Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.6W2

[Perhaps, the phrase “deliver us from evil” in the Lord’s Prayer is more than an afterthought.

What if the phrase were worded: “Deliver us from an evil beyond statistical necessities”?  What would the phrase indicate?

An evil inhabits the spontaneous order in which we are embedded.  What is this evil?

The spontaneous order exhibits statistical processes.  Statistics mean that there are winners and losers.  Natural good and natural evil coexist.

Could this be the evil?

On the other hand, where would the statistics be, if the order did not exist?  Without the spontaneous order, neither natural good or natural evil exists.

Could this be the evil?

Could “the lack of statistical necessities” be simultaneously our ultimate limitation as well as the ultimate privation of good?

So what are we asking when we pray, “Deliver us from evil?”

Are we asking God3 to never stop Recognizing Himself2?

Are we asking God not to slip into the Nothingness1 of “the possibility of Recognition1”?

Are we asking God not to let us slip completely out of being?

Are we asking God to Stay In Being?]