Doing A Radical Orthodoxy Dance: First Steps
So modernity is dead. What does that mean for theology, as well as the rest of life? It is the job of all theologians and serious Christians to engage with the continental philosophy and post-continental thought, bringing the Gospel to it and helping to dialogue with both. What is the approach we should take? Should be cling to modernity and put our hands over our ears screaming "It's not true, it's not true"? Should we go back to a uncritical pre-modern approach, maybe using Aquinas as our model? Both of these are options, but seem to leave things unsettled. How do we deal with postmoderns like Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault? I think the best answer resides in a movement called Radical Orthodoxy, lead by John Milbank of Nottingham.
What is Radical Orthodoxy (RO)? One of the basic claims of RO is:
"There is not a single aspect of human existence or creation that can be properly undertsood or described apart from the insights of revelation" (Smith, 70).
Or from John Milbank:
"Either the entire Christian narrative tells us how things truly are, or it does not. If it does, we have no other access to how things truly are, nor any additional means of determing the question" (Word Made Strange, 250).
Basically, RO makes a postmodern assault on what Modernity called "unaided, universal, reason." RO makes the claim that Modernity got it totally wrong because it made things that were particular universal, like morals and ethics. In good postmodern fashion, RO says that there is no "universal truth or morals" that can be know without a faith presupposition. RO is willing to sound out as many idols of universal reason as necessary to get it through to everyone that there is no such thing, it was an Enlightenment invention. RO speaks the language of continental thought and is happy to follow their program in destorying modernity and its so called metanarratives.
But RO does not go the troubling way of saying that there is no reason or true stories to tell. RO says that with a full conception of revelation (an inbreaking of the Divine among the world) we have a narrative, and it is local in the sense that it is mediated by its ministers, but it is also meant to be universal. Notice though that it will not be recognized by everyone (the liberalism the theology has been stuch with for quite sometime), but needs to be told, enacted, experienced. In this way, RO is very interesed in the sacraments and liturgy, the language of revelation throughout the Church's history.
RO makes the ridiculous claim that the Christian story is true, and that it commands attention. But it goes further. According to RO, there is no such thing as the secular. We live in a post-secular world where the Gospel must inform ever aspect of the cosmos. We can not to economics, politics, or philosophy without seeking to ground it in the Triune God and His revelation. RO is a all encompassing project which demands that we realize our faith presuppositions (postmodernism), but not as a weakness we need to apologize for, rather as our only guide in a Fallen world. Those who seek to have a "point of contact" with the world will critize the movement, but I think RO is the best step forward in a postmodern context.
So RO says we can't think outside revelation's framework and understanding, but the Triune God never intended us to do anything else.
posted by Hans-Georg Gadamer @ 8:15 pm
7 comments
7 Comments:
Hmm. Great post. I'm trying to absorb it and formulate some questions.
What do you mean by "continental philosophy"?
What does RO say about physics?
Continental philosophy is the "tradition" that began with the Nietzsche/Husserl/Heidegger continuum and continued with Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault. In contrast with other groupings of philosophy, like analytic philosophy or British empiricism, 1) Continental philosophy tends to be less concerned with foundations, 2) Continental philosophers tend to write more self-consciously as part of a tradition, and, as we all know, 3)Derrida is much fluffier than Russell.
Rorty is sort of one of the gap-bridger between the two traditions (analytic and Continental): he takes a been there/done that attitude towards the Russell/Whitehead/Frege/Carnap/Quine logic train and tries to get people in America to appropriate and appreciate our fluffy French friends.
To me, RO sounds like a savvy, aggressive, rehabilitated Christian Kantianism (and that's not to criticize it in a negative way). Kant kept the sovereignty of reason but began to deal with the subjective side of things--it seems to me that RO would have us be Kantians whose categorizer is not reason, but revelation. I kind of like that. I need to think about it some more.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-judgment/
While my insights here may not be as critical or hermeneutical as Hans would like, I do want to weigh in on this post. As someone who is, generally, a fan of RO (or at least what little of it I grasp), I can’t help but think that it isn’t really a solution. Perhaps this is J. Morgan Modernist speaking, but the central claim of RO (that all knowing takes place exclusively within the context of revelation) seems to be a clever avoidance of a whole host of (admittedly Modernist) problems rather than a solution to them. I mean, if the rules of the game don’t suit your ends, then we aren’t really solving anything by changing the rules. Hans may argue, and perhaps rightly, that these “problems” that RO tries to avoid were as much of an invention of the Enlightenment as the “solutions” that accompanied them. I am not so sure, but it seems to me that the success of anything that is post-modern (that is, after Modernity), hinges on the outcome of that question. That said, RO still seems valuable: if this is the train that gets us beyond secular Modernity while avoiding confused Post-Modernity, I’ll take it, just maybe not till the end of the line.
I have been thinking a lot lately about what a critical return to pre-Modernism would look like. I think it is interesting that Hans, using St. Thomas, identified “pre-modern” as apparently synonymous with “uncritical”. Are those two things bound necessarily? Does anyone have reading to suggest to me or any helpful insights?
Gentlemen - I thank you for the comments in general and I think we can all get excited about the RO school of thought, even you J. morg.
The Red - great question about physics. RO is very young (about ten years old, only a few in the US) and it has not yet finished all its work at all. To me that makes it unbelievably exciting. They already have done a great job on language (Smith) and aesthetics (Cavanagh, Pickstock, and Ward), but there are still areas that need to be worked with the RO thesis: one of these is the sciences. I am very excited to do science in the RO thought train and I think we need more people working on it. Ph.D theses anyone?
Charles - great summary of Continental Thought vs. Anglo-American thought. I would simplify by saying Anglo-American (analytic) would universalize metaphysics through logic, Continental would deny metaphysics through deconstruction and RO is attempting to run the via media of localizing metaphysics (grounding?) within the Christian narrative and revelation. If this makes it somewhat Kantian, okay, although if I understand Kant correctly (doubtful) he does not think it is possible to know "Things-in-themselves" (the noumenal) and so we are left with the categorical imperative whereas RO says revelation gives us "Things-in-themselves", as much as possible and we construct the ethics and life philosophy around that. Okay if over-simplified account?
J. Morg - I think you are on to something. RO seems to me to be saying that even formulating the questions Modernity asked was incorrect. Once we left revelation and sought "the secular", we missed the boat and everything was downhill. It is a vicious assault on corelationalist thought - common ground accounts of knowledge- which is perfectly in line with post-modernity. Even trying to solve the questions Modernity (nihilistic modernity - see Conor Cunningham for Geneology of Nihilism) asks would be admitting that modernity had the ability to ask correctly. This RO does not acknowledge and I think on solid, if radical, grounds.
Gentlemen, I think this is a great movement, something we should get involved with in our own perspective spheres of influence. I think RO has a lot to say, as do we speaking within it.
I am very interested in hearing what it says, but I'm daunted at starting into that big book you've been throwing around, Hans.
On J. Morg Borg's thing -- is it that Modernity, as operating under the presupposition that the world could be divided into the natural/non-spiritual/"secular" and the super-natural/spiritual/"holy" world, couldn't ask any question correctly?
What are some of the "modernist problems"? How does RO answer or side-step them?
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