John Milbank

Alasdair John Milbank (born 23 October 1952) is an English Anglo-Catholic theologian and is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham, where he is President of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy.

Milbank previously taught at the University of Virginia and before that at the University of Cambridge and the University of Lancaster.

He is also chairman of the trustees of the think tank ResPublica.

Milbank founded the radical orthodoxy movement.

His work crosses disciplinary boundaries, integrating subjects such as systematic theology, social theory, ethics, aesthetics, philosophy, political theory, and political theology.

Milbank was born in Kings Langley, England, on 23 October 1952.

He married Alison Milbank, also a lecturer at the University of Nottingham, in 1978.

A key part of the controversy surrounding Milbank concerns his view of the relationship between theology and the social sciences.

He argues that the social sciences are a product of the modern ethos of secularism, which stems from an ontology of violence.

Theology, therefore, should not seek to make constructive use of secular social theory, for theology itself offers a peaceable, comprehensive vision of all reality, extending to the social and political without the need for a social theory based on some level of violence.

(As Contemporary Authors summarises his thought, "the Christian mythos alone 'is able to rescue virtue from deconstruction into violent, agonistic difference.'") Milbank argues that metaphysics is inescapable and therefore ought to be critically dealt with.

Milbank is sometimes described as a metaphysical theologian in that he is concerned with establishing a Christian trinitarian ontology.

He relies heavily on aspects of the thought of Plato and Augustine, in particular the former's modification by the neoplatonist philosophers.

Milbank, together with Graham Ward and Catherine Pickstock, has helped forge a new trajectory in constructive theology known as radical orthodoxy – a predominantly Anglo-Catholic approach which is highly critical of modernity.

Milbank explicitly supports 'socialis[t]' social organization.

He has been described as 'communitarian'.

Milbank has described the "legislative change" to legalize same-sex marriage as a strategy for the "extension of a form of biopolitical tyranny", arguing that "[w]here the reality of sexual difference is denied, then it gets reinvented in perverse ways - just as the over-sexualisation of women and the confinement of men to a marginalised machismo. Secondly, it would end the public legal recognition of a social reality defined in terms of the natural link between sex and procreation."

He drew on James Alison to argue that "it is possible to recognise the legitimacy of faithful homosexual union without conceding that this is tantamount to marriage".

Milbank also describes the medical practice of assisted suicide as "the polite, liberal Holocaust".

He allegedly characterised "liberation, local, 'practice based' black, feminist, queer, trans, disability" theologies as "tiresome careerist and naturally elitist bollocks. But no one serious takes it seriously."

He first gained recognition after publishing Theology and Social Theory in 1990, which laid the theoretical foundations for the movement which later became known as radical orthodoxy.

The University of Cambridge awarded him a senior Doctor of Divinity degree in recognition of published work in 1998.

In recent years he has collaborated on three books with philosopher Slavoj Žižek and Creston Davis, entitled Theology and the Political: The New Debate (2005), The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic (2009), and Paul's New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology (2010).

Milbank delivered the Stanton Lectures at Cambridge in 2011.

Milbank's friendship and substantial intellectual common ground with David Bentley Hart has been noted several times by both thinkers.

Following his secondary education at Hymers College, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree with third-class honours in modern history from The Queen's College, Oxford.

He was awarded a postgraduate certificate in theology from Westcott House, Cambridge.

During his time in Cambridge he studied under Rowan Williams.

He then received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Birmingham.

His dissertation on the work of Giambattista Vico, entitled "The Priority of the Made: Giambattista Vico and the Analogy of Creation", was written under the supervision of Leon Pompa.

Paul Hedges of S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University stated in one 2014 Open Theology article that "John Milbank's Radical Orthodoxy employs styles of rhetoric and representation of the religious Other that have clear affinities" with "ideologies" of "religious extremism and fundamentalism".

Hedges wrote that Milbank's "rhetoric and judgements" suggest that "his theology is at best unhelpful, and at worst potentially dangerous."

Hedges simultaneously concedes that "a different approach can be detected in his most recent writings".

Nicholas Lash expressed reservations towards Milbank's views on the relation between "the sense of 'power' (Macht)" and "violence", and between "the Kingdom" and the Church.