THE KNUCKLEHEAD
'
S GUIDE TO COVENANTAL THEOLOGY
171
not find any basis for a covenantal relation of love, and thus, for
evangelization, on his own. There is no basis for evangelization but the
Eucharistic Event. All of the initiative for evangelization is in and
through the New Covenant, and there alone.
Further, it is perhaps poetic justice, if no less devastating a reality,
that present day Catholic theology's intellectual inability to form words
of covenantal love is the very reason Catholic theology, in all of its
current variants, is under such intellectual pressure from the New
Class, pressure so severe that Catholic theology can't even really hear,
much less answer, the central charge that the New Class in its turn
makes against Catholicism:
By the power of our unbelief, we cast out demons.
The 'modern scientific' view is that active unbelief is a prerequisite
for scientific, and thus, for technological, advance. If you truly want
the blind to see, the lame to walk, the sick to be cured, then you must
consign 'belief' to Mr. Minsky's middle box.
Further, this 'must' doesn't mean, "it would be nice if you would do
this." It means, that when you work as a scientist and thus participate
in the advance of knowledge, you are "bound whether you like it or
not" by the very foundations of reality, the 'natural law,' to consign all
'belief,' including your own, to Mr. Minsky's middle box.
As Mr. Minsky says, we can't be consistently truthful about reality,
even to ourselves, because then we would become despairing and
anxious: "We're virtually forced to maintain that belief [in free will],
even though we know it's false -- except, of course, when we're
inspired to find the flaws in all our beliefs, whatever may be the
consequence to cheerfulness and mental peace."
1
1. Minsky M (1986). The society of mind. New
York: Simon and Schuster, p. 307.
Man must lie to himself, just to make it through the day. Even
though the New Class admits this, it still calls even its own intermittent
resorts to 'belief' a lie, and contends that freedom -- even in Hell -- is
preferable to even one moment of the sweet slavery of 'belief.'
Moreover, a true modern, such as Mr. Minsky, believes that the choice
for freedom, not for 'belief,' turns out to be sole real remedy for Man's
suffering.
This charge, then, is ironically merely the mirror image of
traditional Catholic theology's claims against the New Class. The New
Class also invokes the 'natural law.' Its claim is that the 'natural law,'
the fundamental structure of reality, by which we are "bound whether
we like it or not," quite obviously divides the world into Cause and
Chance, and therefore necessarily consigns Catholicism to the non-
existent middle box, "whether it likes it or not."
N.B. This is an html-ized copy of a page from the pdf file, The Knucklehead's Guide to Covenantal Theology.