christopher insole, against radical orthodoxy

AGAINST RADICAL ORTHODOXY:THE DANGERS OF OVERCOMINGPOLITICAL LIBERALISM1

CHRISTOPHER J. INSOLE

Let us mistrust . . . this admiration for certain ancient memories.2

Benjamin Constant“The Liberty of the Ancients Compared to that of the Moderns”

The Radical Orthodoxy movement, taking in its leading thinkers JohnMilbank, Graham Ward and Catherine Pickstock, is about a lot more than acritique of political liberalism. My treatment here certainly has no preten-sions to exhaustiveness or comprehensiveness. I am concerned only withtheir critique of political liberalism, and aspects of their proposed solution.I understand this solution to be a strong form of communitarianism, vastlyextended in ontological scope, invoking participatory and transformativecommunities and structures at every level of a hierarchical, teleological andanalogically inter-related cosmos. I take a position to be strongly “commu-nitarian” if it subscribes to two positions: (i) that the individual is consti-tuted largely or entirely by the range of self-interpretations available withinthe communities in which they find themselves, and (ii) that our thoughtabout ethics, politics and morality should always seek to further rather thanrestrict the natural priority of the community over the individual.

Political liberalism, in the form I will outline it below, tends to endorse (i),and on the basis of this to reject (ii), precisely because of the dangers implicitin (i). Political liberalism can tolerate a range of attitudes about the impor-tance of participatory communities within society, but what it can in princi-ple never tolerate is the notion of society itself as a participatory community,if—as Rawls puts it—“by such a community we mean a political societyunited in affirming the same comprehensive doctrine. This possibility is

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Modern Theology 20:2 April 2004ISSN 0266-7177 (Print)ISSN 1468-0025 (Online)

Christopher J. InsoleThe Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9BS, UK

excluded by the fact of reasonable pluralism together with the rejection ofthe oppressive use of the state power to overcome it.”3 In less stridentapproaches to political philosophy4 there will be different degrees of empha-sis on the importance and correctness of both (i) and (ii), such that with amore subtle position it is probably not even helpful to ask, without swathesof nuanced qualification, if it is communitarian or liberal; but in the strongform set out above communitarianism is quite distinct from political liber-alism, and it is a strong form which is at work in Radical Orthodoxy.

Placing the Radical Orthodoxy movement into a wider communitarianmovement seems justified in the light of John Milbank’s own statement thathis work can be seen as a “temeritous attempt to radicalize the thought ofMacIntyre”5. In view here is Alasdair MacIntyre’s attempt in After Virtue6 andWhose Justice? Which Rationality?7 to break through modern nihilism (char-acterised by emotivism, instrumentalism, relativism and subjectivism) by theretrieval of virtuous teleological communities (the focus of After Virtue) andChristian moral philosophy (the focus of Whose Justice? Which Rationality?).

The methodology of this article, and my work as a whole, is in some waysclosely aligned with one of Milbank’s central claims in Theology and SocialTheory, perceptively captured by Fergus Kerr when he comments that“Milbank’s thesis is simplicity itself” amounting to the insight that:

There is no need to bring theology and social theory together, theologyis already social theory, and social theory is already theology. The task isto lay bare the theology, and anti-theology, at work in supposedly non-theological disciplines like sociology, and, analogously, to uncover thesocial theory inscribed in theology.8

Nor would I for an instant deny that there are not many moments of elec-tric insight, startling wisdom and sometimes ravishing beauty in the writ-ings of Milbank, Ward and Pickstock, all of whom can combine a gift forliterary reverie and conceptual lateralness with a prose style which can beevocatively, necessarily and painfully difficult.

Nevertheless, whatever else there is to the Radical Orthodoxy move-ment, there is at least a critique of political liberalism with some broadlycommunitarian-theological solutions. The political ambitions of the radicalorthodoxy movement are perhaps gaining momentum in recent efforts to centralize information relating to radical orthodoxy on a web-site (seewww.radicalorthdoxy.com), where the movement (shortened to “RO”) isdescribed at one point as “the organisation”, with the promise of forthcom-ing information on the leading authors of the movement, and on “work-shops, classes and conferences generated by the organisation itself”. Thisseems to be consonant with sentiments expressed at a conference held inOxford9 by “the organisation”, where one of the leading authors of the move-ment talked of the progress made by the radical orthodoxy “project”, withit being envisaged that small cell-like groups might begin forming around

214 Christopher J. Insole

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004

the country, inspired by the Radically Orthodox vision. It is the political cri-tique and the desire to mobilise Church and society towards a certain sortof solution, which is my concern in this article.

The Radically Orthodox critique of political liberalism is that it is symp-tomatic of an ontological nihilism; “ontological nihilism” amounts to a sensethat the fundamental reality of the universe is a violent competitive strug-gle between opposing wills, bent upon their own self-assertion. This onto-logical nihilism breeds an environment of atomistic loneliness and violence.We find ourselves living in a disenchanted and flattened universe, wheresuch order and beauty that there is being a construction or projection, engi-neered all too often for a purpose other than the sheer contemplation of thegood, the true, the beautiful. Radical orthodoxy has a rival story to tell aboutthe cosmos and our role in it: that we belong to participatory and analogi-cal bodies (physically and socially) which are part of a hierarchical, teleo-logical and analogically inter-related universe, and that there are ways ofliving—socially, politically and liturgically—which can bring us out of ourforgetfulness about this peaceful and harmonious reality. It can feel unpleas-ant and bad-tempered to object to such a genuinely delightful and desirablevision. A little like the undergraduate who discovers that an objection to util-itarianism entails denying that we should seek the greatest possible happi-ness, it can feel as if we would rather there be misery, in that we recommendbeing sanguine about there being less happiness than is possible. But as withutilitarianism, our dissent is based upon a theological and humane concernthat the vision and the method invoked will ultimately be destructive to thatwhich motivates both. In broad terms this essay will flesh out this instinct.

The essay is structured around two fairly self-contained sections. Afteroutlining what precisely I mean by political liberalism, the first part dealswith the claim that the underlying framework for the “secular” human con-dition—which would include political liberalism—is ontological violenceand ethical nihilism. This claim is made forcefully in John Milbank’s mag-nificent Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, and the focus herewill be entirely on Milbank’s argument. First of all, I will suggest thatMilbank’s positive solution is entirely imitative of the problem (as he seesit), and shares all its drawbacks. Secondly, I will challenge the characterisa-tion of our natural/secular condition as being marked by ontological vio-lence and ethical nihilism, arguing instead for a more nuanced and mixedreport on the “secular” human condition.

The second part of the essay deals with the charge that liberalism leads toa social atomism and individualism, which can be overcome with the helpof a participatory-analogical theology. I consider the invocation to unity, par-ticipation and transformation to be theologically incautious,10 politicallynaive and so dangerous, and ultimately destructive to the fine and admirablemotivations of the protagonists of the Radical Orthodoxy movement. Myfocus here will widen, looking at the sweep of the critique of liberalism and


Against Radical Orthodoxy 215

the radicalised communitarian solution offered in Theology and Social Theoryby Milbank, and in Cities of God11 by Graham Ward. I will consider the waythe political attitudes expressed in these works have been augmented, qual-ified or radicalised in other works such as Being Reconciled: Ontology andPardon12 (Milbank), Truth in Aquinas13 (Milbank and Pickstock), and AfterWriting14 (Pickstock). There is in the latter two works a moving emphasis onthe Eucharist as the temporal expression of—responding to, invoking andenacting—the deepest ontological ambitions and yearnings of the RadicalOrthodoxy movement. I will suggest that the way in which the Eucharist isused here brings into focus the utopian-transformative nature of the RadicalOrthodoxy movement. Further, I will argue that the type of Eucharistic prac-tice so valued, by Catherine Pickstock especially, is only possible within astructure such as political liberalism, thus subverting the Radically Ortho-dox critique of the same.

I have found it necessary to divide the argument into these two sections.Milbank’s claim about the founding of secularity (including liberalism) onontological, nihilistic violence is such an unusual sort of argument, imper-vious to more detailed social and political considerations (about participa-tory politics and theology, for instance). The latter could not really come intotheir own until the rather nuclear threat offered by Milbank over the wholeterrain had been diffused. So although the first section does not specificallyconsider political liberalism, the claim I attempt to refute has devastatingconsequences for a wide raft of approaches, of which political liberalism isone prominent example.

Part I: Political Liberalism: John Gray and John Rawls

For immediate clarification I should state that by “political liberalism” Imean the conviction that politics is ordered towards peaceful co-existence(the absence of conflict), and the preservation of the liberties of the individ-ual within a pluralistic and tolerant framework, rather than by a search fortruth (religious or otherwise), perfection and unity. The crucial ambition ofthis sort of “political liberalism” is a refusal to allow public power to enforceon society a substantial and comprehensive conception of the good, drivenas it is by its central passion for the liberties of individuals over and abovethe enthusiasms of other individuals or collectivities. Political authority iswielded on behalf of the people it protects, and is derived ultimately fromtheir consent.

A motivating concern of this sort of “political liberalism” is to enable cit-izens who have diverse conceptions of the good to live peacefully and non-intrusively with each other. Not all forms of liberalism are like this. Arguably,the doctrines of universal, individual autonomy propounded by Kant andMill are intended to be comprehensive doctrines of the good in their ownright. These forms of liberalism presents themselves almost as a rival to



theology, whereby the way to human fulfilment/salvation is to satisfy thedemands of autonomous reason which, given sufficient time and education,would elicit everyone’s agreement. “Political liberalism” allows citizens toadopt a Kantian position about individual autonomy, but would rule outusing public power to promote this comprehensive conception of the good,either by attaching incentives or penalties to assent or dissent. Similarly,political liberalism would aim to facilitate Christianity without allowingpublic power to promote or penalise its adoption.

The “political liberalism” I am talking about, then, is intended to be com-patible between various differing non-comprehensive and non-substantialinterpretations of liberalism. I include here John Gray’s modus vivendi modelof liberalism, and John Rawls’ “overlapping consensus”. In the Two Faces ofLiberalism,15 Gray distinguishes two entirely different approaches within thetradition of “liberal” thought. The first approach understands toleration ofdifference as being a means to a further end; the conviction is that ultimatelythere will be a rational consensus and a convergence of values. On Gray’saccount, Locke, Kant and Mill are representative thinkers of this tradition.The alternative liberal approach, which Gray supports, boasts no such ambi-tion to achieve a rational consensus, and understands toleration as a condi-tion of peaceful co-existence. “Peaceful co-existence” is an end in itself onthis approach, and the goal of politics is to find a modus vivendi betweenincommensurate but equally valuable forms of life, rather than to project asingle political and economical regime. Gray traces the genealogy of thisapproach back to Hobbes, where the sole purpose of government is peace-ful co-existence.

Rawls’ “political liberalism” is more ambitious than Gray’s. Rawls hopesto secure an overlapping consensus for the institutions and core protectionsof liberalism (“fairness”) “by addressing each citizen’s reason, as explainedwithin its own framework”,16 where that framework is expected to involvemore substantial and comprehensive views of the good. Whereas Grayappeals to mutual self-interest in preserving peace, Rawls presumes that “allthose who affirm the political conception start from within their own com-prehensive view and draw on the religious, philosophical, and moralgrounds it provides. The fact that people affirm the same political concep-tion on those grounds does not make their affirming it any less religious,philosophical, or moral, as the case may be, since the grounds sincerely helddetermine the nature of their affirmation.”18 Rawls’ understanding of politi-cal liberalism, in other words, in no way insists that comprehensive doc-trines be “watered down” to fit a secularised common ground, nor does itassume “a consensus on accepting certain authorities, or on complying with certain institutional arrangements, founded on a convergence of self-or group interests”.17 The only requirement is an assent to the idea thatpublic power be limited in scope. So Rawls comments of political liberalismthat it:



. . . does not say . . . that the doctrine extra ecclsiam nulla salus is not true.Rather, it says that those who want to use the public’s political power toenforce it are being unreasonable. That does not mean that what theybelieve is false . . . in saying it is unreasonable to enforce a doctrine,while we may reject that doctrine as incorrect, we do not necessarily doso. Quite the contrary: it is vital to the idea of political liberalism that wemay with perfect consistency hold that it would be unreasonable to usepolitical power to enforce our own comprehensive view, which we must,of course, affirm as either reasonable or true.19

For our purposes, the difference between Gray and Rawls is not so great:both are motivated by their sense of the irreducible incompatibility of “con-flicting reasonable comprehensive doctrines with their conceptions of thegood, each compatible with the full rationality of human persons”20—leading to the conclusion that “no comprehensive doctrine is appropriate asa political conception for a constitutional regime”.21 Hence both Gray andRawls deny the possibility of “political community”, if by such a commu-nity is meant “a political society united in affirming the same comprehen-sive doctrine. This possibility is excluded by the fact of reasonable pluralismtogether with the rejection of the oppressive use of the state power to over-come it.”22 What is striking about the “political liberalism” recommended byGray and Rawls, is that it presupposes that citizens will and should be com-mitted to comprehensive conceptions of the good above and beyond theirassent to the politically liberal framework. And it is because of this, along-side the fact of pluralism, that political liberalism is recommended. Theredistinctly is not any favouring of “secularism”; indeed, secularism wouldshare an equal status with Christianity as a comprehensive conception of thegood that should be facilitated but not promoted by incentives or punish-ments. Just as “secularism” is not promoted as a comprehensive conceptionof the good, neither is political liberalism advanced as a sufficient and com-prehensive philosophical and theological doctrine; indeed, in principle itcannot be precisely because “political liberalism” is defined by its principledreticence concerning substantial notions of the good.

The Liberal Subject and the Will-to-Power

The judgement on “liberalism” emerging from Radical Orthodoxy is that itis symptomatic of the will-to-power facing an entirely flattened universe,with order (such as there is) being a projection of the subject’s will-to-power,in rivalry with other subjects. The Radically Orthodox vision opened byMilbank, and developed by others, claims that such a worldview can beovercome by being exposed as itself a violent projection that the theologianis at liberty to resist and replace with a rival ontology of peace. This rivalontology envisages participation and analogical inter-relatedness between



all levels of a hierarchical and teleological universe. I will suggest that thereis a problem both with Radical Orthodoxy’s characterisation of the problem,and with the proposed solution, which seems exactly to imitate the veryposition it is so keen to resist. In brief, the problem with the Radically Ortho-dox solution is that the subject ends up constructing and asserting the mean-ingful, participatory universe in which they then may live; but themotivation for asserting this universe is to escape the condition whereby theonly order which faces the subject is that created by the subject. In order toescape this condition, the Radically Orthodox theologian—in this caseMilbank—asserts that there is a non-asserted universe.

In order to find a way into Milbank’s daring and brilliant piece of theo-logical panache, it might be useful to summarise his position in four mainmoves:

(1) Characterisation of the problem:Milbank characterises “postmodernism” as:

(a) an absolute historicism, where every concept and claim must be under-stood not in terms of the claim it makes for itself, but in terms of its“genealogy”. Following Foucault, “genealogy” is not simply the intellec-tual history of an idea. Rather, a “genealogy” always exposes how anytruth claim is implicated in a network of power struggles and mutuallyincompatible claims to dominance. If this exposure is not made, we do nothave a “genealogy”—in the quite specific sense involved here—but a truthclaim which must itself be further analysed in terms of its use as a meansof assertion and violence amongst mutually incompatible power strug-gles. Note already a certain circular criterion for something counting as agenealogy: it will only serve as such a criterion if it feeds the “post-modern” characterisation of the human world as marked by “the ontology of difference” and “ethical nihilism”.

Moreover, (b) this genealogical work exposes a persistent “ontology of difference”, “the spectre of a human world inevitably dominated by violence”.23

Finally, (c) the realization of the implication of all truth claims in powerstruggles, and the subsequent insight into the condition of “ontologicaldifference”, leads to an “ethical nihilism” where no truth claims or eman-cipatory movements can ground themselves, since all are implicated incorrupt genealogies that constitute the space of the human condition, theontology of difference.

(2) False proposed solutions:Milbank understands Kant’s “liberalism” as an attempt to overcome themovement towards nihilism. In fact, it manages to be no more than “the greatdelayer”, for “once it has been conceded, as by Kant, that ethics is to be



grounded in the fact of the will and of human freedom, then quite quicklyit is realized that freedom is not an ahistorical fact about an essential humansubject, but is constantly distilled from the complex strategies of powerwithin which subjects are interpellated as unequal, mutually dependentpersons”.24

Here we see Milbank endorsing a genealogical reduction of a Kantianclaim about freedom and the will. Claims about “freedom” are really alwaysonly moves in a power struggle:

If freedom effaces itself in favour of power, then how can one ever talkof there being more or less freedom in one society rather than another?Every society will exhibit both freedom and unfreedom, and a post-humanist, genealogical discourse must confine itself to the deconstruc-tion of regimes of power, and not present this task as also a ‘philosophyof history with a practical intent’, or an emancipatory potential.25

Repeatedly, after Kant, there is a legitimate desire to make philosophy eman-cipatory, to give it a prophetic and political edge. Of course, it may not havethis edge if all it can ever do is to offer genealogical reductions of truthclaims, with its own genealogical reductions presumably joining the tempo-ral flux of truth claims which need in turn to be reduced. This emancipatoryspace remains an impossible place, a utopia, in that it seems always neces-sary to “smuggle back into” the philosophies “an ahistorical Kantian subjectwho is the bearer of freedom”, so that every “new disguised, or semi-overtversion of a Kantian practical reason . . . always succumbs to reapplicationof the Nietzschian reduction of liberty to power”.26

(3) The demand on thinking:Nevertheless, there remains a legitimate demand on our thought that it beemancipatory. Milbank quickly dismisses the alternative—the admissionthat philosophy cannot help politically and is irredeemably our Cassandra,singing her lethal genealogies—as “mystical despair”.27

(4) The only possible response:Milbank declares his own heroic response, which he claims is the “onlyresort”:

One’s only resort at this juncture, other than mystical despair, is to returnto the demonstration that nihilism, as an ontology, is also no more thana mythos. To counter it, one cannot resuscitate liberal humanism, but onecan try to put forward an alternative mythos, equally unfounded, butnonetheless embodying an “ontology of peace”, which conceives differ-ences as analogically related, rather than equivocally at variance.28

The problem here is that Milbank’s conclusion is complicit at every stagewith the picture he critiques. The assertion of ontological violence is simply



met—violently—by the counter-assertion of ontological peace. However, thequestion mark needs to be put over the assertive space which is opened up bythis picture, rather than contesting which meta-narrative will be slotted intoit. The “post-modernist”, Milbank claims, is only in this space at all becausehe has smuggled back in the will to power, the ahistorical, non-spatial andnon-temporal Kantian subject, who is placed outside the world (where“freedom” must be reduced to the more or less deterministic and amoralplay of power), and whose only decision is then what attitude to taketowards the whole world so understood. The post-modernist asserts a neo-pagan ontology of violence. Milbank asserts peace. We have an all-round lev-elling, inasmuch as Milbank founds the edifice of his theology on the basisthat he is no less entitled to it than the post-modernist. A major factor in arriv-ing at his conclusion is Milbank’s demand that emancipatory philosophyand genealogy will be reconciled (see stage 3 of Milbank’s argument above).Because there is this need, there must be a solution. So “ontological peace”is justified in a pragmatic and secular way as a means to an end: the end isemancipatory genealogical philosophy, the means a declared ontologicalpreference for peace.

I am troubled by the constant re-appearance in Milbank of phrases suchas “equally unfounded” to describe both the “ontology of peace” and the“ontology of difference”. For instance, he comments that the “alternativemythos” he proposes is “equally unfounded”, but that this is acceptable inthat it “conceives differences as analogically related, rather than equivocallyat variance”.29

Note again the general levelling. Milbank is countering Nietzsche’s will-to-power which, he argues, is sustainable only if “one has transcendentallyunderstood all differences as negatively related, if—in other words, one hasallowed a dialectical element to intrude into one’s differential philosophy.”30

He does this by setting against Nietzsche the “as possible” Christian per-spective, which is “to argue that the natural act might be the Christian,(supernatural) charitable act, and not the will-to-power”, and so that “an‘analogical relation’ is as possible” a “transcendental conception” as “thepositing of an a priori warfare”.31

Again, one observes at play one of Milbank’s favourite moves: to condemnthe “transcendental conception”, yet to occupy it when proclaiming theontology of peace. What can possibly be going on when Milbank says thatan “analogical relation” is as possible a transcendental conception as a prioriwarfare? Was not the problem the very possibility and violence of any tran-scendental conception? We are told that the post-modernist is not entitled tothis conception. Neither am I entitled. But by force one of us must claim it,and it will be me who wins. But of course it is the nihilist who has won (evenif I am the nihilist), because the only thing they need for victory is for truthclaims to be equally illegitimate, and for there to be a victor rather than aprophet.



It is striking to note that Milbank uses a pattern of vocabulary whichevokes an imaginative labour to re-invoke Augustinian universes. If genealo-gies can betray things, I would suggest that Milbank’s emphasis on the workcarried out by the imagination (the “analogizing process”,32 as Milbank putsit) makes a chilling sort of sense if understood in the Lockean mode of themind working on the “scarce to be reckon’d” with matter of raw nature tocreate (in the mental realm) the coloured, aromatic and textured experienceof our life-world, and in the material realm, to work on untoiled nature tocreate objects of use and value. To be sure, the mind’s “working” is a richeraffair here than it was in Locke—involving writing, rhetoric, seduction andinvocation—but the philosophical mechanism is the same.

Consider that for Locke the imaginative construction of our world, out ofthe impoverished raw material of nature, is present at every level:

Ideas thus made up of several simple ones (ideas) put together, I callcomplex, such as are beauty, gratitude, a man, an army, the universe; which,though complicated as various simple ideas, or complex ideas made up ofsimple ones, yet are, when the mind pleases, considered each by itselfas one entire thing, and signified by one name.33

Now hear Milbank, and ask if there is not something of the Lockean intel-lectual toil on the impoverished wasteland of raw nature:

. . . what we do or make is not prescribed by a preceding idea; on the con-trary, we have to discover the content of the infinite through labour, andcreative effort.34

With Locke, the mind constructs its world by organising the raw empiricalcontent it initially receives. Its constructions start with its own body andbuild up the ideas such as “the universe”. Consider this, and then hearMilbank exploring the implications of his claim that “analogy . . . (enters)into all unities, relations and disjunctions”:

. . . the likenesses ‘discovered’ are also constructed likenesses (whetherby natural or cultural processes) which can be re-fashioned and re-shaped. And if certain things and qualities are ‘like God’, then it mustalso be true that the analogizing capacity itself is ‘like God’ . . . an analo-gizing process appears to organize schematically the empirical content.35

It is extraordinary to see such a bold statement of the constructive capac-ities and responsibilities—God-like even—of the subject. The tendency toread Locke through the hygienic lens of Kant and British-American analyt-ical philosophy means that only part of the “organising activity” of Locke isheard in terms of Kantian-type categories—i.e., categories which frame thepossibility of a world rather than provide the substantial content of that world:preconditions of experience such as substance and causation. Likewise,when it comes to descriptions of the mind organising “sense impressions”



or empirical content, the tendency is to remember only the ontological par-simony of Russell, with a fashionably hygienic world of atoms in motion.Listening again to Locke, and just Locke, prior to Kant and Russell, we mightbe shocked at the Byzantine carnival of things which the mind constructs,and over which it claims ownership: e.g., bodies, beauty, gratitude, armies,universes and governments.36 It is to this Locke that the Radical Orthodoxymovement has some striking conceptual similarities. This relationship toLocke would concern the Radically Orthodox perhaps more than it wouldme, for whom a debt to Locke is not necessarily a grave error. But the par-ticular nature of the link to Locke is revealing: a thorough-going construc-tivism about truth, which then allows theology to create worldviews in theinterests of political agendas. Such a politically serviceable constructionseems to be at work in passages such as the following:

Only, therefore, if we can reinvoke, like Augustine, another city, anotherhistory, another mode of being, can we discover for ourselves a socialspace that is not the space of the pagus crossed with the dominium of anarbitrary, Scotist God.37

Augustine was not “reinvoking” the city of God, like some Middle Earthimage, but delineating the contours of something which humbled all humaninvocation just because it did not require invoking. The City of God existed,exists, will exist in parallel to the City of Man; but the history of the latter isnot changed or manipulated a jolt because of the hidden as-yet pilgrimsplendour of the latter. The City of God, in Augustine, is not a means to theconstruction of a “social space”. Utmost caution must be exercised when-ever secular justification is sought for theological worldviews: we need asocial space, therefore we will invoke an Augustinian city. Paradoxically, itis such a secular-instrumental attitude to theology that Milbank is so keento resist.

In sum, the perceived problem begins with the lonely (liberal) subject whofinds himself or herself in a nihilistic universe, without any given order (orat least with whatever order there is being a constructed order, which onlyescalates the subject’s sense of anxiety and dis-ease). Radical Orthodoxy notonly seems to share this outlook of residing entirely within the nihilistic universe, but exacerbates this condition by asserting and constructingAugustinian worldviews.

The diagnosis of the problemRecall the four-point summary of Milbank’s argument above. Milbank’s firstmove is to expound the post-modernist claim that all truth claims can besubjected to a genealogical reduction, a claim which rests finally in an ontol-ogy of difference and an ethical nihilism. Milbank then goes on to reviewsome attempts to occupy a transcendental assertoric space amongst thesenihilisms and judges them all to be “unfounded”. Because these positions



are all equally (un)founded, Milbank is able to advance his own (un)foundedRadically Orthodox vision. But this move is problematic, not so muchbecause of the content asserted but because of the way in which the asser-toric space is characterized. It seems that Milbank’s solution, as it stands,imitates the errors of that which it attempts to replace. Rather than sanc-tioning the search for “other” solutions that would avoid this difficulty, Iwould suggest that the problem lies deeper, and is to be found in the “nihilis-tic” diagnosis of the problem itself. It lies specifically in the notion of per-vasive and slippery work done by the concept of “power”.

Some care is needed here in separating out what Milbank presumes andwhat he denies. Ultimately Milbank insists on two theses: first of all, thatthere is no need for Christian theology to engage rationally or apologeticallywith “secular” reason, just because there is no neutral foundational rationalspace in which such a dialogue can really appear. Theologians are simplycalled to out-narrate other stories, all of which are equally (un)founded. Thisthesis is justified because of a broad acceptance of the Foucaultian notion ofgenealogy. Here truth claims are identified with power claims and thusMilbank’s comment that “one’s only resort” is “to put forward an alterna-tive mythos, equally unfounded, but nonetheless embodying an ‘ontology ofpeace’.”38 Milbank’s second thesis—which is almost the opposite of the first,because indeed “Christianity is the precise opposite of nihilism”39—is thatthe Foucaultian conflation of power and truth, the assertion of ontologicalviolence, is wrong when and only when it comes to describing the alterna-tive mythos which is Christianity. In a wonderful conjuring trick, Milbankuses Foucault as his ladder to climb high enough above apology and dia-logue in order to be in the right space to assert his meta-narrative “that-Foucault-is-wrong” (the “ontology of peace”); but we can only claim that“Foucault-is-wrong”, in this case and in this way, if Foucault is right. Thereare two problems here: first of all, and this is the claim elaborated above, theposition is self-referentially incoherent. Using genealogy, in Foucault’s sense,is a dangerous game to play, and one cannot scratch out the trace of violenceby shouting that one has always been peaceful (now that everyone else isdefeated). Secondly, as I will now demonstrate, Foucault is not right anywayconcerning the ubiquity of power, and so the “last resort” for Christianity—simply to assert itself in a radically secular world—is a premature andalarmist judgement.

The problem with Foucault’s genealogical approach, as appropriated byMilbank—prior to his Foucaultian assertion that Foucault is wrong—is thesliding work done by the notion of “power”.40 Everything is described as apower struggle: even a charity or a minority justice based resistance groupis understood in terms of this social physics. To the extent that everything isaccounted for in terms of “power”, the term seems to work simply descrip-tively, with no more sinister moral connotations than “gravity”. This descrip-tive use of “power” gets the thesis off the ground that “power” operates



everywhere. But then Milbank uses “power” in a way that associates it withoppression and violence. Here the term carries strong prescriptive under-tones that seem to make emancipation and peace impossible. Moreover, theimpossibility is not something discerned in the world, but is rather smug-gled in at the very beginning prior to any observations. Deploying equivo-cal uses of the concept “power” produces something like the following:

Power1 is just that which is involved in any human action (includingspeech acts). Power1 seems to include within its scope any attempt to com-municate or influence, for to communicate or influence is to go out of oneselftowards another and so be involved in persuasion and a “power” dynamic.There is nothing particularly sinister, evaluative or prescriptive about sucha notion.

Power2 involves a sub-section of human actions which are violent andoppressive. Such characterisations are possible in that we can make contrastswith other forms of human action. So a “violent” or “oppressive” action isrecognisable in the context of the linguistic possibility of calling other actions“peaceful” or “emancipatory”. Power2 in this sense carries strong evaluativeimplications, and if it were present everywhere would lead to ethicalnihilism.

Milbank’s argument proceeds as follows:

(1) Power1 is operative everywhere.(2) Wherever there is Power1 there is Power2.(3) Therefore there is violence and oppression everywhere.

The difficult move here is of course (2). What sort of claim is this? Either it is a necessary conceptual claim (no counter-example will in principle be admitted), or it is a contingent empirical claim about human nature(where working from induction, we conclude that as no human act ever has been free of Power2, it never will be, although in principle a counter-example could topple the claim). In either case, the argument is not a happyone.

If the claim is considered conceptually necessary, then the argument is wonby a rather bloodless linguistic fiat, such that normal distinctions between“altruistic”, “compassionate”, “ambivalent” and “wicked” are overridden,and all actions considered in some sense violent and oppressive. Such a fiatleads in the end to a conceptual breakdown and the need to re-invent lan-guage. How so? Concepts such as “violence” and “oppression” derive theirsignificance from belonging to a complex weave of meaningful and possiblecontrasts, such as “peace” and “emancipation”. However, if every humanaction—because an exercise of power—is “violent and oppressive”, then newconcepts have to be invented to capture the need to make everyday moralcontrasts—like distinguishing the “violence and oppression” carried out byOxfam from the “violence and oppression” carried out by the Nazi regime.



So the former type of “violence and oppression” will be characterised by con-cepts which circle around our present notions of compassion, justice andhumanity, while the latter type will be characterised by concepts occupyingthe linguistic space which carves out the notions of cruelty, hate and sadism.In the end, the characterisation of actions as “violent and oppressive” cansimply drop out altogether, being implicitly understood as applying univer-sally, and so as useless in making communicative moral distinctions. In a waycuriously parallel to Milbank’s critique of the Scotist-univocal notion of“Being”, one can say that a concept that describes absolutely everythingceases to pick out anything in particular at all.

Language needs to be shaped around the human condition rather thanhypostasised in such a way that, by linguistic fiat, one can claim to discoversomething completely shocking about the human condition. For wheneverlanguage is thus removed from the warp and weave of the human condi-tion, new concepts must be invented to take the place of previous conceptsused to make crucial distinctions in everyday life. Take the concept of “intel-ligence” as an example. I could decide that the criterion for intelligence is aGod-like omniscience. On this criterion I would then “discover” that noperson has ever been or ever will be intelligent, leading potentially to anapocalyptic and nihilistic theory that “everyone is stupid”. Such a theorywould be able to feed on some cases of genuine or surprising stupidity, evenwhere people apparently are clever, just as the “post-modernist” genealogi-cal reduction of truth to power can find instances where “truth” has been somanipulated. I could then infer from this that a situation of “intellectualnihilism” or “ontological ignorance” obtains. But this would be a manifestlysilly argument, resting on my idiosyncratic and over-rigorous notion of“intelligence”—a notion which has nothing to do with the actual meaningof the concept as it arises from distinctions typically made as humans aboutthe range of human-type intelligence. The genealogical reduction of all humaninteractions to Power2, and so to violence and oppression, works in a struc-turally similar way—by linguistic fiat—and is ultimately no less silly.

Now of course one could construe Milbank’s argument as an empiricalone. On this reading, some humanly possible actions would count as non-violent and peaceful. It just so happens, however, that there never have beenany such actions. I assume there is no need to say much as to why such anempirical thesis would be (i) impossible to establish with the force neededto produce Milbank’s charge of “ethical nihilism”, and (ii) manifestly untrueanyway, in that there are countless acts of kindness, altruism and love, ifthese concepts are not defined so over-rigorously as to make them unin-stantiable (which on the empirical approach they are not, this being whatdefines the empirical approach as such).

So there is really no need for Milbank to shove his way into the assertivetranscendental space, which is only opened up and made necessary in thefirst place because of an erroneous “description” of the human condition (a



description arising from an inhuman and over-rigorous setting of the crite-ria for using concepts). In other words, Milbank’s perfectibilism about concepts leads to an unwarranted scepticism about human nature. By challenging the initial genealogical reduction to nihilism, in the way shownabove, I can do no better than simply shout it down on the basis that myoptimism about human nature is “no less unfounded”. I can show the initialgenealogical reduction to nihilism to be wrong by offering instead a morenuanced interpretation of the natural human condition, complete with all itshope, frailty, complexity, tragedy and immortal longings.

What remains is neither nihilism nor the full glory of a participatory cityof God, but rather a broken middle, where the wheat and the chaff are thor-oughly mixed until the coming of the Son of Man, a complex, graced butfallen inter-mingling of good and evil, of hope and despair.

Part II: Liberalism, Participation and Atomism

Having disposed with the global ontological complaint against the “secular”condition, of which political liberalism would be one manifestation, it is timeto attend to the more particular critique of elements of life under politicalliberalism, along with proposed solutions.

In Cities of God Graham Ward presents what he calls the “burden for therest of the book”; this consists of an analysis of “social atomism” broughtabout by “contemporary cyberspace, global cities, and new forms of mobileshort-term ‘employment’ (which erodes notions of society, family, and evennation)”.41 It is clear that Ward aims his project against a “liberal, humanistapproach” that is rooted in a “social atomism, founded upon the rampantindividualism of the I am, I want, and I will”.42 In discussing earlier theo-logical treatments of the city, Ward complains that “they failed to grasp, intheir liberal optimism, how deep the roots of secularism penetrate nihilism;the secular city is a radically unfoundational, virtual city”.43

Ward propounds a rival vision of the city; namely, a “constructive theo-logical project which maps our physical bodies on to our social and civicbodies, on to our Eucharistic and ecclesial bodies, on to the Body of Christ”.44

According to Ward, Christian theology has a political opportunity andresponsibility “to counter this advanced atomism” with a “strong doctrineof participation” that includes a “doctrine of analogical relationships net-working the several bodies—physical, social, political, ecclesial, eucharistic,Christic and divine”.45 Milbank presents a similar yearning for a more par-ticipatory and unitary society:

True society implies absolute consensus, agreement in desire, and entireharmony amongst its members, and this is exactly (as Augustine reiter-ates again and again) what the Church provides, and that in which sal-vation, the restoration of being, consists.46



For Milbank the first conceptual battle against the atomistic society is toassert the harmonious ontology of peace against the nihilistic ontology ofviolence—the latter of which he perceives as informing political liberalism(amongst other things). Milbank’s diagnosis of the present situation, alongwith his constructive solution, is not in any sense empirical. Nor is it eveninterpretative of something empirical, but requires a “special handling” ofthe concept of power as described in the first part of this essay. Havingrefuted Milbank’s distinctive critique and solution, one has yet to engageWard and Milbank’s shared sense of the atomism of liberal culture, thevacuity and destructiveness of the “freedom” offered, and the need for aresponse at the theological level, re-envisaging our fundamental ontologicalframeworks.

There are two questions I want to put to this broad consensus betweenWard and Milbank, the first concerning the accuracy of their cultural com-mentary, and the second pointing to a danger with their proposed solutions.

With regard to the accuracy of the cultural commentary, it is worth asking:“From whence comes this sense of ‘social atomism’”?47 I suspect that it isnot an “impartial” assessment gleaned from studying the out-put of theOffice of National Statistics. Such an approach would smack too much ofprecisely the technological-instrumental approach to society which Wardand Milbank wish to overcome. It is much more likely that this critique arisesfrom a sort of prophetic wisdom, imbibed from the theologian’s own expe-rience of the world, informed by a theological framework and the readingof fine cultural commentaries (e.g., from the likes of Zygmunt Bauman andJean-Luc Nancy).48 The target of critique here is clearly the liberal: one whoassumes a stance from nowhere whilst projecting onto the human conditionthe fairly narrow and privileged confines and opportunities of their own sit-uation. But perhaps the same suspicions could be raised against the RadicalOrthodox prophets. Do they not also experience the occupational loneliness,marginality and political impotence of being academic theologians, living inlarge urban centres? Full participation (consoling and challenging) within acommunity of interest and understanding tends only to come about afterseveral hours on an aeroplane, which takes one to the international confer-ence where the handful of people who might have read your work reallyattentively can be expected to gather. In between such meetings the “com-munity” has a diaspora existence through e-mail correspondence, with intel-lectual friends being identified with distant cities rather like the charactersin a Shakespeare history play (“Exeter”, “Warwick”, enter “Canterbury” andso forth). Physical dis-location becomes the obstacle to participation in theflesh, with cyberspace making at times a painfully inadequate substitute.

Hence, one might begin to understand why Ward so enjoys the descrip-tion of the “inoperative (desoeuvree) community” given by Jean-Luc Nancy,who in describing cyberspatial communication writes that “these ‘places ofcommunication’ are no longer places of fusion, even though in them one



passes from one to the other; they are defined and exposed by their disloca-tion. Thus, the communication of sharing would be this very dislocation.”49

Whereas such a poignant and acute description applies to the urban acade-mic theologian, it is perhaps of limited use as a global pronouncement ofhow a whole range of people live and suffer in the wider city, let alone inthe suburbs, the provinces and the countryside (which are treated by Ward,if at all, as a construction within the city of the city’s “other”, as if rural com-munities do not have their own narratives, and their own constructions ofthe “urban” as other).

This may seem a strange way to conduct an argument. But when a cul-tural commentary is presented not on statistical but interpretative-propheticlines, its efficacy and existential compulsion has to be challenged andassessed by each hearer. Ward and Milbank are professional theologians,with an Oxbridge background, writing from within an Anglican tradition.Exactly the same descriptions apply to me. The promise, but also the dis-appointment of the cultural commentary which emerges from RadicalOrthodoxy, is that it seems to describe perfectly a strand in my life (qua beingan academic theologian), but not the whole, and not even a part of the wholeof many of those I know and love the best.

A large number of my close relatives, friends and acquaintances live notin a world of chrome covered austerity and cyberspatial relationships, butin much thicker communities, based in the suburbs, provinces or in ruralcommunities. There can be a sense of belonging, of participation, of beingknown, needed and loved from many directions. This can bring many bless-ings, but also its own sort of misery, not possible in a more lonely andephemeral city existence. Living in thick or thin communities engenders itsown possibilities and limitations; the human condition—with its frailty, com-plexity and fallenness—has a way of re-asserting itself in either situation.

One might say that there are two sorts of “liberty”, which are incompati-ble, and that each brings their attendant problems. There is the liberty of the“city”. Around such “liberty” we can gather such experiences, limitationsand possibilities as loneliness, lightness, unpredictability, choice, anxiety andmobility. The “liberty” involved in thicker communities—more provincial,traditional or rural—tends to gather around it notions such as participation,heaviness, belonging, predictability, routine, duty, surveillance, care, judge-ment, attention and immobility. Both modes of life have their own gloriesand their own problems, but it is vital to acknowledge that one is not in anystraightforward sense the cure for the other, although both can look like acure when one is immersed unhappily in either extreme. The problems areattendant upon the possibilities, and one removes the former only by elim-inating the latter. So thicker communities have a strong sense of belongingand participation, which is engendered by a powerful mutual imitation,common ideals and an exclusive sense of the “outside” and the strangenessof outsiders; so such a community will be less tolerant of certain forms of



dissent, plurality, withdrawal and diversity, and will tend to construct itsown coherence by building uncharitable models of non-conforming indi-viduals or “outsiders”. Remove this cohesive imitation and these commonideals and one has a society which is more tolerant of the dissident and theoutsider, but only because it cares less, and the sense of belonging and unityhas depleted. Hence the well-known phenomenon—enjoyed by some,deplored by others—that it is almost impossible to cause a stir on the Londonunderground by virtue of eccentric self-presentation.

In the early stages of researching the issues dealt with in this article, I spentsome time with the Iona Community on the West Coast of Scotland. One ofthe most memorable workshops was led by the leader of the CorrymeelaCommunity from Northern Ireland, a retreat house that brings togetherpeople from both sides of the sectarian divide who have been hurt in variousways by the conflict. It was during the course of this workshop that it becameclear to me that there was something awry with the way in which “com-munity” is often used in theological discourse as a sort of panacea, with theword “individual” always emanating connotations of hubristic self-sufficiency. Coming from the English-urban-academic background, my con-viction then—being lonely—was that theology should apprise political philosophy of the need for thicker, more participatory communities. Butfrom Trevor Williams, the leader of the Corrymeela Community, and otherparticipants in the workshop from Northern Ireland and the West Coast ofScotland, I was hearing about theologically saturated communities wherethe sense of unity and belonging could not be stronger. At the same time inthese communities there was also a strong experience of judgementalism,surveillance and immobility, with the cohesiveness of the participatory com-munities maintained by powerful internal imitation, common ideals and aviolent construction of the other. Part of the job of the Corrymeela commu-nity was precisely to help people remove their thick identities and speak amore universal language of individual pain: this woman of the pain of beingostracised for loving a Catholic man, this man of the childhood terror of afather shot on the doorstep.

Some communities are debased by their scapegoating and violent con-struction of the other. This would especially not surprise Milbank, with hisinterest in Girard, and his emphasis on the ontological violence underlyingsecular nihilism. The proper goal is to create communities—such as, forinstance, the Iona Community and the Corrymeela Community—where theontological priority of peace can be remembered. This is correct, but it is notyet a response to my objection to “participatory” theologies. My point wasnever that communities are always “worse” than individuals, or irre-deemable, or never cites of grace. Rather my contention is that communitiesare just as prone to sin, frailty and pain as individuals, and are not in them-selves salvific. Further, my claim is that given the pervasive—albeit contin-gent—human condition, there are certain tendencies which can be mapped



conceptually and a priori, which tell us that where there is a thick/thin senseof community certain possibilities are stronger (belonging and unity/choiceand mobility) and other dangers more immanent (scapegoating, judgementand immobility/loneliness and anxiety).

It is worth reflecting in this regard that communities such as Iona and Cor-rymeela are not “natural” communities, but formed artificially by removingindividuals from the communities to which they belong (in which they par-ticipate) for a consciously limited period of time, allowing people to standout in their individuality in a way that they could not do in their “native”environment. A sense of the artificiality and transience of the formed com-munity is valued and institutionally preserved by the Iona Community, forinstance, who stipulate three years as a maximum residency for volunteers.In other words, the reason why such communities can work so well, and besuch cites for grace, is just because they balance the possibilities available toboth more anonymous and more participatory communities. My anxietyabout Milbank and Ward’s proposed solutions is not that they are alwaysimpossible, but that there are non-accidental attendant dangers in seekingto build communal participation and unity, and that these dangers remainwhen the “building” is symbolic and theologically literate. It is never polit-ically advisable to work towards solutions whose prerequisite or goal is aradical transformation of the human condition, whether conceived individ-ually or collectively.

I would maintain that there is a strand in the liberal tradition—too rarelyacknowledged—which is profoundly aware of all the dangers, limitationsand possibilities discussed above. The wisdom, if we would look, is alreadyset out in the eighteenth/nineteenth century French liberal, Benjamin Con-stant.50 While Constant distinguishes the liberty of the ancients from theliberty of the moderns, his types, broadly speaking, situate “liberty” bothwithin participatory communities (“the ancients”) and within more atom-istic communities (“the moderns”). The historical or geographical locatingof these types is of little importance. I suggested that—in my experience atleast—the “liberty” of thicker communities tends to coincide with non-urbanenvironments. Constant’s “type” of the cohesive and participatory commu-nity is the ancient city-state. Neither Constant’s nor my example need theconnection be necessary or exhaustive. What is of vital importance is the con-ceptual relationship that Constant demonstrates between participation andcertain limitations and dangers, on the one hand, and “modern” autonomy,loneliness and anxiety, on the other. Constant adds a nuance to my analysisby addressing the nostalgia for the liberty of the ancients that moderns willinevitably undergo, but against which they should exercise caution.

Speaking in 1819 of the “liberty of the ancients”, Constant paints a pictureof participation and unity, with the people “exercising collectively, butdirectly, several parts of the complete sovereignty”, with deliberation in allmatters being carried out “in the public square”.51 The attendant limitation



of this “collective freedom” is, as one might expect “the complete subjectionof the individual to the authority of the community”:

You find among them almost none of the enjoyments which we have justseen form part of the liberty of the moderns. All private actions weresubmitted to a severe surveillance. No importance was given to indi-vidual independence, neither in relation to opinions, nor to labour, nor,above all, to religion. The right to choose one’s own religious affiliation,a right which we regard as one of the most precious, would have seemedto the ancients a crime and a sacrilege. In the domains which seem to us themost useful, the authority of the social body interposed itself and obstructed thewill of individuals.52

Thus among the ancients the individual, almost always sovereign inpublic affairs, was a slave in all his private relations. As a citizen, hedecided on peace and war; as a private individual, he was constrained,watched and repressed in all his movements; as a member of the col-lective body, he was interrogated, dismissed, condemned, beggared,exiled, or sentenced to death by his magistrates and superiors; as asubject of the collective body, he could himself be deprived of his status,stripped of his privileges, banished, put to death, by the discretionarywill of the whole to which he belonged.53

In contrast, amongst “the moderns”, “the individual, independent in hisprivate life, is, even in the freest of states, sovereign only in appearance. Hissovereignty is restricted and almost always suspended. If, at fixed and rareintervals, in which he is again surrounded by precautions and obstacles, heexercises this sovereignty, it is always only to renounce it.”54 Although impo-tent at the level of the polis, the modern individual enjoys the benefits andsuffers the anxieties of “liberty” within a thin community:

. . . the right to be subjected to the laws, and to be neither arrested,detained, put to death or maltreated in any way by the arbitrary will ofone or more individuals. It is the right of everyone to express theiropinion, choose a profession and practise it, to dispose of property, andeven to abuse it; to come and go without permission, and without havingto account for their motives or undertakings. It is everyone’s right toassociate with other individuals, either to discuss their interests, or toprofess the religion which they and their associates prefer, or evensimply to occupy their days or hours in a way which is most compati-ble with their inclinations or whims.55

The price for such liberty is impotence and loneliness, for at the level ofthe polis “we can no longer enjoy the liberty of the ancients, which consistedin an active and constant participation in collective power”:

Our freedom must consist of peaceful enjoyment and private indepen-dence. The share which in antiquity everyone held in national sover-



eignty was by no means an abstract presumption as it is in our own day.The will of each individual had real influence: the exercise of this willwas a vivid and repeated pleasure. . . . This compensation no longerexists for us today. Lost in the multitude, the individual can almost neverperceive the influence he exercises. Never does his will impose itselfupon the whole; nothing confirms in his eyes his own cooperation.56

Constant possesses an acute sense of the difficulties of imposing a partic-ipatory “liberty” on any significant scale, “for the ancients when they sacri-ficed that independence to their political rights, sacrificed less to obtainmore; while in making the same sacrifice, we would give more to obtainless”.57 In his comments about the “excusable” yearning for ancient forms ofliberty which caused “infinite evils” during the “long and stormy (French)revolution”, we can perhaps also hear something which would touch, gentlybut subversively, the Radical Orthodoxy movement:

Their error itself was excusable. One could not read the beautiful pagesof antiquity, one could not recall the actions of its great men, withoutfeeling an indefinable and special emotion, which nothing modern canpossibly arouse. The old elements of a nature, one could almost say,earlier than our own, seem to awaken us in the face of these memories.It is difficult not to regret the time when the faculties of man developedalong an already trodden path, but in so wide a career, so strong in theirown powers, with such a feeling of energy and dignity. Once weabandon ourselves to this regret, it is impossible not to wish to imitatewhat we regret. This impression was very deep, especially when welived under vicious governments, which, without being strong, wererepressive in their effects; absurd in their principles; wretched in action;governments which had as their strength arbitrary power. . . .58

Remember the most politically alarming of Milbank’s sentences in Theol-ogy and Social Theory:

True society implies absolute consensus, agreement in desire, and entireharmony amongst its members, and this is exactly (as Augustine reiter-ates again and again) what the Church provides, and that in which sal-vation, the restoration of being, consists.59

Now hear what Constant has to say about the post-revolutionary politicaltheologian the abbé de Mably—who passionately desired theologicallyinformed unity and participation—and ask if there is not a whiff of Milbankin the air:

. . . to him any means seemed good if it extended his area of authorityover that recalcitrant part of human existence whose independence hedeplored. The regret he expresses everywhere in his works is that the



law can only cover actions. He would have liked it to cover the mostfleeting thoughts and impressions; to pursue man relentlessly, leavinghim no refuge in which he might escape from its power.60

The transformation, as conceived by Milbank, Ward and Pickstock, is tobe brought about by the Church—or, more precisely, by the liturgical con-summation available in the Eucharist. Initially, this seems a promising qual-ification. A worry about Milbank’s position must be that it smacks oftheocracy,61 and a too smooth identification of the visible with the invisibleChurch (that is to say, the actual visible institutions of the Church, with theinvisible eschatological Church, the not-yet gathering in glory of all thesaved).62 Milbank seems to soothe these anxieties in a response to criticismof Theology and Social Theory where he comments that it was not his purposeto “imagine the Church as Utopia. For this would have been to envisage theChurch in spatial terms—as another place, which we might arrive at, or asthis identifiable site.”63

If my anxiety is that the Radical Orthodoxy movement can too closelyidentify the visible with the invisible Church, overlooking the rupture andbrokenness of the created and fallen state of humanity, then there is comfortto be taken from the passage in Truth in Aquinas where Pickstock andMilbank write:

For in a fallen world, we do not infallibly experience the unknown depthas a participated unknown which partially discloses its truth in the man-ifest; to the contrary, we experience it also as a rupture from God andultimate truth or meaningfulness.64

Reading further, one begins to suspect that this “rupture” does not remainas a structural feature of our fallen createdness, but rather is somethingwhich is removed by our participation in the Eucharist. So the rupturedescribed above causes a “hesitation” (even the understatement is telling)which “is overcome” (italics mine) “when we encounter, with the eyes of faith,the divine bridging of this rupture so that (here in the Eucharist) we see andtaste a material surface as immediately conjoined to the infinite depth. Par-ticipation is, in this case, so entire that God as the participated truth is fullypresent, without lack, in the material bread and wine which participate.”65

When and where is this full participation given? In the Church, which is tobe found “on the site of the Eucharist”.66 But this site is not a discreet momentin time, the present moment when contact is made between the tongue andbread, for “the Eucharist is not a site, since it suspends presence in favourof memory and expectation”.67 Hence the full participation of the Eucharistspills out into both memory and expectation, with the present only everbeing the invisible inter-weaving of the two. The full participation of theEucharist does in truth “overcome” the rupture spoken of above, occupyingfor us, time as such.



It begins to seem that what preaching is for the Calvinist, the Eucharist isfor the Radically Orthodox. For the Calvinist our wretched natural condi-tion is overcome by our conversion on hearing the scriptures, which unlocksour pre-determined and elected status as saved, enabling us to gather withthe righteous to transform the visible Church and wider society in the modelof the eschatological kingdom. For the Radically Orthodox, our wretchednatural condition is immersion in secular nihilism, with the transformationand perfection of our nature being brought about by our participation in theEucharist, which enables the “participants” (the righteous) to transform the visible Church and wider society according to the model of the participatory-analogical universe.

My suggestion to both the Calvinist and the Radically Orthodox is thatour natural condition (sinfulness/secular nihilism) is not as wretched as pre-sented, and that the redemption from our (less bleakly conceived) naturalcondition is not as complete, dramatic and politically instrumental as bothseem to imply. It is worth remembering that the Eucharist is a re-enactmentof a meal marked by real presence fully given within the reality—amongstthe “visible Church” of the disciples—of fear, anxiety, uncertainty and imma-nent betrayal. As then, so today. The Eucharist is not the generating centreof political transformation, or the cite of “full participation”, if by that wemean the elimination—from expectation and memory—of all confusion,frailty, complexity and fallenness. The Eucharist does not authorise and sanc-tify the actions or political vision of the communicants. For which of usknows who is Judas and who is Peter, and who can be certain that, for them,the cock will not crow a second time?

The transferral of utopian political ambitions from the Church onto theEucharist (and so back to the Church, which is the site of the Eucharist) isvery evident in Catherine Pickstock’s After Writing. Pickstock seems to regretthe passing of the pre-Vatican II Roman Rite, in that it stood for a more holis-tic interweaving between the secular and the religious. The gradual elimi-nation of the role of the state in the religious life of the people, and vice-versa,is seen almost entirely in terms of loss. Indeed, “the rise of a soteriology ofthe State as guarantor of social peace and justice” leads Pickstock to ask wist-fully, “to what dimension was the religious relegated”?68 Pickstock traces thebeginning of this process of “privatization of religion”—which culminatesin the rise of political liberalism in the seventeenth century—back to figuressuch as Marsilius of Padua (c. 1275–c. 1342), “an . . . opponent of papal claimsto comprehensive power, [who] already argued that the natural process ofearthly politics had a self-sufficiency which not only needed no completionor rectification from higher sources, but could be represented as endangeredby such interference”.69 There can be no doubt, from the tone or substanceof Pickstock’s writing, that this imagined “self-sufficiency” of politics is con-ceived to be hubristic and destructive. The effect on religion is to “privatizeits relevance and segregate it from the ecclesial sphere of bodily practice”,



with the nadir of this tendency being reached in 1576 when Jean Bodin“brought it (the privatization of religion) to its most explicitly realizedexpression: people should be free in conscience to choose whatever religionthey wished”.70 This has the result that “religion no longer comprises bodilypractices within the sphere of the Corpus Mysticum, but becomes limited tothe realm of the ‘soul’”.71 In contrast, Pickstock argues, “the complex ritualsand institutions of charity in the early and high Middle Ages made possiblea fusion of love and power upon a liturgical basis”.72

At this point the nostalgia about a more enchanted pre-liberal Churchpolity needs to be checked, and some serious questions asked about whatexactly Pickstock is recommending. After Writing is a beautiful and sugges-tive appreciation of the pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Rite. At the same time,we have a critique of state neutrality, and a nostalgia for the fusion of “loveand power” which is only possible prior to the liberal separation of Churchand State. But of course, where the state is not theologically neutral, publicpower can be used to save souls by more or less direct forms of coercion,privileging and exclusion. The very rite Pickstock is recommending, the pre-Vatican II Catholic Rite, could not have been publicly practiced, withoutheavy censure, by any British subject after the Reformation—specifically the1559 Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, respectively establishing the Kingas the supreme head of the Church of England, and the forbidding of anypublic prayer than the second prayer-book of Edward VI—and prior to theCatholic Emancipation Act of 1829. The Emancipation Act was a crucial mile-stone in the emergence of a theologically neutral state, setting out as it didto remove “restraints and disabilities . . . imposed on the Roman CatholicSubjects of His Majesty”,73 so as to allow “the Invocation of the Saints andthe Sacrifice of the Mass, as practised in the Church of Rome”, alongside the“sitting and voting in Parliament” and the “Exercise of Enjoyment of anyOffice, Franchise, or Civil Right.”74 The implications of this act were fearedby such contemporaries as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who opposed the Acton grounds with which Pickstock could have some sympathy. Coleridge wasconcerned about any fracture developing between the corporate identity ofChurch and State, the national Church and the nation. So strong was thisidentity, in Coleridge’s view, that in the “highest sense of the word STATE”,“it is equivalent to the nation”, which “considered as one body politic . . .includes the National Church”. Church is here “the especial and constitu-tional organ and means” of the “primary ends of” the state, “the hope, thechance” of the spiritual welfare of all citizens.75 The Catholic EmancipationAct is very much in the spirit of precisely the political liberalism whichColeridge fears and which Pickstock critiques. Yet without the state neu-trality legislated for in the Act—a neutrality which political liberalism soprizes—Pickstock’s endorsement of the pre-Vatican II Rite would be heavilycensured, and incompatible with—as the Act puts it—her “Exercise of Enjoy-ment of any Office, Franchise, or Civil Right”.76



Where the state withdraws from questions of religious truth and personalsalvation, one finds that a greater degree of participation in the national lifebecomes possible for those religious groups who have been previously mar-ginalised, or alternately marginalised and privileged, depending on thenature of the regime. One also finds that certain forms of theological creativity, such as Radical Orthodoxy’s endorsement of the pre-Vatican IIRoman Rite, are guaranteed protection from persecution and made possibleonly because of the way the liberal state no longer uses public power to savesouls. Critique should be tempered with awareness of indebtedness, if notgratitude.

Conclusion

The force of my argument is that a principled neutrality on theologicalmatters need not arise from an indifference to religious truth. Rather, itshould arise out of a sense of humility, of being chastened by the pain of reli-gious conflict, and a charitable commitment to the importance of toleratingdifference. The individual is made the ultimate political unit not necessarilybecause of a confidence in the hubristic self-sufficiency of the individual, butbecause of a sense of the frailty of individuals who need to be protected fromthe enthusiasms of others, whether those others are acting individually orcollectively. To characterise all this as the “relegation” of religion to a priva-tised sphere is only to give part of the story. For the state to remain silent onreligious truth, but to preserve freedom of conscience, toleration and theright of free association, is actually to facilitate a greater diversity of publicspaces.

There is something regrettably shrill about the broadside given byMilbank in his recent Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon, where he com-ments that “political liberalism . . . engenders today an increasingly joylessand puritanical world”. Indeed, such a world is marked by a “totalitariandrift and may always become really totalitarian at the point where its [politi-cal liberalism’s] empty heart is besieged by an irrational cult of race, class,science, style or belief”77 . This is just wrong. Any careful attention to politi-cal liberalism—on the conceptual or historical level—makes evident that thefinest instinct of political liberals is not an emptying of their hearts, nor is ita slide towards “totality” in order to “confirm . . . free-will as such” and iden-tify it with the good.78 It is rather that political liberals make room in theirhearts and in the heart of society—out of love, humility and charity—so asto allow for a diverse range of incompatible but humanely possible identi-fications of the good. It is not always clear that “Radical Orthodoxy” hasroom for such generosity, at least in its more extravagant flourishes. It isperhaps time for theologians to reckon more strenuously and charitably withthe highest possibilities and motivations of political liberalism, as well asexposing its manifest failings, historical debasement and concrete problems.



Christian theologians legitimately complain when “Christianity” is judgedby its worst historical and concrete moments, and ask critics instead toreckon with Christianity’s higher aspirations and deepest truths. One mightdo well to extend this same courtesy to other traditions, such as political liberalism.

It is better that every individual and group feel some degree of discontentand alienation, inasmuch as the state remains silent on religious truth, thanfor some individuals within one group to be completely satisfied at the costof all the others. What begins to emerge is that while political liberalism isnot sufficient for supplying our theological commitments and religiousneeds—and in that sense we must go beyond it—it can be seen to be neces-sary for certain forms of religious and theological creativity, such as, forinstance, Radical Orthodoxy. It is one of the oldest text book errors to mistakenon-sufficiency for non-necessity.

Laying the blame for pervasive and structural problems concerning thehuman condition on specific doctrines, such as political liberalism, is neitherwise nor convincing. One can feel in a liberal culture the loneliness, excite-ment and anxiety that comes with “choice”. Likewise, one can experiencethe oppression, surveillance and belonging of more participatory communi-ties. Sometimes one can feel both in parallel in different dimensions of life.To be sure, Radical Orthodoxy does present a moving albeit partial accountof some of humanity’s misery. But when one reads Milbank’s dream of truesociety as “absolute consensus, agreement in desire, and entire harmony”,79

or Pickstock’s vision of the liturgical fusion “of love and power”80 in theMiddle Ages, one would do well to heed Constant’s caution: “let us mistrust. . . this admiration for certain ancient memories”.81

NOTES

1 This article is a version of a chapter from my forthcoming book, The Politics of Human Frailty:A Theological Defence of Political Liberalism (SCM Press/University of Notre Dame Press). Iam grateful to the following people for comments on earlier versions of the article: Fred-erick Bauerschmidt, Nigel Biggar, David Dwan, David Fergusson, Giles Fraser, LaurencePaul Hemming, Susan Parsons and anonymous readers for Modern Theology. Without them,the article would have been much worse, although none are responsible for how bad itmay be.

2 Benjamin Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared to that of the Moderns”, inPolitical Writings, edited and translated by Biancamaria Fontana, (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1988), p. 323.

3 Ibid., p. 146.4 One finds, for instance, Alasdair MacIntyre specifically rejecting the notion of the whole of

society as a participatory community, endorsing instead a range of participatory commu-nities within society. Milbank’s self-characterisation as a radicalised version of MacIntyreis revealing.

5 John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, (Oxford: Blackwell Pub-lishers, 1990), p. 327.

6 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, (London: Duckworth, 1990).7 Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (London: Duckworth, 1988).



8 Fergus Kerr, “Simplicity Itself: Milbank’s Thesis”, New Blackfriars, Vol. 73, no. 861, (June,1992), pp. 305–311; p. 307.

9 This very well organised and conceived conference was entitled “Illuminations”, held atSt. Stephen’s House, Oxford, in July 2002.

10 Although my approach is quite different, I find myself in broad agreement with the instinctsarticulated by Gerard Loughlin in “Christianity at the End of the Story”, Modern TheologyVol. 8, no. 4 (October, 1992), pp. 365–384, where he expresses a desire to “resist any theo-logical totalization—any advancement of theologico-philosophical metanarratives seekingmastery” (p. 375). I am also sympathetic in this regard to Romand Coles’ anxiety thatMilbank seems to “condemn all other stories—ultimately, insofar as they do not inadver-tently contain the wisdom of the one true meta-narrative—to the waste bin of nihilism andsubjugation” (p. 332). See Romand Coles, “Milbank and Neo-Nitzschean Ethics”, ModernTheology Vol. 8, no. 4 (October, 1992), pp. 331–351. Neither Loughlin nor Coles share myenthusiasm for political liberalism, although one way of appreciating my argument is toappreciate that their concerns about plurality in the face of the mastery of a single meta-narrative are well met by political liberalism.

11 Graham Ward, Cities of God, (London: Routledge, 2000).12 John Milbank, Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon, (London: Routledge, 2003).13 John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas, (London: Routledge, 2001).14 Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy, (Oxford:

Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1988).15 John Gray, Two Faces of Liberalism, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000). For a more extensive

discussion of this work see my review in The Heythrop Journal, Vol. 44 no. 1, (January, 2003),pp. 108–110.

16 John Rawls, Political Liberalism, (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 143.17 Ibid., p. 148.18 Ibid.19 John Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 138.20 Ibid., p. 135.21 Ibid., p. 135.22 Ibid., p. 146.23 John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, pp. 278–279.24 Ibid., p. 279.25 Ibid.26 Ibid.27 Ibid.28 Ibid.29 Ibid.30 Ibid., p. 289.31 Ibid.32 Ibid., p. 279.33 John Locke, An Essay on Human Understanding, Bk. ii, ch. XII, sec. 1, (London: Everyman,

1961), p. 77. Italics original, bold mine.34 Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 306.35 Ibid.36 Locke, An Essay on Human Understanding, ch. XII, sec. 1, p. 77.37 Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 321.38 Ibid.39 Ibid., p. 293.40 I am in agreement on this point with Nicholas Lash, who comments that “Milbank himself

too easily adopts Nietzsche’s habit of confining the sense of ‘power’ (Macht) to dominationand the violence which it entails. But surely an (Augustinian) Christian rejection of themyth of primal violence entails, in turn, rejection of the view that power, as such, is taintedand to be eschewed.” See Nicolas Lash, “Not Exactly Politics or Power?”, Modern TheologyVol. 8, no. 4 (October, 1992), pp. 354–364; p. 358. A similar concern is perceptively raisedby Laurence Paul Hemming, who writes of the reinforcing of the “power of power” foundin radical orthodoxy, which would concede everything to Nietzsche and nihilism, evenaffirming that power in the Church is an effect of der Wille zur Macht. . . . Indeed, Radical



Orthodoxy’s own articulation of nihilism recognises that the question of power is sharplyposed in postmodernity, but has lacked the ability to resolve it.” Laurence Paul Hemming,“Introduction” in Radical Orthodoxy?—A Catholic Enquiry, ed. Laurence Paul Hemming,(Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2000), p. 17.

41 Graham Ward, Cities of God, (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 75.42 Ibid., p. 70.43 Ibid.44 Ibid.45 Ibid., p. 75.46 John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 402.47 Graham Ward, Cities of God, p. 75.48 Both referred to deferentially by Ward. Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community, trans.

Peter Connor et al., (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press, 1991) and ZygmuntBaumann, In Search of Politics, (Oxford: Polity Press, 1992).

49 Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community, p. 75.50 Although Swiss by birth, Constant became a prominent figure in French political life fol-

lowing the revolution of 1789. He was a leading member of the liberal opposition toNapoleon and, following that, to the Bourbon monarchy.

51 Benjamin Constant, Political Writings, trans. Biancamaria Fontana, (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1988), p. 311.

52 Ibid.53 Ibid.54 Ibid., p. 312.55 Ibid., p. 311.56 Ibid., p. 316.57 Ibid., p. 317.58 Ibid.59 Ibid., p. 402.60 Ibid., p. 318.61 A criticism made by Aidan Nichols OP in “ ‘Non tali auxilio’: John Milbank’s Suasion to

Orthodoxy”, New Blackfriars, Vol. 73, No. 861 (June, 1992), pp. 326–332.62 Nicholas Lash expresses a similar concern, suggesting that Milbank mistakes the Church

for the Kingdom. Milbank claims that “all ‘political’ theory, in the antique sense, is relo-cated by Christianity as thought about the Church” (John Milbank, “Enclaves, or Where isthe Church?”, New Blackfriars, Vol. 73, no. 861 (June, 1992), p. 341). Lash, in reply, writes:“Might it not be more prudent to say: is relocated as thought about the Kingdom? Thatwould remind us that, though Christ has come, although salvation has occurred, the classicChristian grammar of these things require us also to say: salvation is occurring now andis still awaited eagerly in hope.” Nicholas Lash, “Not Exactly Politics or Power?”, ModernTheology, Vol. 8 no. 4 (October, 1992), p. 362.

63 John Milbank, “Enclaves, or Where is the Church?”, New Blackfriars, Vol. 73, no. 861 (June,1992), pp. 341–352.

64 John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas, p. 94.65 Ibid.66 John Milbank, “Enclaves, or Where is the Church?”, p. 342.67 Ibid.68 Catherine Pickstock, After Writing, p. 152.69 Ibid., p. 153.70 Ibid., p. 154.71 Ibid.72 Ibid., p. 157.73 “Catholic Emancipation Act 1829”, in Samuel Taylor Coleridge, On the Constitution of

Church and State, ed. J. Colmer, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), vol. 10 of theCollected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, p. 203.

74 Ibid.75 Coleridge, On the Constitution of Church and State, ch. VIII, p. 73.76 “Catholic Emancipation Act 1829”, in Coleridge, On the Constitution of Church and State,

p. 203.



77 John Milbank, Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon, (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 25.78 Ibid.79 Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 402.80 Catherine Pickstock, After Writing, p. 157.81 Benjamin Constant, Political Writings, p. 323.



christopher insole, against radical orthodoxy

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