Political Ecclesiologies

ECCLESIOLOGY Ecclesiology 9 (2013) 106–113 brill.com/ecso Political Ecclesiologies Andrew Davison Westcott House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge CB5 8BP, UK [email protected] John Hughes Jesus College, Cambridge CB5 8BL, UK [email protected] John Milbank, The Future of Love: Essays in Political Theology (London: SCM Press) 382 pp. £25.00. ISBN: 0334043263 (pbk); (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2009) £44.00. ISBN: 1606081624 (pbk). Graham Ward, The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming Postmaterial Citizens (London: SCM Press, 2009) 304 pp. £25.00. ISBN: 0334043506 (pbk); (Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2009) $25.00. ISBN: 0801031583 (pbk). The Radical Orthodoxy movement is one of the most significant schools in contemporary theology. Associated with the work of John Milbank, Graham Ward and Catherine Pickstock, the name comes from their 1998 edited vol- ume, Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (London: Routledge). The movement (or ‘sensibility’, as John Milbank has called it) is criticised by some for placing too much emphasis on the Church, and by others (perhaps par- ticularly by Roman Catholics) for being a ‘theology in search of an ecclesiology’. The books under discussion here, by Milbank and Ward, develop the ecclesiological perspective and offer a response to both of these criticisms. The Church is indeed central to their thought. Here is a theology all about the Church, which places Radical Orthodoxy within the wider ‘ecclesial turn’ in Anglo-Saxon academic theology of the last few decades. It is, however, a more creative ecclesiology than the liberal critics have allowed, and surprisingly grounded in the practical challenges and deliberations of the churches, not least the Church of England. There is also consider- able ecumenical interest, in the Churches of East and West. Theology is © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI 10.1163/17455316-00901008 A. Davison and J. Hughes / Ecclesiology 9 (2013) 106–113 107 always ecclesiology for these authors; it is also always political theology. The Church is Milbank’s and Ward’s social and political vision, but (to pick up another criticism) ecclesiology is not in this way transmuted into post- modern political theory or historical reconstruction, with no direct con- nection to the real institutional churches or contemporary political life. In The Future of Love: Essays in Political Theology Milbank moves away from the more theoretical engagement with figures from continental post- modern philosophy that has characterised his writing in recent years, and returns to the themes of political theology which dominated his work in the 1980s and came to fruition in Theology and Social Theory. This collection brings together essays spanning the last twenty-five years and shows the remarkable consistency of the radical British Catholic social vision which Milbank has developed and how this might apply to contemporary geo-political concerns. The title is significant, because it is a particular vision of love, or charity, that is at stake here; this is Milbank’s political, ecumenical, Anglican ecclesiology. Three essays in this collection respond to various criticisms of the ecclesiology of Theology and Social Theory: that it is too utopian, too dependent upon a contested historical narrative, and too totalising in its dismissal of its opponents. In ‘Enclaves, or where is the Church?’ Milbank argues for an ecclesiology beyond the caricatures of Catholic and Protestant polemic, that is neither immanently identified with the infallible institutional and juridical Church, nor transcendentalised into a purely ‘spiritual’ horizon for individuals without concrete social manifestation in this world. Rather the Church arrives ‘as time, taken in the mode of gift and promise’ through the liturgy and supremely the Eucharist (p. 133). Such an account of the Church as that which ‘is not, but has been and will be’ (p. 133) is not triumphalist, because it recognises that the Church is only ever partially realised, without however ontologising this tragedy. The Church is ‘some- thing like honour amongst thieves, love in brothels, wisdom in the councils of state, Utopia constructed on the ravaged hunting grounds … Here – nowhere yet – is the Church. Everywhere’ (p. 144). If Milbank is often criticised for his Romantic sympathy for medieval Christendom, ‘The Invocation of Clio’ offers a defence of the claims that ‘philosophy must be historicist’ and that theology cannot avoid narrative and symbol. This is developed through Plato and Augustine, and a critique of Kantian disinter- ested ‘angelic’ love in favour of an alternative social history of charity. ‘On Theological Transgression’, along with the essays grouped under ‘Theology and Pluralism’, clarifies Milbank’s rejection of Enlightenment .

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