Due to past discussions here at the Weblog that weren’t as friendly as many would have liked, I wanted to see if I could find some way to understand some of the arguments a bit better than they can be presented in comment boxes. So, thanks to the power of interlibrary loan, I am currently making my way through Milbank's Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. In part I agree with Milbank's basic thesis that states much of what passes for an attempt to understand where we live is insufficient because it divorces the sacred (unthought?) from man's real, material existence and yet continues to posit a faith. That is all fine and good. Where I come up against problems is his insistence that the Christian tradition is, after all this time, really the best thing to happen in the world. That, even if other religions as such have validity, they are not as good as Christianity.

I'll quote from a section on charity that should give an idea of why I am both enjoying the book and vaguely pissed off:

Prudence concerns moral tact, the giving of everything its due in the right place and at the right time, and charity must still be exercised with tact if it is to be a proper care. But charity also transcends the perspective of doing exact justice, of measuring up to the way things are. The supernatural perspective of charity reveals that from every finite position, within every social situation, an advance to perfection remains possible. This perspective does not simply negate the Aristotelian insight about 'moral luck', or the way in which our moral capacities are restricted by our social situation and fortune.

So far, so good. Charity is a higher principle of human action than justice. Justice, ultimately, denies the possibility of charity. I can even see how Christian theology, though not the actual practice of Christianity, gives evidence to this very fact. So I want to affirm this; I want to find a way of denying justice in the name of charity, creating an ontology of charity, whatever needs to be done.

Then Milbank continues:

For the perspective is only possible as a new social perspective, which is that of the Church. To be a part of the Church (in so far as it really is the Church) is to have the moral luck to belong to the society which overcomes moral luck. For the Church exists as a 'practice of perfection', as the working of charity, which ceaselessly tries to remove the obstacles in the way of people becoming perfect.

Though Milbank consistently criticizes Kant, I can't help but think that he is speaking here of a Church in "pure religious reason". That is, this thought is not the way things actually are in the world. Though those who practice such reason certainly apply what lies in our realm of religious reason to those objects in the world in order to perceive them, I'm not sure I'd advise them to advocate the Church as it is in itself to be the model for such a social perspective. Then there is the interesting statement "For the Church exists as a 'practice of perfection'." I don't think that Milbank is simple minded, far from it, but I have to wonder if he is using this word with the care it requires in a work that is sure to be read by philosophers who have long grappled over what it means to be. Does he mean, as a Heideggerian, that the Church is ek-sistent and thus never fully present as this 'practice of perfection'? Such Caputo-style discourse is surely not what Milbank is doing. For one, this would seem to go against his Platonism, which states in Christian terms that the ideal form of Church is its true existence, while what we have merely participates in this.

Milbank's choice of Platonism is also a curious choice. While I realize that he holds to it in part because he comes from a long tradition of Cambridge Platonists, somewhat against his Nazarene and Weslyan background, I wonder if he really understands the full implications of there being a transcendental Good, True, and Beautiful. In Alchibiades I, Socrates stops Alchibiades from going to the temple to pray because without true knowledge we are sure to pray for the wrong thing. If we pray that we are given power, that power is given to us at tremendous cost, often costs that we would not like to pay. Thus, the only truly pious and safe prayer is, "Lord, give me the good things." What this dialogue implicitly illustrates is that the Good, True, and Beautiful are higher than any God. A God would have to look up to the Good for this prayer to be truly safe, something that I think is completely incompatible with the Christian tradition if only because of the Book of Job. Though Milbank may want to affirm these transcendentals, he will need to distance himself completely from Plato to do so, and thus from the origin of philosophy.

In the link above Nate Kerr accused the this site of being a theological manqué. I think I'd have to say I'm for Milbank in so far as he unmasks Western secular reason as not being secular at all, but against him as he is a philosophical manqué because his argument stands upon the authority of the Church as it exists; sadly this is an existence that is far from a ‘practice of perfection’. All in all, I think Goodchild does this much better, though he will likely never become as popular as Milbank has due to his precarious position as a philosopher who takes religion seriously.

Update: I found a lecture given by Milbank. It's a rather decent overview of his work and a bit more autobiographical than what his written word tends to concede.