In the face of the resurrection it becomes finally impossible to think of our Christian narrative as only “our point of view,” our perspective on a world that really exists in a different, “secular” way.There is no independently available “real world” against which we must test our Christian convictions, because these convictions are the most final, and at the same time
the most basic, “seeing” of what the world is.—John MilbankMy thanks to the Rev. Dr. Ray Ortlund for posting this quote from Dr. Milbank’s book The Word Made Strange. It’s a profoundly important point; in particular, it’s a crucial rebuke to any purely subjective understanding of Christianity. We’re dealing here with a reality which is far greater and wilder than our subjectivity, and which shatters our comfortable reductionism.At the same time, the logic underlying Dr. Milbank’s argument is also a stiff challenge to secular pretensions of greater objectivity; for secularists, too, their convictions “are the most final, and at the same time the most basic, ‘seeing’ of what the world is.” We cannot, any of us, get outside ourselves to measure ourselves against reality apart from any presuppositions; we cannot see from no point of view.
