THE KNUCKLEHEAD
'
S GUIDE TO COVENANTAL THEOLOGY
109
Once again we may begin to understand just how much Covenantal
Theology is a book only for children, of all ages. It gives us all sorts of
strange ideas about a Triune God who is so stupefyingly generous, so
inherently a free relation of Persons, that He ends up "wasting" the
sending of His Only Son to give the Spirit -- because in the
inexhaustible free Covenantal Event created in and through that
sending, puny little St. Paul "completes" it, and therefore, creates -- out
of nothing -- something "lacking" in it: not "pretend" lacking, not
hang-on-the-refrigerator-door lacking, but real lacking.
This is a God whose weakness and foolishness is absolutely
beyond our comprehension, a weakness stronger than our strength, a
foolishness wiser than our wisdom.
From within the ridiculous, child-like, new-but-ancient vocabulary
that Fr. Keefe marshalls within Covenantal Theology, we have the
words to say that the free, responsible, genuinely creative character of
'private' work or prayer is therefore created ex nihilo within the
weakness and foolishness of the New Covenant itself.
The New Covenant is itself an Event, the One Sacrifice, and a free
response, for the New Covenant is created in the marriage of Mary, the
Second Eve, with the Second Adam, Christ her Head.
In that Covenant, Mary is subordinate to Christ, yet her freedom is
not subordinate to His.
Her power is subordinate to Christ's, yet her creativity is not
subordinate to His: she is, after all, His Mother.
The public work or prayer is the sacramental re-presentation of the
New Covenant in and through the Church's free liturgical mediation of
her faith. Fr. Keefe would teach us that reality itself flows from this
public work, the Eucharistic Event. There is no place to stand to
understand the Eucharist but the Eucharist, for the simple reason that
the Eucharistic Event is the sole font of all reality. Furthermore, reality
is thus of its essence covenantal, nuptial, a relation of persons. Thus it
is utterly free, and inexhaustibly creative, interesting, and surprising. In
a word, then: Nature is Grace.
That is, the Eucharistic 'order' of history: 'flesh,' 'One Flesh,' and
'life,' was not only given at the Creation, its giving was the Creation.
Jesus Christ the Lord truly is "Alpha and Omega," present "in the
beginning." Nature is the Eucharistic 'order' of history: Nature is
Grace. The `Nature' assumed by both traditional and New Class
Catholic theology is sarx merely, which can only be Mr. Minsky's
(and Ecclesiastes') Real World, a world formally, systematically,
methodologically detached from the acts in time of the Lord of History
with his Bride, and thus a world utterly enslaved, futile, and insane --
utterly fallen, and nothing more.
N.B. This is an html-ized copy of a page from the pdf file, The Knucklehead's Guide to Covenantal Theology.