88 Chapter 6
ONE MODERN SILLINESS
Class biblical scholars, even the Catholic ones, the Bible no longer
exists solely as it is read in the heart of the Catholic Church, from
within her liturgy, from within the sacramental economy whose heart
is the Eucharist. Rather, dehistoricized cosmology is taken for granted
as the hallmark of "professional" exegesis. Some Thing called "The
Bible" is "there," and we are "over here," establishing the proper
`critical distance' from it, trying to understand it.
However this is fudged, the acceptance of the paradigm
immediately and irrevocably disintegrates the living presence of Christ
with his Catholic Church in and through the Sacred Scriptures. The
Jesus who actually lived and died and offered himself is no longer
actually the Word of God, One Flesh with his Bridal Church -- that is
only a metaphor.
"The Christ of Faith" is over here
The "Jesus of History" is over here
New Class biblical exegesis begins with the assumption that it is
the separation between the "Jesus of history" and the "Christ of Faith"
that is real. But no matter; the New Class has preserved the `critical
distance.' After all, within all dehistoricized cosmology, the only
alternative to some kind of `distance' is a subsumption of the Many
into the One, and the New Class is not (at present) very interested in
being subsumed.
The Bible is over here,
< - - - and here we are, standing
some place else, in the 'normal
universe,' looking at it, and trying to
understand it.
But the key point is that New Class Catholic exegesis and theology
is merely making a more rigorous, a more "logical" application of the
paradigm of dehistoricized cosmology. It is not inventing out of whole
cloth something foreign to traditional Catholic theology. It was, and
remains, not only theologically relevant, but also politically relevant,
that New Class Catholicism is simply applying, more vigorously and
consistently than traditional Catholic thought, traditional Catholic
thought's own paradigm:
The Eucharist is over here,
< - - - and here we are, standing
some place else, in the 'normal
universe,' looking at it, and trying to
understand it.
N.B. This is an html-ized copy of a page from the pdf file, The Knucklehead's Guide to Covenantal Theology.