A reader, Dan Glover, responds to my comments about Milbank’s take on the faith-seeking-understanding motto. He’s more correcting my presentation of Milbank than Milbank himself:
” I think that . . . he is wrong to say that ‘this is fundamentally an eschatological rather than an epistemological point.’ I think he is pulling an either/or distinction when it ought to be seen as within the realms of both/and. In the same way that he is rejecting the dualism in the faith/reason distinction, I think he is wrong to say that epistemology and eschatology for the believer can be separated and that this issue belongs in the realm of one and not the other. I think this fits within both the realms of epistemology and eschatology.
“Another example would be sanctification. Using Milbank’s same reasoning above, we might say that sanctification is not a matter of ethics but rather of eschatology. Of course it is true that sanctification is an eschatological consideration. Sanctification here and now can only be in part and only in the eschaton will we be fully perfected, fully sanctified. But it is also a matter of ethics, of obedience here and now, of striving toward the perfections of the eschaton. Is this also not true of reason? Is there also both now and a not yet aspects to reason?”
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