ABSTRACT
As the subtitle to John Milbank's Theology and Social Theory suggests, his aim, and the aim of the Radical Orthodoxy movement as a whole, is to take us 'beyond secular reason'.1 Milbank claims that modern secularity is problematic both in itself and in its relation to Christian theology. It is problematic in itself because it is ultimately a self-destroying nihilism, an inherently unstable and impossible standpoint that results in postmodernity, itself a celebration of being as nothing or pure flux. In Milbank's view, modern secularity has the exact structure of evil; it is a turn to an independent self that is in truth, in itself and for itself, nothing. Milbank proposes as a remedy to this inner dissolution of modern subjectivity a post-postmodernism that is also the recovery of premodernism - a standpoint beyond secular reason. Modernity is equally problematic, for Milbank, from the perspective of Christian theology. Modernity is founded on an ontology of violence and power, in contrast to the ontology of peace that belongs to Christian orthodoxy. The efforts of modern theologians to mediate or find a place for modern secularity is in Milbank's eyes to make a pact with the devil; any allowance for modern secularity necessarily compromises the integrity and primacy of Christian theology (WMS, pp. 219-32).
