INTRODUCTION

Parts, Wholes, and Opposites:

John Milbank as Geisteshistoriker
John Bowlin

ABSTRACT
This special focus of the Journal of Religious Ethics begins with the mixture
of admiration and apprehension that John Milbanks use of historical materials so often inspires and moves to specific reflection on specific figures
and texts that appear in his grand story of secular modernity. Throughout,
the focus is not on his moral theology per se, but rather on the way he treats
certain figures, how he constructs his historical tale, and how his critical
enterprise and his normative proposals depend upon his historical efforts.
This introduction considers the difficulties of constructing and assessing a
Geistesgeschichte, the genre of historical writing that Milbank prefers.
KEY WORDS:

Milbank, history, modernity, Scotus, secularity

the historical content in John Milbanks various contributions to what is now commonly called Radical Orthodoxy.
At the same time, it is difficult to regard that content with admiration
unsullied by worry. In this respect, and in others, Milbanks efforts resemble Alasdair MacIntyres, whose work and example Milbank has explicitly emulated and self-consciously radicalized (1990, 3, 5). Both tell a
grand, seductive story about the origins, character, and travails of secular modernity. In each instance, the critical consequences of the tale told
and the moral and theological positions that emerge depend, in large
measure, on the historical inquiries they pursue, on the treatments they
give of figures, texts, and movements. Both use historical exegesis as the
medium of their normative efforts, and it is this way of proceeding that
generates both approbation and worry. In MacIntyres case, this dual response led to serious reflection on his treatment of specific figures and
texts. The publication of After Virtue in particular precipitated a number
of essays, volumes, and symposia on the virtues and vices of MacIntyres
historical exegesis.1 Milbanks efforts deserve a similar response, and yet

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO IGNORE

1 Representative examples include Madigan (1983), ONeill (1983), and Schneewind

(1983). For more recent responses see Horton and Mendus (1994).

JRE 32.2:257269.

C 2004 Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc.

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to date there has been no deliberate attempt to explore his use of historical materials and assess their place in his normative inquiries. A portion
of this deficit will be corrected later this year with the publication of a collection of essays edited by Douglas Hedley and Wayne Hankey, but only
a portion.2 For the most part, this collection addresses Milbanks use of
historical materials in inquiries that interest philosophical theologians,
metaphysicians, and philosophers of language. It pays little attention to
his use of historical texts and figures in his treatment of those issues
that matter most to moral theologians and religious ethicists. In addition, the essays in the Hedley and Hankey collection largely ignore the
critical and normative conclusions that follow from Milbanks historical
inquiries.
This special focus of the Journal of Religious Ethics is designed to respond to this need in our field. It begins with the mixture of admiration
and apprehension that Milbanks use of historical materials so often inspires and moves to specific reflection on specific figures and texts that
appear in his grand story of secular modernity. Throughout, the focus is
not on his moral theology per se, but rather on the way he treats certain
figures, how he constructs his historical tale, and how his critical enterprise and his normative proposals depend upon his historical efforts.
Milbank, of course, treats an extraordinary number of figures and texts,
more than could be considered in a small collection of papers. Only a few
are considered here and some of our choices will no doubt disappoint. Our
aim has been to mix things up, to consider Milbanks treatment of a few
well-known figures like Augustine and Kant, as well as few others, like
Ruskin and Hazlitt, who are known well by only a few. In each instance,
the contributors have tried to say something about the relationship between the grand narrative of secular modernity that Milbank develops
and the specific texts, figures, and episodes that are its parts. As this
relation between parts and whole seems to generate the most common
worries about Milbanks historical efforts, I will use the remainder of this
introduction to say something about that relation and those worries.

1. Antiquarians, Propagandists, and Red-Faced Snortings

Consider Richard Crosss account of the part Duns Scotus plays in the
story of secular modernity that Milbank recounts (Cross 2001). In that
story, the intellectual discourses of our secular age, the social sciences in
particular, are best regarded as a counter theology that presupposes a
collection of metaphysical missteps. One such misstep can be found, according to Milbank, in Scotuss treatment of the univocity of ens, bonum,
2

This volume is currently under review at Cambridge University Press.

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and other transcendental concepts. Following lines of interpretation plotted out by Etienne Gilson, Milbank contends that Scotus places God and
creatures under the same concept, ens, which he then predicates univocally of each (Gilson 1952). By these lights, ens, according to Scotus,
could be either finite or infinite, and possessed the same simple meaning of
existence when applied to either. Exists, in the sentence God exists, has
therefore the same fundamental meaning (at both a logical and a metaphysical level) as in the sentence, this woman exists. The same thing applies
to the usage of transcendental terms convertible with Being; for example,
God is good means that he is good in the same sense that we are said to
be good, however much more of the quality of goodness he may be thought
to possess. . . . And just as being and goodness are attributed in the same
sense to both infinite and finite, so they are attributed in the same sense
to finite genera, species and individuals (Milbank 1990, 302303).

It was, of course, Aquinass analogical alternative that Scotus rejects

and, according to Milbank, at our peril (Milbank 1990, 303). For Thomas,
transcendental terms apply properly and in themselves to God alone. To
creatures they apply only derivatively, analogically, and only insofar as
all things are said to participate imperfectly in those transcendental
attributes that only God fully instantiates.3 For Milbank, Aquinass account of creaturely participation and analogical predication guarantees,
as Cross puts it, both the qualitative difference and real resemblance
between God and creatures (Cross 2001, 14). This in turn prevents us
from thinking that ontology can proceed as a secular discipline independent of theology, precisely because we cannot specify ontologys subject, the ens commune that is proper to creatures, without referring to
theologys.
But in Milbanks story, Scotuss view prevails and various unhappy
consequences ensue. If ens is univocal, then God and creatures are best
regarded as the same kind of thing, one finite, the other infinite, but
united nevertheless as Beings in much the same way. The claim is not
that ens is a genus, but rather that it is distributed in an univocal fashion, having precisely the same meaning for every genus: in the aspect
of Being, things are in the same way (Milbank 1990, 303). As univocal distribution of being collapses the qualitative distinction between
God and creation that Christians have always sought to maintain, so too
it overturns the Thomistic relation between theology and metaphysics.
Theology is no longer independent and prior, ontology is no longer dependent and secondary. Rather as Scotus fixed a stable sense of the
meaning of Being, goodness and so forth he quite literally invented a
3 Cross quite rightly points out that while this is a plausible reading of Aquinass treatment of analogy it is not without its critics (Cross 2001, 13). See McInerny 1961.

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separation between ontology and theology (Milbank 1990, 303). As ens

is, on this reading of Scotus, something that is somehow prior to God,
something that God himself somehow requires (Cross 2001, 26), so too
God now becomes a subject of ontological inquiry quite independent of
the rule and measure of theology. With this outcome we are, according
to Milbank, one step closer to secularitys subtle counter-theology.
To this treatment of Scotus and to the normative conclusions that follow, Cross, the intellectual historian, replies with what are best regarded
as red-faced snortings (Rorty, Schneewind, and Skinner 1984, 8). The
substance of his complaint, reduced to its essence, comes to this: Milbank
doesnt do history. Rather, he writes theological propaganda in historical
tones. Its not Scotus who does the inventing here, but Milbank! Its not
historical scholarship that Milbank pursues as he explicates Scotuss
views, but something more akin to melodrama, to the fabrication of a
villain in the service of a moral and theological agenda.4 In defense of
his outrage, Cross catalogues Milbanks exegetical sins and summarizes
what he takes to be the consensus among medievalists about Scotuss
treatment of the univocity of transcendental terms. Contrary to what
Milbank assumes, Scotuss theory does not generate or justify any particular ontological commitments about the relationship between God and
the world. In fact, just the opposite is true. Scotus provides a semantic
theory about the extension of certain concepts that are in themselves
vicious abstractions, that do not correspond to any one extramental property, to neither Creator nor creatures (Cross 2001, 2021). Of course,
this semantic theory of transcendentals comes packaged with its own
collection of ontological commitments, but they are, according to Cross,
roughly equivalent to those that follow from the treatment of analogy
that Milbank admires and finds in Aquinas (Cross 2001, 21).
Crowning the victor in this exegetical contest does not concern me
here. Rather, I am more interested in the assumption Cross makes
throughout and the conclusion he defends toward the end: history and
theology are fundamentally different enterprises. Of course, theology is
unavoidably historical, and Cross concedes as much. It is, he says, a
traditional practice, a craft whose tools are the past (Cross 2001, 41).
Yet he seems to think that the theologians tools are forged and delivered by the historian. The historian tells us what the past is about and
the theologian draws the proper normative conclusions. In this division
of labor, the theologians judgments are ruled and measured, at least
in part, by the historians specification of the past. When theologians
4 Heroes too. He writes: It seems to me that the treatment of Aquinas is in many ways
just as cavalier as that of Scotus: in an anxiety to find a hero, the RO [Radical Orthodox]
theologians seem to construct an Aquinas more in their own image that in his (Cross 2001,
1011).

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leave their judgments ungoverned by historical truth, when they draw

hasty conclusions from a restricted reading of the past (Cross 2001, 41),
historians should object. And historians should cry all the louder when
theologians dress up those normative judgments in Clios robes, for in
that event it is likely that historys authority has been pinched to shroud
partisan, normative commitments. To change metaphors, in that event,
the tables will have been turned and normative commitments will rule
and measure historical inquiries. This, according to Cross, is precisely
what Milbank does, and this is how not to do theology (Crosss emphasis). Indeed, theology inattentive to the tutelage of history would just
be folly (Cross 2001, 41).
To the charge that his historical efforts are mere propaganda, that he
does theology under cover of the false authority of counterfeit history,
Milbank might reply with a complaint of his own. The distinction Cross
draws between history and theology is unjustified and it distorts the relations that are assumed to obtain between them. It either makes history
bold beyond warrant and theology unnecessarily humble, which is the
secular settlement that Cross seems to favor. Or, alternatively, it makes
history quaintly irrelevant and theology strangely imperious.5 If it is in
fact the case that historical inquiries are sharply divided from normative
pursuits, then, apart from mere antiquarian interest, it is not at all clear
what might move us to care about the past. Why bother with Scotus in
the first place if we must wait for the theologian to come along and tell
us whether anything of importance follows from his views?
So we have a red-faced snort (propagandist!) and an imagined reply
(antiquarian!), both of which depend upon a relatively sharp distinction
between the tasks of the intellectual historian and those of the theologian. At this point it is worth noting that, unlike Cross, the contributors
to this volume do not assume this distinction. At the risk of assigning
them views they might not share, let me say why that might be so.
On the one hand, Christian theology has always been done with a
backward glance, above all to the Law and the Prophets, the Gospels
and the Apostolic writings, but also to the efforts of previous Christians
to interpret this scriptural inheritance. The theologian proceeds historically or not at all. On the other hand, the historian proceeds normatively,
and in this context, theologically, or not at all. We are tempted to say
that the past can be known in itself and that we ask about its relation
to the present or consider its normative consequences only after it is
known on its own. But this is a temptation to resist, if only because it
is not at all clear that bits of the past can be identified, characterized,
and distinguished from other bits apart from their relations to other
5 Milbank, of course, defends a version of theological imperium, but his defense does
not depend upon a sharp distinction between historical and normative pursuits.

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things, above all their relations to our contemporary interests and concerns (Rorty, Skinner, and Schneewind 1984, 8). Return for a moment
to Scotus. Cross appears to assume that his views can be understood
apart from saying why they matter. But it is not at all clear that there
is something called understanding Scotuss treatment of the univocity
of being that can be distinguished from understanding that treatments
relation to other things that we care about: Aquinass account of analogy,
the doctrine of creation, the emergence of modernity, and so on. Since the
possible relations between some particular historical bit and our contemporary concerns and interests are vast, too complicated and too unwieldy
to guide any particular historical inquiry, choices have to be made. And
if this is right, then it is the normative commitments of historians that
generate their inquiries and shape their conclusions. Their commitments
direct them to some connections between past and present but not all,
to some topics and puzzles but not others, and to prefer some interpretations to others. In this respect at least, little distinguishes Milbanks
efforts from Crosss.
Suppose that something like this account of historical inquiry and
normative commitment is sound. Suppose the tasks of the intellectual
historian and those of the theologian cannot be neatly distinguished.
What follows? In particular, how might historians and theologians respond to each others efforts? Well, the first thing to note is that the substance of their occasional charge (propagandist!) and counter charge
(antiquarian!) will have to be rethought. If an antiquarian studies the
past without noting its relations to other things that we care about, then
nobody has succeeded in being antiquarian. If a propagandist specifies
the content of the past only as he spells out its various relations to certain
features of the present, then all history is propaganda (Rorty, Skinner,
and Schneewind 1984, 1011). For these complaints to amount to something useful they will have to be loaded with normative content. The
antiquarian will have to be recast as someone who studies the past by
noting its relations to harmless and uninteresting features of the present.
Point out other relations, vastly more interesting and full of promise for
amending our account of this or that historical bit or transforming our
conduct for the better, and the antiquarian gives us a dusty shrug. Hes
not interested. Similarly, the propagandist will be one who specifies the
character of the past by spelling out its relation to contemporary concerns
and interests that are, in some way, both serious and objectionable. Point
out what is objectionable about these concerns and interests, or direct
her attention to other, more important, more interesting relations between past and present, and she refuses. And, chances are, unlike her
antiquarian cousin, she is not content to let the matter alone. She will
want to do all that she can to convince us that her concerns and interests are the only ones worth having; the only ones that give us access

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to a past worth knowing. Still, on this account, the antiquarian and the
propagandist have made roughly the same mistake. Both approach the
past with the wrong set of cares, and both refuse to modify or abandon
the cares they happen to have in the face of good reasons to do so. In one
case the refusal is harmless, if not pathetic. In the other, the refusal is
provocative, if not dangerous.
Suppose Crosss complaint with Milbanks treatment of Scotus and
Aquinas is recast in this way. What then does it amount to? No doubt, for
Cross, Milbank remains a propagandist, but if we assume an improved
version of that charge, it cannot be because Milbank lets his theological
and normative interests influence his historical exegesis. There is no
escaping that influence, nor reason to want to. Rather, Crosss complaint
must regard the normative content of Milbanks efforts. Milbank lets
the wrong interests govern his exegesis, above all his desire to judge
theological ideas by the merit of their consequences. On this reworking of
Crosss complaint, Milbanks historical efforts fall short precisely because
he assesses ideas, texts, and figures only as he notes their effects upon the
origins and progress of modernity. No other interest, no other measure
of merit, seems to matter, not changeless truth, not local justification
(Cross 2001, 910). By these lights, Milbank rejects Scotuss treatment
of univocal being largely because of the secularizing consequences he
insists it has had. At the same time, he remains stubbornly blind to the
interests Scotus and Aquinas share, interests that, if taken seriously,
might cause him to recast his interpretation of their views and rethink
his assessment of their respective efforts. Indeed, Cross and others are
quick to point out that the Subtle Doctors various disagreements with
Aquinas are motivated by interests that are difficult to ignore, some
having do with the need to remain faithful to the theological practice of
the Church Fathers (Cross 2001, 21), some having to do with the difficulty
of asserting the radical contingency of creation in the philosophical idiom
of ancient Greece (Noone 1998). If Milbanks historical efforts fall short
and his conclusions collapse into propaganda, it is precisely because he
proceeds with a collection of interests that he refuses to revise in the face
of these good reasons.
Milbanks reply, if we can risk imagining one for him, might well be a
variation on the charge of antiquarianism. He might say that he attends
to the effects of texts and ideas on the emergence and progress of secular modernity precisely because modernity matters. It matters enough
to justify our exclusive interest in it. All other interests are, by comparison, trivial. The historical inquires and conclusions they generate are
quaint, perhaps interesting to a few, but hardly worth the effort. In defense of this reply, he might point out that his own historical efforts, not
just in the Middle Ages, but across Western intellectual history, confirm
this conclusion. On this account of that history, order can be found and

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significance specified precisely when lines from cause to consequence

are traced to and from secular modernity. But notice, at this point other
problems emerge. Indeed, it is this self-justifying character of Milbanks
grand tale and specific inquiries that makes them so difficult to evaluate.

2. Geistesgeschichte
Begin with the assumption that there is a big, important something
called secular modernity, a potentially dangerous cultural force. Its discourses and practices dominate our lives in ways both obvious and subtle, and because they do we have good reason to let our concern for it
dominate our historical inquiries. When we consider historical texts, figures, and traditions we ought to ask how they bear on the origins and
prospects of this big and important thing. When our inquiries conclude
and we say what these texts, figures, and traditions are about, it will be
their various relations to secular modernity that specify their character
and significance. If, for example, we want know what Aquinas and Scotus said about divine predication, the doctrine of creation, and the wills
freedom, we will have to say how these matters bear on the progress of
secular modernity. In turn, our conclusions about these historical figures
and views will be justified, in large measure, by their ability to contribute
to the story of modernitys progress, just as our assumption that secular
modernity is big, important, and ought to dominate our inquiries will be
justified by the fact that these important figures and views, interpreted
in a certain way, contribute to that story.
Suppose we approach every other text, figure, and tradition with the
same assumption, the same purity of heart. Telling the story of secular
modernity is what matters most, and individual texts, traditions, and
figures will come to matter only as they find a place in that story and confirm that assumption. Texts and figures that do not find a place will not
matter, at least not much. They will not warrant our attention, at least
not for long. And those that do matter warrant our attention precisely because they contribute to that story. Some, like Scotus, contribute by providing key resources for the emergence of secular modernity. These are
the villains. Others, like Nietzsche and his progeny, provide the distinctions and arguments that lead to modernitys unraveling. These are the
heroes. Others still, like Augustine, provide a vision of human life that
the discourses and practices of secular modernity can neither corrupt nor
imagine. These are the prophets of the other city, the other country, the
only alternative to secular reason after its nihilistic implosion (Milbank
1990, 434). Of course, interests other than telling the story of modernitys progress might also move us to care about these figures and texts.
And, with different interests, different interpretations might emerge.
But these interests and interpretations can be dismissed as quaintly

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antiquarian precisely because they ignore what matters mostthe story

of secular modernity.
A big, sweeping, single-minded story about the origins and prospects
of something big and important like secular reason, a Geistesgeschichte
of this sort, is obviously self-justifying (Rorty 1984, 57). Figures and
texts are identified, interpreted, and their importance specified only as
they are situated in the dramatic narrative of secular modernity, and
our attention to modernitys progress is justified by the fact that so
many figures and texts play a role in that drama. It is a closed loop and
its meant to be. Indeed, a good Geisteshistorikerand Milbank stands
among the bestis acutely interested in keeping the loop closed. Why?
Because in large measure his goal is to justify the image and importance of the grand thing whose story he tells, which in turn justifies
certain attitudes toward that thing, certain problems and questions that
regard it, and certain ways of conceiving a disciplines response to it.
Put another way, every good Geistesgeschichte has a moral and every
Geisteshistoriker is a sage (Rorty 1984, 5960). His tale is as big and
grand as its object, and his mastery of its logic and his cunning in the
telling justifies his wise pronouncements. In Milbanks case, the story
of secular modernity is designed, not so much to secure the reality and
importance of secularitythis he assumesbut rather to justify certain
judgments and attitudes. Secular reason is best regarded as a violent,
self-destructive counter-theology that Christians ought neither sympathize with, nor accommodate themselves to. They should, rather, pit their
own grand account of the final causes at work in human history against
its nihilistic logic. With a cast whose principal characters are Christ, the
church, and the saints, they should narrate a counter-history, a drama
of salvation so fundamentally different from the familiar story of secular
modernity that its strangeness will stand out. Indeed, this is the task of
theology: to articulate Christian strangeness not just as difference, but
as the difference from all other cultural systems, all other histories and
ontologies (Milbank 1990, 380381).
But of course, the moral of a Geistesgeschichte is only as convincing as
the tale told, and the tale is convincing only when its parts, the texts and
figures framed in its narrative, are presented in a convincing manner.
This is, no doubt, a loose standard of assessment, if only because getting
the parts right, the parts that make up the history of the grand thing, is
not what the Geisteshistoriker is after. It is not as important as spelling
out the whole of that history and then fitting the parts into it. In fact, one
doesnt read a Geistesgeschichte for an accurate account of those parts, or
at least one shouldnt. Rather, one reads the grand tale for the moral at
the end, for the experience of taking on certain passions, attitudes, and
judgments toward the object of the tale. One reads a Geistesgeschichte,
in other words, for inspiration and self-justification (or conversion, as

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the case may be) (Rorty 1984, 57, 73). Other genres of historical writing
are more likely to fulfill our desire for reliable accounts of the parts.
Historical reconstructions can give us interpretations of texts in their
own context and of figures in their own idioms. Rational reconstructions
can help us imagine what figures might say to matters that concern us
now, in our context, and how texts might be recast in the concepts we
now employ (Rorty 1984, 4956). Either approach can give us a better
sense of the parts that make up a Geistesgeschichte than whatever the
Geisteshistoriker happens to say about them.
Still, a tale well told will not have parts that rebel too forcefully against
the whole, and parts might rebel, not on their own, but through our reconstructions of them. A good historical reconstruction might show that
a text or figure set in its own context was not about that, not about the
career of the grand thing at the center of the Geisteshistorikers tale. Alternatively, a good rational reconstruction might convince us that some
text or figure cannot be easily re-educated to address the questions the
Geistesgeschichte inspires us to ask. Both sorts of inquiries, or some interesting combination of each, might cast doubt on the merit and moral
of the grand story and on the substantial reality of its object. Both might
encourage us to wonder what the fuss was all about and to look to some
other Geistesgeschichte for inspiration and self-justification.
In one way or another, three of the four essays in this focus generate worry about Milbanks grand metanarrative along one of these lines.
James Wetzel argues that Milbank can enlist Augustine against the secular conceits of our age only as he ignores Augustines ambivalence about
moral perfection in the saeculum and overlooks the inconsistency between this ambivalence and his critique of pagan virtue. He concedes
that Milbanks Augustine, the one who yokes his critique of pagan virtue
to his conception of secularity, is in fact roughly the Augustine we find
in book xix of City of God. At the same time, he argues that by collapsing
sin into secularity Augustine compromises his own hard-won insight into
the thoroughly ambiguous character of moral and political relations in
the age between Christs ascension and return. To resolve this confusion
and secure this insight, Wetzel offers an Augustinian reconstruction of
Augustine, one that insists upon the unresolved character of love in time.
With this done, every effort to strip away the virtues of our enemies and
expose their vices falls victim to this Augustines thick expectation of
ambivalence (276).
Jennifer Herdt asks whether the portion of Milbanks tale that regards
the rise of modern political economy is in some respects too tidy and
whether the critique of sympathy and benevolence that follows in turn
is a bit too hasty (304). As everyone knows, Hobbes places the fear of
death and the individuals desire for power at the center of politics, while
his critics, Hutcheson and others, deny that human action is essentially

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self-interested and insist instead that our natural sympathy generates

and harmonizes human society. Both camps de-ethicize agency precisely
because both locate the sources of human action in a collection of instincts
that are at once natural and cut off from the ends that might transform
and perfect human nature. At the same time, both assume that selfinterest exhausts our public motives, which in turn reduces Christian
charity to private benevolence and local sympathy. Its a familiar story
and by Herdts lights a bit too seamless. By looking closely at modern
understandings of sympathy and responses to the problem of poverty,
she hopes to complicate the tale told and the moral drawn. In particular,
she hopes to show that instinct did not ultimately displace virtue, any
more than political economy obliterated the Christian sphere of public
charity (304).
David Craig wonders whether Milbank forces John Ruskin to perform a role in the story of secular modernity that he is ill fit to play. By
Milbanks lights, Ruskins social criticism comes loaded with opposing
visions of the whole of life, oppositions that explicate and justify his own
largely aesthetic distinction between secular modernity and Christian
charity. Like Augustine, Ruskin is, for Milbank, a prophet of charitys
beautiful order, an order that stands as a strange alternative to the fractures and contests of the secular city. But Craig isnt so sure. On his
reading of these texts, Milbank paints too beautiful a picture of Ruskins
corpus, one that ignores those aspects of Ruskins thought that conspire
against the distinction between charity and modernity, theology and secular reason, beautiful order and fractured difference (32728).
The last of the essays, Gordon Michalsons contribution, casts doubt
on the persuasive power and normative consequence of Milbanks Geistesgeschichte, not through a consideration of specific parts, but through a
look at alternative wholes. The post-Kantian portion of Milbanks grand
narrative is designed to show that secular reasons autonomy is an invention, not a discovery, that its normative status is an ideological hoodwink,
and that its supposed compatibility with Christianity is in fact the undoing of true devotion to Christ. As post-Nietzschean nihilism is both consequence and critic of this autonomous sphere of secular rationality, the
Kantian tradition of modern philosophy carries the seeds of its own undoing, which in turn opens the way to the moral of Milbanks tale. The Christian metanarrative offers the only alternative to Nietzschean nihilism.
But Michalson isnt convinced. James Edwards and Hans Blumenberg
show us that there are other ways to interpret the Kantian-idealist heritage, other morals to draw about its consequences and prospects. These
alternatives encourage Michalson to wonder whether the moral Milbank
draws actually follows from his account of that heritage. He wonders,
that is, whether that account is unimaginable apart from a moral that
Milbank assumes from the start. And of course, if this hunch is sound,

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then autonomy is smothered in its crib, and alternatives to Milbanks

position appear only in the terms that he has prescribed for them (379).
Of course, this is, as I have said, precisely what a Geistesgeschichte
is supposed to do. It is supposed to disregard every other story; it is
supposed to dominate its parts. So whats the problem? Why do these
worries matter?

3. No Other City
They matter for at least two reasons. First, a Geistesgeschichte justifies
the image and importance of its object and generates certain attitudes
toward that image only as it persuades us to disregard every other story
and overlook every part that conspires against the whole. It succeeds
only as this impression of story and object is effortlessly maintained,
and the essays in this focus work to expose Milbanks efforts to sustain
this impression of secular modernity. Modernity, as Milbank sees it, is a
grand and important something that requires a big and compelling story
of its birth, life, and decay. If this story fails to persuade and inspire,
either because its parts rebel or because competing wholes emerge, then
it is not at all clear that the grand thing exists, at least as Milbank
imagines it. This does not necessarily mean that there is no such thing as
the modern period with certain features that distinguish it from earlier
periods. Rather, it means that grand narratives do very little to help
us get a handle on those features, on how they line up in relations of
similarity and difference to features in other periods. And, of course, if a
grand story cannot sustain for us the existence of modernity as a unified
something, then nor can it sustain in us a unified and coherent collection
of attitudes toward it. Ambivalence will be the norm.
Second, these worries matter because they cast doubt on one of the
distinguishing features of our times: our tendency to generate theological identity and secure theological commitment in reaction to the image
of secularity found in some grand story of the modern, either Milbanks
or some other. If, however, there is no grand, unified something called
secular modernity, then the identity encouraged is false. Or, at the very
least, it rests precariously on false footing. Christians and other biblical
theists are, it seems, easily tempted by this reactionary construction of
identity and commitment, if only because they too have a grand story
to tell and it is always tempting to pit that story, that account of all
things, against some other. But they should resist this temptation, this
culture war seduction. They should not give up their own grand narrative, but nor should they secure commitment to it by drawing contrasts
with some false, spectral opposite. Rather, they should recall that their
own story begins with creation and ends in redemption and thus admits
no alternative of its rank, only parts of its whole. As Wetzels Augustine

Introduction: Parts, Wholes, and Opposites

269

insists, for Christians there is but one city: morally ambiguous, divided
by difference, making its way in time (276).
Put another way, in this theological context a compelling account of
modernity, whether some variation on Milbanks tale or some different
variety altogether, cannot be an account of secularity. It cannot assume
the biblical narrative as its opposite, if only because Christians will be
obliged to find a place for both this account and its object in the story they
tell of fallen natures gracious redemption. And even if no such account
of modernity emerges, the theological task remains roughly the same.
Specific features of the modern period, some secular and some not, will
have to be fit into that story, and this task can be done with confidence
precisely because Christians assume, as Herdt reminds us, that God
can never be shut out of Gods own unfolding of creation (302).

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