ABSTRACT
Radical Orthodoxy claims to represent an * alternative vatic, "Platonic" tradition within British culture' (WMS, p. 2) in the tradition of Ralph Cudworth, and John Milbank suggests that Cudworth prefigures Balthasar in trying to restore a 'sacral cosmology* (RO, p. 19). Indeed, Milbank appeals to Cudworth and Henry More as having 'diagnosed' and 'resisted' the modern subject (Milbank, 2001a, p. 336). The inheritance of the Cambridge Platonists in Radical Orthodoxy is explicit and emphatic. It is perplexing, however, for the postliberal John Milbank to claim the lineage of these Cambridge men. Why does Milbank, whose central position is that only theology gives a true account of the real, who attempts to rid theology of any 'false humility', seek to link himself with a quintessentially liberal school like the Cambridge 4men of latitude' (Milbank, 1990, p. 1)? This essay explains why the famed * comprehension* or tolerance of the Cambridge Platonists is quite incompatible with the jusqu fau boutisme of Radical Orthodoxy, with its urgent appeal to challenge a world which is 'soulless, aggressive, nonchalant and nihilistic' (RO, p. I).1
