02/28/14

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.3N4

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.]

02/27/14

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.3N3

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?]

02/25/14

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.3N1

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 consciencespecified1 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 thinkgroup 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 thinkdivine 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.]

02/24/14

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.3M

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.]

02/21/14

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.3L2

Summary of text [comment] page 19

[Ironically, this accounting is parodied in this life, when a thinkgroup projects a thinkopposing_the_object and conscienceanti-object onto a suspected enemy.

Anyone guilty of some minor infraction, being at the wrong place at the wrong time, or daring to think that ‘he’ could fix a problem, is suddenly held “responsible” as “a person who holds an evil ideology3 and lives a false conscience1”.  Often, the person is also accused of a gross, uncivil and tormented disposition1.

Here, “two normal contexts3 (thinkpro-object3 and lawdenial3)” constitute “the accused person2 (giving ‘him’ a new body2)” by bringing ‘him’ into relation with “the possibilities inherent in the accused actually having a conscience1 and dispositions1“.

The only caveat is that the accusers define the person’s conscience1 and dispositions1, rather than the person.  Thus, the mob, that great frothy beast (today, amplified through mainstream television and newspapers), turns on a soul who exists only in the realm of potential, as if the accused imaginary person was actual.

Look, our eyes can see an image of a real person being accused.  There ‘he’ is, on the television.  So it must be true.

In 2012, Mr. Romney never saw it coming.  The poor soul became the person he never was.  He was damned in a parody of divine judgment.  He was demonized by the projections of the accusers.

Mr. Romney still does not know what happened to him.  One wonders whether, in a farcical version of some tale written Edgar Allen Poe, he will awaken in his crypt.  Will he ever face the accusers?  Will the accusers ever face him?

“Responsibility” is “holding a possibility accountable”.  This “holding” can only be accomplished by “creating a context where possibility comes into relation with actuality”.  Thinkpro-object creates those contexts by projecting thinkanti-object onto innocent souls.

The question arises: Will God do the same at the Resurrection?

The answer is that He cannot.  God cannot lie to Himself.]

02/20/14

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.3L1

Summary of text [comment] page 19

[From the previous blog, God judges the deceased person.

In order to hold ‘him’ responsible, God reifies the soul as a person.  Consciencespecified1 and the person’s trained dispositions1 (the person’s soul) re-animate a body (site of action), constituting a person. In that re-animation, the person is judged.

What does that mean?

First, consider that, at the time of Judgment, the thirdness of the intersecting nested form is lawessential3 (since acceptance or denial are no longer pertinent) and thinkdivine3 (since any particular thinkgroup has passed away long before the Resurrection).

Second, consider the way that a normal context works.  In our everyday lives, “lawessential3 and thinkdivine3” bring “a body, the site of human action2” into relation with “the potential in one’s consciencespecified1 and trained (but still natural) dispositions1“.

Third, consider what these two points imply: A normal context judges as it brings the person into the realm of actuality.

This logic applies to everyday life and to any post-mortem existence for humans.  No matter what one imagines the constitution of existence after death, a judgment must occur, because the normal contexts of the afterlife are necessarily different than the normal contexts of everyday life.]

02/19/14

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.3K2

Summary of text [comment] page 19

[We can ask the question: When we die, what is there to judge?  The body cannot be judged.  It is dead. Re-animation would explicitly violate His Own Will that we be “who we are,” that is, “creatures”.  Death goes with the territory. Creatures do not die then come back to life.

One’s actions could be judged, but these actions are events in the past, therefore cannot be held responsible. “Responsibility” implies “a thing that can be held accountable”.  The actions were events, not things, so cannot be held accountable.

What about one’s thinkgroup and its associated denials of lawessential?

Well, let us perform a thought experiment and suppose that, due to various bureaucratic machinations, God waits about 80 years (4 generations) before rendering judgment on any individual.  Imagine defending your bohemian lifestyle and cooperation with the eugenics movement, today, in 2012, when you died in 1932.  This thinkgroup and denial of lawessential are a dead as you are.  Time renders us all parochial.

Well, now that we eliminated actions2, lawessential3 and thinkgroup3, what is left?

Only the specified conscience1 and trained (but still natural) dispositions1 remain as “things that can be held responsible”; that is, “judged”.

Are these not the characteristics that animate the body?  Do these not comprise the soul and bring the person to life? ]

02/18/14

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.3K1

Summary of text [comment] page 19

[So, at what point does our consciencespecified become unalterably fixed as either “free of coercion” or “lacking freedom”.

Here we begin to touch upon a spooky moment for most moderns.  This is the moment when we die.  Death is the final action that situates consciencespecified and whatever dispositions supported actions.]

02/17/14

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.3J

Summary of text [comment] page 19

Schoonenberg wrote that the heart, the center of the person, is also the locus of the free decision for which ‘man’ is responsible.  Mesurable qualities do not make ‘man’ good or bad before God.  Nor do the consequences of ‘his’ actions.  Instead, God judges the response of the free person which takes shape in ‘his’ actions.

[How to translate this into the format of the intersecting nested forms?

Think3(actions2(conscience1)) is the purely theoretical moral religious axis.  In order to be practical, actions­2 specify conscience1.  The specification is revealed in the way we live.

In the process of living, a particular conscience and set of dispositions (both exist in the realm of possibility) feel more and more real (as the range of possibilities becomes more limited and thus, predictable).  One’s actions make more and more sense (in that one can try to explain their predictable patterns).  The person seems to have made a choice.]