What is a covenant?

A covenant is a divinely initiated and historically enacted relationship in which God binds humanity to Himself through a mediator, employing promises, obligations, and sacred signs, in order to restore communion disrupted by sin and to lead creation to its fulfillment in Christ. Rooted in God’s faithful action and requiring human assent, all covenants progress toward and are fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the mediator of the new and eternal covenant (CCC 54–73, 60; Summa Theologiae I–II, q.112; III, q.62).

Covenant Mediators, Roles, Participants, and Witnesses

Definition (Formal Cause)

The covenant’s formal cause is its essence or “blueprint,” defining its nature, structure, and relational mode between God and humanity. 

Each covenant binds:

• God, who is both promiser and witness.

• Humanity, bound through a mediator who brings blessing or curse based on fidelity.

Specific participation:

• Adam binds all humanity to God through creation.

• Noah binds his family to God as a preserved remnant.

• Christ binds all humanity to God through His Body, the Church, transcending creation while participating in it through the Incarnation.

Divine Initiative

God always takes the initiating role in establishing covenants. God is the principle efficient cause of every covenant:

• Adam: God creates humanity and commands fruitfulness (Gen 1:28).

• Noah: God establishes His promise after the flood (Gen 9:9–17).

• Moses: God reveals Himself on Mount Sinai (Exod 19:3–6).

• Christ: God redeems humanity through the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection.

God’s Faithfulness

Despite human failure, God remains faithful to His covenantal promises.

Nature and Structure of the Human Party

Human Assent

The mediator truly hears and speaks to God through effective communication, faith, and obedience.

Human Response to Divine Action

• Adam failed in obedience.

• Noah and Abraham demonstrated fidelity through signs (ark, circumcision).

• Christ fulfilled all righteousness through perfect obedience.

Covenant Mediators and Their Roles

The role of the mediator defines the essence and scope of each covenant:

• Adam: As husband, Adam represents humanity in a marital bond with God, establishing creation’s familial nature.

• Noah: As head of the household, Noah binds his family as a remnant of creation to God.
  Moses: As judge and liberator, Moses mediates the covenant for Israel, formalizing law and worship.

• David: As king, David mediates a royal covenant establishing a national kingdom.

• Christ: As eternal High Priest and Savior, Christ mediates the new and eternal covenant through His sacrifice.

Covenant Expression / Form

The formal cause determines the relational structure of the covenant:

• Adamic Covenant: Marriage between Adam, Eve, and God.

• Noahic Covenant: Family structure bound by divine promise.

• Davidic Covenant: National kingdom.

• Christ’s Covenant: Universal and eternal Church.

Ritual of Acceptance, Ratification, and Oath

Each covenant involves a solemn external act, often accompanied by sacrifice or labor:

• Circumcision (Abraham)

• Passover sacrifice (Moses)

• Eucharist (Christ)

Covenantal Oath

• Adam’s implicit oath of fidelity in the Garden.

• Christ’s explicit institution of the Eucharist as the New Covenant.

Covenantal Effects

• God’s action: Grace, providence, authorship.

• Human action: Trust and obedience.

Old Testament expressions:

• Physical marks (circumcision)

• Laws (tablets)

• Obedience

New Testament fulfillment:

• Grace and eternal life (John 3:16)

Change and Content of the Blessing, Promise, Curse, Reward, and Signs

Blessing / Promise

Each covenant contains a promise:

• Abraham: “I will make of you a great nation.”

Curse

Violation of the covenant invokes consequences:

• Adam’s sin brought death.

• Christ bore the curse of humanity’s sin (Gal 3:13).

Reward

Participation in divine blessing according to fidelity.

Signs (we won't sort out the types, but just so we are aware of this distinction)

Mandated Signs and Renewal

Signs often overlap with rituals of ratification or with consequential signs:

• Adam: Sabbath (Gen 2:2–3).

• Christ: Eucharist (Luke 22:20).

Consequential Signs (Enduring Testimony)

• Noah: Rainbow (Gen 9:13).

• Abraham: Circumcision and descendants (Gen 17:10).

• Moses: The Law on tablets and the lives shaped by it.

• Christ:

  • The Church as witness and participant

  • Apostolic succession

  • Saints and martyrs

  • Sacred history preserved in Scripture

  • The Shroud of Turin

Historical Context, Timing, and Narrative Setting

Each covenant is inaugurated at a divinely appointed moment in salvation history, corresponding to humanity’s development, and God’s progressive revelation and plan for salvation.

The Making of the Covenant: Rituals and Ratification

God as Primary Maker and Active Party

God precedes humanity in establishing covenantal conditions and circumstances.

Human Response: Obedience, Sacrifice, and Failure

Obedience

Faith expressed through concrete action and ritual fidelity.

Disobedience and Failure

Human misuse of freedom introduces rupture, yet does not nullify God’s faithfulness.

Purpose of This Covenant (Final Cause)

General Purpose

• Divine intimacy through revelation.

• Restoration of communion disrupted by sin.

• Salvation through law and grace.

• Establishment of the Kingdom of God.

• Progressive preparation culminating in Christ and eternity.

Blessings and curses function pedagogically
(e.g., Deuteronomy 28).

Particular Purpose

• Adam: Human dominion and harmony in creation.

• Noah: Preservation of humanity and creation.

• Abraham: Formation of a chosen people.

• Moses: Establishment of a holy nation.

• David: Establishment of an anointed king.

• Christ: Universal salvation through the Church.

Preparation for Christ

All covenants anticipate and find fulfillment in Christ.

Restoration and Redemption of Humanity

Covenants progressively heal the rupture caused by sin.

Growth of Communion and the Kingdom

The covenantal economy orders humanity toward unity, justice, and divine communion under God’s reign.

Covenant 1: Adamic

The Covenant with Adam

1. Formal Cause of Covenants

Covenant Mediators and Roles

• God makes man in his image describing man's Divine Sonship as we learned last session

• Adam and Eve have "dominion", so they exercise a mediation between God and creation, thus man is a steward of material creation

Covenant Form

• The Covenant with Adam - Genesis 2:1-4

• God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.

Rituals of Ratification

• Creation/Existence

• Prayer

• Rest

Change/Obligation

• Creation and its care

Context or Timing - Passages Discussed in last session - This covenant is nestled with in the Creation of Man as a default to Man's nature

• Genesis 1:26-29 - creation context

• Genesis 2:15-17

  1. We recall from our last session that God placed man where He would flourish

  2. Who is God (what is He like)?

  3. Created in God's image and called to know and love him (CCC, 31.)

  4. This question intertwines itself with the question of whether God exists. We must first exist in a way to detect Him. But most of all we get to know Him.

  5. CCC, 32 The world: starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world's order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe.

Conditions & Duration

• We recall from our last session that God placed man where He would flourish

• Man, not receiving the fullness of his freedom traded it for what seemed better to him

Blessing or Prophecy

• He created us in this, and sin besmirched this, but God also intends to restore it to make us gods toward which we were first tempted (Genesis 1:26)

Curse

• The results of breaking the covenant were realized (Genesis 3:8-19)

2. Material Cause of Covenants

Signs (and Efficacious Signs when applicable)

• In this covenant, the image of God in which man was made is the sign of the unity of two entities is important.

Participants and Witnesses

• God

• Man

How does this happen?

CCC 31 Created in God's image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him...

This question intertwines itself with the question of whether God exists. We must first exist in a way to detect Him. But most of all we get to know Him

1. What we know of Who God is in our day comes from Jesus empirically

   1. We can know what God is like By listening to His words

      1. Jesus is the Word (John 1)

   2. We can know Who He is by what He does

      1. Heals us even where it means death (Matthew 8:1-4)

      2. Forgives relating to healing (John 8)

      3. Weeps/Commiserates with us (John 11:35)

      4. Prays and gives us a model (Luke 11:1-13)

      5. Invites us into His life, responding to what keeps us from Him (Matthew 4:19, Mark 10:17-31)

      6. He cares for us in every way (Matthew 10:29-31)

2. We can also conceptually and impersonally know God but not insignificant

   1. "God is Love" (1 John 4:8)

   2. He cannot be a member of any finite category in fact He is Existence Itself

   3. CCC 32 The world: starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world's order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe.

3. Final Cause of Covenants

General

• So we are made to be "like" and in the "image of" God but what does that mean?

•  When we talk about Imago dei that correlates to the structure or form of our being, our soul. But what is likeness?

  1. Our likeness to God was "disfigured in man by the first sin" (CCC 1701), the content of ourselves

  2. In loose terms, it is our holiness because likeness to God for a finite being is only obtained by participation in the mystery of God, in His "divineness". Thus, we can only become like God if we become divinized in every aspect of our being.

  3. He created us in this, and sin besmirched this, but God also intends to restore it to makes us gods toward which we were first tempted (Genesis 1:26).

Particular

• What is likeness?

  1. Our likeness to God was "disfigured in man by the first sin" (CCC 1701).

  2. In loose terms, it is our holiness because likeness to God for a finite being is only obtained by participation in the mystery of God, in His "divineness". Thus, we can only become like God if we become divinized in every aspect of our being.

4. Efficient Cause of Covenants

God as the Efficient Cause

• God makes man in his image (Genesis 1:26-29)

• He cannot be a member of any finite category; in fact, He is Existence Itself.

Oath often Accompanied by Sacrifice or Labor

• God placed man where He would flourish (Genesis 2:15-17)

Human Response

• Man’s Response - Genesis 3:1-7 -So amount of time before He fell when man was in right relationship with God - then Man, not receiving the fullness of his freedom, traded it for what seemed better to him.

Resources from Sacred Heart Parish in Norfolk, NE

Resources from Fr. Riccardo