Customer Reviews

Being Reconciled (Routledge Radical Orthodoxy)

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As an avid reader of theology, this is the most difficult book I have read. Those not well read in theology and philosophy should begin elsewhere. It seems that Milbank writes so that readers will have to struggle with the book nearly as much as he has obviously struggled with the issues it presents. That said, this is a very profound work that opens many avenues of research. Milbank is committed to recasting the orthodox conception of God into our "postmodern" context. Thus he works from the assumption that the classical attributes of God (omniscience, omnipotence, immutibility, etc.) are true. In this work, Milbank explores the category of "gift" as a way of understanding God's interaction in the world, specifically in terms of forgiveness. The book moves from an understanding of evil as privation, to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and finally to the church and interaction with contemporary culture. Along the way, Milbank draws heavily on the work of many theologians and philosophers. I do not agree with all that is presented in this book, but it most definately caused me to think more critically about the positions I hold.

Rowan Williams writes an endorsement for this book calling it challenging and I think that that is about as accurate as it gets. This isn't so much a coherent theology as a provocative theology which has its faults, but is quite challenging. While for the most part it feels as if Milbank thinks the Fall happened, not in eden, but at the University of Paris in 1300, he still has some striking things to say about the present. Though I disagree with a good part of what he says (e.g., Christian pacifism is more violent than killing while defending your friends), there is a good part of it that is rightfully unsettling.

Like I said, this is not an absolutely coherent theology so it is easy to pick away at it, and Milbank is not the most lucid prose stylist so it is also easy to get frustrated with it, but it is worth the read. I wish Milbank would stick to working through texts, his strongest attribute as a theologian(e.g., Theology and Social Theory) and the strongest part of this work, but when he lets himself loose over the whole of Christian Tradition, he is still, as Rowan Williams puts it, challenging.

This book is very difficult reading, at least for me, but the subject matter is so important, that its worth the effort. John Milbank opens up many insights for further study by Christian Scholars. I must admit that some of it is over my head, I had to repeatedly refer to various dictionaries, and still did not find the needed definitions for some of the words used, in the text. Still I got the gist of most of what He is saying, I think? In the chapter on the Incarnation, He goes somewhat toward an answer to the vexing question of the impossible fact that according to Christian Teaching the Human Race did Fall,despite being in communion with the perfect infinite Creator. He goes into the possibility of forgiveness being possible because God did in fact become a Human Being in Jesus Christ, linking the forgiveness offered by God through the Deified Humanity of Jesus. This also has implications for Escatalogy, in how this might prevent the Fall from happening again a second time, a sort of second impossibility. Whew!!! Like I said this is tough going for just an interested layman, My understanding of Professor Milbank's book, may be way off. I intend to reread it several times, like I said the subject matter is worth such an effort. Thanks for listening. Sincerely Richard Woodhouse. Bradford PA