54 Chapter 4
THE EUCHARISTIC NATURE OF REALITY
dehistoricized cosmologies of various kinds have been accepted by
Catholic theology as equivalent to Reason itself, and therefore, the
intellectual structure of Catholic thought has so far been founded on a
pagan paradigm that is in fact overturned and rejected, by name, as it
were, in the New Covenant itself.
Thus, the fundamental structure -- not of Catholicism -- but of
Catholic thought, has been consistently pagan, not Catholic, under the
misapprehension that, while the world might be Catholic, Reason itself
was not, but was instead "value-free," to use modern terminology.
Of course, since the Eucharist is a gratuitous truth, simply not open
to necessitating or conditioning by any supposedly prior structure or
framework, the inevitable failure of all efforts to make the Eucharist
necessary by some dehistoricized cosmology will necessarily
ultimately lead to the conclusion that the Eucharist is unnecessary and
therefore, irrational.
The final resolution is thus forced, by the initial choice of the
paradigm itself: the Eucharist ought to disappear -- in favor of
something that can be made a necessity of the chosen dehistoricized
cosmology.
Thus, by its own acceptance of some version of dehistoricized
cosmology (which is inevitably the paradigm of time-less necessity,
logical or otherwise), Catholic theology has unwittingly taken up the
task of assigning the Eucharist to the necessary -- which is contradicted
by the Eucharist itself -- or to the irrational, for no other choices
present themselves within any dehistoricized cosmology.
Catholic thought has forgotten that the Eucharist is
a surprise. It is always with complete surprise, utter
astonishment, that we join with the angels and saints
and sing, "Holy, Holy, Holy."
A surprise is something that could not have been
predicted, but is nonetheless intelligible.
The notion of real surprise can not appear in any dehistoricized
cosmology. Either the 'new' thing is unpredictable because it is
unintelligible, or the dehistoricized cosmology needs refining, so that
what is intelligible can be seen to be necessary. In either case, 'surprise'
is made to disappear.
The Eucharist is free.
It does not flee time, even for an
N.B. This is an html-ized copy of a page from the pdf file, The Knucklehead's Guide to Covenantal Theology.