THE KNUCKLEHEAD
'
S GUIDE TO COVENANTAL THEOLOGY
179
Within the words provided by present day Catholic theology, men can not recognize themselves as beings
capable of using their minds in ridiculously free and awesomely responsible covenantal worship. Instead,
nearly everyone, Catholic and anti-Catholic alike, 'knows' that 'faith' is about the 'submission' of the intellect,
the 'humiliation' of reason to The Really Necessary Truth that binds us whether we like it or not.
Responsible existence, as even Mr. Minsky sees, can only be free existence. Further, it can not exist
within any dehistoricized cosmology, not because Man has not yet found the 'correct' dehistoricized
cosmology, but because all dehistoricized cosmologies at their brightest and bravest can only be a
representation of what Man, as 'flesh' alone, looking at 'flesh' alone, really and truly finds.
As Fr. Keefe shows, Man's freedom is a sharing in the One Sacrifice of Christ, a completion of his
afflictions by our own loving crucifixion, not into a time-less world we make up, whether of 'reason' or
'liberation' or the Deus Unus, but into meaningful time, which is, precisely, our time, but solely as concretely
given in the concrete and 'time-full' worship of the Church, in and through whose Body her Head is a living
presence to us.
Our crucifixion into free and responsible time is of course then our
crucifixion into the Church's 'time-full' worship in all its historical
concreteness, which includes its solemn proclamations regarding what
is commonly referred to as the 'moral' realm.
This public worship, the Eucharistic Event, the One Flesh of the
Bride and her Lord in the One Sacrifice, is the creation of our own
freedom. Lest there be any mistake on this point, no time-less
'explanation' beyond, before, or beside them, but only the actual
irrevocable history of the Church's acts in her nuptial union with her
Lord constitute the freedom by which we are free. Try as we might, we
can not find any 'truth' beyond, before, or beside the blunt historicity of
her concrete sacramental acts in time, for there is no such time-less
place.
We can not make our acts free and thus responsible unless they are
concretely, in body, in time, and therefore, responsibly, joined to hers,
which are joined in free nuptial union to the historical One Sacrifice of
her Lord, "one and the same," for, as has been shown, no fallen power,
no matter how fierce or overwhelming or well-intentioned, can make
even one of our actions, not even one of our thoughts, free.
In history, then, -- in the Eucharistic Event -- is created the possibility
of our existence as historical beings, capable of creating ex nihilo our
own 'private' work that, insofar as it is created in and through the
public work of the Church, is meaningful, unrepeatable, irrevocable --
earth-shattering, history-making.
"Through Him, with Him, and in Him, in the unity of the Holy
Spirit" our 'private' work in response to the Church's public Sacrifice of
Praise to her Lord can become prayer, a worship of the Father in spirit
and truth, a worship in and through the New Covenant. Though fully in
time, that worship, that crucifixion into time, is history created in and
through history; it is free -- a complete surprise completely intelligible.
Freedom, responsibility, creativity,
and surprise can not exist in a world
of Cause and Chance. At present
there are almost no non-liturgical
words to treat of the reality: free
human acts in time that are free as
historical, as responsible, as history
created in and through history --
historical acts, worship, created ex
nihilo in and through the "radically
historical" Eucharistic Event. The
New Class needs to hear that its
creativity is real, but also that it is
only real as historical in the sense
given here. 'Creative' acts not
created in and through that
historical Event are as meaningless
as they are time-less.
N.B. This is an html-ized copy of a page from the pdf file, The Knucklehead's Guide to Covenantal Theology.