Joseph Hollcraft MA
Foundations of Catechetics: CCP 211
Week 6: October 9, 2007
V. Understanding the Economy of Salvation History . Key terms defined: Trinity, Church, History, Economy, Theology, Typology, and Mystagogy defined to communicate the fullness of Christian Truth and salvation found in the Catholic Church. It is never a matter of sorting through one‘s own feelings and experiences but seeking out what is revealed to belong to God!!!
1. Consult Word of the Week on the Trinity.
2. What Church is as “assembly of believers” points to an Old Testament Church, “qahal” that foreshadows what Christ came to perfect--the New Testament Church, ekklesia, the Catholic Church. A word that should enkindle excitement not monotony.
3. History defined “to weave a pattern.” God in the Old Testament, over a period, uses images throughout Old Testament history to reveal to us what we have today. As history does not spring forth from non-events, God uses it pedagogically, as a great Teacher revealing his eternal wisdom to his eternal plan. It will be ancient history that will unite man--not unproved modern notions.
4. History reveals the economy of God: “the law of his household.” As Benin states: “God teaches through the events of history that correspond to his eternal plan. That ultimately, in Christ, the embodiment of law, we may find that the heart of the law of the household is to live in the law. The “oikonomia” is the wise arrangement of stages whereby the mystery that is Christ is brought to fulfillment…and theology, or the Theologia, the inner life of the blessed Trinity, is realized” (CCC 236).
5. Typology (cf. Word of the Weekon Typology) is the study of likeness. The interpretation of signs, symbols, and persons that foreshadow Christ in the Old Testament. To understand scripture we must always interpret Old and New as the whole revelation of God. You cannot have one without the other. Salvation history’s plot is revealed through a careful study of typology. This interacts with the Liturgy so that we are placed in salvation history in the Eucharist. We see this in Scriptures and Tradition.
1. Jn.5.39-40...You search the scriptures (Old Testament) because you think that in them, you have eternal life and it is they that bear witness to me.
2. “The faith of Christ is concealed in the Old Testament, lay hidden under shadowy symbols. Scriptures are living in only as far as they point to Christ”--St. Thomas Aquinas
3. St. Augustine tells us: “The Old Testament is hidden in the New Testament and the New Testament reveals the Old Testament
4. Typology is the Literal Sense in which the New Testament reads the Old. For Cardinal Daniellou, “it gives intelligible coordination to Gods work in salvation history.” Let us consider an illustration with the Gospel of John. John teaching with things that are familiar to explain things that are unfamiliar.
Gn.1.1: “In the beginning” Jn.1.1: “In the beginning”
Gn.1.3.14: “darkness and light” Jn.1.5: “the light shines in the darkness.”
Genesis-creation account Jn.1.3: “all things were made through him.”
Gn.2.23-24: marriage account on the seventh day Jn.2.1-10: marriage account on the seventh day
Gn.2.24: First expression of man is woman Jn.2.4: first expression of man was “woman”
a. These parallels can begin to reveal to us that John is showing the history of the Church and the plan of God to atone for the fall of Adam. That since the fall of Adam all of Church history pointed towards the coming of Christ. More significantly, these parallels reveal to us that the Old and New Testament can only be understood when they are both understood as a binding coherent of truth. Christ came to restore what was lost with Adam-divine sonship!
b. How did it develop? We will begin to see what happened with Adam in the fall.
1. This will set up the foundation to the thread that we see woven in OT history and how it forms our understanding of the OT Church and the purpose of the New Testament Church.
6. Mystagogy is typology applied to the sacramental life. It is the application of how the visibility of Christ has passed over in to the sacramental mysteries. It is the process of covenant fulfillment passing over and perpetuated in and through the sacraments.
1. According to Daniellou, “Mystagogy is how the sacraments carry over the great works of God through the Old and New Testament.”
VI . Covenant (synonym to Testament): convenire (L.) meaning “to come together.” This word is often understood as a compact agreement, which it is, but God elevates our understanding of this agreement to a sacred family bond. Covenant love is more than a contract where you say “this is yours and this is mine,” rather it says “I am yours and you are mine.” And for God, who is entirely relationship, His covenant would not be something external in history, but rather a manifestation of His saving love. “Covenant unlocks the key to the Christian mystery.”—Hahn. What and where are the biblical roots for this great prevailing truth of covenant throughout salvation history?
1. Latin word for oath is Sacramentum. God manifests his love most completely in the sacramental life of the church (7 sacraments). We are finite beings and the sacramental life leads and points to the infinite reality.
a. Gn.21.31...To establish a covenant you “swear an oath”...Hb. word is sheba which alsomeans "to seven oneself.” The seventh day itself was God’s great oath to man.
b. Deut.32.40...God lifts his hand in an oath swearing engagement.
1. Heb.6.13... “God swears by Himself.”
2. Heb.6.11... “Oath is final for confirmation.”
c. This covenant sacred family bond that is based on oath swearing is a very family oriented covenant communicating the stuff of the flesh!
1. Gn.17.13..."everlasting flesh” covenant. In fact, throughout the Old Testament we read of God’s steadfast love, which in Hebrew is Hesed, a more literal translation would read “a blood bond of love.”
2. Gen.2.23; 2 Sam.5; 1 Chr.11.1‑3..."Bone of my bone flesh of my flesh."
d. Jer.3.16‑17...“Presence of God will no longer be in the Ark of the Old Covenant, but in Jerusalem shall all nations gather.”
1. Jer.31.31...only mentioning of the New Covenant in the Old Testament. In it, he is going to restore the house of Israel by writing the law on their hearts. The law will no longer be one of stone (tablets) but of the divine--flesh!
1. 2 Cor.5.1‑5..."From the earthly tent being destroyed to the new building, house in which God dwells in...”
2 Mk. 14.24…“I am the body and blood of the new covenant.”
3. Lk.1.13...God shows fidelity to covenant language through Elizabeth and Zechariah and shows how they are they dawn of a new covenant:
1. Elizabeth means: "God has sworn.”
2. Zechariah means: "God remembers.”
VII . Covenants through the Old Testament have a common thread in that they are marked by sacrifice (or lack there of in Adams case). Adam as the forerunner to understanding “the why” of the liturgical sacrifice (Note in this diagram that Rom.5.14 (typology) testifies to the link between Christ and Adam).
A. Gn.2.15-17…Adam is called to “till and keep the garden.”
1. Till in Hebrew was abodah…keep was Shoman (Hebrew expression that could also mean worship ). These expressions were referring to the priestly duty of guarding the sanctuary and keeping it from defilement…cf. Nm.3.28; 8.26; 13. Implies that something must be kept out.
2. Earth was a building-a temple that he was to guard…cf.Job 38.4-7
a. Gn.2.8; 15-17... “You must surely die” literally translates you shall “die a death.”
1. Rabbis treated this as both a spiritual and physical death. Adam preferred the spiritual death.
b. Gn.3.1-7... “You shall not eat of the tree of the garden.”
1. The serpent addresses both Adam and Eve. Author uses second person plural verbs. An English translation that we cannot render because we do not have. The word “you” is plural in its Hebrew language. The serpent is addressing them both yet only Eve responds.
c. Gn.3.2... “Serpent”…Hebrew word is Nahash. We see this same noun in Is.27.1 and Job 26.13. A better translation would be a large Sea Monster or Sea Dragon. Adam was petrified facing a life-threatening situation.
1. What we have here is more than a failure to communicate. Adams fears kept him form guarding the garden. He did not trust his father.
2. This kept his from protecting “bone of his bone flesh of his flesh.”
3. By failing to sacrifice his life, Adam would start something that would not find its completion until Christ-the new Adam who would emerge from a garden with a saving tree through trust.
3. Gn.4.3-5...In the story of Cain and Abel there was a sacrificial offering made by both brothers. So as early as the second generation of Adam and Eve we have the theme of liturgical sacrifice continuing soon thereafter.
4. Altar Servers that kept the thread of sacrifice as the hallmark of every covenant and gave us reassurance to the“liturgical current” found in the Old Testament. Note here the altar was understood in times of antiquity as representing the four corners of the earth.
a. Gn.8.20...Noah built an altar to the Lord to offer up sacrifices
1. The sacrifice marked the moment God made his covenant oath with him.
b. Gn.22.2...Abraham built an altar up upon Mt. Moriah to sacrifice his own son.
1. God spares Isaac and immediately afterwards makes a covenant with him.
2. This sacrifice is significant in that Isaac foreshadows Christ by carrying wood up a cross in the same Mountainous region as Christ did.
c. Ex.12...covenant motif continues during the time of Moses when God requires every Israelite to sacrifice an unblemished lamb in place of the first-born.
d. 2 Sam.7.10...God reaches a flesh covenant with David, which reaches its consummation with the building of the altar and its sacrifices during the time of Solomon.
5. Imperfect sacrifice. These figures performed an incredible task yet failed in the end. This is going to point to a more perfect sacrifice in Christ. Each covenant had been real, yet partial, which ultimately drives us forward to the climax of the types of the Old Testament--Christ!
a. Noah gets drunk and incest occurs with Ham.
b. Abraham grows impatient for an heir and takes a concubine -mistress.
c. Moses strikes the rock in anger and gives into his temper.
d. David commits adultery with Bathsheba.
** The history of the Church (assembly of believers) can be best understood by seeing how God wished to unite his broken family. After Adams failure to sacrifice in the Garden of Eden, God chose leaders (Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David) to sacrifice to him in order to be in covenant with him. All of these men were heroic but only attained an imperfect bond in salvation history. Typology reveals to us how O.T. figures prepared and laid the foundation for the coming of Christ. In addition, the sacrifice of Christ perpetuates itself through the divine mysteries of the church,--mystagogically. John gives us warning of this in the opening of his Gospel (parallels between Genesis and John); That Christ was the chosen one who came to unite in the Eucharist through sacrifice. God has woven a pattern that is to be understood only by knowing the key elements of his unfolding plan in the Old Testament.
5. To understand “The divine program and economy for the salvation of humanity” (Irenaeus) it is necessary to note the special characteristics of his covenants with the biblical heroes.
3-fold covenant
Adam-Gen 2.23 Noah-Gen. 9.13 Abraham-Gn. 15 Moses-Ex.20 David-2 Sam.7.10 Christ-Mk.14.2
marital household tribal Gn. 17 National kingdom (rules nations) Universal
Marriage Rainbow Circumcision Gn. 22 Passover Throne Baptism/Eucharist
6. The oath was fulfilled, the sacrificed was unblemished, and the meal itself was a communion with God. The New Covenant does not remove the Old but transforms it. All covenants must be seen in light of the new and eternal covenant in the Eucharist. Consider Christ as the new Passover lamb.
a. Let us take a step back to understand the Passover. This was the most sacred religious festival in which they would commemorate their liberation from slavery.
b. Israelites were the first-born (Hos.11.1) offering animals as sacrifices because they themselves when in Egypt were offering sacrifices to pagan gods. So the Lord commanded that the first-born offer animals the persecutor of the first-born ( Egypt) idolized. A kind of restoration through renunciation.
1. Amos 5; Ps.50... “Holocaust is not enough, I desire sacrifice.” Sacrifice creates trust, but thanksgiving creates deeper union with self.
c. We can now look at Christ, in John 19, as the new Passover lamb.
1. Jn.19.36--Ex.12.46
2. Jn.19.29--Ex.12.22
3. Jn.23b; 19.2...seamless tunic and purple robe worn by the Old Covenant high priest during the Passover sacrifice.
4. Jn.19.14... “The 6 th hour”…was the hour when the moment of sacrifice of the lamb…Rev.5.6
7. What Adam failed to do was the genesis to the disunity of mankind. Christ would be the restorer of unity on the cross; giving us the visible Church in which he would instruct and guide keeping unity among his people until the end of time… 1 Cor.1.10
a. Note, that soon after Christ instituted the Sacrament of the Eucharist, he instituted the Kingdom. A moment later, he speaks of the Kingdom in terms of the table and the banquet…THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN!
b. It would also be important to note here that the bride of Christ, the Church, is our sacramental instrument to salvation. So it is that our spouse, bride, is our pragmatic, everyday reminder, means to our salvation; through whom we both enter into a most intimate unconditional union.
Homework Assignment: Reflecting upon the articles of the CCC in the syllabus…How does Grace lead us to a deeper conversion to Christ? Consider the subject matter discussed last class with respect to sacrifice, obedience and being children of God.