02/23/15

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.7E

Summary of text [comment] page 47

[This leads to a question:

What about scientific discovery?

Scientific discoveries alter the way we express lawessential, especially those features that exist independently of us. In Latin, the term is ens reale.

Notably, there is a difference in speed of response for each type of think.

For example, accounts of a new discovery may give political or some other advantage to a particular thinkgroup. They interpret lawessential in their own favor, thus producing an affirmative form of lawdenial. They will claim the discovery works to their benefit. Once these claims are debunked, these interpretations end up as fodder for thinkdivine. The claim itself remains in lawessential.

This fits the definition of “scandal”: “a fascination of the surface that blocks access to seeing deeper”.]

02/20/15

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.7D

Summary of text [comment] page 47

Next on the list: The opposition (to God) derives from our freedom. The opposition materializes a variety of levels. It both resembles and differs from evil in the prepersonal level.

[In regards to the prior intersection, free will associates to consciencelacking and consciencefree.

The comment on “levels of freedom” associates to two points.

One concerns the diversity of thinkgroups that speech alone talk makes possible. Even if a person is not in opposition to God, there are many groups to join, each with its own independence. Both the individual and the group may find ways to oppose God.

Two concerns the horizontal level of the intersection. This nested form interscopes with other nested forms. The nested form of lawessential interscopes with other expressions of the natural law. Each interscoping nested form constitutes a level of lawessential that must be accounted for by thinkgroup_or_divine.]

02/18/15

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.7B

Summary of text [comment] page 47

Schoonenberg opens chapter 1, section 7, with a list. These are the topics that he has covered so far. These topics constitute an essential definition of “sin”.

Let me go through the points one by one.

Sin is an opposition to God’s salvific activity and to His creation, hence a crime against the world and against humans.

[This can be portrayed by the formalism of the intersecting nested forms for “the message underlying the word ‘religion'”.

Sin is at the core of any mob or conspiracy:

thinkgroup3V( sin2( consciencelacking1V)).

Sin is in opposition to God’s salvific activity:

thinkdivine3V( virtue2( consciencefree1V))

Opposition to His creation is a crime against the world and fellow humans. That crime is captured by:

lawessential3H( sin or virtue2( dispositions1H))]

02/17/15

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.7A

This blog continues the review of Piet Schoonenberg’s book, De Macht der Zonde (1962), translated into English in 1965.

Man and Sin: A Theological View (University of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame, Indiana) is divided into 4 chapters plus an epilogue.

This blog continues on chapter 1, section 7, titled “God and sin”.

02/16/15

Beneath the Veil of Strange Verses by Jeremiah L. Alberg 2013 6F

What have I learned from Alberg’s slim volume?

Both Nietzsche and Rousseau constructed symbolic orders that turned hearts to stone.

Dante pointed to the symbolic order of the Christ.

Jesus, along with the prophets, constructed the first symbolic order from the perspective of the victim.

Flannery O’Connor wrote from the point of view of the victim; that is, the corpse.  In doing so, she portrayed the Nothing at the heart of symbolic orders manufactured after the Fall.

Each symbolic order relies on mimesisconstrained.

Mimesisunconstrained re-enacts mimesisconstrained in scandalous and problematic ways.

If “scandal” fascinates on the surface and blocks the path to deeper understanding, then “scandal” it is.  If “forgiveness” removes the block of “scandal”, then “forgiveness” it must be.

Discovery is located where scandals lurk.

02/13/15

Beneath the Veil of Strange Verses by Jeremiah L. Alberg 2013 6E

That brings me to the last author examined by Alberg.

Flannery O’Connor, unlike all the other authors, wrote with a dead hand.

Everything in her books and stories rings with the voice of a corpse, telling of the social construction that destroyed her, and revealing almost nothing about the symbolic order that supported the sinful social construction.

She forces the reader to say, “You do not make sense. Could you explain to me what you are writing in my own symbolic order?”, before realizing that she is only a corpse, a person who could never hold your symbolic order, because if she did, your symbolic order would construct a bureaucratic machine that would kill her.

She will never explain her writing in your symbolic order.

Consequently, many readers want to strangle her.

02/12/15

Beneath the Veil of Strange Verses by Jeremiah L. Alberg 2013 6D

In our evolutionary history, the “object that brought everyone into relation” existed in the realm of possibility, the realm where contradictions are allowed, the realm where everyone could both compete and get along.

Now, as soon as someone puts a formulation, some key component of a symbolic order, into the hollow space of “where the object is supposed to go”, the “object” becomes like a “thing” that we can want because we sense that others want it as well.

What a powerful and alluring thing this “object” is.  We expect that others are willing to sacrifice everything for this “object”.  We can back up that expectation with sovereign power.  Sovereign power creates the corpse.

And sovereign power is scandalized by its mute testimonial.

02/10/15

Beneath the Veil of Strange Verses by Jeremiah L. Alberg 2013 6B

Is anything more hurtful than someone criticizing your worldview – your symbolic order – without explaining her critique in terms of your symbolic order?

You can only sputter, “You do not make sense.”  Not in my Lebenswelt, that is.  And in that sputter, comes some spittle, a scattering spray of defensive thoughts, claiming that the critical utterer is informed by a twisted ideology and inspired by demonic motives.

If you are lucky, someone has already organized your thoughts, so all you have to do is act shocked and deny the critique.

The accusing corpse has already been refuted by the symbolic order, even though the accuser is dead.