Is There a Cosmic Covenant?

Abstract

Abstract The idea of a cosmic covenant originated within Roman Catholicism in the mid-twentieth century. Jean Daniélou used it first as the order God gave in nature by which he is known to those outside of Israel. Though this supports interreligious dialogue, it confuses covenant with providence and may diminish the centrality of Christ to salvation. Mary Daly later took up the phrase and attached to it ideas of a sisterhood of universal harmony in which all distinctions are dissolved in being, intuited similarly to dialogical personalism. Robert Murray then grounded the idea in traces of a divinely willed order in nature and society unearthed from vestiges of ritual expression thought to remain in the Old Testament. In each of these usages, the idea of cosmic covenant falls short of what covenant entails, a relationship established between rational entities, ultimately by God with human beings, to establish loving obedience among those made in his image.