“Fullness” is a key word in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. The Lord has made known the mystery of His will in a way “suitable to the fullness of the times” (1:10). Christ is exalted above every name, and about all rule and authority, and is head over the church, His body, the “fullness of Him who fills all in all” (1:23). Paul wants the Ephesians to grasp Christ’s love in four dimensions, so that “you may be filled up... Read more
“Be wise as serpents,” Jesus says. How? The first wise serpent in the Bible is a deceiver. Is Jesus encouraging His disciples to use deception to protect themselves? In part, the answer is qualified Yes. Jesus wants us to let our Yes be Yes, and our No No. He exhorts us to straightforwardness. But there are times when deceit is righteous. Paul escaped the ethnarch Aretas in a basket let down through a window in the wall of Damascus, and... Read more
What does Paul mean in Ephesians 1:23 when he describes the church as the fullness of Christ? Does it mean that the church is completed and filled up by Christ, or does it mean that Christ is completed and filled up by the church? Certainly the first. But the second is also true. According to 1 Corinthians 12:12, “Christ” names the head-and-body totus Christus , and Christ-head without a body would be a monstrous Christ. A Christ without a body would... Read more
Gnostics used the term pleroma , fullness, to describe the realm of emanations from the high God, the realm of perfection and life. Paul had pre-refuted this later development by giving pleroma an earthly address and a history. The body, He says, is the pleroma of Chrit (Ephesians 1:23), and this fullness is not achieved all at once but over time, as we all mature into the “fullness of Christ” (4:13). Gnostics looking for the pleroma did not need to... Read more
PROVERBS 28:12 The proverb is structured in parallel: In the triumph of the righteous Much glory But in the rising of the wicked Hide men. “Triumph” doesn’t quite capture the force of the Hebrew verb ‘alatz . It is used only a handful of times in the Hebrew Bible. Hannah “exults” in Yahweh because the Lord has vindicated her by giving her a son, vindicated her against her rival wife; she exults because the Lord has raised up her horn... Read more
A summary of Part IV of Milbank’s book. Milbank argues that a proper theological response to postmodernism must be discriminating. He accepts the postmodern critique of “substance,” and thinks that Christianity can get along without employing this notion. But other aspects of the postmodern attack on traditional philosophy cannot be admitted by theology. His critique of postmodernism proceeds by three steps: first, he argues that genealogy requires an ontology of violence; second, he claims that this ontology has no claim... Read more
A summary of some arguments from Part II of Milbank’s book.It is important to Milbank’s approach that he does not treat sociology as a “discipline” but as a worldview, philosophical standpoint, or theological perspective. He calls it a theology and a church in disguise, offering an account of history that is irreconcilable with Christianity’s. He makes two subordinate points. First, Milbank wants to show that theology entered into the construction of sociology, and he spends a good bit of one... Read more
What follows is a summary of the first part of Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Political Profiles) . Once, Milbank begins, there was no secular. And the appearance of the secular is not merely a matter of removing something superfluous, as sociology generally tells it in its theories of “desacralization,” the image of the stripping of a sacred covering so that some realm of pure humanity and nature is brought into the open. That portrayal assumes that... Read more
Milbank again, summarizing Hegel’s critique of Fichte’s political views: “In a political world where anything can be made of anything, the only common standard is protection of the finite ego, which, according to Fichte, must extend not only to the prohibition of deliberate crimes against person and property, but also to the numerous ways in which individuals may accidentally interfere with, and inhibit, the freedom of others. To prevent this happening, to ensure the smooth operation of the free market,... Read more
Milbank criticizes Hegel for the philosophical “error” in his “myth of negation.” The issue is how difference arises, the logic of difference. Milbank points to Leibniz by way of contrast, who “conceived logic as a ‘series,’ which unfolded by infinitesimal steps such that every act of analysis of a ‘single’ thing revealed a slightly ‘different’ aspect of possibility.” That is, difference does not arise negatively, by way of contradiction, by unfolds. Hegel is more “conservative” in rooting his logic and... Read more
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