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Integrity and Realism: Assessing John Milbank's Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Graeme Richardson
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On the acknowledgements page of Theology and Social Theory John Milbank thanks, rather abruptly, ‘Rowan Williams, who taught me theology’. No other teacher is recognised. The formal teaching was at Westcott House, Cambridge, in the mid-70s; but there is evidence enough that the current Archbishop of Canterbury has been an abiding influence on the whole of John Milbank’s theological career. In the crowded Metro of Milbank’s footnotes, it is rare to see a face more than once; but Williams appears five times in The Word Made Strange, speaking variously of Barth, Arius, Lossky and Gregory of Nyssa. And often, Milbank’s ideas seem closely related to those of his teacher. The concept of poesis in Milbank’s ‘A Critique of the Theology of Right’ (1989) - ‘the ceaseless re-narrating and ‘explaining’ of human history’, a self-exceeding act — is clearly the twin of Williams’ ‘generative revelation’ — ‘events or transactions in our language that break existing frames of reference and initiate new possibilities of life’ — in his essay ‘Trinity and Revelation’ (1986). But this example serves not just as a demonstration of Williams’ influence on Milbank; it also shows how Milbank overtakes his teacher, tackling on a grand scale ideas that are in Williams rather tentative. For Milbank, the idea that somehow Christian experience generates its own momentum of truth contributes to the overthrow of Kantian transcendentalism; for Williams, the same sort of idea provides ‘a way of thinking’ about the Spirit’s work in the church. Milbank’s theological ambition seems much greater than Williams’.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 84 , Issue 988 , June 2003 , pp. 268 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 John, Milbank, The Word Made Strange: Theology, Language, Culture (Oxford, Blackwell, 1997), p.32Google Scholar.

2 Rowan, Williams, On Christian Theology (Oxford, Blackwell, 2000), p. 134Google Scholar.

3 The Word Made Strange, p. 1.

4 On Christian Theology, xv-xvi.

5 ibid., p.5

6 ibid., p.6

7 ibid., p.13

8 ibid., p.8

9 Rowan, Williams, ‘Saving Time: Thoughts on Practice, Patience and Vision’, New Blackfriars 73, (1992) 319-326Google Scholar, (p.321).

10 ibid., p.320

11 Unless the context specifically indicates otherwise, I have taken criticisms of Radical Orthodoxy to apply also to John Milbank. I concede that this is dangerous. But it’s justifiable, I think, given the prominence of Milbank and his pupils (Catherine Pickstock, Conor Cunningham, et al) in continuing the movement beyond the original volume of essays, and the way that Graham Ward and his pupils (including Gavin Hyman) have been more critical of the enterprise. Also, where Radical Orthodoxy speaks with one voice (as in Introduction to the original volume) it sounds more like Milbank than anyone else.

12 Richard, Cross, ‘ ‘Where Angels Fear To Tread’: Duns Scotus and Radical Orthodoxy’, Antonianum LXXVI (2001), p. 41Google Scholar.

13 p. 22

14 p. 41

15 Laurence, Paul Hemming, Radical Orthodoxy – A Catholic Enquiry (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2000), p.13Google Scholar

16 Gareth Jones, ‘Editor’s Choice’ Reviews in Religion and Theology, (1997), p.6.

17 Professor Lash’s criticism is echoed by the stupendously contrasting person of Jeff Sharlet, in his on-line article for ‘Killing the Buddha’ at www.killingthebuddha.com/dogma/gods_own.htm.

18 Douglas Hedley, ‘Should Divinity Overcome Metaphysics? Reflections on John Milbank’s Theology beyond Secular Reason and Confessions of a Cambridge Platonist’, Journal of Religion, (2000). 271-299, (p.273): ‘Whereas, for traditional metaphysical theology, the Greek Platonic-Aristotelian thesis of reason as the divine within man provides the basis for natural theology, the neo-Barthian Milbank sees God as wholly other or ‘strange’, and he sees the only possibility for a meeting of God and man as not metaphysical speculation but theological practice: ‘charity’, ‘poesis’ and ‘praxis’, and ‘narrative’

19 R.R. Reno, ‘The Radical Orthodoxy Project’, First Things, 100 (2000), 37-44, (p.40).

20 Ross, Thompson, ‘Postmodernism and the Trinity: How to be postmodern and post-Barthian too’, New Blackfriars, 83 (2002), 173-188 (p. 175)Google Scholar.

21 Gavin, Hyman, The Predicament of Postmodern Theology: Radical Orthodoxy or Nihilist Textualism, (Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), p.88Google Scholar.

22 Romand, Coles, ‘Storied Others and the Possibilities of Caritas: Milbank and Neo-Nietzschean Ethics’, Modern Theology, 8:4 (1992) 331-351Google Scholar.

23 The Word Made Strange, p. 3.

24 Bauerschmidt, F.C., ‘The Word Made Speculative? John Milbank’s Christological Poetics’, Modern Theology, 15:4, (1999) p.429CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Steven, Shakespeare, ‘The New Romantics: A Critique of Radical Orthodoxy’, Theology, Vol. 103, 2000, 163-177 (p. 165)Google Scholar

26 Hedley, p.298

27 Gareth Jones, review of The Word Made Strange, Journal of Theological Studies, April 2001, pp. 467-470.

28 John Milbank, ‘Intensities’, Modern Theology, 15:4, (1999), 445-497 (p446).

29 Hemming, p. 37.

30 Theology and Social Theory, p. 1.

31 ‘Intensities’, p 446

32 See especially ‘Postmodern Critical Augustinianism: A Short Summa in Forty Two Responses to Unasked Questions’, Modern Theology, 7:3, (1991), 225-237, for discussion of this.

33 Hyman, p. 69

34 In asserting that Milbank’s grand narrative is fictional, perhaps Hyman is thinking of Milbank’s 1992 declaration: ‘Fortunately, the Church is first and foremost neither a programme, nor a ‘real’ society, but instead an enacted, serious fiction’.35 But Milbank goes on to talk of the eucharist as ‘ritual distance’, saying ‘this ritual distance of the Church from itself defines the Church, or rather deflects it from any definition of what it is. In its truth it is not, but has been and will be’. This surely implies an acceptance of instability in Milbank’s conclusions. Further on in the same article he talks of his descriptions of the Church: ‘...the ‘formal’ descriptions (which I do not claim could ever be exhaustive – even within the confines of formalism) – in terms of peace, forgiveness, harmony, etc – describe structural relations, and do not isolate essences... nor prescribe ‘what is to be done’ ’ (p.343).

35 ‘Enclaves, or Where is the Church?’, New Blackfriars, (1992), 341-352, (p. 342)

36 Hyman, p.117

37 On Christian Theology, p.7

38 Theology and Social Theory, p.6.

39 Don, Cupitt, ‘My Postmodern Witch’, Modern Believing, 39:4, (1998), pp. 5-10Google Scholar

40 His reasons are i) that realism/non-realism is a framework (Hyman sees frameworks — wrongly — as being analogous to Wittgensteinian language-games) and Milbank is operating in a completely different framework; and ii) that realism/non-realism is a dichotomy which takes insufficient account of alterity: again, an argument solely for the postmodernist

41 Hyman, p.62-64

42 Theology and Social Theory, p. 296.

43 ‘Postmodern Critical Augustinianism’, p.228: ‘The Community is what God is like, and he is even more like the ideal, the goal of community implicit in its practices’.