John Milbank is one of the most original—and difficult—theologians writing today. His central claim is surprisingly simple:
The crisis of modernity is not primarily political or economic. It is theological and metaphysical.
In that respect, he's actually closer to Matthew Segall than Patrick Deneen is. Where Deneen diagnoses a failure of liberal politics, Milbank asks: "What view of reality made liberalism possible in the first place?"
The basic idea: everything participates
Milbank revives a very old Christian idea, drawing on Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, and especially the Platonic tradition.
He argues that:
- God is Being itself.
- Everything that exists participates in God's being.
- Nothing is truly self-sufficient.
- Reality is fundamentally relational and participatory.
Notice how close this already sounds to Segall.
Where Segall says:
Reality is a web of relations.
Milbank says:
Reality is a web of participation in divine being.
They agree that isolated substances are a mistake.
They disagree about why relations exist.
His critique of modernity
Milbank's most famous book, Theology and Social Theory, argues that modern social science is not neutral.
Economics...
Political science...
Sociology...
...all secretly depend on metaphysical assumptions.
For example:
If humans are fundamentally isolated individuals...
then politics becomes contract.
Economics becomes competition.
Nature becomes raw material.
Religion becomes private opinion.
Milbank says this isn't objective science.
It's bad theology masquerading as neutrality.
Violence
One of Milbank's major ideas is that modern political theory begins with violence.
Think of Thomas Hobbes.
Hobbes imagines people existing in a violent state of nature.
Society exists because people surrender power to the state.
Milbank says:
This story is false.
Christianity begins somewhere else.
Creation is fundamentally gift.
Relationship precedes conflict.
Peace is more fundamental than violence.
This is one reason Radical Orthodoxy is called "radical."
It tries to rethink society from theological first principles.
Liberalism
Like Deneen, Milbank thinks liberalism misunderstands freedom.
Liberalism says:
Freedom means choosing whatever I want.
Milbank says:
Freedom means participating in the Good.
This is classical philosophy.
The pianist is freest not when randomly hitting keys.
The pianist is freest after years of disciplined practice.
Freedom grows through formation.
Again, Deneen would strongly agree.
Capitalism
Milbank is actually more radical than Deneen economically.
He criticizes capitalism for turning every relationship into exchange.
Love becomes transaction.
Education becomes credentialing.
Nature becomes resource.
Community becomes market.
He often advocates versions of distributism, local economies, cooperatives, and gift-based social relations.
Why Segall would find him interesting
Unlike Deneen, Milbank talks about cosmology.
He argues that modernity adopted a metaphysics in which:
- objects become isolated
- value becomes subjective
- nature becomes dead
- meaning disappears
Segall would say:
Exactly.
Where they diverge is what replaces it.
Segall looks to Whitehead's process philosophy.
Milbank looks to Christian Platonism.
The biggest disagreement with Segall
This is the heart of it.
Segall's universe is evolving.
Whitehead thinks reality is genuinely creative.
Novelty is fundamental.
God even grows with creation (in process theology).
Milbank is much more classical.
Creation is dynamic.
History unfolds.
But God is perfect and complete.
Reality ultimately participates in an eternal order.
Segall would likely think Milbank leaves too little room for genuine cosmic novelty.
Milbank would likely think Segall risks making God dependent on the world.
Why many people find Milbank difficult
Milbank doesn't write like Deneen.
Deneen writes political arguments.
Milbank writes like someone combining:
- Plato
- Augustine
- Aquinas
- postmodern philosophy
- sociology
- theology
A typical Milbank sentence can run half a page.
He assumes familiarity with centuries of philosophy.
He's brilliant but notoriously dense.
A spectrum
One way to see these three thinkers is as addressing different layers of the same problem:
| Thinker | Root problem | Solution |
|---|---|---|
| Deneen | Liberal political anthropology | Recover virtue, family, local institutions |
| Milbank | False metaphysics and false theology | Recover participatory Christian ontology |
| Segall | Mechanistic cosmology | Recover a process-relational understanding of reality |
The striking thing is that all three reject the idea of the autonomous individual and argue that humans are fundamentally relational. Their disagreement is about what grounds that relationality. Deneen grounds it in an enduring account of human nature and the practices that cultivate virtue. Milbank grounds it in participation in God. Segall grounds it in the creative, relational structure of reality itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment