The newest trend in god-talk I’ve heard of calls itself “radical orthodoxy.” The tagline is deliberately provacative, an apparent oxymoron that demands more attention.
In many ways, radical orthoxy builds itself upon the edifice of another recent mini-movement, “postliberalism.” Proposed by George Lindbeck and several of his Yale colleagues, postliberalism positions itself as the resolution to the battle between classical liberalism–which imagines truth is something that can be written down into propositions–and modern romanticism–which imagines that the experience of truth can never be reduced to mere words. When in the hands of reductionists, classical liberalism devolves into legalistic rationalism and romanticism into easy sentiment.
Postliberalism offers the alternative of the cultural-linguistic approach. Here the life of faith is imagined as a language or culture that you must either grow up in or be assimilated into. Creeds simply lay out the grammar of any particular faith culture. If you and I speak different faith languages, perhaps some of our speech hits at identical realities, perhaps some of it does not. Although Lindbeck doesn’t take it this far, the question of universalism/inclusivism/pluralism is left delightfully unanswered. Theories about the commensurability of faith languages may help, but the question can only be finally resolved through ground level investigations of another’s faith language, a conversation between neighbors.
Radical orthodoxy is gleeful about the dissolution of truth claims into relativistic tribalisms. It takes Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic approach and builds defensive walls around it. If “truth” is just a matter of standpoints, then you can’t criticize what I see from my standpoint. Therefore, I can be as reactively orthodox in my god-talk as I like, and you can’t do anything about it.
Criticism of the anachronistic creedalism of radical orthodoxy are answered, “But that isn’t part of our faith culture,” or “That’s against the rules of our faith grammar.” Why? Because they said so.
I was hopeful that radical orthodoxy had found some way to ironically appropriate classic Christian orthodoxy. Instead, it is a willful naivete, a three-year-old covering his eyes so you can’t see him, a teenager catching his parent in a contradiction mid-lecture. It’s the treehouse that says, “No girls allowed.”
And what is radical about that? Something is understood to be “radical” if it abandons everything in order to get to the root of things. Once at the roots of things, you can reorder the universe, lining everything up according to your new perspective.
“Radical orthodoxy” uses an oversimplified, selective reading of postmodern philosophy to abandon troublesome questions about whether or not there’s something called “truth” that we can get to and communicate. I never get the impression that they’ve engaged these questions themselves; the postmodern turn is simply a convenient way to avoid these nagging questions.
It’s unclear how the Nicene Creed or Augustine is in any way “radical.” Self-styled radical Christian god-talk has turned to specific moments or texts and named them as authentic Christian god-talk. Candidates have included the “historical” Jesus, the early Church, the future kingdom of God, the ethical teachings of Christ, and different portions of Saul/Paul’s god-talk. They have then gone on, in different ways, to rewrite the meaning of (if not throw away) conventions like the Nicene Creed and Augustine’s god-talk.
Something being old does not make it radical. Radical orthodoxy’s embrace of fourth/fifth century Christianity can serve only to enforce (a long dead) Christendom, as the early creeds were state-sponsored moves to transition the late Roman Empire from paganism to Christianity. This would be the first time the embrace of the “golden age” of Constantinian Christendom was considered radical by anyone.
How does radical orthodoxy argue for its being “radical?” By saying, “But you haven’t met my Jesus.”
Perhaps I have, perhaps I haven’t. But perhaps you haven’t met mine. Or anyone else’s for that matter.
on my browser you left column is eating up half my screen
Should be fixed now (I hope).
Modern theology 101.
Prof. Chutney is teaching a crash course in twentieth-century theology over at My Irony. The introductory lecture compares and contrasts philosophy, theology, and mythology. A brief second lecture dismisses a lot of post-WWII theology as stagnant —…
Having only recently begun an exploration of the R.O. thing, at first blush it seems to be a “counter assualt on the intellectually barren philosophical culture base of our present society.”
Which is a tedious way of saying that presuppositions govern everyones thought and language, and presuppositions are received on authority, not empirically substatiated. R.O. seems to be reiterating this – but in a very complicated way. However, the audience to whom they are speaking has a fairly complicated thought structure, so perhaps this is unavoidable.
I agree that ‘fundamentalism’ (note the quotes) is often an escape from confronting real and difficult questions, but it seems that R.O. is tackling the philosophical arena where very few of us mortals really spend any conscious time.
It may be that their influence will be remedial over time, but that seems unlikely, if I read my Bible correctly.
As for “your” Jesus… well, the minute your relativize Him, you don’t really have Him, do you? The question isn’t “has Jesus come into your heart” but rather “have you come into HIs kingdom?”
If we could change just that about evangelicalsim, now that would be radical.
Chutney, you are absolutely right. Radical Orthodoxy is a sham. It attempts to appropriate postmodern theory and then completely contradicts this by affirming that ‘the Church’ (whatever that means) shows the ‘True’ narrative. It seems to think ‘pre-modern’ is essentially the same as ‘post-modern’. In other words, modernity was a nihilistic tragedy and we’d do better going back to the middle ages. To be post-modern is in their reasoning to reject modernity, and I’ve read Milbank claim only Christian theology is truly post-modern as it seeks reflection *after* secularism. True postmodernism (if that is not too anachronistic a term) is always an internal critique of modernism, not a fullscale rejection. It is modernism undoing itself, yes, but not the negation of all that modernity brought, which includes the ‘death of God’. Postmodernism bears no relation to ‘credal Christianity in the patristic matrix’ or whatever it is Milbank and co claim to believe. There will be no return to Cathedrals and the liturgy – thankfully – just as there will be no return to other premodern delights such as feudalism, rampant patriarchy, crusades, illiteracy, and so on.
what is wrong with cathedrals and the liturgy??
Who said anything is wrong with them?
When I say there will ‘thankfully’ be no return to ‘cathedrals and the liturgy’ I mean this in the following way:
Cathedrals to me represent a monument to the pre-modern ordering of the world, in which the ‘great and the good’ (i.e. a rich elite) financed the building of huge monuments ostesibly for God but arguably as a show of their own earthly might. Jesus’s response to such buildings, if Mark is remotely accurate, was one of disapproval and contempt:
‘As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”‘
(Mark 13:1-8 NRSV).
Then there is the liturgy, to me a collection of sycophantic nonsense for the patriarchal god of a past world. Seeing the liturgy as a solid basis for life in the (post)modern world is fatuous. And again, I bring up the reported words of that man from Nazareth, who the liturgy is supposedly about/for:
“When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Matthew 6:7-8 NRSV).
Have you actually read anything written by the theologians in the Radical Orthodoxy movement? There is absolutely nothing in your comments that suggests that you have read anything other than shoddy secondary critiques. If you are going to criticize it perhaps you should learn the first step to literary criticism: actually reading the text. A good place to begin is with Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory and then move on to the Radical Orthodoxy volume. Just reading the first few pages would have heped you in clearing your confusion in how they are using the word ‘radical.’
I’ve read the RO volume, thanks.
I agree with Milo. I’ve read James K. A. Smith’s introduction to RO as well as a couple of volumes in the series, and I can’t seem to recognize anything of that in these comments here.