Summary of text [comment] page 22

Schoonenberg continued by weaving two themes together.

Here is one: Sin is the violation of norms of the concrete world of creation, that is against God’s will and wisdom expressed in our nature.  Sin is against the essential laws of natural and supernatural reality.

Here is the other: Sin is a violation of the norms of the Covenant, the laws given to us by Moses.  These laws come from without and define our nature.  Sin is an offense against the positive laws of God’s will.

He ties these themes together by asserting that the “positive” laws (theme two) are justified by the “essential” laws (theme one).

[The statement that one type of law is justified by the other implies that one type of law puts the other into context.  Is this really the case?

Schoonenberg’s stylistic method of interlacing and tying together suggests otherwise.  “Justification” does not “interlace and tie together”.  The model of the intersecting nested forms performs this trick quite nicely.]

Summary of text [comment] page 22

The “No of sin” shows itself in two forms: refusal and usurpation.  Each form includes the other.

[I mention this text in order to show how slowly I’m moving: This same sentence starts blog 1.4D.

Ancient Israel was the first civilization on record to clearly document the historic pattern of a suprasovereign religion establishing a sovereign, that then became a locus of power and a site of competition for infrasovereign religious factions.]

According to Schoonenberg, some [infrasovereign religious] factions aimed to “be like unto God” (Gen 3:5) and to dispose (as if they owned) God’s free gifts.

Of course, they had to destroy whoever complained.  They did so by projecting the anti-object, claiming that dissenters (and whoever else might accidentally stand in their way) held despicable ideologies (that God could not give gifts) and were bad people (for hating God and God’s gifts).]

The sovereign^infra Cult of the Royal House (of the First Temple) projected an ideology of disobedience and a persona of disrespect onto the prophet.  This was manifestly the opposite of what God (and practically everyone else, for that matter) witnessed.

I pause to put a diagram of the general intersecting nested forms for an infrasovereign religion.

[This leads to a question: Who pays the price of think^group?

“Denial of law^essential” or “ignoring the consequences of the imposition an object relation” is symptomatic of think^group.

Often, sovereign power is confused – confounded – with law^essential.  “The law” is defined as “the capricious actions of sovereign power”.

Most often, unintended consequences are attributed to the projected other.  I suspect that Rene Girard’s models of the scapegoat may be deduced from this arrangement.  Notably, Girard’s tradition does not develop the other side of the model, what I call “the golden calf”.

Scapegoating protects the golden calves only so long.  Eventually, all subjects become aware of the high costs of think^pro-object.  They come to realize that think^anti-object is merely a projection.  The guilty ones (scapegoats) do not really hold the religious ideology and moral attitudes attributed to them.

When people no longer believe, think^pro-object must rely more and more on the brute force of sovereign power in order to maintain power.  Think^pro-object stupidly clings to its organizational object.  They cannot let go.  In particular, they must suppress the appearance of individuals who critique their religion from the perspective of think^divine.

They must prevent the appearance of a think^divine that dares to put their sovereign^infra into context.]

[Today, religions^{infrasovereign} seek to gain the integrity of a religion^{suprasovereign} by gaining control of sovereign power.  In short, they confound the “organizational goals” with “character building”.

This is a perilous path, since the costs of completely imposing the organizational objectives of an religion^{infrasovereign} are high.

What happens if, by some chance, the organizational objectives are met?  Or what if the society must be destroyed in order to achieve the organizational objectives?  Or what if people adapt to the imposition by changing their behaviors in such a way that they lessen the importance of the organizational goal?  What if the effort to impose organizational goals destroys moral character?

Well, the imposition must be continually strengthened in order to meet the imperative.

The imposition becomes like a boulder.  The people become like water.

The dao becomes more apparent.

This is the theoretical challenge facing all critical thinkers today.]

Summary of text [comment] page 22

[Today, one might imagine that infrasovereign religions appear only after sovereign power descends under the auspices of a suprasovereign religion.

An Archaeology of the Fall suggested that religions of constrained complexity acted as think^divine in concert with think^organization.  Sovereignty belonged to the individuals within the group.  The undifferentiated nested form seamlessly encompassed character building₃(exercise of power₂(organizational discipline and goals₁)).

The purely symbolically ordered think^groups of unconstrained complexity defined themselves in contrast to this holistic, traditional way of life. Organizing dissociated from character building.

The sovereign arose as the only institution capable of performing certain tasks (such as the natural functions of government: resolving civic and contract disputes, public works, addressing crime, and defense).

However, the sovereign was also the only institution capable of forcing people to accomplish organizational goals defined by infrasovereign institutions.

The legitimate tasks of the sovereign make its institution inevitable.  The establishment of the sovereign then attracted infrasovereign religions.]

Summary of text [comment] page 22

[How did the nested form religion^{suprasovereign}₃(sovereign₂(religion^{infrasovereign}₁)) emerge?

This is a good question.  In many ways, this is the same question as:

When did think^divine and think^group become exclusive yet interpellating?

Before the beginning, in constrained complexity, this nested form was not differentiated.

In the beginning, as depicted in An Archaeology of the Fall, a change in the way we talk from referential to symbolic potentiated the differentiation.

The differentiation characterizes unconstrained complexity.

In Biblical myth, the differentiation was already apparent by the end of the stories of Cain and Abel in Genesis.]

[The difference between the character-building think^divine and the organization-justifying think^group is significant.

The difference reminds me of the ego’s use of objects in order to bring other aspects of the psyche into relation.  Non-ego aspects of the psyche, harbored in conscience and in dispositions, may be trained through the integrative symbols of think^divine or they may be brought into command by the disciplinary objectives of think^group.  Ironically, both these aspects appear to fall under the label of “superego”.

Either way, the non-ego aspects cannot escape the ego’s object relations because they cannot leave the psyche.  Virtually the same condition holds for the sovereign subject.]

[A think^group may seek sovereign power in order to “establish the object that brings all subjects into an organization”.  (Or an alliance of think^groups may seek power to establish objects.)

When an infrasovereign institution grasps sovereign power, the think^group re-iterates the previously described parallel structure, but on the basis of a particular organizational relation – which I will call an “organizational object” – that establishes the difference between the grasping think^group and others.

Think^group becomes think^pro-object.

Furthermore, think^pro-object substitutes for think^divine.

The exclusion of the nested form of think^divine and the substitution of think^{group/pro-object} (in think^divine‘s place) leaves the parallel nested form (formerly occupied by think^group) empty.  Into that emptiness, sovereign power projects a nested form onto whoever does not go along with the party line.

The resulting parallel forms are think^pro-object(virtue^{=object relation}(conscience^pro-object)) versus the projection of think^anti-object(sin^{=violations of object relation}(conscience^anti-object)).

The difference between the character-building think^divine and the organization-justifying think^group is significant.

[Let me continue to expand on the first criteria in blogs 1.4F and 1.4G1.

Under conditions where supra-sovereign religions operate, the normal contexts of the vertical axis (of the intersecting nested forms) manifest themselves as think^divine(virtuous actions (conscience^free)) and think^group(sinful actions(conscience^lacking)).

The sovereign (ultimately no different from anyone else) is contextualized according to her actions within this universal – civilization engendering – dichotomy.

Think^divine addresses “the object that brings everyone into relation”.  Each person is called (interpellated) to align herself with that object (bring herself into relation).  This process may be called “building character”.

Personal character induces spontaneous organizations within society.  Organizations spontaneous arise and order themselves as individuals cooperate under the inspiration of the simple character building rules of a suprasovereign religion. For example, organizations may further train the person according to some goal.

Organizations, in turn, are contextualized by (or as) institutions. Institutions justify organizations.  Here is the location of think^group.  Institutions put organizations into context.

Some of these institutions may compete for sovereign power.]