Brian Hamilton

Milbank on Speculation and Practice

In his appreciative critique of Lindbeck’s rule theory of doctrine, John Milbank makes some incredibly helpful observations about the real practical work that doctrine performs. For example, he notes that when religious practices define themselves as responses to the absolute, they are already imagining some scenery within which to respond. So he insists that “a ‘propositional’ level, grounded not simply on intellectual ‘vision’, but simultaneously in creative imagination, is therefore implicit even within a religious practice confined to worship and the recitation of stories.” Moreover, he demonstrates that doctrine always exceeds practice—that is, it contains a “radically ‘inventive’ moment” that elicits new conversations and dialectically affects practice. It’s this dialectic between speculation and practice that I find most helpful, because of its clarity rather than its novelty. He’s using the doctrine of the Incarnation to illustrate:

I also want to claim that this ‘idea’ [of the Incarnation] is an inseparable part of historical Christianity, and that such speculations are unavoidable, though they remain ungrounded, except in the pleasing character of the conceits to which they give rise. Nevertheless, there is more than a danger that a contemplation of the paradigmatic ‘setting’ for the Christian drama—the sublime Baroque scenery—will totally efface the syntagmatic, narrative dimension. Properly understood, the speculative idea does not encourage this, but rather (as Hegel half understood) of its own nature demands a return to the concrete, narrative level: if Jesus really is the Word of God, then it is not the mere ‘extrinsic’ knowledge of this which will save us, but rather a precise attention to his many words and deeds and all their historical results. The idea helps to confirm that God is love, the narrative alone instructs about what love is. (Theology and Social Theory, 387, emp. mine)

The necessity and reflexivity of concrete and speculative Christian self-understanding comes through strongly for Milbank in a way that takes seriously the risk involved in stressing either side.

1 December 2006 |
tags: Radical Orthodoxy