INTRODUCTION

Parts, Wholes, and Opposites:John Milbank as Geisteshistoriker

John Bowlin

ABSTRACT

This special focus of the Journal of Religious Ethics begins with the mixtureof admiration and apprehension that John Milbanks use of historical ma-terials so often inspires and moves to specific reflection on specific figuresand texts that appear in his grand story of secular modernity. Throughout,the focus is not on his moral theology per se, but rather on the way he treatscertain figures, how he constructs his historical tale, and how his criticalenterprise and his normative proposals depend upon his historical efforts.This introduction considers the difficulties of constructing and assessing aGeistesgeschichte, the genre of historical writing that Milbank prefers.

KEY WORDS: Milbank, history, modernity, Scotus, secularity

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO IGNORE the historical content in John Milbanks var-ious contributions to what is now commonly called Radical Orthodoxy.At the same time, it is difficult to regard that content with admirationunsullied by worry. In this respect, and in others, Milbanks efforts re-semble Alasdair MacIntyres, whose work and example Milbank has ex-plicitly emulated and self-consciously radicalized (1990, 3, 5). Both tell agrand, seductive story about the origins, character, and travails of secu-lar modernity. In each instance, the critical consequences of the tale toldand the moral and theological positions that emerge depend, in largemeasure, on the historical inquiries they pursue, on the treatments theygive of figures, texts, and movements. Both use historical exegesis as themedium of their normative efforts, and it is this way of proceeding thatgenerates both approbation and worry. In MacIntyres case, this dual re-sponse led to serious reflection on his treatment of specific figures andtexts. The publication of After Virtue in particular precipitated a numberof essays, volumes, and symposia on the virtues and vices of MacIntyreshistorical exegesis.1 Milbanks efforts deserve a similar response, and yet

1 Representative examples include Madigan (1983), ONeill (1983), and Schneewind(1983). For more recent responses see Horton and Mendus (1994).

JRE 32.2:257269. C 2004 Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc.

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to date there has been no deliberate attempt to explore his use of histori-cal materials and assess their place in his normative inquiries. A portionof this deficit will be corrected later this year with the publication of a col-lection of essays edited by Douglas Hedley and Wayne Hankey, but onlya portion.2 For the most part, this collection addresses Milbanks use ofhistorical materials in inquiries that interest philosophical theologians,metaphysicians, and philosophers of language. It pays little attention tohis use of historical texts and figures in his treatment of those issuesthat matter most to moral theologians and religious ethicists. In addi-tion, the essays in the Hedley and Hankey collection largely ignore thecritical and normative conclusions that follow from Milbanks historicalinquiries.

This special focus of the Journal of Religious Ethics is designed to re-spond to this need in our field. It begins with the mixture of admirationand apprehension that Milbanks use of historical materials so often in-spires and moves to specific reflection on specific figures and texts thatappear in his grand story of secular modernity. Throughout, the focus isnot on his moral theology per se, but rather on the way he treats certainfigures, how he constructs his historical tale, and how his critical en-terprise and his normative proposals depend upon his historical efforts.Milbank, of course, treats an extraordinary number of figures and texts,more than could be considered in a small collection of papers. Only a feware considered here and some of our choices will no doubt disappoint. Ouraim has been to mix things up, to consider Milbanks treatment of a fewwell-known figures like Augustine and Kant, as well as few others, likeRuskin and Hazlitt, who are known well by only a few. In each instance,the contributors have tried to say something about the relationship be-tween the grand narrative of secular modernity that Milbank developsand the specific texts, figures, and episodes that are its parts. As thisrelation between parts and whole seems to generate the most commonworries about Milbanks historical efforts, I will use the remainder of thisintroduction to say something about that relation and those worries.

1. Antiquarians, Propagandists, and Red-Faced Snortings

Consider Richard Crosss account of the part Duns Scotus plays in thestory of secular modernity that Milbank recounts (Cross 2001). In thatstory, the intellectual discourses of our secular age, the social sciences inparticular, are best regarded as a counter theology that presupposes acollection of metaphysical missteps. One such misstep can be found, ac-cording to Milbank, in Scotuss treatment of the univocity of ens, bonum,

2 This volume is currently under review at Cambridge University Press.

Introduction: Parts, Wholes, and Opposites 259

and other transcendental concepts. Following lines of interpretation plot-ted out by Etienne Gilson, Milbank contends that Scotus places God andcreatures under the same concept, ens, which he then predicates univo-cally of each (Gilson 1952). By these lights, ens, according to Scotus,

could be either finite or infinite, and possessed the same simple meaning ofexistence when applied to either. Exists, in the sentence God exists, hastherefore the same fundamental meaning (at both a logical and a metaphys-ical level) as in the sentence, this woman exists. The same thing appliesto the usage of transcendental terms convertible with Being; for example,God is good means that he is good in the same sense that we are said tobe good, however much more of the quality of goodness he may be thoughtto possess. . . . And just as being and goodness are attributed in the samesense to both infinite and finite, so they are attributed in the same senseto finite genera, species and individuals (Milbank 1990, 302303).

It was, of course, Aquinass analogical alternative that Scotus rejectsand, according to Milbank, at our peril (Milbank 1990, 303). For Thomas,transcendental terms apply properly and in themselves to God alone. Tocreatures they apply only derivatively, analogically, and only insofar asall things are said to participate imperfectly in those transcendentalattributes that only God fully instantiates.3 For Milbank, Aquinass ac-count of creaturely participation and analogical predication guarantees,as Cross puts it, both the qualitative difference and real resemblancebetween God and creatures (Cross 2001, 14). This in turn prevents usfrom thinking that ontology can proceed as a secular discipline inde-pendent of theology, precisely because we cannot specify ontologys sub-ject, the ens commune that is proper to creatures, without referring totheologys.

But in Milbanks story, Scotuss view prevails and various unhappyconsequences ensue. If ens is univocal, then God and creatures are bestregarded as the same kind of thing, one finite, the other infinite, butunited nevertheless as Beings in much the same way. The claim is notthat ens is a genus, but rather that it is distributed in an univocal fash-ion, having precisely the same meaning for every genus: in the aspectof Being, things are in the same way (Milbank 1990, 303). As univo-cal distribution of being collapses the qualitative distinction betweenGod and creation that Christians have always sought to maintain, so tooit overturns the Thomistic relation between theology and metaphysics.Theology is no longer independent and prior, ontology is no longer de-pendent and secondary. Rather as Scotus fixed a stable sense of themeaning of Being, goodness and so forth he quite literally invented a

3 Cross quite rightly points out that while this is a plausible reading of Aquinass treat-ment of analogy it is not without its critics (Cross 2001, 13). See McInerny 1961.

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separation between ontology and theology (Milbank 1990, 303). As ensis, on this reading of Scotus, something that is somehow prior to God,something that God himself somehow requires (Cross 2001, 26), so tooGod now becomes a subject of ontological inquiry quite independent ofthe rule and measure of theology. With this outcome we are, accordingto Milbank, one step closer to secularitys subtle counter-theology.

To this treatment of Scotus and to the normative conclusions that fol-low, Cross, the intellectual historian, replies with what are best regardedas red-faced snortings (Rorty, Schneewind, and Skinner 1984, 8). Thesubstance of his complaint, reduced to its essence, comes to this: Milbankdoesnt do history. Rather, he writes theological propaganda in historicaltones. Its not Scotus who does the inventing here, but Milbank! Its nothistorical scholarship that Milbank pursues as he explicates Scotussviews, but something more akin to melodrama, to the fabrication of avillain in the service of a moral and theological agenda.4 In defense ofhis outrage, Cross catalogues Milbanks exegetical sins and summarizeswhat he takes to be the consensus among medievalists about Scotusstreatment of the univocity of transcendental terms. Contrary to whatMilbank assumes, Scotuss theory does not generate or justify any par-ticular ontological commitments about the relationship between God andthe world. In fact, just the opposite is true. Scotus provides a semantictheory about the extension of certain concepts that are in themselvesvicious abstractions, that do not correspond to any one extramental prop-erty, to neither Creator nor creatures (Cross 2001, 2021). Of course,this semantic theory of transcendentals comes packaged with its owncollection of ontological commitments, but they are, according to Cross,roughly equivalent to those that follow from the treatment of analogythat Milbank admires and finds in Aquinas (Cross 2001, 21).

Crowning the victor in this exegetical contest does not concern mehere. Rather, I am more interested in the assumption Cross makesthroughout and the conclusion he defends toward the end: history andtheology are fundamentally different enterprises. Of course, theology isunavoidably historical, and Cross concedes as much. It is, he says, atraditional practice, a craft whose tools are the past (Cross 2001, 41).Yet he seems to think that the theologians tools are forged and deliv-ered by the historian. The historian tells us what the past is about andthe theologian draws the proper normative conclusions. In this divisionof labor, the theologians judgments are ruled and measured, at leastin part, by the historians specification of the past. When theologians

4 Heroes too. He writes: It seems to me that the treatment of Aquinas is in many waysjust as cavalier as that of Scotus: in an anxiety to find a hero, the RO [Radical Orthodox]theologians seem to construct an Aquinas more in their own image that in his (Cross 2001,1011).

Introduction: Parts, Wholes, and Opposites 261

leave their judgments ungoverned by historical truth, when they drawhasty conclusions from a restricted reading of the past (Cross 2001, 41),historians should object. And historians should cry all the louder whentheologians dress up those normative judgments in Clios robes, for inthat event it is likely that historys authority has been pinched to shroudpartisan, normative commitments. To change metaphors, in that event,the tables will have been turned and normative commitments will ruleand measure historical inquiries. This, according to Cross, is preciselywhat Milbank does, and this is how not to do theology (Crosss empha-sis). Indeed, theology inattentive to the tutelage of history would justbe folly (Cross 2001, 41).

To the charge that his historical efforts are mere propaganda, that hedoes theology under cover of the false authority of counterfeit history,Milbank might reply with a complaint of his own. The distinction Crossdraws between history and theology is unjustified and it distorts the re-lations that are assumed to obtain between them. It either makes historybold beyond warrant and theology unnecessarily humble, which is thesecular settlement that Cross seems to favor. Or, alternatively, it makeshistory quaintly irrelevant and theology strangely imperious.5 If it is infact the case that historical inquiries are sharply divided from normativepursuits, then, apart from mere antiquarian interest, it is not at all clearwhat might move us to care about the past. Why bother with Scotus inthe first place if we must wait for the theologian to come along and tellus whether anything of importance follows from his views?

So we have a red-faced snort (propagandist!) and an imagined reply(antiquarian!), both of which depend upon a relatively sharp distinctionbetween the tasks of the intellectual historian and those of the theolo-gian. At this point it is worth noting that, unlike Cross, the contributorsto this volume do not assume this distinction. At the risk of assigningthem views they might not share, let me say why that might be so.

On the one hand, Christian theology has always been done with abackward glance, above all to the Law and the Prophets, the Gospelsand the Apostolic writings, but also to the efforts of previous Christiansto interpret this scriptural inheritance. The theologian proceeds histori-cally or not at all. On the other hand, the historian proceeds normatively,and in this context, theologically, or not at all. We are tempted to saythat the past can be known in itself and that we ask about its relationto the present or consider its normative consequences only after it isknown on its own. But this is a temptation to resist, if only because itis not at all clear that bits of the past can be identified, characterized,and distinguished from other bits apart from their relations to other

5 Milbank, of course, defends a version of theological imperium, but his defense doesnot depend upon a sharp distinction between historical and normative pursuits.

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things, above all their relations to our contemporary interests and con-cerns (Rorty, Skinner, and Schneewind 1984, 8). Return for a momentto Scotus. Cross appears to assume that his views can be understoodapart from saying why they matter. But it is not at all clear that thereis something called understanding Scotuss treatment of the univocityof being that can be distinguished from understanding that treatmentsrelation to other things that we care about: Aquinass account of analogy,the doctrine of creation, the emergence of modernity, and so on. Since thepossible relations between some particular historical bit and our contem-porary concerns and interests are vast, too complicated and too unwieldyto guide any particular historical inquiry, choices have to be made. Andif this is right, then it is the normative commitments of historians thatgenerate their inquiries and shape their conclusions. Their commitmentsdirect them to some connections between past and present but not all,to some topics and puzzles but not others, and to prefer some interpre-tations to others. In this respect at least, little distinguishes Milbanksefforts from Crosss.

Suppose that something like this account of historical inquiry andnormative commitment is sound. Suppose the tasks of the intellectualhistorian and those of the theologian cannot be neatly distinguished.What follows? In particular, how might historians and theologians re-spond to each others efforts? Well, the first thing to note is that the sub-stance of their occasional charge (propagandist!) and counter charge(antiquarian!) will have to be rethought. If an antiquarian studies thepast without noting its relations to other things that we care about, thennobody has succeeded in being antiquarian. If a propagandist specifiesthe content of the past only as he spells out its various relations to certainfeatures of the present, then all history is propaganda (Rorty, Skinner,and Schneewind 1984, 1011). For these complaints to amount to some-thing useful they will have to be loaded with normative content. Theantiquarian will have to be recast as someone who studies the past bynoting its relations to harmless and uninteresting features of the present.Point out other relations, vastly more interesting and full of promise foramending our account of this or that historical bit or transforming ourconduct for the better, and the antiquarian gives us a dusty shrug. Hesnot interested. Similarly, the propagandist will be one who specifies thecharacter of the past by spelling out its relation to contemporary concernsand interests that are, in some way, both serious and objectionable. Pointout what is objectionable about these concerns and interests, or directher attention to other, more important, more interesting relations be-tween past and present, and she refuses. And, chances are, unlike herantiquarian cousin, she is not content to let the matter alone. She willwant to do all that she can to convince us that her concerns and inter-ests are the only ones worth having; the only ones that give us access

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to a past worth knowing. Still, on this account, the antiquarian and thepropagandist have made roughly the same mistake. Both approach thepast with the wrong set of cares, and both refuse to modify or abandonthe cares they happen to have in the face of good reasons to do so. In onecase the refusal is harmless, if not pathetic. In the other, the refusal isprovocative, if not dangerous.

Suppose Crosss complaint with Milbanks treatment of Scotus andAquinas is recast in this way. What then does it amount to? No doubt, forCross, Milbank remains a propagandist, but if we assume an improvedversion of that charge, it cannot be because Milbank lets his theologicaland normative interests influence his historical exegesis. There is noescaping that influence, nor reason to want to. Rather, Crosss complaintmust regard the normative content of Milbanks efforts. Milbank letsthe wrong interests govern his exegesis, above all his desire to judgetheological ideas by the merit of their consequences. On this reworking ofCrosss complaint, Milbanks historical efforts fall short precisely becausehe assesses ideas, texts, and figures only as he notes their effects upon theorigins and progress of modernity. No other interest, no other measureof merit, seems to matter, not changeless truth, not local justification(Cross 2001, 910). By these lights, Milbank rejects Scotuss treatmentof univocal being largely because of the secularizing consequences heinsists it has had. At the same time, he remains stubbornly blind to theinterests Scotus and Aquinas share, interests that, if taken seriously,might cause him to recast his interpretation of their views and rethinkhis assessment of their respective efforts. Indeed, Cross and others arequick to point out that the Subtle Doctors various disagreements withAquinas are motivated by interests that are difficult to ignore, somehaving do with the need to remain faithful to the theological practice ofthe Church Fathers (Cross 2001, 21), some having to do with the difficultyof asserting the radical contingency of creation in the philosophical idiomof ancient Greece (Noone 1998). If Milbanks historical efforts fall shortand his conclusions collapse into propaganda, it is precisely because heproceeds with a collection of interests that he refuses to revise in the faceof these good reasons.

Milbanks reply, if we can risk imagining one for him, might well be avariation on the charge of antiquarianism. He might say that he attendsto the effects of texts and ideas on the emergence and progress of secu-lar modernity precisely because modernity matters. It matters enoughto justify our exclusive interest in it. All other interests are, by compar-ison, trivial. The historical inquires and conclusions they generate arequaint, perhaps interesting to a few, but hardly worth the effort. In de-fense of this reply, he might point out that his own historical efforts, notjust in the Middle Ages, but across Western intellectual history, confirmthis conclusion. On this account of that history, order can be found and

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significance specified precisely when lines from cause to consequenceare traced to and from secular modernity. But notice, at this point otherproblems emerge. Indeed, it is this self-justifying character of Milbanksgrand tale and specific inquiries that makes them so difficult to evaluate.

2. Geistesgeschichte

Begin with the assumption that there is a big, important somethingcalled secular modernity, a potentially dangerous cultural force. Its dis-courses and practices dominate our lives in ways both obvious and sub-tle, and because they do we have good reason to let our concern for itdominate our historical inquiries. When we consider historical texts, fig-ures, and traditions we ought to ask how they bear on the origins andprospects of this big and important thing. When our inquiries concludeand we say what these texts, figures, and traditions are about, it will betheir various relations to secular modernity that specify their characterand significance. If, for example, we want know what Aquinas and Sco-tus said about divine predication, the doctrine of creation, and the willsfreedom, we will have to say how these matters bear on the progress ofsecular modernity. In turn, our conclusions about these historical figuresand views will be justified, in large measure, by their ability to contributeto the story of modernitys progress, just as our assumption that secularmodernity is big, important, and ought to dominate our inquiries will bejustified by the fact that these important figures and views, interpretedin a certain way, contribute to that story.

Suppose we approach every other text, figure, and tradition with thesame assumption, the same purity of heart. Telling the story of secularmodernity is what matters most, and individual texts, traditions, andfigures will come to matter only as they find a place in that story and con-firm that assumption. Texts and figures that do not find a place will notmatter, at least not much. They will not warrant our attention, at leastnot for long. And those that do matter warrant our attention precisely be-cause they contribute to that story. Some, like Scotus, contribute by pro-viding key resources for the emergence of secular modernity. These arethe villains. Others, like Nietzsche and his progeny, provide the distinc-tions and arguments that lead to modernitys unraveling. These are theheroes. Others still, like Augustine, provide a vision of human life thatthe discourses and practices of secular modernity can neither corrupt norimagine. These are the prophets of the other city, the other country, theonly alternative to secular reason after its nihilistic implosion (Milbank1990, 434). Of course, interests other than telling the story of moder-nitys progress might also move us to care about these figures and texts.And, with different interests, different interpretations might emerge.But these interests and interpretations can be dismissed as quaintly

Introduction: Parts, Wholes, and Opposites 265

antiquarian precisely because they ignore what matters mostthe storyof secular modernity.

A big, sweeping, single-minded story about the origins and prospectsof something big and important like secular reason, a Geistesgeschichteof this sort, is obviously self-justifying (Rorty 1984, 57). Figures andtexts are identified, interpreted, and their importance specified only asthey are situated in the dramatic narrative of secular modernity, andour attention to modernitys progress is justified by the fact that somany figures and texts play a role in that drama. It is a closed loop andits meant to be. Indeed, a good Geisteshistorikerand Milbank standsamong the bestis acutely interested in keeping the loop closed. Why?Because in large measure his goal is to justify the image and impor-tance of the grand thing whose story he tells, which in turn justifiescertain attitudes toward that thing, certain problems and questions thatregard it, and certain ways of conceiving a disciplines response to it.Put another way, every good Geistesgeschichte has a moral and everyGeisteshistoriker is a sage (Rorty 1984, 5960). His tale is as big andgrand as its object, and his mastery of its logic and his cunning in thetelling justifies his wise pronouncements. In Milbanks case, the storyof secular modernity is designed, not so much to secure the reality andimportance of secularitythis he assumesbut rather to justify certainjudgments and attitudes. Secular reason is best regarded as a violent,self-destructive counter-theology that Christians ought neither sympa-thize with, nor accommodate themselves to. They should, rather, pit theirown grand account of the final causes at work in human history againstits nihilistic logic. With a cast whose principal characters are Christ, thechurch, and the saints, they should narrate a counter-history, a dramaof salvation so fundamentally different from the familiar story of secularmodernity that its strangeness will stand out. Indeed, this is the task oftheology: to articulate Christian strangeness not just as difference, butas the difference from all other cultural systems, all other histories andontologies (Milbank 1990, 380381).

But of course, the moral of a Geistesgeschichte is only as convincing asthe tale told, and the tale is convincing only when its parts, the texts andfigures framed in its narrative, are presented in a convincing manner.This is, no doubt, a loose standard of assessment, if only because gettingthe parts right, the parts that make up the history of the grand thing, isnot what the Geisteshistoriker is after. It is not as important as spellingout the whole of that history and then fitting the parts into it. In fact, onedoesnt read a Geistesgeschichte for an accurate account of those parts, orat least one shouldnt. Rather, one reads the grand tale for the moral atthe end, for the experience of taking on certain passions, attitudes, andjudgments toward the object of the tale. One reads a Geistesgeschichte,in other words, for inspiration and self-justification (or conversion, as

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the case may be) (Rorty 1984, 57, 73). Other genres of historical writingare more likely to fulfill our desire for reliable accounts of the parts.Historical reconstructions can give us interpretations of texts in theirown context and of figures in their own idioms. Rational reconstructionscan help us imagine what figures might say to matters that concern usnow, in our context, and how texts might be recast in the concepts wenow employ (Rorty 1984, 4956). Either approach can give us a bettersense of the parts that make up a Geistesgeschichte than whatever theGeisteshistoriker happens to say about them.

Still, a tale well told will not have parts that rebel too forcefully againstthe whole, and parts might rebel, not on their own, but through our re-constructions of them. A good historical reconstruction might show thata text or figure set in its own context was not about that, not about thecareer of the grand thing at the center of the Geisteshistorikers tale. Al-ternatively, a good rational reconstruction might convince us that sometext or figure cannot be easily re-educated to address the questions theGeistesgeschichte inspires us to ask. Both sorts of inquiries, or some in-teresting combination of each, might cast doubt on the merit and moralof the grand story and on the substantial reality of its object. Both mightencourage us to wonder what the fuss was all about and to look to someother Geistesgeschichte for inspiration and self-justification.

In one way or another, three of the four essays in this focus gener-ate worry about Milbanks grand metanarrative along one of these lines.James Wetzel argues that Milbank can enlist Augustine against the secu-lar conceits of our age only as he ignores Augustines ambivalence aboutmoral perfection in the saeculum and overlooks the inconsistency be-tween this ambivalence and his critique of pagan virtue. He concedesthat Milbanks Augustine, the one who yokes his critique of pagan virtueto his conception of secularity, is in fact roughly the Augustine we findin book xix of City of God. At the same time, he argues that by collapsingsin into secularity Augustine compromises his own hard-won insight intothe thoroughly ambiguous character of moral and political relations inthe age between Christs ascension and return. To resolve this confusionand secure this insight, Wetzel offers an Augustinian reconstruction ofAugustine, one that insists upon the unresolved character of love in time.With this done, every effort to strip away the virtues of our enemies andexpose their vices falls victim to this Augustines thick expectation ofambivalence (276).

Jennifer Herdt asks whether the portion of Milbanks tale that regardsthe rise of modern political economy is in some respects too tidy andwhether the critique of sympathy and benevolence that follows in turnis a bit too hasty (304). As everyone knows, Hobbes places the fear ofdeath and the individuals desire for power at the center of politics, whilehis critics, Hutcheson and others, deny that human action is essentially

Introduction: Parts, Wholes, and Opposites 267

self-interested and insist instead that our natural sympathy generatesand harmonizes human society. Both camps de-ethicize agency preciselybecause both locate the sources of human action in a collection of instinctsthat are at once natural and cut off from the ends that might transformand perfect human nature. At the same time, both assume that self-interest exhausts our public motives, which in turn reduces Christiancharity to private benevolence and local sympathy. Its a familiar storyand by Herdts lights a bit too seamless. By looking closely at modernunderstandings of sympathy and responses to the problem of poverty,she hopes to complicate the tale told and the moral drawn. In particular,she hopes to show that instinct did not ultimately displace virtue, anymore than political economy obliterated the Christian sphere of publiccharity (304).

David Craig wonders whether Milbank forces John Ruskin to per-form a role in the story of secular modernity that he is ill fit to play. ByMilbanks lights, Ruskins social criticism comes loaded with opposingvisions of the whole of life, oppositions that explicate and justify his ownlargely aesthetic distinction between secular modernity and Christiancharity. Like Augustine, Ruskin is, for Milbank, a prophet of charitysbeautiful order, an order that stands as a strange alternative to the frac-tures and contests of the secular city. But Craig isnt so sure. On hisreading of these texts, Milbank paints too beautiful a picture of Ruskinscorpus, one that ignores those aspects of Ruskins thought that conspireagainst the distinction between charity and modernity, theology and sec-ular reason, beautiful order and fractured difference (32728).

The last of the essays, Gordon Michalsons contribution, casts doubton the persuasive power and normative consequence of Milbanks Geis-tesgeschichte, not through a consideration of specific parts, but through alook at alternative wholes. The post-Kantian portion of Milbanks grandnarrative is designed to show that secular reasons autonomy is an inven-tion, not a discovery, that its normative status is an ideological hoodwink,and that its supposed compatibility with Christianity is in fact the undo-ing of true devotion to Christ. As post-Nietzschean nihilism is both con-sequence and critic of this autonomous sphere of secular rationality, theKantian tradition of modern philosophy carries the seeds of its own undo-ing, which in turn opens the way to the moral of Milbanks tale. The Chris-tian metanarrative offers the only alternative to Nietzschean nihilism.But Michalson isnt convinced. James Edwards and Hans Blumenbergshow us that there are other ways to interpret the Kantian-idealist her-itage, other morals to draw about its consequences and prospects. Thesealternatives encourage Michalson to wonder whether the moral Milbankdraws actually follows from his account of that heritage. He wonders,that is, whether that account is unimaginable apart from a moral thatMilbank assumes from the start. And of course, if this hunch is sound,

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then autonomy is smothered in its crib, and alternatives to Milbanksposition appear only in the terms that he has prescribed for them (379).

Of course, this is, as I have said, precisely what a Geistesgeschichteis supposed to do. It is supposed to disregard every other story; it issupposed to dominate its parts. So whats the problem? Why do theseworries matter?

3. No Other City

They matter for at least two reasons. First, a Geistesgeschichte justifiesthe image and importance of its object and generates certain attitudestoward that image only as it persuades us to disregard every other storyand overlook every part that conspires against the whole. It succeedsonly as this impression of story and object is effortlessly maintained,and the essays in this focus work to expose Milbanks efforts to sustainthis impression of secular modernity. Modernity, as Milbank sees it, is agrand and important something that requires a big and compelling storyof its birth, life, and decay. If this story fails to persuade and inspire,either because its parts rebel or because competing wholes emerge, thenit is not at all clear that the grand thing exists, at least as Milbankimagines it. This does not necessarily mean that there is no such thing asthe modern period with certain features that distinguish it from earlierperiods. Rather, it means that grand narratives do very little to helpus get a handle on those features, on how they line up in relations ofsimilarity and difference to features in other periods. And, of course, if agrand story cannot sustain for us the existence of modernity as a unifiedsomething, then nor can it sustain in us a unified and coherent collectionof attitudes toward it. Ambivalence will be the norm.

Second, these worries matter because they cast doubt on one of thedistinguishing features of our times: our tendency to generate theologi-cal identity and secure theological commitment in reaction to the imageof secularity found in some grand story of the modern, either Milbanksor some other. If, however, there is no grand, unified something calledsecular modernity, then the identity encouraged is false. Or, at the veryleast, it rests precariously on false footing. Christians and other biblicaltheists are, it seems, easily tempted by this reactionary construction ofidentity and commitment, if only because they too have a grand storyto tell and it is always tempting to pit that story, that account of allthings, against some other. But they should resist this temptation, thisculture war seduction. They should not give up their own grand narra-tive, but nor should they secure commitment to it by drawing contrastswith some false, spectral opposite. Rather, they should recall that theirown story begins with creation and ends in redemption and thus admitsno alternative of its rank, only parts of its whole. As Wetzels Augustine

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insists, for Christians there is but one city: morally ambiguous, dividedby difference, making its way in time (276).

Put another way, in this theological context a compelling account ofmodernity, whether some variation on Milbanks tale or some differentvariety altogether, cannot be an account of secularity. It cannot assumethe biblical narrative as its opposite, if only because Christians will beobliged to find a place for both this account and its object in the story theytell of fallen natures gracious redemption. And even if no such accountof modernity emerges, the theological task remains roughly the same.Specific features of the modern period, some secular and some not, willhave to be fit into that story, and this task can be done with confidenceprecisely because Christians assume, as Herdt reminds us, that Godcan never be shut out of Gods own unfolding of creation (302).

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