THE KNUCKLEHEAD
'
S GUIDE TO COVENANTAL THEOLOGY
119
completely intelligible, should happen to bread and wine -- ever.
A particular 'arrangement' of bread and wine in time should not be
more or less meaningful than any other.
But since the impossible is in fact the case, then it matters what
bodies do. It matters that we arrange our bodies in particular ways in
time and in space -- for then also, as complete surprise completely
intelligible, our acts, our arrangements of bodies in time, also are fully
'flesh' within the Eucharistic 'order' of history.
Our acts, though fully 'flesh,' are, by impossible possibility,
simultaneously completely free and completely meaningful.
We should notice what has been happening here, in this discussion.
The meaningfulness of human (sexual) acts -- even individual human
(sexual) acts -- has been found, but not in some specialized theory of
sexuality or even in some specialized theory of actions. Their
meaningfulness -- their sole meaningfulness -- has been found in the
Eucharist itself. That Eucharist, that New Covenant, is an Event. It is
"radically historical," the free activity of the Lord of history in
irrevocable union with his Bride.
In the radical historicity of this Event is to be found the sole -- but
the sure -- meaningfulness of everything we, and Our Lady's juggler,
do: in and through the public work of the Church, which freely re-
presents by liturgical mediation the One Sacrifice of her Head, what
our bodies do as they move about in time, may become our free
response to Her public work, and "through Him, with Him, and in
Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit," our 'private' work or prayer in
and through Her free response to Her Lord becomes nothing less than a
worship in spirit and truth.
Covenantal Theology thus does seem to provide a profoundly
Catholic foundation, because a profoundly Eucharistic and sacramental
foundation, for discussion of human (sexual) acts. After all, the word
"covenantal" is part of the title of the book! More's the pity, then, that
the Catholic academy has so far paid Covenantal Theology very little
attention.
On the other hand, the lack of attention is understandable.
Covenantal Theology makes a deep critique of the intellectual and
scientific approach (the methodology) of Catholic theology. This
makes it very hard to read, because it is very hard to read words that
are very hard to swallow.
Physicists sometimes divide problems in physics into the 'trivial,'
the 'non-trivial,' and the 'deep.' These words don't have their standard
meanings. 'Trivial' means something like: "if I worked on this problem
for awhile, I know that I could get the answer." 'Non-trivial' means: "if
I worked on this problem for six years, I'm not sure I could get the
N.B. This is an html-ized copy of a page from the pdf file, The Knucklehead's Guide to Covenantal Theology.