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.]

Summary of text [comment] page 19

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”?]

Summary of text [comment] page 18

New Testament writers also point to the doctrine of conscience as the inner norm for “what is good and sinful” for pagans, who have no Law (Rom 2:12-15).

[Just as the contextualization of actions through law^essential trains one’s dispositions, the contextualization of actions through the Law (think^divine) trains one’s conscience to be free.

The pagans had no Law.  But, they did have independent think^groups.  Think^pagans were constituted independently of the Mosaic Tradition.  They did not form in order to exploit the Mosaic Tradition.  There were no barriers to coming close, or finding features, of think^divine.  Consequently, many pagans had consciences that came remarkably close to the Scriptural ideal of conscience^free.

This precisely is the intuition behind a little book by Simone Weil, Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks, published in the United States in 1958 by Beacon Press.]

[How does love fit into this picture?  Think^divine trains conscience^free by favoring actions that belong to a moral religious context.  Think^divine brings virtuous acts into relation with conscience^free.

Law^essential trains our dispositions by placing our actions into a normal context.  If one desires to follow a think^divine but does not allow law^essential to speak to those dispositions that require training, then one is not really following think^divine.]

With this in mind, consider this snippet from Schoonenberg’s reference: 1 Cor 13.

“And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”

[The drawback of “putting one’s heart before God” is that God will not tell the sinner “what ‘he’ wants to hear”.

The virtue of “placing one’s heart before God” is that the person comes closer to contextualizing ‘his’ actions through both think^divine and law^essential.   Only by aligning oneself ( that is, one’s actions₂(conscience^free₁)) ) with think^divine, does one start to see the consequences of one’s own and other’s actions ( that is, law^essential ).]

[In the time of Jesus, the exterior cultivation of ritual purity constituted a think^pro-obect. It exhibited the relations of a think^golden_calf to a (projected) think^scapegoat . It spoke a language that maintained the mask of law^denial.

The take home lesson is that the sinner’s dispositions are situated by transgressions through both think^pro-object and law^denial.

The sinner hears what ‘he’ wants to hear.]

Summary of text [comment] page 18

Jesus places ‘man’s’ heart before God.  The person’s free decision is the foundation of religion and morality.

The New Testament further develops that doctrine by pointing to the primacy of love (1 Cor 13).

[The hypocrite must establish that the cause lies elsewhere.

This is precisely why Rene Girard’s observations of the sociological importance of the scapegoat have such pertinence.

The hypocritical golden calf preserves ‘his’ innocence through the creation of a scapegoat.

The charade lasts until the moment when law^essential can no longer be denied and the kingdom collapses.]

[Hypocrisy follows a roundabout pathway to denial.

The hypocrite engages in transgressions.  These transgressions can be described on the moral religious axis as think^group₃(sin₂(conscience^lacking₁)).  The hypocritice does not proselytize ‘his’ think^group.

Why?

‘His’ think^group is parasitic to a sovereign that think^divine has empowered.  The hypocrite does not pay the price for ‘his’ actions and directs resources to ‘himself’.]

As the consequences of the transgressions (of hypocrites) become more and more apparent, the sovereign may face a choice.  The sovereign may recognize that the hypocrites saps ‘his’ ability to maintain sovereign functions or ‘he’ may fail to recognize what is happening.  Either way, members of a parasitic think^group will insist that they are not responsible.

Moreover, they will insist that the cause of the problems cannot be understood as law^essential₃(transgressions₂(dispositions₁)). Thus, the denial of law^essential underlies hypocrisy.]

Summary of text [comment] page 18

[What characterizes “the hypocrite”?

The hypocrite preaches one way but does the other.  The interpellation between the parallel nested forms becomes a charade.  The hypocrite pays lip service to think^divine but acts according to think^group.]