Covenantal Relationships and Trust

“A group in which getting along together was achieved only by the threat of violence on the one hand, or by paying for services rendered and received on the other, would not be a family. I call such relationships – using a keyword of the Bible – covenantal. Whereas contracts are about the self, covenants are about the larger groupings in and through which we develop our identity. They are about the ‘We’ in which I discover the ‘I.’ Covenantal relationships are those sustained by trust.”

The Dignity of Difference, p. 128