Outside of history, lawdenial is conjured through Progressive thinkgroup. Thinkgroup expresses imaginary pictures, primordial images that cannot be challenged, of “the anticipated consequences of the imposition of their organizational objectives”. These primordial images add to an exclusion already exercised by controlling the language. These divorced people must be happy, they got a “no fault divorce”.
After all, what do the words “fault” and “marriage” mean in a world of “no fault divorce”?
Take a few moments and toy with the antihistorical and farcical primordial image of “a fault free divorce”. Human relationships like a little plastic toys. Sometimes toys break and it is nobody’s fault. You shop for another one. See. It’s pretty and new again.
Not.
The Primordial Images of American Progressive Elites informs attitudes of consciencelacking and trains the dispositions. No fault divorce undermines prudence and trains the dispositions in the arts of deception. The next relationship is never pretty and new again.
American Progressive Elites cannot imagine, much less articulate, the debilitating unfolding of lawessential that follows the eclipse of traditional marriage.]
Summary of text [comment] page 24
[The other association may best be expressed through an example: marriage.
The (thinkdivine) norm of “what God has joined let no man sunder” is opposed by the modern norm of “no fault divorce” (thinkgroup). These two norms are exclusive yet interpellating. A contest between them plays out in history. A contest also occurs “outside of history”; that is, in the realm of primordial imagery.
The former associates with the unfolding of lawaccept.
The latter associates with lawdenial.
Inside of history, the unbinding of marriage by Progressives has had repercussions on every level of society, from the population (demographics) to the personal (the flourishing of resentment). Thinkgroup necessarily denies the consequences of its policies on human action.
In fact, their symbolic order cannot articulate any deformative impacts because the “words have changed” to accommodate their faultless policies.
The repercussions of no-fault divorce, plus the denial of those repercussions (lawdenial), constitute the Real of History (lawessential).
Or rather, more technically, there is a relation of impossibility between lawaccept and lawdenial. ]
Summary of text [comment] page 23
Free will [specified conscience] relies on norms [thinkgroup and thinkdivine] . Many of these norms are built over time. Many are handed down by God. Many are created out of the cloth of deception, telling the interpellated what they want to hear.
Sin [thinkgroup] may eclipse awareness of any true (not deceptive) norm [thinkdivine].
In this regard, sin is opposed to the meaning of history, especially the history of salvation. Sin is in history. But since sin derives from freedom, sin is antihistorical.
[To me, this recalls Jung’s archetypes, which are “antihistorical”. A better word would be “ahistorical”.
Perhaps, here, we may see another delineation of the definition of “religion”. So far, “religion” has been defined according to the criteria of the intersecting nested forms and relation to sovereign power.
Here, “religion” is archetypal in the precise sense that “primordial images never occur in their archetypal purity” but always specified through historical circumstance.
But there could be another association.]
Summary of text [comment] pages 22 & 23
‘Man’ is not only placed in a reality to which ‘he’ has to conform [lawessential], ‘he’ ‘himself ‘is the summit of that reality [characterized by thinkdivine((consciencefree))].
‘Man” carries within ‘himself’ the task of “ruling the earth”; that is, of building and molding the world [through human action] and ‘himself’ [conscience and dispositions].
Free will [specified conscience], at the least, establishes the person.
Where do these necessary person-forming attitudes come from? Nature itself? No. Relations with others? Yes. Relations with God? Yes. Yes.
[One implication of Schoonenberg’s line of thought: “The attitudes that establish one’s free will, or specified conscience”, get confounded with “building the world and oneself”, that is, one’s dispositions.
Also, stepping further back, another implication is that thinkdivine (building character) may be confounded with thinkgroup (building the world).
Losing perspective is so easy when building the world becomes more important than building character, rather than the reverse.]
Comment on pg. 22 continued from last blog.
[Now, let me consider science for a moment. The only way to study the realm of actuality is to only consider dyadic relations. But how do you do that?
The realms of normal context and possibility are always getting in the way. After all, the nested form is:
Triadic relations3( dyadic relations2( monads1))
Normal context3( actuality2( possibility1))
Perhaps, that is why “exclusion of divine causation” must be methodological.
The normal context must methodically eliminate alternate possibilities. Empirical scientists are always worried about the quality of their controls and their measurements. We can only truly see dyadic cause and effect by restricting normal context and by eliminating alternate possibilities.
This is very difficult to do. We can only see cause and effect when we are restricted to the referential; that is, to true as opposed to false.]
