THE KNUCKLEHEAD
'
S GUIDE TO COVENANTAL THEOLOGY
17
I'm merely trying to build up enough general background knowledge
between us so I can begin to tell you what Fr. Keefe is actually doing
in his book. Don't sweat the details.
But do read those chapters, for I will be referring to ideas in them
throughout this book. When later on I say that we risk becoming "Ones
in free motion," or that there is no Bigger Sentence than the Eucharist,
you'll have an idea of what I'm talking about, because of Chapters 2
and 3.
By reading Chapters 2 and 3, you'll also begin to have a basic idea
of a concept that is very important in Fr. Keefe's thought: what he calls
"dehistoricized cosmology." A "dehistoricized" (time-less)
"cosmology" (explanation for the cosmos) is what Fr. Keefe says that
the Eucharist refutes. You therefore need to begin to have some sense
of what time-less frameworks look like -- so you can eventually see
how radically the Eucharist contradicts them all.
Also, you need an idea of how perennial, how 'natural,' it really is
for fallen Man in this fallen world to find, and then to trap himself in,
one of these time-less explanations for the cosmos.
For example, there are both very old and very new versions of
many time-less frameworks. Indeed, dehistoricized cosmologies, time-
less frameworks, are even more than a perennial temptation for Man.
Outside of the Eucharist, they are Man's fate, for only the Eucharist
can coherently 'tempt' Man in a different direction. By giving examples
from different historical epochs, Chapters 2 and 3 therefore also try to
give you at least a glimmer of the vast sweep, and depth, of this
perennial turn of Man toward the time-less.
In Chapter 2, I draw you some pictures. The first thing you have to
understand is that they are all different representations of the same
basic paradigm, "dehistoricized cosmology." The first picture you will
see is the most important for understanding Fr. Keefe's thought:
The Eucharist is over here,
< - - - and here we are, standing
some place else, in the 'normal
universe,' looking at it, and trying to
understand it.
Don't forget: this picture is a representation of the wrong answer,
according to Fr. Keefe. All the pictures you will see are representations
of the same basic paradigm, "dehistoricized cosmology," and that
paradigm has a deep problem.
In all the representations of the paradigm, there is a distance
between one important thing and another. What the fact of this
distance ends up meaning is either that only one of the two things can
really exist (one thing has to swallow the other thing), or that there's an
unbridgeable gap between them. Obviously, one important thing
N.B. This is an html-ized copy of a page from the pdf file, The Knucklehead's Guide to Covenantal Theology.