Radical, orthodox

The organizing aim of The Word Made Strange is to trace the theological roots of the turn toward language in contemporary thought while demonstrating the relevance of this turn for reenvisioning classical theological topics (God and creation, God the Son, the incarnation, the Holy Spirit, the Christian life and Christian story). As in Theology and Social Theory, Milbank opposes the establishment of an autonomous secular terrain independent of theology. Kant is identified as the source of this establishment, though Milbank focuses most of his energy not on the philosopher but on Kant's impact on theologians.

Milbank distances himself from a contemporary postmodern theologian like Jean-Luc Marion because even Marion--working in the tradition of Martin Heidegger--presupposes an autonomous human realm that exists prior to the reception of divine gift. Milbank makes it clear that the "postmodernity" of his own work is not to be linked to the Heideggerian and Nietzschean lines that have so influenced postmodern nihilists. Instead, he appropriates a set of Christian thinkers such as G. B. Vico, J. G. Hamann, J. G. Herder and F. H. Jacobi, who combine analyses of language and culture with trinitarian and christological presuppositions. Milbank draws on these thinkers in order to rethink Augustine's and Aquinas's understanding of how all things are related to one another and to God.

It's important to note that in appropriating the Augustine-Aquinas tradition, Milbank radically redefines Aquinas's "analogy of being," positing instead an "analogy of creation." According to Aquinas's analogy of being, every individual creature finds its purpose or true "being" in the pattern that exists in the mind of God. For Milbank, however, it is our ability to "create" that defines us as God's creatures, made in God's image. We might recall here his difference with MacIntyre on the question of a universal pattern of reason and law and his appropriation of Derrida's insight into the self-grounding character of creativity and power.

Especially intriguing is the way Milbank turns to language and aesthetics to rethink classical Christian doctrines. The most radical effort of this kind is his revision of the doctrines of atonement and incarnation. Seeking to avoid simply accepting these doctrines as propositions dropped from heaven, Milbank offers "intrinsic" reasons why they are central to Christian faith by way of an "ecclesial deduction" of their rationale. The incarnation, he argues, makes sense only if Jesus is understood to have founded a new community whose eschatological arrival is identified with the enactment of Christ's divine personhood in ecclesial worship and practice. In turn, the atonement is best understood if the efficaciousness of Jesus' death is defined in relation to the way he inaugurates the political practice of forgiveness as the mode of the church's social being. Milbank's focus on ecclesial practice in interpreting Christ's person and work indicates the significance of his doctrine of the Holy Spirit and specifically his understanding of the Holy Spirit as the church's reception of the Son's testimony about the Father.