ABSTRACT
It is a primary task of theology in every age to rethink the object of faith and to do so in terms which are authentically contemporary - and therefore contingent. Paradoxically only in this way can revelation be truly revealed, expressed in a living tradition that is rooted in the evolving realities of time and space. John Milbank belongs to a younger generation of theologians whose work represents the re-figuring of tradition in the light of perspectives which belong to the new scepticism of the postmodern movement in philosophy. John Milbank's uncritical presupposition that there is an irreducible opposition between radicalised semiological difference on the one hand and a stubbornly Aristotelian-Cartesian view of substance on the other, is one such philosophical commitment. His philosophical obligations serve to construct an essentially monological and heroic view of culture. Furthermore, the narrative which John Milbank seeks persuasively to perform is a distinctively Christian semiosis of non-violence.
