The common description of theology as “faith seeking understanding” is often understood in a dualist fashion: Faith is the starting point, then reasoning takes over on the basis of faith, and through that process of reasoning, faith reaches understanding.
Milbank suggests on the contrary that for Augustine and Anselm and Aquinas, “faith seeking understanding” means that “reason itself is faith seeking understanding.” He says that this is fundamentally an eschatological rather than an epistemological point: “Reason for now can only be faith,” and what faith seeks in the mode of reason is the knowledge that we will have when we know as we are known. On the other hand, this also means that “faith for now can only develop its insights rationally and discursively,” not with the immediacy of eschatological knowledge.
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