Solidarity through trust

In his essay in Paul’s New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology , Milbank suggests that we translate dikaiosune pisteos as “just solidarity through trust,” which Paul contrasts with all attempts to established solidarity through law or other means.

He explains, “It may appear that trust is a weak recourse compared to the guarantees provided by law, courts, political institutions, checks and balances, and so forth. However, since all these processes are administered by human beings capable of treachery, a suspension of distrust, along with the positive working of tacit bonds of association, is the only real source of reliable solidarity for a community. Hence to trust, to depend on others, is in reality the only reliable way in which the individual can extend his or her own power, his or her own conatus , that is, the legitimate reach of one’s own capacities, and also the only reliable way to attain a collective strength.”

But this trust has to be grounded in trust in a God of absolute and infinite justice: “In trusting God we trust also that the current negative order is a violation and that ‘in the end’ the order of gift must be restored. It then follows that to trust others a potentially good – as potential sources of gratuitous life . . . – is to trust their own trust in God and in eschatological finality.”