Writer of Fancy: The Playful Piety of Jane Austen

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

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Politics: Sadeian liberalism

Milbank, summarizing and critiquing the work of Pierre Manent, suggests that “there was, from Machiavelli through Hobbes to Montesquieu and Hegel, a bias toward the primacy of evil.”  Honoring good was “the everyday unexceptional reality,” but not “the normative defining one.”  Instead, what was considered defining was “the exceptional suspension of normality in the moment of crisis that reveals a deeper truth and on that basis makes founding civil gestures.”  The truth is evident especially in “circumstances of pure anarchy and of threat to the city or its rulers; then evil assumes priority preciously in the face of violence.  All lies, subterfuges, and resorts to counterviolence then become justified.”  Manent, Milbank notes, “is the only liberal I have read who admits that liberalism is at bottom Sadeian and Satanic.”

Putting this together with the previous post, it’s curious how Milbank’s description of liberalism connects to Calvinism.  On the one hand, liberalism is voluntarist, which Milbank (not accurately, in my judgment) claims is also true of Calvin.  Yet, the voluntas that is central to liberalism is the free will of the individual human; liberalism is thus anti-Calvinist.  Yet, liberalism also picks up the Calvinist theme of depravity, though isolated from Calvinist emphasis on grace, special and common.  Liberalism, on Milbank’s description, is a mosaic constructed of incoherent fragments of Calvinism and anti-Calvinism.