Summary of text [comment] page 21

Schoonenberg argues: The whole of creation is assumed with God in the covenant of grace.  That is, the covenant of grace is natural.

So when one sins in the sphere of natural relations, this sin is ultimately assumed in the dialogue between “God who bestows” and “man who receives” grace.

Sin always possesses a supernatural character.

[This is consistent with the way that the natural philosophical axis intersects with the moral religious axis in the realm of actuality.]

Summary of text [comment] page 20

Section 1.4 summarizes Schoonenberg’s description of “sin”.  Here are some initial points:

Sin belongs to the moral order.

The moral order is where ‘man realizes ‘himself’ as a person in action and utterance.

Sin is a negative reaction, a refusal and resistance.

Sin is a “No of the person” who shuts ‘himself’ off and hardens ‘himself’ (when openness and self-giving is expected).

Sin is a “No to God”.

[The previous blogs demonstrated that elements and features of the intersecting nested forms associate to these points.]

Summary of text [comment] page 19

Schoonenberg did not mention the word “intentionality”.

[ He assumed that intentionality existed.

The Scholastics were very interested in intentionality.

Semiotics opens a way to appreciate intentionality and existence.

My association for the human is:

Intentionality : specified conscience and trained disposition in a particular situation; very similar to both “soul” and “heart”.

John N. Deely wrote a whole book on this subject: Intentionality and Semiotics: A Story of Mutual Fecundation.  2007. University of Scranton Press:Distribution Center Chicago.]

Summary of text [comment] page 19

[Perhaps I was a little off target in the previous blogs.  Who knows? I return to Schoonenberg’s text.]

Schoonenberg wrote that the Church discovered that the heart, the center of the person, accounts for the free decision for which ‘man’ is responsible.  What makes a ‘man’ good or bad before God?  Not the qualities that can be noticed or measured, nor the consequences of his actions.  It is the response of the free person which takes shape in these actions.  To be sure, the outer and objective structure of his activity is important. But the deepest value lies in the response of the heart.

It is here that the person expresses ‘himself’ as such.

[To me, this description of the “soul” calls to mind the dual concepts of conscience^specified₁ and dispositions₁ that are habituated by our virtuous or sinful actions. This description of the “heart” calls to mind the entire intersecting nested form.]

Summary of text [comment] page 19

[One would not predict that the Theodrama, that we are immersed in, would be horrible and capricious.

What Jesus went through was horrible and capricious, because he was subject to the decrees of rulers who assumed that they represented the divine.  They thought they were think^pro-God.  They were filled with hatred of those they accused of think^anti-God.

Yet, Jesus forgave them.  And he is God.]

Summary of text [comment] page 19

[Who is the person₃ providing these realistic and fantastic images?

“The Holy Spirit is the Mediator₃” that brings “God the Father₂ and God the Son₂” out of “the possibility of Self-Recognition₁“.

The Holy Spirit is the relation between Father and Son.  That relation involves recognition, judgment, and submission.  That relation involves love.  That relation is a person.]

Summary of text [comment] page 19

[Judgment is intrinsic to Christ’s Theodrama.  What happened to Jesus wasn’t pretty.  What happened to Jesus was “God Judging the One Recognized as Himself”.  And what did Jesus do?  He submitted to that Judgment.  Yes, there is more than one meaning to the word “submission”.

Could God provide a more realistic and more fantastic image of our own judgment, where our souls, our specified conscience₁ and our dispositions₁, the only part of our selves that can be judged, become persons₂ in His Act of Recognition, thus defining His Final Judgment?]

A striking moment in the science fiction movie Watchmen (2009) cleverly and tenderly dramatizes the impossibility of a particular person.

Summary of text [comment] page 19

[The nextquestion is: Has a God who Judges been revealed?

Schoonenberg presumes so.   Let us take a look at his presumption from the perspective of Peirce’s categories (er, my view of that perspective).

Think about Jesus, “the One God Recognizes as Himself”, being miraculously conceived, then born as a human, from this apparently random woman.  Could God provide a more realistic and more fantastic image of our own “coming into being” from the realm of possibility?  Here we are.  Our own actuality is only reason why we do not recognize that each and every one of us is impossible.  Was Jesus any more impossible?

Jesus, like any one of us, had a conscience^specified₁ and dispositions₁.  Somehow, as he developed he knew that the Father Recognized Him.  In that Recognition, his soul occupied the same position as our souls after death.  The Person of Jesus, in a sense, accepted the mantle of our “waiting to be Recognized, and with that Recognition, Judged” simply because He was “the One the Father Recognized”.

“The One Who Recognizes₂” and “the One Who is Recognized₂” both belong to the realm of actuality.  What happened when it became more and more apparent that the Father recognized His Son?  Everyone was repelled in horror and drawn forward in fascination.

On the one hand, every think^group was revealed for what it would lead to: a mess of porridge cooked from human flesh.

On the other hand, we saw an image of think^divine that we could not even come close to comprehending.  All humanity has been drawn into the theological drama, the Theodrama, of God’s Self Recognition.]

Summary of text [comment] page 19

[The idea of God’s judgment implies that God is a mediator. A mediator brings actuality from possibility.  God brings “a thing that can be held accountable₂” out of the only items in the intersecting nested forms that can be judged, “one’s specified conscience₁ and trained dispositions₁”.

God₃ brings a person₂ from a soul₁ in the process of the final judgment₃.]