John Milbank: The Future of Love

If you, like me, have had a hard time to really understand what Milbank is really about, this is the book for you. What these essays do is really to clarify a lot of things that remains unclear in his other books. This happens in different ways. In the first section we get (mildly updated) versions of Milbanks really early eighties stuff, and this for me shows where he is coming from. These are readings of English theologians (!) that I have never heard of ( apart from Newman). These texts are mostly interesting to someone who wants to study Milbanks own development, but for the rest of us they are mainly interesting beacuase they are fairly ordinary. This is before TST, and he is not as well read as later (he mainly sticks to the writer at issue).

The fun begins with the TST era writings. There are two chapters (I think) must have been written while he was working on TST and here we see the Milbankisms starting to appear (sociology in inverted commas, references to nihilism and french philosophy by the truckloads). Then there are three chapters made up of responses to criticism of TST and these really help to answer some of the questions I had after reading it. In particular, Milbank really fleshes out his vision of the Church, the major flaw of TST, IMO. And obviously his politics is made much more explicit here.

But the most impressive part of the book is the three chapters under the header "Political Theology Today". Here Milbank uses his wide knowledge of western intellectual history to comment on current affairs, in he does this extremely well. In particular the essay on 9/11 is among the best I have read on the topic. As a critic of US policy he is defintiely on par with the chomsky's and Klein's of the world, and original too. I do not think I could say this about another theologian. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Then follows a part on theology and pluralism, and obviously this is much more problematic at least for me. If the "political theology" part is what attracts me to Milbank, this is what makes me hesitant. His stand on dialogue between religions goes beyond merely pointing out real problems in the field. His conclusion is bascially "convert!" and clearly this is a bit disappointing. I am not sure either that his rather fanatical view of theology as a field in academia is very helpful.

In the final part we find the superb "Postmodern Critical Augustinianism", which probably is the best text Milbank has written. Had I not chanced on this I would not have bothered reading a word more from him after TST. Why is it so good? Not only is it concise and well argued. It has a tone that is somewhat different from most of Milbanks writings, maybe because this is a rare moment where he is not polemicising against anyone (there are parts of "Being reconciled" that are similar in this sense). This feels like an important point to make, but I do not know what to make of it myself. It is clear that to be able to say what he says hear about Christianity and Theology would not be possible for him to say had he not first "liberated" himself from so much of the liberal and secular thinking he fights against elsewere.

All of these texts are published elsewere, so they can be dug up in the library. But the volume is really worth its price for anyone interested in political theology today.

Milbank vs. Zizek: The Monstrosity of Christ

I guess there should be a spoiler warning here, at least for me this book had what can be best describe as a surprise ending: I threw it away in disgust. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

A lot has happened since this infamous (in my universe anyway) post, where I went my frustration over Milbank's Theology and Social Theory. I have to admit that I am at the moment compeltely fascinated by Being reconciled, although there are large chunks of it I do not agree with, either regarding method (the chapter on forgiveness) or substance (violence, of course). However, the chapter on Church, Politics and Culture are about the best I have read in a long time.

I also enjoy(ed) Zizek a lot. His way of reading texts (in a very broad sense) is incredibly creative, and I will never see The Sound of Music the same way again.

This book leaves a lot of shattered dreams behind, I'm sure. A lot of attempts to do theology in dialogue with Zizek that will now have to be rethought, or abandoned. Because at least as far as I know, In his past discussion of Christian theology, he has always remained somewhat ambigous, always left things a bit open for interpretation. Not this time.

But no one can possibly be more disappointed than Milbank. I do not know where that blurb on the back of Being Reconciled comes from (does anyone know if there is an actual review of it out there somewhere?) where Zizek basically says that this is finally the real shit. Milbank must have been so proud of that. What theologian would not be when hearing praise like that from one of the worlds most famous intellectuals? And then this.

The first part, where Zizek presents his reading of Christianity adds little to The Puppet and the Dwarf. The most striking thing here is that it is really apparent that Zizek's knowledge is of theology is really patchy. He makes som really far fetched claims about Eastern Orthodoxy based on Lossky alone, and makes some rather obvious mistakes that Milbank rather kindly points out later on.

Milbanks part of the book, is not that revealing either. Lots of discussion on Hegel and more interestingly, Meister Eckhart. Milbank accuses Zizek of being protestant, basically. And for me this was the most interesting aspect of Milbank's text, his criticism of Lutheranism is fleshed out a lot more than what I have read so far. His attempt to make Kierkegaard an "Catholic honoris causa" is a bit awkward though.

So obvious it is Zizeks response to Milbank's criticism that is what ultimately makes this book worth its prize. After som niceties about the "authentic spirituality" of Milbank's position, he bluntsly states: "Of course i fail to see this ... because to me, there is no transcendent God-Father. " What that basically says is: "Nice120 pages, but did do miss the part about me being an atheist?" But it gets worse, much worse. For then he goes on to show Milbank that his Catholicism is basically a form of paganism, that is protestantism that is the kind of Christianity he finds interesting, with the focus on the Cross, and especially, get this, radical death-of-God theology in the vain of Thomas Altizer. Poor Milbank.

So that is the one big point of this book. Now a completely different kind of theology is endorsed by the great Zizek. However. The other point is that I am not sure if any theologian actually want tha endorsement anymore. Because the dialogue form of this book makes Zizek come clear on several areas at least I was not aware of his stance on. Maybe it is just me, but I kind of felt all this talk about being stalinist and so on was ironic posturing. Not so. Not only does Zizek's atheism in the end be like any other atheist's, only slightly more educated. But his ethics are described in a way that made me, as a christian, loose al my interest in whatever else he has to say.

At one points he discusses the situation where he would encounter one of thos doctors that aid in torture, helping the torturers decide how much the victim can take.

I must admit that if I were to encounter such a person, knowing that there was little chance of bringing him to legal justice, and be given the opportunity to murder him discreetly, I would simply do it, without a vestige of remorse about "taking the law into my own hands."

In another instance he seems to endorse a "violent totalitarian regime", but here there is some ambiguity. But no matter, for his final definition of his moral ideal in itself is enough, and that was where to book flew out of my hands in disgust.

This is where I stand - how I would love to be: an ethical monster without empathy, doing what is done in a weird coincidence of blind spontaneity and reflexive distance, helping others while avoiding their disgusting proximity. With more people like this, the world would be a pleasant place which sentimentality would be replaced by cold and cruel passion.

Surely, after this any theological engagement with this kind of philosophy will be nothing but a waste of time, a way of keep missing the point about Christianity?

Milbank discussion

There is a extremely revealaing discussion with John Milbank posted at livedtheology.org (HT: Theopolitical.com, F&T). It discusses the last chapter of Theology and Social Thery, but it goes off in all kinds of directions, and Milbank talks a bit about his background and stuff. For those of you, like me, still trying to figure out what it actually is Milbank wants to accomplish this is a great source.

Otherwise, the book came to be written really by accident in the sense that I was asked to write a textbook, and the publishers were totally horrified when I didn’t produce a text book. And when I set out to write it I really honestly and truly assumed I was going to talk about the mutual help that theology, sociology, and Marxism could give to each other. But somehow quite quickly when I started to get into that I felt that there was an incredible assumption going on in the usual approaches, that somehow social/scientific discourses were sort of theologically innocent or neutral, and that theology wasn’t inherently itself a social theory and an account of history. And I suppose that is the main methodological point in a sense that is being made.

A Rant on John Milbank

Yes, I have read Milbank's Theology & Social Theory. All of it. My original intention was to write a critical and serious review of it, but then I thought what the heck, I'll just write what I feel about it instead.

To be honest, Milbank lost me even before the "acknowledgments" part. In the dedication. "For Alison (fair enough, that's presumably his wife) and the Remanant of 'Christendom'." How is it possible to get so much arrogance, snottiness and sentimentality into a single line? Ok, here we have a guy that feels nostalgic about a time when dissent from "Christian" faith would mean death by fire.

I won't deny that Milbank's book has its merits. The very first paragraph: "Once, there was no 'secular'" is an important point to make and Milbank's arguing for the invention of the secular is very good. He has a width of knowledge about the history of modern philosophy and sociology that is nothing short of amazing, even though he presents it in a way that seems to be intentionally difficult. The ironic thing is that his sense of Christianity is so puny. First of all, and this really annoys me, he is constantly arguing out of what "Christianity" is and what is "Christian", as if the content of these concepts were given and clear. It gets absurd at times because Milbank nowhere gives his criteria for what is genuinely Christian theology, he just refers to it as if he had a secret knowledge about what this really is. What do we call that, again? Yeah, right: gnosticism.

Here's my favorite example: "Eriugena's ontology, based on God as internally 'maker' and then on different degrees of participation in creation, is therefore more profoundly Christian than that of Aquinas." Incidently I agree with him here, Eriugenas understanding of creation is really good, but how can one just claim that it is more Christian than Thomas? According to what? Who?

The problem for me with Milbank's theology is that is so lacking in religious value. Milbank's entire credo seems to be "I believe in the Church". God Father, Son and (especially) Spirit all play very peripheral roles in his theology. His alternative to a world based on secular reason is the Church, which is not so much a place where the Word of God is preached nor where the sacraments are celebrated and the Mystery is worshiped, but a kind of alternative society. And what kind of society is this? This is again extremely ironic, but it seems that Milbank's vision of a society based on Christian Socialism is essentially a kind of liberal state where some aspects of life are centrally governed but for the most part it is a free market economy. Sounds familiar? That's exactly what we have in the Western world today. Only Milbank would like people to be a bit nicer, because that is more "Christian".

Another problem with this book is that the practical applications of his argument always come as complete surprises, like the half-hearted criticism of capitalism mentioned above, or the championing of non-violence. It has a very loose connection to his over-all line of argument.

An then we have the final chapter. In these few last pages we find out that Milbank actually don't think the Church is such a great place after all. It has failed miserably at what it was supposed to be and do, and created liberalism, nihilism, violence and power-politics in the process. And then it stops with a kind of "but at least it is better than secular reason". And that's it. 433 pages to get to this result?

How about an eschatological perspective on the Church? Nope. How about some notion about the importance of the believers relation to the ultimate? No, not that either. How about the Church as place of overcoming of sin and learning the behavior of the citizens of the Kingdom of heaven? Not in there.

Not much of a point then, really?

Miroslav Volf on John Milbank

One way to embrace the evildoers would be simply "to act as if their sin was not there", as John Milbank has suggested in Theology and Social Theory. Jesus on the cross would then be our model. Like him we would say of the perpetrators, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing". In an act of sheer grace, justice and truth would be suspended, and reconciling embrace take place. We seriously misconstrue forgiveness, however, if we understand it as acting "as if sin was not there". More significantly , whereas the suspension of truth in an act of forgiveness is meant to help create a new world, a world without deception and injustice. Suspend justice and truth, and you cannot redeem the world; you must leave it as it is. Acting "as if not" in the face of sin might indeed anticipate heaven in which there will be no sin, as Milbank argues. However, the price of such anticipation is abandonment of the world to the darkness of hell; the world will remain forever awry, and the blood of the innocent will eternally cry out to heaven. There can be no redemption unless the truth about the world is told and justice is done. To treat sin as if it were not there, when in fact it is there, amounts to living as if the world was redeemed when in fact it is not. The claim to redemption has degenerated into an empty ideology, and a dangerous one at that.
Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, p. 294.

I haven't read all of the Milbank book yet (and reading the first hundred pages makes me wonder how many who applaud it actually has), but this criticism of Volf's seem to me to be very apt. I wonder if this is in fact the major division line within modern theology, oh sorry, that is post-modern: between those who feel the gospel should work towards to redemption of the world and those that don't.