Is Radical Orthodoxy Like Jumbo Shrimp
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Transcript of Is Radical Orthodoxy Like Jumbo Shrimp
Is “Radical Orthodoxy” Like “Jumbo Shrimp”?
An Introduction
The Promise and Perils of Post-Secular Theology
A Little Background
• My introduction to Postmodernity
Primary Questions
• How Radical is Radical Orthodoxy?• How Orthodox is Radical Orthodoxy?• Is the emphasis on Radical or Orthodoxy?• What are the promises and the perils of Radical
Orthodoxy?
Radical Orthodox Theologians
• John Milbank: Theology and Social Theory• Catherine Pickstock• Graham Ward• William Cavanaugh• James K. A. Smith
What is it?
• Radically Post-modern• Brazenly Theological• Unapologetically Confessional• Aggressively Social
I. Radically Post-Modern
“Weird for the sake of Weird”
Pre-Modernity
Reason
Revelation
Reason
Modernity
Phenomena
Noumena
The Wrong Turn of Modernity
• Foundationalist Epistemology• Quest for Rational Certainty• Loss of participatory ontology• Loss of the historical (time)• Loss of the catholic (universal)
Leads to…
• Fragmentation of society• Breakdown of communication• Loss of wonder and beauty• Textual nihilism • Individualistic narcissism• Rejection of dogmatic/confessional theology• Results in a “Religion Without Religion” (Derrida)
Jean-Francois Lyotard
Postmodernism: “incredulity towards
Metanarratives”
Jacques Derrida
There is Nothing Outside the Text!
Michel Foucault
Power is Knowledge
The Primary Culprits: The Rejection of Revelation and the Loss of Participatory Ontology
Duns Scotus’ Knowledge by Abstraction versus Augustine’s Knowledge by Illumination
Example of the End of Modernity: Pruitt-Igoe Housing Demolition
II. Brazenly Theological
• Post-Secular: All theory (social, political, economic, philosophical) is confessional/theological
• “All thought which brackets out God is ultimately nihilistic”
• Christian theology returns to being the queen of the disciplines
• Theology must be non-accommodationist
Christian theology now offers a discourse able to position and overcome nihilism itself. This is why it is so important to reassert theology as a master discourse; theology, alone, remains the discourse of non-mastery.
— John Milbank
Recovering Metaphysics
• Plato• Augustine• Aquinas
III. Rigorously Confessional
A new ad fontes: Ressourcement
“Abandoning all scholastic attempts to graft faith onto a universal base of reason [Radical Orthodoxy] instead turns to the church Fathers.”
— Milbank
IV. Aggressively Social
• “Not simply returning in nostalgia to the premodern, it visits sites in which secularism has invested heavily — aesthetics, politics, sex, the body, personhood, visibility, space — and resituates them from a Christian standpoint; that is, in terms of the Trinity, Christology, the Church and the Eucharist.” — Radical Orthodoxy
The Church as Polis
• Augustine’s City of God• The church is the only
authentic polis, because
it eschews individualism
“The church IS a social ethic”
The Promise of Radical Orthodoxy
• Returns theology to public discourse• Points out the “confessional” nature of
secularism• Challenges faith/reason dichotomy• Challenges sacred/secular dualism• Emphasizes the role of the church in the world• Attempts a rigorous confessional Christianity
within a pluralist, post-secular context
The Perils of Radical Orthodoxy
• Limits potential for interdisciplinary dialogue(?)• Lacks clear criterion for Ressourcement? (which
theologian? Which tradition?)• Undermines the constructive promise of
contextual theology (voices from the margins)• Is it desconstructive enough? Is it reconstructive
enough?• Metaphysics potentially over-rides biblical and
systematic theology– Sophia as warning