Radical Orthodoxy: Postmodern Critique of Modernity and Liberalism

This is a segment in my “Defining Radical Orthodoxy” series.

Rather than a “movement” with well-defined boundaries or doctrines, Radical Orthodoxy is more of an ethos—or, “sensibility” as it’s called—shared between many similar thinkers across Christian traditions.  James K.A. Smith, in his excellent book Introducing Radical Orthodoxy, helpfully highlights five common key themes to help understand the broad contours that shape the thought of Radical Orthodoxy (abbreviated as “RO”).

1) Postmodern: A critique of modernity and Liberalism.

Smith writes:

“[...] RO is a trenchant critique of modernity as a flawed, imploding project.  The key figures in RO see in modernity the institution of dualisms that are grounds for excluding the divine and the transcendent, hence modernity’s implosion, or what others have called the “end” of metaphysics. “The end of modernity,” Milbank argues, “which is not accomplished, yet continues to arrive, means the end of a single system of truth based on universal reason, which tells us what reality is like.”  Modern dualisms, such as the opposition between faith and reason, became the rules of the game in which Modern theology had to play. RO, instead of operating within those confines, questions the very rules of the game by calling into question the assumptions of modernity itself.

“[...] RO criticizes theological liberalism, which it views as accommodating theology to modernity, rather than grounding itself in revelation… RO is also a strident critic of classical political liberalism because of its assumptions regarding human nature (as in Thomas Hobbes, for instance) and its atomistic account of the social sphere.

“However, though RO is grounded in a critique of modernity, it is not antimodern. To be antimodern in the sense of Protestant fundamentalism is to be the simple negation of modernity and hence still within a modern paradigm. RO is critical of modernity in a way that seeks to circumvent its assumptions; thus, as some proponents of RO suggest, only RO is truly postmodern because it is precisely other than modern. “Hence Radical Orthodoxy, although it opposes the modern, it also seeks to save it. It espouses not the pre-modern, but an alternative version of modernity” [John Milbank].

“What this means is that Christian  theologians and theoreticians are, in a sense, empowered to call into question the foundational metaphysical, epistemological, and anthropological assumptions—or faith commitments—that undergird modernity. [...] In Milbank, for instance, this means calling into question the “ontology of violence,” which construes human intersubjective relationships as governed by power and war.  But he does more than just call this into question; he seeks to show the internal inconsistencies of such a construal.  Further, he then offers an “ontology of peace,” which considers human intersubjective relationships as grounded in a fundamental harmony.  This is confessedly and unapologetically grounded in a Christian, particularly Augustinian, metaphysics—which, of course, the modern academy claims must be excluded because it operates from a particular faith perspective.  But Milbank’s analysis has demonstrated that even these modern, supposedly “secular,” accounts of intersubjectivity are founded on particular faith perspectives.  The “fundamental shifts” that characterize modern, secular social theory—which Milbank argues are in fact simply modifications or rejections of Christian orthodoxy—are “no more rationally ‘justifiable’ than the Christian positions themselves” [Milbank].

“[...] Graham Ward’s analysis of secular utopias in the work and thought of Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier unveils the way in which their “cities of eternal aspiration”—whether Wright’s ideal community of Broadacres or Le Corbusier’s “Radiant City”—are in fact parodies of the eschatological city. As such, urban planners and architects become priests of this immanentized New Jerusalem, and city planning is, in fact, a covert natural theology. The proper response to this unveiling of the theologies at work in the secular city is a more radical and integral theological account of urban reality, particularly the nature of relationships within this city.”

I’ll followup with Smith’s remaining 4 key themes that help shape the thought of Radical Orthodoxy.