Milbank’s Bible

In a discussion of the divergence of “romantic” and “classical” modes of contemporary theology, Milbank highlights the central role of the Scripture.  More fundamental than reason, or the “rational consideration of the propositions of faith” is “meditation on the liturgy, the eucharist and the scriptures.”  Meditating on the liturgy, we meditate on “all the words which wise men have ever uttered,” but especially on “the words of the Bible which contain the most sublime reasonings of all because they anticipate, echo, enforce and again anticipate the epiphanic descent of reason itself to humanity” in the incarnation of the Logos.

We can read the book of the world and the book of Scripture because “our intellectual is illumined (and so able to think at all) through its participation int he very mind of this same author.  The book of creation itself points obscurely to the paradoxically world-exceeding book of scripture.  At the same time the latter refers in the first place always to things of this world and so must be read through the world-book, just as the scriptures also refer to many languages and cultures and thereby assume and anticipate the whole of human history.”  Christian use of language and study of the natural world are “focussed on the Bible that it itself authorized by its critical place in enabling liturgy, the truth worship of the triune God.”