Speaking off the cuff, John Milbank gave a very interesting and compelling account of his own theological programme, or agenda. It was polemical and aggressive in tone, to say the least!
The great insight of Radical Orthodoxy is the claim that there is no such thing as the secular. Milbank pointed to the fading away of sociology as a discipline as vindication of his own book in particular. He mentioned Benedict XVI's Regendsberg address as evidence of his own influence! Which is to say, the claim that the Pope made that faith and reason integrated is the best, nay only defence against the arrogance of reason unfettered and the lunacy of pure fideism. What both he and the pope agree on is that there is the need for a 'mediating metaphysics'.
1. Achievements. Milbank claimed that RO is one of the most influential and significant movements in theology today. It claims to revision philosophy as well as theology and to bring theology back to the centre of thought as in the medieval university. He claimed that the movement had global reach.
2. Themes 1. RO is a critique of the secular. The secular is an illusion! This is to me is the great attraction of RO. It has real apologetic teeth at this point. There is no neutrality when it comes to metaphysics. It is all metaphysics - just good or bad metaphysics. In analytical philosophy we see not argument but a buried theological decision. Theology saves common sense!!
2. Postmodernism. RO is very positive about the destruction of modernism and wishes to 'embrace the postmodern flux'. The flux is however not a cause for despair AT ALL but a sign of divine plenitude. Once again, I find this a very attractive feature of RO.
3. RO rests on a peculiar and contested genealogy. This to me is the least interesting feature of the movement. Duns Scotus is cited as the point of departure - where subsequent Christianity went wrong. As a post-Reformation theologian, this leaves me a little sidelined!
He went on a little here to speak about the mode of theological writing. The point is, that if you stick to pure rational discourse, you will go wrong, says Milbank. He has a bit of a point here: Christian theology when it attempts a pure rationality fails to capture the richness of its own scriptures. I would cite 17th C. scholastic protestantism as guilty of this. Narrative and metaphor in fact SAVE the grand tradition, says JM. To strip them away is a fatal move.
4. Theological ontology... RO talks a great deal of participation in the divine being. This it has learnt from thinkers like Maximus, and this participation is expressed liturgically and especially eucharistically. This is unashamedly platonistic - Milbank says that Christianity is inherently Platonist.
3. Criticism. Milbank said there were no serious criticisms. Sure, he said, you get politically correct US rant and you get a British version which is nitpicking about his reading of various thinkers, but these are not serious.
4. Future directions. JM spoke here of a number of themes that he was interested in exploring: geopolitical theology, the idea of gift exchange and so on. He was quite unabashed about being a supercessionist! He also spoke of an educational programme: theologians should be soaked in the classics and in philosophy and literature. And he has an interest in parish life and so on. He claims an ecumenical reach beyond Anglicanism.
A vigorous question time followed.
10 comments:
Interesting, tho' it is the insistence on Platonism that most worries me. I was once told by the RO that if it came to a choice between Platonism and Christianity, they would choose the former - as you can imagine, that wasn't something I could buy into. But more fundamentally it seems to me that you can't have metaphysics in the way that the RO want to have it. I've posted a long essay on why "Wittgenstein, Plato and Pickstock".
RO may well be essentially Platonic but it need not follow that Christianity is. There doesn't seem to be that much that is actually radical about ignoring the Enlightenment and returning to Western medieval worldview.
David - It is radical in the sense of returning to roots, though the roots of the wrong tree...
As for doing away with the secular, I think this is a grave mistake. We need to reclaim it as a Christian concept. It is the idea of the saeculum, this age, as opposed the the coming age. As such, it is a complex and useful idea in all sorts of fields, though never one to be blandly thrown around with platitudes like 'aren't we all glad we live in a secular society and so don't need to talk about religion anymore...'
Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto.
Sicut erat in principio,
et nunc, et semper,
et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
well I don't think milbank would disagree with you at all Byron... he would just dispute the secular as secularists understand it.
Michael: I find Byron's manifesto on reclaiming the idea of the secular very congenial (surprise, surprise) but I must say I wouldn't have understood Milbank to have supported it based on the "no such thing as the secular" rhetoric you quoted. Does he give a positive account of the life of this age, and living in it, in addition to the "critique of the secular" you mentioned? Or does he have some other vocabulary for it (since there's been a hostile takeover of the word secular)?
Pardon my ignorance: in the "seven years" of this movement I have had my back turned.
Well, the secular was originally not secular! Which is to say the word originally had the meaning Byron gave it. Now, and in Milbank's rhetoric too, 'secular' means the non-theological/non-religious public space as opposed to the personal and private religious space.
Milbank would say that the myth of the neutrality and non-theological nature of what is now 'the secular' is just that: a myth. It too has its theological justifications.
I am most curious on how you feel about RO and its interests in the parish life as well as ecumenism...I have found many of the writings intriguing and challenging, though often very tough to chew through. This has led me to wonder if the movement as a whole isnt inherently elitist...How, if at all, can an intellectual movement as rigorous as RO find life in the praxis of the church?
This is not to say that i am against RO as a whole...I guess I am just asking the childish question 'so what?' is this fair? thoughts?
Yes, I think it is inherently elitist. I wouldn't use the word 'rigorous' however!
There is an assumption by academic theologians that people in the pews could care less about their work...On the other hand, Milbank IS interested in the rival of parish life, especially focussed around the Eucharist. Also, because RO is interested in every aspect of life, it is perhaps more likely to have something to say to a broader range of people. Will it make for good preaching? Who can say...
Back to language for a moment:
Michael I understand about proper and contemporary meanings of secular and so on. What I'm curious about is what postive account he gives of the original concept --- I guess I mean "how he speaks about the phenomena", since if you've definitively given up on the word, then in practice the way you conceive of the phenomena is up for grabs.
The word myth is a propos, since you've used it both in the vulgar sense of "false belief" (I'm glad you didn't refer to such belief being "exploded") and in its more technical sense. That's a word that has sadly been taken over by a loaded and pernicious use, but with the original sense still current in some circles and still necessary if we're to even discuss all sorts of ideas.
My own instinct would be to maintain a more proper use of secular in the same way, and work on a long rearguard action. But if Milbank is so completely giving up on the word that he's willing to incorporate the street meaning into his rhetoric, my question is, what positive account does he put in its place? Because we do need such an account, as Byron pointed out.
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