John Milbank and the Theology of Religions

As is probably to be expected given Milbank's views on Christianity as a 'master discourse' placing all other narratives, he does not have a very positive view on the so called 'theology of religions'. This can be seen through an analysis of his essay entitled 'The End of Dialogue'.

Milbank’s essay ‘The End of Dialogue’ appears in the collection Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered which was designed as a response to the volume The Myth of Christian Uniqueness. In this essay, Milbank takes issue with several of the contributors to Myth and their attempts to render possible a dialogue between different religions. Milbank is critical of the notion that ‘religion’ is a genus which all the different traditions belong to. This (Western) assumption assumes that all the different traditions share similar characteristics and so there can be dialogue between them. On the contrary, argues Milbank, different traditions have construed the world in radically different ways which are ultimately incommensurable.

He acknowledges that various of the contributors have abandoned any attempts to ground dialogue in foundational theoretical reason (which as we have seen Milbank considers an impossibility) and have instead looked to practical reason as a means out of the impasse. Milbank, however, rejects this grounding in praxis as equally mistaken. Praxis does not offer an objective starting point for dialogue but in fact is as inseparable as theoretical reason is, from the tradition in which it originates.

The religions themselves embody certain social projects (i.e. they are ‘political’) in a manner which does not allow for the neat separation of a political realm from an individual sphere of religious experience. Furthermore, even if the pluralists were right, and these two realms could be separated and a common action agreed upon this would do nothing to help mediate the differences between the religions themselves.

Thus with the rejection of theoretical reason as a supposed objective meeting place for the religions, Milbank is able to dismiss such pluralist theologians as John Hick who posits a noumenal realm of pure ‘religious experience’ which bypasses all the supposedly external trappings of religion. With his rejection of the praxis solution it is theologians such as Paul Knitter and Rosemary Radford Reuther who fall under the axe.

Milbank further criticises the pluralists because he believes that their position is in fact detrimental to the social justice agenda they are keen to push. This is a rather damning indictment. Milbank charges that the pluralists are doomed to failure for their notions of justice remain tied to a Western Liberal-capitalist framework. Hence, ‘dialogue’ is not really of any relevance to the poor for whom it is necessary to create the conditions where they can enter conversations no longer as the poor.

Milbank charges that Rosemary Radford Reuther’s use of liberal discourse in speaking of justice for the Third World questions whether she (and others like her) truly desire a post-liberal outcome. Furthermore, if it were accepted that all cultures (the term by which Milbank designates the religions) had equal access to the truth then there would be no place for any criticisms of certain practices which these religions embody. Once again Milbank’s claim that the Church must of necessity provide criticism of other readings of Being is apparent here. He does not, however, deny that this criticism is coming from a non-neutral and inherently ‘biased’ position.

I'll post some more on this topic tomorrow, hopefully.