[Paralleling self-destruction:

‘Something called ‘love’_3V’ brings ‘I (imaging the lover) and the object of my love (imaging the ‘something I love’)_2V’ into relation with ‘my potential for conscience, ‘what I love’, and self_1V’.

Here, ‘the object of my love_2V’ stands in for ‘myself (the one who I recognize on the basis of ‘something’)_2V’.

How close is that to: ‘I’ must be ‘whoever my love says I am’?]

[Paralleling grace:

‘Love or the Holy Spirit_3V’ brings ‘I (imaging the Father) and the one I love (imaging the Son)_2V’ into relation with ‘my potential for conscience, ‘what I love’ and self_1V’.

Here, ‘the one I love_2V’ stands in for ‘myself (the one who I recognize)_2V’.

How close is that to: I can love the other as myself?]

[The substitution of the word ‘love’ into the vertical axis produces different results for the cases of grace and self-destruction.]

[Both grace and self-destruction pertain to recognition. They both reflect the nested form of ‘God Recognizing Himself’.

For the moment, let me stay with the example of ‘the opportunity to love₂’ in ‘the tension between I recognize myself and human nature is to participate in divine nature’.

In this intersecting form (2.2F), the term ‘recognition_1V’ encompasses I and myself.

The term ‘recognize_3V’ may be called a design of God.

For grace:

‘Recognize or the Holy Spirit_3V’ brings ‘I (imaging the Father) and myself (imaging the Son)_2V’ into relation with ‘my potential of being an image of God_1V’.

For self-destruction:

‘Recognizing ‘something’_3V’ brings ‘I (the one who recognizes) and myself (the one who is recognized on the basis of ‘something’_2V) into relation with ‘my potential to recognize myself as ‘something’_1V’.]

[I am thrown back to the originating nested forms (2.1 DE, DH and DJ)).

One nested form goes with ‘I recognize myself as an image of God’.

The other nested form goes with ‘my human nature is to participate in the divine nature’.

Neither of these originating nested forms readily separates supernature and nature.

If I had to choose, I would say that the first goes with supernature and the second goes with nature.

But, that still does not satsify.

Even the originating dyad of One True Triune God and Creation does not readily separate into supernature or nature.]

Summary of text [comment] page 71

Schoonenberg takes care to avoid this stumbling block:

Grace determines nature.

[The preceding blog offers a suggestion about ‘grace in contrast to nature’.

But the suggestion is not convincing.

The contrast of grace opposed to self-destruction has been confounded with the contrast between supernature and nature.]

[Does the intersecting nested form of recognition and participation capture Schoonenberg’s dichotomy of ‘the whole person and the whole of reality’?

Does it also capture the dichotomy of ‘grace as opposed to nature’?

So far, ‘grace’ is opposed to ‘self-destruction’ as two contradicting ‘states of existence’. The opportunity to love enters the tension between recognition and participation.

Can I formulate a dichotomy of ‘grace in contrast to nature’ from this?]

Summary of text [comment] page 71

What about the sinner who falls in love?

In this example, love must mean eros, rather than agape.

Is it possible for a sinner to become enamored of another?

Yes, but love must involve the whole person.

Love is a positive stand of the whole person with respect to the whole of reality. Love comes from one’s whole heart or it is not love.

[Here, it is clear that Schoonenberg packs more than one definition into the term ‘whole person’.

He has no model that shows how natural and supernatural love implicate one another.

He used the word ‘levels’, as if the two were hierarchical.]