Radical, orthodox

In tandem with this point, major traditions within Christianity have (following Romans 1:18-22) presupposed that there is a universal law that all human beings perceive, a law holding them morally accountable for their actions, regardless of who they are ethnically or even religiously. Indeed, this point, which Christians share theologically with Jews and Muslims, stands in sharp contrast to all forms of contemporary historicism. One can affirm this point without positing an autonomous realm of the "secular" separate from God.

Milbank risks downplaying the reality of sin in the world and in the church, and the fact that God's justice (which is not a "totalizing reason" or an impersonal "legality," though it can be perceived as such by sinners) stands in absolute judgment of that sin. Augustine himself offered a complex analysis of distorted loves (cupiditas) alongside his discussion of the proper love of God and human beings (caritas). One need not be a dualist to recognize the power of sin and the fact that even though we live in the plenitude and power of Christ's resurrection, we still struggle with what St. Paul called the "old Adam" and God's universal judgment on him (Rom. 3:23).

Milbank offers a powerful vision of the Christian community as the place Christ's forgiveness is to be enacted. But as many who have lived and worked within Christian communities know, it is Christ who enables the church to be this kind of place, not the church in and of itself. Even if one holds to a strong sense of the church as a sacrament of Christ's presence, one must still affirm that it is Christ's incarnation that enables it to be a sacrament and his atoning death that validates the church's practice of forgiveness, not the other way around. Finally, it is the Spirit who breathes power into the church's witness to the Son, a Spirit that always transcends, even as she most intimately indwells, the church. In other words, Milbank's high ecclesiology would be much stronger if accompanied by an even bolder depiction of Christ's and the Spirit's work within and at times against Christian communities.

Reading Milbank is like having a conversation with a very bright new convert who is brimming with energy and a fresh way of seeing things. His theology is the most compelling I have encountered in a long time. But new converts have to face the complexity entailed in being human (even if redeemed) and sinful (even if forgiven). The rise of globalization and technological prowess does not simplify this complexity. Nor does the fact that some of Christian theology's deepest challenges in this century revolve not around secularism but conflicts among Christians and between Christians and those of other faiths.

Nevertheless, Milbank jolts mainstream theology out of complacency, forcefully suggesting that it has been neither robustly Christian nor rigorously intellectual in its engagement with modernity. He challenges us to think hard about what is most ancient and contemporary about being Christian.