[What is the lesson?
A post-religionist (enlightenment) godhead wins every battle among the enlightenment gods in the 20th century.
American citizens do not win the so-called Cold War.
Big Government Liberalism win the Cold Battle among the Materialist Ideologies (7745-7789 U0’).
Big Government Liberalism is a sovereign religion.]
Summary of text [comment] page 82
[Today, certain semiotic scholastics may be labeled post-modern.
In the same way, I call certain enlightenment and modern thinkers post-religionist.
Schoonenberg is not a post-religionist (enlightenment) thinker.
He is a modern who witnessed the horrors of modernism.
He tries to find a way out of the interpellation of the post-religionist (enlightenment) godheads.
Unfortunately, he writes right at the time when a new set of enlightenment gods enter into conflict.
In 1960, the conflict rages between two ideologies of materialism: Soviet Communism and Big Government Liberalism.]
[In place of the myth of Genesis, Enlightenment thinkers propose (what they think is) a true (as opposed to false) scenario.
It goes something like this:
Humans are naturally good and well-intentioned.
Then, civilization came along with the concept of property. The self-centering condition of ownership blocks their good and well-intended natures.
Hence the slogan from the French Revolution goes like this:
Liberty (from property)
Equality (of property for all)
Fraternity (through our good and well-intended natures)]
Summary of text [comment] page 82
[Enlightenment doctrine holds. Genesis is mythology. Mythology is false.
But is it deceptive?]
[Moderns insist. The stories of Genesis are mythology. Why? They wanted people to convert. They wanted them to abandon their Christian mythologies.
For the modern, the stories of Adam and Eve are false.
Original Sin, a doctrine relying on the stories of Adam and Eve, is also false.]
[Today, 50 years after Schoonenberg published, I may delineate threads that link the themes.
First, let me start with the idea that Modernism was built on mythologies.
For the modern, mythology associates with the word: “False”. The dichotomy is true versus false. Mythology is false.
For the premodern Christian, mythology associates with the word: “Deception”. The dichotomy is true versus deception. Pagan myth is deceptive.
Why?
The original Christians are all converts. They abandon their Greek, German, Roman and other mythologies. Yet, those religions still call them to return.]
[Does Schoonenberg’s proposal integrate with established doctrine in some fashion?
He does not know how, because he does not have a postmodern way to mythologize the Story of the Fall.
He does not have a postmodern way to show that Modernism itself is built on mythologies.]
[Slavoj Zizek coined a word for ‘the exhibition of the passions of self-justification’.
He called it ‘perversion’.
Hmmm. Now, that sounds like the Church’s doctrine on Original Sin.]
[Once self-justification becomes the normal context of concupiscence, the passions once again enter into the picture.
Cruelty arises from the potential inherent in self-justification.
Cruelty puts self-justification into context.
Cruelty answers the question: Are you willing to use your self-justifications in order to dehumanize other humans?
Cruelty is a powerful and passionate affirmation.
Self-justification never felt so good.]
Summary of text [comment] page 82
[Schoonenberg’s proposed doctrine on concupiscence differs from the Church’s doctrine on concupiscence. It is also a critique of the Church’s doctrine.
Yet, it is not so different. Schoonenberg surveys the same world as the Church.
Ambition and power demands that we are the ones who put ourselves into perspective.
The signal we broadcast to ourselves, when received by reason, facilitates self-justification.
Self-justification is the normal context of concupiscence.]
