[1] You would think that Christians, whether Protestant or Catholic, might generally have more sympathy for one another\u2019s cosmological views than either would for the cosmological views of an atheist. And in last year\u2019s The Monstrosity of Christ, British Catholic theologian John Milbank does mount an elaborate defense of traditional beliefs against Slovenian critical theory superstar Slavoj \u017di\u017eek\u2019s decidedly heterodox views on the nature of God. And yet, a surprising point of agreement is that both writers characterize the psychoanalytic Marxist \u017di\u017eek, who affirms his atheism in no uncertain terms, as holding the position closest to Protestantism. Indeed, this discussion of historic and modern challenges to Christian belief remains engaging throughout, despite its dense language.<\/p>\n
[2] Dialectics, G.W.F. Hegel\u2019s totalizing system of inversions and syntheses, provides the vocabulary \u017di\u017eek uses to make a case for \u201cdeath of God\u201d theology \u2014 a materialist outlook, associated with Thomas Altizer, in which the very possibility of transcendence died on the cross with Christ, whereupon the Holy Spirit became fully immanent in the world. \u017di\u017eek says at one point that \u201cGod is hiding,\u2026to hide the fact that there is nothing to hide.\u201d He denies (using the psychoanalytic language of Jacques Lacan) the existence of any \u201cbig Other,\u201d a reference point outside of reality. The universe lacks fundamental essence or unity, but can be characterized instead as actively and continuously self-negating, as a \u201cnon-All.\u201d In Hegelian language, he rejects as inadequate both the Objective Spirit, which exists universally, and the Subjective Spirit, a mere personal fantasy, in favor of an Absolute Spirit, given shape by a community. However, \u017di\u017eek states that this community is now to be found in emancipatory politics rather than in churches.<\/p>\n
[3] For \u017di\u017eek, the Passion isn\u2019t really a reconciliation. It ultimately symbolizes not the forgiveness of a debt of sin, but \u201cthe alienation of God from Himself\u201d \u2014 a paraphrase of Hegel\u2019s \u201cmonstrosity of Christ\u201d concept, from which the book takes its title. \u017di\u017eek speaks about another \u201cOther\u201d \u2014 something inhuman within that makes us human, an \u201cex-timate kernel\u201d that bridges the gap between our internal and external reality, by embodying that very gap. This calls to mind Lacan\u2019s \u201cobjet petit a,\u201d an arbitrary item that the ego can attach itself to and use as a foundation for beginning to relate to the world. Entry into the world of language, and of other people, requires abandonment of this \u201cobjet.\u201d This abandonment is, in Lacanian psychoanalysis, a moment of symbolic castration, a little death \u2014 and, on a spiritual level, this is the death of the big Other represented by the Crucifixion. Thus, the self-awareness of the Fall is synonymous with the freedom of the Redemption.<\/p>\n
[4] For Milbank, it makes no sense to assert the \u201cdeath of God,\u201d as he sees God and humanity as belonging to two different registers of existence, the \u201contological\u201d (or essential) and the \u201contic\u201d (or actual) respectively. He rejects \u017di\u017eek\u2019s proclamations of \u201cunivocal\u201d inevitability, in favor of the open \u201canalogy\u201d: a dynamic of multiplicity, difference, and play, informed by the contemporary theology of William Desmond and John Caputo. Milbank\u2019s God is a God of endless giving, of mysterious plenitude, a Trinitarian relation rather than a stable identity. The doctrines of Augustine, Aquinas, and Nicolas of Cusa, among many other humanist Christians, are invoked by Milbank in lobbying for an atavistic utopia. Here the liberal\/Hegelian\/Marxist concept of civilization\u2019s progressive evolution is replaced by an alternative historic scenario sans Reformation (and Counter-Reformation): a benign paternalistic collectivity where harmony and universal principles are favored over individual rights and social discord. This mirrors his joyful cosmos of emanating grace, represented by a Trinity of \u201cthe giver, the gift, and the renewal of the gift,\u201d to which believers answer absolute generosity with absolute gratitude. Milbank founds his argument on Kierkegaard\u2019s idea, against Hegel, of the Incarnation as an illustration of the incomprehensibly paradoxical incursion of the infinite, recurrent, and eternal into the temporal, finite world we know.<\/p>\n
[5] Milbank portrays \u017di\u017eek as a modern philistine advocating the dissipated social engineering Michel Foucault termed \u201cbiopower,\u201d sounding a shrill trumpet for the significance of will and teleology, antagonism and evil, democracy and discourse, while walking the theological path first trod by Franciscan scholastics like Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. From these medieval writers all the way through Luther and Boehme to Hobbes and Darwin, the denial of divinity is central to \u017di\u017eek\u2019s essentially Protestant lineage. Arrogantly believing in his own self-creation, as Milbank would have it, \u017di\u017eek ignores the embodied circumstance of consciousness itself. This condition of incompleteness is located by \u017di\u017eek, however, not in our thinking but in all subjective being, a condition Martin Heidegger called being \u201cthrown.\u201d For his part, \u017di\u017eek takes pleasure in deriding Milbank\u2019s misty abstractions \u2013 the mistiest being Milbank\u2019s grand metaphor, a romantically befogged English countryside intended as an image of unified multiplicity and aesthetic harmony, but easily caricatured as nostalgia-blurred idealism. \u017di\u017eek laments that Milbank\u2019s view, like other modern arguments for a divine dimension, rely upon the limitation of understanding by imagination.<\/p>\n
[6] The book could be summarized as an attempt to discern what answer the Cross offers to the question of how existence arises from and returns to nothingness. As among the most profound Western statements on this matter, the mystic reflections of medieval German Dominican Meister Eckhart are hotly debated. Eckhart\u2019s God, \u017di\u017eek explains, can only be discovered in a null space that itself is God, a zero-ground potential that the individual can create within via absolute detachment. Our will grants us greater freedom than that enjoyed by God, who is bound to us as much as we are bound to him; \u201cGod himself can relate to himself only through man.\u201d However, for \u017di\u017eek, Eckhart, like Milbank, is too much of a Platonist to recognize Christ\u2019s humanity. Milbank does not deny the negative aspects of Eckhart\u2019s thought, but describes his cosmos as a progression, in which God emerges from static infinite nothingness to risk the dynamic possibilities of creation and Incarnation, evoking the Kierkegaardian \u201cMoment.\u201d All things constantly progress out of and return to God, as a dimension of utter simplicity and perfect justice.<\/p>\n
[7] Other theories of irony and rupture are discussed: in particular those of F.W.J. Schelling, G.K. Chesterton, and Alain Badiou. But then there\u2019s that old Protestant hobby-horse of actual Scripture. While \u017di\u017eek references Paul\u2019s abandonment of traditional customs and attachments, his preoccupation with sin and suffering, and his glorification of the selfless divine love of Agape subsuming the repressive Law (leading Milbank to reproach \u017di\u017eek for his prudish pessimism in dismissing the earthly love of Eros), it seems that both authors could dig further into the Pauline epistles in order to flesh out the underpinnings of Christianity. The belittling of Caesar before the Kingdom of God, the promise of an approaching upheaval, the experience of collective trauma, the suspicion of idolatry, all could lend \u017di\u017eek support with his revolutionary prophecies. Conversely, Paul\u2019s depiction of a clear social order, his justifications by faith, and his humanist call for ecumenical reconciliation, all speak to Milbank\u2019s aspirations for reintegrating the church with the world. And, to just take one more example, neither writer, in their struggle for moral and political high ground, takes any advantage of James\u2019 epistle, which offers a thoroughly contemporary statement of egalitarianism and activism.<\/p>\n
[8] In fact, other than \u017di\u017eek\u2019s scattered references to Paul, Job, and the Gospels, this is a theological philosophy book that\u2019s fairly short on biblical citation. Perhaps this omission comes about because the Bible is an archive of beliefs relating individual experience to the larger universe, not a systematic logical treatise. Still, for a book centering on the importance of the Crucifixion, it\u2019s startling how little ink in The Monstrosity of Christ is spilled to discuss the past and future Resurrection. On another note, there are very few comments on the historical fact of the Church, in a manner more tangible than the tidy Christological vector \u017di\u017eek sketches from the dehumanized Christ of Orthodoxy, through the institutionally-mediated role-model Savior in Catholicism, arriving at the merely dead corpse of the Protestant Jesus, where both he and Milbank locate his position theologically. There\u2019s barely any hint in the book that any Christians, Protestants especially, exist in the world as a huge and growing population.<\/p>\n
[9] But one book cannot be held responsible for every open question in contemporary Christianity; its focus is on rigorous debates around faith. The \u201cdemythologizing\u201d of theology by esteemed Protestant scholars like Albert Schweitzer and Rudolf Bultmann does have important implications, as both \u017di\u017eek and Milbank suggest. At the same time, it\u2019s wonderful to note the unsettling effect that concrete details and gaps of the historical Easter event ultimately have on any objective study of the Christian narrative, by Protestants or by anyone else. The Monstrosity of Christ also underscores the influence that \u201cpagan\u201d Hellenistic philosophy, in particular Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, has always had on Christianity, suggesting that a deep-rooted hybridity in Christian thought may sometimes be a resonance to appreciate rather than an irritant to purge. To that end, the \u201ctheological turn\u201d in contemporary philosophy, to which this book contributes admirably, is forging an esoteric but inspiring vocabulary that allows people of varying interests and faiths to discuss the slippery, invisible aspects of Christianity in a new way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[1] You would think that Christians, whether Protestant or Catholic, might generally have more sympathy for one another\u2019s cosmological views than either would for the cosmological views of an atheist. And in last year\u2019s The Monstrosity of Christ, British Catholic theologian John Milbank does mount an elaborate defense of traditional beliefs against Slovenian critical theory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n