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At the heart of Milbank\u2019s response to Zizek is the insistence that Christianity is fundamentally paradoxical, but not fundamentally dialectical. \u00a0For Milbank, the latter partakes of the ontology of violence that he sniffs out beneath classical, modern, and postmodern systems. \u00a0In Zizek\u2019s case, it\u2019s fairly overt, and overtly Hegelian. <\/p>\n
Milbank argues that the logic of Trinitarian theology is different: \u201cfor the most classical Christian perspective, as developed from Gregory of Nyssa through Augustine to Aquinas, the Father in his absolute plenitude as arche nevertheless can never even be considered \u2018in himself\u2019 as the first \u2018moment,\u2019 since this origin is entirely exhausted in the filial image which it expresses. \u00a0This does not, however, mean that it is abolished or negated in what it expresses, since the paradoxical logic of substantive relation also operates with absolute symmetry the other way around: the Son, as expressed image, is only <\/em> that which he images or expresses. \u00a0It is perhaps no accident that it was an orthodox Anglican clergyman who invented looking-glass logic: for the logic of the Trinity suggests that the Father is only <\/em> his image in a mirror, and yet that this image is indeed a \u2018mirror image\u2019 \u2013 in itself entirely transparent and containing only its reflected source.\u201d <\/p>\n Milbank goes on to say that the Spirit confirms \u201cthat the ecstatic passage between Father and Son is indeed a love between two and not simply an impersonal \u2018flash\u2019 of passage or fusion. \u00a0But this means that love between two can be confirmed only <\/em> by seeing that love is contagious beyond the mere claustrophobia of the dyad. \u00a0For this paradoxical logic, the third is only <\/em> the two, but the two is only <\/em> the passage to the third. \u00a0Therefore the third is a remaining and not a vanishing mediator. \u00a0The third is the between that always allowed the passage from the one to the two, or the same to the different, even though it is the \u2018product\u2019 of the one and the two, the same and the different.\u201d \u00a0Thus, \u201cthe Spirit lies analogically between identity and difference, yet it allows the univocal and the equivocal their place, since it is itself entirely the upshot of the interplay between them.\u201d <\/p>\n This also means, Milbank says, that the Triune life is not an agon but a dance: \u201cNo more Olympus, no more Olympiad; but Parnassus persists, now the Muses peacefully triumph over the gods themselves.\u201d \u00a0 Trinity \u201cdoes not favor a solemn, serious, and tragicTeutonic shadowing of real history\u201d but instead \u201cfrivolously invokes a lost or hidden realm of fantastic pure play,\u201d a play that erupts into history at the incarnation. \u00a0Zizek is too serious, and cannot see that Christianity is \u201cmuch more lightheartedly concerned with God\u2019s self-joying and the human joy that arises to think that there is indeed first of all and finally such joy, even if it is for us now in time almost totally concealed.\u201d <\/p>\n That \u201cis only\u201d seems excessive; the Athanasian creed repeatedly states an \u201cis not\u201d between Father and Son. \u00a0But I think that Milbank acknowledges that here, in his insistence that while the Father is His image, yet the image is truly Image of the Father. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the heart of Milbank\u2019s response to Zizek is the insistence that Christianity is fundamentally paradoxical, but not fundamentally dialectical. \u00a0For Milbank, the latter partakes of the ontology of violence that he sniffs out beneath classical, modern, and postmodern systems. \u00a0In Zizek\u2019s case, it\u2019s fairly overt, and overtly Hegelian. Milbank argues that the logic of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology-trinity"],"yoast_head":"\n