Summary of text [comment] pages 32 and 33

Schoonenberg then wrote about will and an ascending series of venial sins, mortal sins, and final impenitence.

The will has to do with an intuition in this life about a future life.  The will makes choices in this life … and there comes a moment … a moment in dying … when the will and the choice become one  …

Free will works with the sensual appetites. The appetites spontaneously tend to partial goods.  They are able, like the sense knowledge to which they correspond, to push deeper decisions into the background.

[In terms of the intersecting nested forms, conscience^specified corresponds to free will and dispositions corresponds to appetite.

The dispositions focus the attention of the conscience onto partial goods (subjective knowledge) while pushing the deeper decisions (objective knowledge; think^{group_or_divine}) into the background.]

Summary of text [comment] page 31

[So let me add the concept of “free will” to both examples.

In the first, the surgeon knows that something is wrong, but avoids corrective actions.

In the second, the medical professional knew that it was the wrong patient and still performed the operation.

Are both cases equivalent to mortal sin?

Here, we must confront the notion of “freedom”.  Freedom reflects the professional’s relation to think^divine (noting, here, that for medical practitioners, think^group was formulated explicitly to complement and reinforce think^divine).

A surgeon may avoid corrective action in order to solve an even more critical issue.  Similarly, the “wrong patient” may need the operation but not have insurance.

In both cases, the surgeon breaks the rules in order to achieve a goal.  So these are not sins at all.  Are they?

Thus, the will must be added to knowledge of circumstances in the consideration of venial and mortal sins.

To me, it seems that free will and knowledge, not the objective results, constitute “gravity”.]

Summary of text [comment] page 31

First, let us consider an example of the Dutch logic tree of sin.

Here is my analogy.

Professionals, people trained to perform within a certain discipline, perform tasks.  Here are two examples where tasks go awry:

First, on the subjective pole, a routine action may suddenly not feel right.  The reason becomes apparent.  Corrections follow.

Second, on the objective pole, a routine action may go completely smoothly then, later, the professional finds something horribly wrong.  This is the nightmare of every medical professional.  Guess who operated on the wrong patient.

[This example resonates with the scholastic view that a venial sin is a disorder concerning the means and a mortal sin is a disorder concerning the end.

Now let us apply this to the Dutch logic tree.

Both types mirror “transgression of God’s law”.

Both types relate to “important matters”.

Neither was committed with “full knowledge”.

Consequently, neither type was “committed freely”.

But clearly, one type is objectively worse than the other.]

[There is an ontological split in the moral order.  This split leads to “tension”.  “Gravity” relates to this “tension”.

The tension contains a polarity with respect to knowledge.  On one hand, there is universal knowledge, immaterial, tautological, honed by both natural and cultural evolution, and revealed in freak moments of divine what-if-ness.  On the other hand, there is sensual knowledge, carnal, ambiguous, stimulated by natural and cultural events, and habituated in freak moments of “wow that felt good” or “wow that felt bad”.

Now, step back.  Does the term “tension” sound similar to the “tension” between “objective” and “subjective” knowledge?  Even more, does “subjective’ knowledge become “objective” knowledge when one steps back?

Sensual knowledge is fragmentary.  Universal knowledge is unitary.  Sensual knowledge is subjective.  Universal knowledge is objective.

[To me, Schoonenberg started with personal decision (which I associate with conscience^specified).  He then noted a tension relating to sensual knowledge (which I associate to dispositions, which is not in the moral order) and universal knowledge (which I associate to think^{divine_or_group}, which is in the moral order).

Schoonenberg highlighted three of the elements of the intersecting nested form.  Let us see how it plays out.]

Summary of text [comment] pages 30 and 31

Sin is subjectively a personal decision and utterance against God.

[In terms of the intersecting nested forms, I associate “personal decision” with “conscience^lacking” and “utterance” with “think^group”.]

Can these personal decisions and utterances be classified as venial or mortal?

Yes, the gravity for mortal decisions is greater than venial decisions.

What does the term “gravity” imply?]

Summary of text [comment] page 30

Why don’t humans act on the basis of logic trees?

Logic trees are “objective”.

Human action arises from a “subjective” point of view.  The logic tree approach omits the subjective aspect to sin.  Sin is subjectively a personal decision and utterance against God.

Summary of text [comment] page 29

[I return to the text.]

How does Schoonenberg see the difference between venial and mortal sins?

The Dutch Catechism of 1910 set up a logic tree:

Is a human act a transgression of God’s law?  Yes (continue) No (not sin)

Is the act an important matter?  Yes (possibly mortal, continue) No (venial)

Was the act committed with full knowledge? Yes (possibly mortal, continue) No (venial)

Was the act committed freely (with free will)? Yes (mortal) No (venial)

Schoonenberg then pointed out – in a roundabout way – that humans do not act on the basis of logic trees.

[I write like a bird.

When I land, I leave a drop of yuck, a condensate of the sublimated waters of Scholasticism and the burnt embers of Modernism.

When I fly, I leave a gaseous trail.

I cannot help it, because I am the harbinger of meaning.

Do not hold me to tightly.  I do not want to be crushed.

Do not hold me too loosely.  Otherwise I will fly away.]

[Or maybe I should blame Schoonenberg because he anticipated the yawning gap that was about to separate postmodernism from modernism.  Every paragraph sets out an idea then withdraws it, clarifies it, nuances it, or balances it.  Each idea comes from tradition, has been refined by countless controversies, and may be stated with precision.

At the same time, the entire tradition (symbolic order) has been vaporized, sublimated into a single term: “superstition”.  Its intellectual presence has been replaced by longings for some utopian dream world as constituted by the Social Sciences.

In sum, my flights of neoscholastic and postmodern speculation come from the fact that Schoonenberg was both scholastic and modern.  Neither symbolic order remains alive. Neither remains truly dead.  The chasm between 1964 and 2012 can only be bridged through speculative flight, on the wings of the spirit of the Fourth Age of Understanding.]

[“Postmodernism” may be defined as “Modernism Crashing On the Shoals of Actuality”.  “Modernism” may be defined as “Scholasticism Dying On the Shores of Speculative Possibilities”.  Pyrrhic victories usher in new eras.

How many papers have been published on venial and mortal sin during the past 25 years?  Only 10 years after Man and Sin came out in Dutch (1962), Menninger was publishing Whatever became of Sin?  Yet here, in this blog, Schoonenberg’s words on this apparently arcane topic have become disturbingly relevant.]