 |
|
     |
|
|
|
As noted in a post earlier his week, Barth sees Kant's philosophical program as an opening for the biblical theologian to do his own thing on his own basis by his own methods, without paying much of any attention to reason. Milbank wonders if this doesn't leave a "certain liberal residue, a certain humanistic deposit." For Barth, it is possible to "recognize certain features of the created order - whether ontological or epistemological - in their pure finitude, without reference to any ratio of finite and infinite, as well as certain features of the fallen created order, which it nonetheless fails to decipher as fallen."
Milbank goes on,
"The danger here is, as is well exemplified in Barth, that if we fail to redefine being and knowledge theologically, theological difference, the radical otherness of God, will never bee expressible in any way without idolatrously reducing it to our finite human categories. Hence Barth is confined to a Christomonism, in which Christocentricity reduces to a focus on an enormous black hole, so radically other that it cannot be at all pictured or conceptualized as the new characteristic practice of the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And, worse still, Barth's continued and heterodox reduction of Christ's personal, and expressively imaging, character to a mere conveyance of the Paternal will betrays the fact that he projects God as the supreme instance of what a post-Kantian philosophy, as Fichte correctly realised, must logically understand human existence to be: namely, a willed positing of reality without other constraining grounds of necessity. Thus, while the Barthian claim is that post-Kantian philosophy liberates theology to be theological, the inner truth of his theology is that by allowing legitimacy to a methodologically atheist philosophy, he finishes by construing God on the model, ironically, of man without God."
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, September 12, 2007 at 01:42 PM
Permission is given to use material on this site, provided the source is cited, blog entries are republished in full, and the author is notified in advance.
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
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
