Bonding with God: A Reflective Study of Biblical Convenant

Spiritual Life, Summer 2000 by Stratton, Robin

Bonding with God: A Reflective Study of Biblical Covenant. Roland J. Foley TOR. Paulist Press: 997 Macarthur Blvd., Mahwah, NJ 07430, 1997. Pp. 151. Paperback. $12. 95.

Father Faley sets the tone of the entire book at the beginning of the first chapter: "The Judeo-Christian tradition is not a religion of seeking God, but rather one of having been grasped by God" (p. 3). Everything else flows from this premise and points toward it. The opening chapter includes a discussion of the scriptural meaning and richness of the word "covenant" and explains how it is like and unlike other words we use, for example, "contract" or "pact," which are "too legal to highlight the afFective dimension of the biblical covenant" (p. 4). Covenant is an irrevocable bonding between God and God's people. This God, who chose a nondescript little people out of all the peoples of the world and who chose us in Christ Jesus, will be faithful till the end of time. God asks only for our reciprocal love.

The author leads us, chapter by chapter, to a deeper understanding of the history, mystery, and theology of biblical covenant, always with an eye to its practical ramifications in our personal and communal life, whether in ethics or ecology:

Covenant teaches us that people matter. The Noah covenant teaches us that all creation matters.... If the world were seen as a sacrament of God's generosity and lone, then we would scarcely be hurled toward the precipice of environmental ruin. (p. 39)

As the reader comes to understand the original covenant at Sinai, the role and importance of Law become clear as well. Law, for the Israelite believer, was not a list of abstract things to be achieved or avoided, but rather the way in which love for the God who had chosen them was expressed in the concrete. Ezekiel's prophesy of a new covenant, written not on stones but on the human heart, "makes a strong point of the personal relationship with God that stands at the heart of a religious experience" (p. 51). But the author is at pains to make certain we understand that this personalism never separates one from the community. The individual is always part of a larger body to which she or he is responsible.

Chapters four through eight examine the new Covenant, the irrevocable bond made with God in Christ Jesus with the women and men who "belong to the Way" (Acts 9:3). A discussion of the question regarding the institution of the Eucharist and its "two distinct liturgical origins" in Jerusalem and Antioch (p. 57) leads into a discourse on Eucharist and Passover, Eucharist as meal, and Eucharist and Church.

If the "Spirit has replaced the Law as the center of the covenant relationship" (p. 65), what is the place of law in the Christian dispensation? The Spirit is operative in the law of love, as Paul states in Galatians: For you were called to freedom. But do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; rather serve one another through lone. For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement: "You shall lone your neighbor as yourself." (Gal 5:13-14)

Although it may be said that it is easier to follow a religion of law, this is not the maturity that we as Christians are called to live. And here Faley is at his passionate best: "The measure of our moral response is Christ himself"; "Laws, which are necessary for the church to operate, should be kept to a minimum lest we revert to a religion of practice rather than one of adherence to a person"; "The Spirit binds us to Christ with the bond of love, and with Christ as our window on God, we are bound to [God]" (p. 90). On the other hand, we recognize that we are always in the now, on the way, incomplete, which is why we are in constant need of conversion or metanoia-turning around more fully toward God. Conversion means simply that we are not yet what we are called to be. Jesus is our model, and it is by constantly referring all things to him that we will learn what our responses are to be. From him we will gain the courage to live as he lived (and perhaps die as he died): "Christ remains the sole measure of what discipleship means" (p. 117).

With all our inadequacies, we are deeply loved. As Saint John of the Cross wrote long ago, "Love can be repaid by love alone." Once we recognize that we are so loved, it is natural for us to want to respond in kind. However, because we cannot see God, our response must reach out to those in whom God dwells-God's people, wherever they are, for "faith in action is the only faith worthy of the name" (p.108). Faith and love are inextricably bound together.

Bonding with God is what Faley claims it is: a "reflective study." The book easily adapts to either individual or group study, though the questions at the end of each chapter seemed to this reader to lend themselves more to a group discussion than individual reflection. Using them on one's own had the feel of "homework," though that isn't the worst thing they could resemble. It may have been more helpful to have had questions encouraging the reader to make more direct applications of the material in terms of prayer and lived experience.