Milbank and the papal cosh
The latest issue of Modern Theology features a handful of articles from key figures associated with the operation of the journal–whether formally or informally–throughout its twenty-five year history. The founder and former editor of the journal, Kenneth Surin, has a short “Retrospect/Prospect” article in the issue that reflects on the early establishment and formation of the journal in the context of the theological and political climate in Britain in the 1980s. Surin’s speculations on the “prospects” for academic theology praises recent developments in political theology, but bemoans the state of Roman Catholic theology. In comparison to 1945-1980, the time of the early liberation theology, Rahner, von Balthasar, de Lubac, Congar, Küng, Metz, Schillebeeckx, and Kasper, ”the last couple of decades have shown themselves to be a period of relative intellectual quiescence” (8). If the Roman Catholic church had opened its proverbial windows during the time of the Second Vatican Council, under the last two popes, in Surin’s view, “the shutters have been drawn again.” But, perhaps, it is no longer possible to be the “creative protagonist of a manifest ‘church poetics’ (in the manner of de Lubac and Congar, say)” in the Roman Catholic church. This “intellectual quiescence,” according to Surin, is largely the consequence of a “large papal cosh” which has for the past thirty years continually “descended on the heads of those suspected of deviancy in doctrinal matters” (9). However, as Nicholas Lash rightly points out, there were plenty of “large papal coshes” during the “golden age” of Catholic theology, including silencing and banishing, but in the end many of these thinkers were made cardinals. In other words, as Lash puts it, “there is little evidence that ‘papal coshes’stifle theological creativity” (51). Evidently, in Surin’s view, the theological situation is quite a bit better in Anglicanism–at least one could scarcely imagine, for instance, Rowan Williams leading some sort of an inquisition against John Milbank or Graham Ward in the way the “dreadful Cardinal Ratzinger” attacked Leonardo Boff and liberation theology. Again, Lash responds, I think rightly, by questioning the wisdom of such high praise for Anglicanism considering the current disaster in which the Anglican communion finds itself.
It is instructive to compare Ken Surin’s article with John Milbank’s article later in the issue. According to Milbank, the debate within Catholic theology is the only truly “vital” one. In fact, in typical Milbank fashion he offers us a ridiculous provocation: “a definitively Protestant theology is now extinct” (26). The divide in the theological world is no longer between “neo-orthodoxy” and “liberal theology,” but between what Milbank calls the “classical” and “romantic” “modes of orthodoxy.” For Milbank, the Barthians ended up utterly irrelevant–locked within their “fideist ghetto”–equally, liberal theology’s irrelevance was due to its constant embrace of cultural norms. So, apparently for the past twenty-five years theologians have been trying to seek out new modes of critical mediation–but, of course, Milbank is sure to remind us that a recovery of the analogia entis is the only solution, the only way to remain critical of secularism while remaining relevant. Now what is perhaps especially interesting about Milbank’s article is that he locates the new “vital” theological debate and indeed the new divide as a distinctly Roman Catholic one. Milbank sums up his understanding of the two positions: the former [the "romantic"] sees Wordsworth’s “feeling intellect” as lying at the heart of theology, while the latter [the "classical"] sees the role of an entirely “objective reason” as vital for theological practice” (28). Representatives of the “romantic” mode of orthodoxy are perhaps more readily obvious–essentially, Milbank is referring to the intellectual descendants of ressourcement and the nouveau theologie movement of which Communio, despite its problems, remains an important voice. Insofar as the “romantics” follow this line of tradition they are to be considered “radically orthodox” and so in common cause with the “fundamental outlook” of Radical Orthodoxy. Now, representatives of the “classical” mode of orthodoxy are quite a bit more obscure–here Milbank is thinking of the Thomism of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, which is apparently making a comeback. This “classical” mode of orthodoxy is rationalistic and, in Milbank’s view, really could learn something from de Lubac’s rethinking of the natural-supernatural distinction. Now, we all know where Milbank stands, but what is interesting is that on more than one occasion Milbank seems to suggest that Ratzinger is the most faithful representative of this “romantic” mode of orthodoxy. In stark contrast to Surin’s account then, not only are the really vital debates in theology happening within Roman Catholicism, but that which in Milbank’s mind is most radically orthodox is nothing but Surin’s dreadful “papal cosh.” In fact, Milbank is quite explicit about his support of Ratzinger’s ecclesiology and the need for the type of authority in the church that Surin condemns.
Of course the real irony is the fact that Milbank remains protestant. One wonders whether Milbank is really willing to commit–to obediently submit himself to the “papal cosh” of the “dreadful” Pope Benedict XVI.
Some visceral reactions to “analytic theology”
I recently picked up the new volume Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, edited by Oliver Crisp and Michael Rea and I have to say I am kind of stumped by what exactly the book is all about. As far as I can tell, for Crisp, the proposal of “analytic theology” is basically a plea to contemporary theologians to give analytic philosophy, and in particular, analytic philosophy of religion, another chance. In his essay Crisp fields a number of expected objections to the use of analytic philosophy in theology. He anticipates, for instance, the objection that “‘analytic theology’ might look like a Trojan horse,” an attempt to smuggle into “the citadel of theology potentially destructive alien ideas” (34). In response, Crisp reminds us that theology has always used the best available philosophical insights of the day (e.g., the patristics employed Greek philosophy, Thomas used Aristotle, etc.). Theology, in other words, has always employed philosophy as a “handmaid,” that is, theology has always made some “instrumental use of reason” for explicitly theological ends. Certainly this type of objection will be made, but it certainly strikes me as a strange one, for it seems more than obvious that theology never has nor can it escape or adequately avoid properly philosophical problems.
The real objections most theologians will have with this project will have little to do with the question of the use of reason in the theological task. Instead, it seems to me the objections will stem mostly from visceral reactions depending on how one feels about the current state of analytic philosophy in general and analytic philosophy of religion in particular. Although Crisp does not want to debate the merits or demerits of continental philosophy, this is unfortunately the central issue as far as I’m concerned. Most theologians have no real problems with drawing from philosophy for theological ends, but by and large theologians in recent times it seems have tended to find the “continental approach” to be more amenable to the theological task than the “analytic approach.” For whatever reason, this has been the case. Whether this is on account of the perceived “dry” nature of analytic philosophy or real objections to the starting point and methods of the “analytic approach,” this is just the reality of things.
Crisp tries to unpack a bit of what he thinks to be the “virtues” of the so-called “analytic approach,” but I’m simply not convinced that these virtues are somehow unique to analytic philosophy. Crisp doesn’t say that the named virtues of analytic philosophy, such as, “logical rigor, clarity, and parsimony of expression,” are somehow absent from continental philosophy but this seems to be what in the end is implicitly suggested. Let me just say that I am all ears here–I am open to hearing Crisp out. But, I have to be honest: all I can glean from Crisp’s proposal is the basic suggestion that theologians should actually read Swinburne even though he might be a little more boring than Zizek! Perhaps I am being totally unfair here. For the record, I read Crisp’s book on Christology and if it is any indication of what “analytic theology” is like than I am more than open to exploring the possibilities.
On “blueprint ecclesiologies”
In his excellent work Church, World and the Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology, Nicholas J. Healy mounts a scathing critique against what he calls “blueprint ecclesiologies.” Blueprint ecclesiologies are, according to Healy, characterized by the effort to articulate an ideal version of the church–a blueprint–by which the concrete church is meant to conform or realize itself. Healy detects five key methodological elements that are often at work in much of modern ecclesiology. First, there is the attempt to encapsulate in a word or phrase the essential nature or function of the church. One immediately thinks of Avery Dulles’ important work Models of the Church, which distinguishes between five concepts or images of the church that govern different approaches to ecclesiology. Dulles distinguishes between the church as “sacrament,” as “herald,” as “institution,” as “mystical communion,” and as “servant.” In a later expanded edition of his book Dulles includes a chapter on the church as a “community of disciples.” Dulles provides examples of key representative figures of each approach. So, for instance, Karl Rahner is usually associated with the “sacrament” model, while Karl Barth is seen as the prototype for the view of the church as “herald.”
In many ways Dulles is simply organizing what others have already done. Indeed, much of modern ecclesiology begins with a single primary concept or image of the church and then develops a systematic theological account for the legitimacy or the superiority of a given model. For instance, Tillard and Zizioulas, in differing ways, employ the concept of communion as an organizing and governing principle to describe the nature and function of the church. The Second Vatican Council, of course, employed a variety of concepts and images to describe the church. For instance, the council members spoke of the church as the “body of Christ” or as “the people of God.”
Healy notes that theologians tend to use a specific model in two ways: “in an explanatory way, to synthesize what is already known about the church; and in an exploratory way or heuristic way, to lead to new insights about its nature and activity” (27). It is also common to describe the variety of differing views about the church as a precursor (or a foil!) to the developing of one’s own superior view, or what Healy calls a “supermodel.” Dulles’ book can be seen as an example of this or H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture might also come to mind.
In many instances, theologians will distinguish between the supposed twofold ontological structure of the church. The primary and most fundamental aspect of the church is “spiritual” or “invisible.” In this view, the church has some true nature or essence. The other ontological aspect of the church is its “visible” or empirical reality, that is, its everyday practices, institutions, etc. The two ontological poles of the church are often described as a relation between the “invisible” and the “visible,” or the “ideal” and the “real.” Thus, the central task of ecclesiology becomes a matter of articulating the essential nature of the church or what the church ideally is.
One of the major problems with this approach, according to Healy, is that it tends to ignore the concrete reality of the church’s present practice and institutions in favor of an idealized, perfected church. In particular, the reality of the sinfulness of the church is often kept at bay in the theological description of the church. The disjunction that arises between the “ideal” church and the “real” church can lead to the view, as Healy puts it, “that ‘underneath’ our visible flaws there lies the ideal heart of gold if only those carping critics had sufficient ‘faith to see it.’”
The precariousness of Christian truth
I am beginning to realize that my initial attraction to the thought of Rudolf Bultmann was almost exclusively spurred on by my radical skepticism about the historical reliability of the Bible. Bultmann’s insistence on the existential contemporaneity of Christ made real in the proclamation of the gospel is, I think, a tempting way out of dealing with the historical precariousness of the gospel accounts.
No matter how attractive it is to turn Christianity into a system of belief independent of historical events, I have come to believe that this is a profoundly problematic route to go in. Indeed it is far safer to seek a way to “ground” Christian truth independently of contingent and empirical propositions. However, the truth of the Christian faith is unavoidably tied up with the historical actuality of certain contingent, empirical events. And so, it makes perfect sense why conservative biblical scholars exist and why people like Bart Ehrman scare so many Christians. Frankly, I think most of conservative biblical scholarship is both remarkably fearful and usually rather delusional. But one can at least understand that what motivates these scholars, in part, is the conviction that history actually matters and has some bearing on the truth of the Christian faith. On this point, I think they are quite right. It is much safer for us to maintain the image of an eternal changeless God and avoid the reality that the truth of Christian convictions is dependent on certain historical events that, as Donald MacKinnon once put it, “could have been otherwise.”
Trust and Dying
The question “Can anything be worth dying for?” is closely related to the question “Is anyone, or anything, sufficiently trustworthy; can anything, or anyone, be really trusted?” And this is a question which can only be answered practically, by the actual establishment of trust. And trust, if it is to be my possibility, must first be another’s gift. To be able to trust, to be able completely to trust, is to be able to die. What else have we got to give our friends (and our enemies), in the last resort, except ourselves? To be able to die (as distinct from being killed) is a form of faith. And, on a Christian account of these matters, such faith, such self-gift, is possible because what God has given us, in a gift the terminus of which was death on Calvary, was–himself.
Nicholas Lash, Easter in Ordinary: Reflections on Human Experience and the Knowledge of God (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990) 274.
The dangers of reactionary ecclesiologies
Is it theologically problematic that the core convictions of many contemporary accounts of the church seem fundamentally reactionary in character? Does this reflect a loss of confidence in the gospel or at least some feelings of insecurity? It seems to me that Radical Orthodoxy is probably the most obvious “movement” in theology that seems almost exclusively oriented toward positing the church as an “alternative” to modernity, liberalism, individualism, capitalism, nihilism, the nation-state, fill in the blank. Now while I think there are certain helpful insights to be gained from John Milbank and RO, I am uncomfortable with the highly reactionary character of their work. I wonder if this tendency extends beyond RO.
In his insightful essay “Ecclesiology and Communion,” Nicholas Healy suggests that much of post-Vatican II “communion ecclesiology” tends to idealize the church and therefore lends itself to ideological distortion. He argues that, when coupled with a realized eschatology, communion ecclesiology conceives the church “primarily in terms of an attained or always-already grace-given perfection–communion–its need for continual reform and repentance can too easily be forgotten.” The question for Healy then is whether the concept of communion can do the critical work necessary in order to avoid a sort of valorization of “community.” Healy sees this approach problematically at work in John Zizioulas, Jean-Marie Tillard, Joseph Ratzinger, and also in the approaches of the so-called “new ecclesiology,” which consists of thinkers like Stanley Hauerwas, George Lindbeck, Reinhard Hütter, and others.
Now certainly this phenomenon is not a particularly modern or postmodern one. The church has always defined itself against internal and external forces. One thinks, for example, of the role of Augustine’s dispute with the Donatists in formulating his own constructive ecclesiology. But Healy thinks that there is an evident shift in recent times. Healy, for example, criticizes Zizioulas and Tillard for identifying church membership with salvation, thereby collapsing ecclesiology and soteriology, and defining the characteristics of ecclesial existence against what is lacking in the world outside the church. To Zizioulas and Tillard, “to become a member of the church,” in Healy’s words, “is to be saved from a world that is corrupt and sinful so as to live as God lives, in communion.”
Healy’s central fear is that the strong emphasis on the church’s practices coupled with the polemics against the world’s practices tends to neglect the place of divine action. Such accounts “foster a confusion of sanctification with salvation and ecclesiology with soteriology.” The point here is not to deny the centrality of the church, but to highlight that membership in the church does not bring about salvation–it is rather Christ who saves. Healy also notes that the independence of the Holy Spirit is downplayed. The Spirit must always “move us if we are to perform any right action, even when we have the virtues for it.” And, indeed, the Spirit is free to act, even within the modern liberal world. Further, Healy observes the lack of an account of the Word as judgment on the church as well as the world. Healy’s central concern is that an idealized view of the church and its practices tends to neglect the real independence and freedom of the Son and the Spirit.
Healy suggests that what binds the communion ecclesiologies and the so-called “new ecclesiology” together is, in part, their reactionary character, namely, their common opposition to modernity. Just as the Roman Catholic church in the face of modern atheism tended to abandon the narrative of the gospel for apologetic philosophical and scientific proofs to ground belief in God, perhaps contemporary ecclesiology makes a parallel move when it shifts attention away from Christ’s saving acts to the church and its saving acts. As Healy puts it, “Perhaps the outrageousness of the gospel claims may seem less outrageous when they are placed within a critical account of the woes of modernity and how we may be saved from them.” In this way, ecclesiology takes on a distinctly apologetic function, “that of ameliorating the starkness of the gospel claims by situating them within a communal solution to contemporary social problems that appeals to well-meaning moderns and postmoderns.”
In stitches
In Stitches by David Bazan (from his forthcoming album Curse Your Branches).
My body bangs and twitches
This brown liquor wets my tongue
My fingers find the stitches
Firmly back and forth they run
I need no other memory
Of the bits of me I left
When all this lethal drinking
Is to hopefully forget
About you
I might as well admit it
Like I’ve even got a choice
The crew have killed the captain
But they still can hear his voice
A shadow on the water
A whisper in the wind
On long walks my with daughter
Who is lately full of questions
About you
About you
When Job asked you the question
You responded, who are you
To challenge your creator
Well if that one part is true
It makes you sound defensive
Like you had not thought it through
Enough to have an answer
Or you might have bit off more than you could chew
On lulls and lakes
The recent lull around here can be attributed to me really needing to attend to some important matters–like finishing my master’s degree–if I want to have a job in September. In the past month I have managed to basically complete my master’s thesis on John Howard Yoder and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which is now in the hands of my thesis committee. I spent this past week seriously relaxing on a farm and by a lake in eastern Ontario with my (pregnant) wife and 2 1/2 year old son. Things will probably remain quiet around here, as I prepare for comprehensive exams (this Thursday and Friday) and a German reading exam scheduled for September 4th. Following all that, on September 10, I begin teaching three sections of an introductory theology course at St. Thomas. Hopefully once school is in session I’ll have more time to attend to this blog–at least until the baby comes in November.
The distinction between church and world is apocalyptic
Dave Belcher has insisted that we all read J. Louis Martyn’s commentary on Galatians. Rarely does one hear that a commentary is “superb in a way you cannot even imagine,” as Dave puts it. I think he might just be right. Here is a gem I ran across yesterday that helps to substantiate the argument I am trying to make about apocalyptic and secularity in Bonhoeffer.
For Paul religion is the human being’s superstitious effort to come to know and to influence God, rather than the faith that is elicited by God’s invasive grace and that is active in the love of neighbor (Gal 4:8-10; 5:6, 13-14; Rom 1:25). To be sure, the new community created by God’s act in Christ engages in the thankful worship of God, indeed worship in everyday life (Romans 12). This community even has rites, such as baptism (Gal 3:26-28) and the eucharist (Gal 2:12; 1 Cor 11:23-26), and it knows that it is distinct from the world at large. . . .worship of God is the corporate act in which the religious distinction of sacred from profane is confessed to have been abolished in God’s redemptive deed in Christ. The Christ who is confessed in the formula solus Christus is the Christ in whom there is neither Jew nor Gentile. Instead of being the holy community that stands apart from the profane orb of the world, then, the church is the beachhead God is planting in his war of liberation from all religious differentiations. The distinction between church and world is in nature apocalyptic rather than religious. In short, it is in the birth and life of the church that Paul perceives the polarity between human religion and God’s apocalypse; and for that reason a significant commentary on Paul’s letters can be found in the remark of Dietrich Bonhoeffer that “God has founded his church beyond religion. . .” (Swords, 118; cf. idem, Letters, 168).
J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: a new translation with introduction and commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1997) 37, fn. 66.
