The Unauthorized, "Normal Person's" Introduction To Fr. Donald J. Keefe, S.J.'s Covenantal Theology
Or, Why It's Actually Very Grown-Up To Have Exactly the Same Catholic Faith As Your Grandmother
John Kelleher
Here you can view and/or download a kind of Junior Illustrated Classics introduction to Covenantal Theology, dogmatic theologian Rev. Donald J. Keefe, SJ's highly abstruse but devastatingly important masterwork. Covenantal Theology bears an Imprimi Potest, a Nihil Obstat, and an Imprimatur. The Knucklehead's Guide doesn't have any of those, but it tries to be a reliable introduction "for normal people."
The Knucklehead's Guide is a real book - 181 pages. It is short and simple compared to the 784 pages of Covenantal Theology. If a normal person, such as yourself, keeps plugging away at The Knucklehead's Guide, he has a good shot at understanding what it says about Covenantal Theology, and -- trust me -- normal people have no shot at understanding Fr. Keefe's original book.
There's no need to tell you on this page why you, a normal person, should read The Knucklehead's Guide. I do that right in the book. Click on this link to begin reading an html-ized version of the book. If you're intrigued, then you can come back here and download the whole thing for yourself.
Here's how to download The Knucklehead's Guide to Covenantal Theology:
The .pdf file format is a good one to use if you need to preserve the exact formatting of your document (I do) while making it available to everyone. RIGHT-click on the link below and [Save target as... or Save link as... -- the exact wording varies with your browser] to your hard drive. Please RIGHT-click on the link - otherwise the entire book may load into your browser, which is definitely not what you want.
RIGHT-click on this link to download 'knuckle.pdf'
This is a big file - 1.7 MB - so be patient while it downloads (it is a whole book, after all). Once downloaded, double-click on knuckle.pdf. If you already have the Adobe Acrobat Reader, the file will open and you can read The Knucklehead's Guide, or even print it out. If you don't have the Reader yet, you can click on the link in the previous sentence and download it for free.
The Knucklehead's Guide is a book. The file is formatted like a book. This means that the document is meant to be printed on both sides of your paper (when printing out the book, set your printer options to print on both sides of the paper), and has what are called "mirror gutters." These give a little extra margin on the "inside" of each page to enable you to spiral bind, or three-hole punch, the completed book.
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