Hegel, Catholicity, or Death

John Milbank throws down a challenging gauntlet to Protestants in the Afterword to The Radical Orthodoxy Reader .  He explains Radical Orthodoxy as a continuation of the attack on extrinicism launched by the nouvelle theologie .  Barth, he argues following the critiques of Przywara and Erik Peterson, “ignored both the genuine ancient analogical and liturgical-pedagogical structures of Christian theology, rooted in a contemplative practice which transcended the reason-faith divide” and “remained essentially a prisoner of German idealism.”  (Note: This is precisely van Til’s critique of Barth!)   The failure of Barth’s attempt to resuscitate Protestant orthodoxy is “perhaps the death-knell of Protestant theology as such,” which, Milbank claims, has recently “enjoyed a merely cadaverous survival in the writings of figures who are already but little read on a global scale.”

One alternative, however, is a Hegelian one:

Citing Johannes Hoff, Milbank notes that Pannenberg, Moltmann, Jungel “have taken Barth back toward absolute idealism,” toward a Hegelianism that, Milbank thinks, “read rigorously . . . is atheistic.”  He admits that in some sense Radical Orthodoxy is “still trying do to what Hegel was trying to do” if that means “take more central account of history, society and poesis than was the case for pre-modern tradition.”  If, as Milbank expects, “Hegel fails” then “the game is up for a strictly speaking Protestant theology.”  A “return to the reformers is not an option” since they were already corrupted and compromised by the extrinicism of “proto-modern philosophy whose errors they but partially saw and which already contaminated their own Christological orthodoxy.”

A more fruitful way forward is that of Hamann, who “in effect re-Catholicised theology,” and thus offered a path that would retain analogy and participation and avoid fideism and extrinicism.

What do we say to that, then?  First, I don’t think that Milbank is entirely fair to the Reformers.  This is where Todd Billings’ work on the “gift theology” of Calvin is important.  He shows that Calvin was far more “catholic” than Milbank allows, and others have also emphasized the continuity between medieval and Protestant traditions.  So, a “return to the reformers,” admittedly critical and selective, remains a viable option, so long as it is a return to the Reformers as catholic doctors and pastors.

Second, I think the thrust of Milbank’s critique is right, and that insofar as Protestantism is corrupted by extrinicism, it is doomed.  And it is so corrupted in many respects – most obviously, perhaps, in the way the “covenant of works” doctrine often collapses into a doctrine of pura natura .  The path forward is to emphasize the creational, catholic, and liturgical dimensions of Protestantism at its best, to cultivate an ecclesial Protestantism of Word and Sacrament.