Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.4R

Summary of text [comment] pages 22 & 23

‘Man’ is not only placed in a reality to which ‘he’ has to conform [lawessential], ‘he’ ‘himself ‘is the summit of that reality [characterized by thinkdivine((consciencefree))].

‘Man” carries within ‘himself’ the task of “ruling the earth”; that is, of building and molding the world [through human action] and ‘himself’ [conscience and dispositions].

Free will [specified conscience], at the least, establishes the person.

Where do these necessary person-forming attitudes come from?  Nature itself?  No.  Relations with others? Yes.  Relations with God? Yes. Yes.

[One implication of Schoonenberg’s line of thought: “The attitudes that establish one’s free will, or specified conscience”, get confounded with “building the world and oneself”, that is, one’s dispositions.

Also, stepping further back, another implication is that thinkdivine (building character) may be confounded with thinkgroup (building the world).

Losing perspective is so easy when building the world becomes more important than building character, rather than the reverse.]