Though the scenes are similar, there is a significant reversal involved.  Solomon receives spices, gold, and jewels; he is the recipient of honor and treasure from the Gentiles.  Hezekiah shows off his spices and treasures to the Babylonians, and the Lord threatens that soon the Babylonians would plunder those very treasures, and receive tribute from a conquered Israel.

Those two brief references to spices tell the whole story of the Davidic dynasty.

Does this mark out a progression in Israel’s history with Yahweh?  Is the canon as a whole following the sequence of the allegory of Ezekiel 16, where Yahweh first adopts Israel as daughter and then takes her as bride?

And, is the repeated “sister-bride/daughter-in-law” of the Song of Songs a hint of Trinitarian theology – a clue that Yahweh is to Israel Father and Brother, adoptive Parent and Bridegroom?

More theologically, though, the coming of daybreak means new life and breath for the world.  As the sun causes the shadows of darkness to flee away, so the breezes breathe new life into the world.

Morning breaks, every morning, like the first morning.

In her enticing beauty, the bride is similarly dangerous, though the singer of the Song of Songs seems to be enjoying being conquered more than Abimelech did.

Pomegranates are also associated with the land.  The spies bring back grapes, figs, and pomegranates (Numbers 13:23), and the people complain that Moses has not taken them to a land of pomegranates (Numbers 20:5).

Given that the priest’s approach to the Most Holy Place is an approach to the throne of Yahweh, and symbolically to the land of Eden, it is appropriate that the priest be decorated with pomegranates.  Aaron is a pomegranate tree, flourishing and bearing fruit in the house and land of Yahweh.  So is Christ, and so, in Christ, are we.

But the land also contains seven fruits – wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, honey (Deuteronomy 8:8) – so a new creation awaits once the Canaanites are destroyed.

John Paul II suggests that the “redemption of the body” gives us this access.  If it were not for the redemption of the body, we’d be hopelessly caught in the historical state of humanity in sin, incapable of reclaiming innocence.

Eschatology offers access to protology.

The reality of mutual reciprocity is evident in the body, and in the specific forms of the bodies of male and female: “Exactly through the depth of [Adam's] original solitude, man now emerges in the dimension of reciprocal gift, the expression of which – by that very fact the expression of his existence as a person – is the human body in all the original truth of its masculinity and femininity.  The body, which expresses femininity ‘for’ masculinity and, vice versa, masculinity ‘for’ femininity, manifests the reciprocity and the communion of persons.  It expresses it through gift as the fundamental characteristic of personal existence.”

The similarity and difference between male and female bodies, their created suitability and “fit,” points to the fact that male and female are created to give themselves to one another.  And this is a theistic proof of sorts:

Being a body, which necessarily means being a male or female body, thus witnesses “to creation as a fundamental gift.”  Because it witnesses to creation as gift, it also witnesses to “Love as the source from which this same giving springs.”

This is superior to many other theistic proofs because it arrives at specifically Christian description of God.  The proof from motion gets us to an “unmoved mover,” and the proof from cause to an uncaused cause.  John Paul’s “proof” moves from the bodily structure of man as male and female to creation as a whole as gift to the reality of a Giver who gives in love.  The God at the end of this chain of reasoning is no impersonal force but the giving God of Scripture, the Father of Jesus, the God who is Love.

At the same time, sexual intercourse represents a profound alienation: “In this act, a human being makes himself into a thing, which is contrary to the right of human nature to one’s own person.  This is possible only under one single condition: when a person is acquired by another in a manner equal to a thing, correspondingly the former acquires the latter, for in this way the person gains itself back again and reconstitutes its personhood. . . . this personal right is nevertheless at the same time also a right in the manner of a thing,” and this is clear since “when one part of the couple has run away or has given itself into the possession of another, the other spouse has the right at any time and without any condition to take it back into his or her power like a thing.”

Sex is not self-gift, but only the gift of sexual organs for use; it is self-alienation, not self-gift.  A sexual ethic more deeply formed by modernity is hard to imagine.

This can only lead to sexual exploitation: “This neo-Manichaean culture has led, for example, to human sexuality being regarded more as an area for manipulation and exploitation than as the basis of that primordial wonder which led Adam on the morning of creation to exclaim before Eve: ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.’”

The Manichaean label is counter-intuitive: How could a culture so devoted to the body be anti-body? Counter-intuitive, but correct.  John Paul II discerned that we cannot really affirm the value of bodies unless we at the same time recognize that we are more than bodies.

“Cause” is reduced to efficient cause.  Purposes and ends might be nice for morals and literature.  But they are not scientific, not knowledge strictly speaking.

Bacon is picking up on the biblical theme of dominion in the last of these ambitions, but he links this with an optimism about human uses of power that is not biblical at all: “Only let the human race recover that right over nature which belongs to it by divine bequest, and let power be given it: the exercise thereof will be governed by sound reason and true religion.”  Apparently, the sheer fact of dominion will overcome original sin with the light of reason and religion.  Such is the pure empire of science.

How do we reach maturity in Christ?  Paul gives us a clue when he quotes from Psalm 68, a Psalm of ascension.  The Psalm begins as a plea for the Lord fight for David.  He calls on Yahweh to arise, scatter His enemies, and make them melt like wax before the fire.  Yahweh responds.  He marches through the desert from Egypt, and ascends through the parched land toward a land of milk and honey, with Israel joining the procession of the King to His throne-land.

The ascent in Paul’s quotation is, in the Psalm, the ascent of Yahweh to Sinai.  “The chariots of God are myriads,” David sings, “thousand upon thousand.  The Lord is among them at Sinai, in holiness.  Thou hast ascended on high, Thou has led captive thy captives.”  It is from Sinai that Yahweh gives gifts to men, the gift of the tabernacle, the gift of the covenant, most especially the gift of Torah.

Paul, however, shifts the emphasis.

In the Psalm, David celebrates the gift of the law from Sinai, but when Paul quotes the Psalm, he celebrates Jesus’ gift of people – pastors and teachers, evangelists and others who equip the saints for the work of service, who train the saints for worship and ministry.  How do we reach maturity?  Not through the law, Paul insists, but through the ministry of pastors and teachers filled with the Spirit of the ascended Christ.  What the law could not do, God has done in Jesus, and through those whom Jesus sends.

Midway through the Psalm, though, it becomes clear that David is not just reflecting on an historical event, but describes something that recurs.  The nations tremble because “they have seen Your procession, O God, the procession of my God, my King, into the sanctuary.”  Not only from Sinai, but from His throne in the temple in Jerusalem, the ascended Lord gives gifts to men.  David sings about two mountains, Sinai and Zion, and from both King Yahweh receives and distributes gifts.

When we read the Psalm through the lens of Ephesians, it throws startling light on what is happening in our worship.  Jesus ascended once, and gives gifts, but Jesus also continues to give gifts every time we gather here as God’s temple, at the Lord’s table.

What gifts?  Certainly He offers Himself.  Certainly He gives the gifts of bread and wine, the gifts of God for the people of God, holy things for the holy ones.  But Paul wants us to see too that when we assemble to the heavenly Zion, the ascended Jesus is also giving people.  Each week, as we share bread and wine, Jesus is giving Himself to us, but just for that reason, He is giving us to each other.  Each week, we are renewed in communion with Jesus, but just for that reason, also in communion with one another.

Paul wants the Ephesians to grasp Christ’s love in four dimensions, so that “you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (3:19), and in Pastor Purcell’s sermon text today Paul talks about the process of maturation by which we grow up to “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (4:13).

Underlying this is what Paul says about Christ Himself in Colossians.  It pleased the Father, he writes, “for all the fullness to dwell in Him” (Colossians 1:19), and he adds later that “all the fullness of Deity dwells [in Christ] in bodily form” (2:9).  Because the body is Christ’s body, we the body share in the fullness of God that dwells in the Head.  In some astonishing fashion, as Christ fills and completes us, so we the body of Christ complete Christ, who without us would be a bodiless Head, a brideless Husband.  For Jesus too, it is not good for man to be alone.

As Paul makes clear, this doesn’t happen all at once.  It happens over time.  Through the gifts that the ascended Christ gives to His church, Jesus is making the church what in fact it is, the mature fullness of the one who fills all things, the one in whom the fullness of God dwells.

Since maturing to become the fullness of Christ is a process in time, it is not automatic.  We mature only if we put into practice Paul’s exhortations: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. . . and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us.”  Our sins inhibit the growth and maturation of the body, and we reach our high calling only as we walk in continual confession and repentance.

The first wise serpent in the Bible is a deceiver.  Is Jesus encouraging His disciples to use deception to protect themselves?  In part, the answer is qualified Yes.  Jesus wants us to let our Yes be Yes, and our No No.  He exhorts us to straightforwardness.

But there are times when deceit is righteous.  Paul escaped the ethnarch Aretas in a basket let down through a window in the wall of Damascus, and we can be certain that he didn’t inform Aretas of his plans beforehand.  Deception is a tactic of war, and the apostles were at war.  When the disciples leave a town where they’ve been persecuted, they don’t leave a forwarding address.  They slip out and go somewhere else.  They might wear disguises, as Calvin had to do at times when he traveled.

Behind these tactics of deception is an eye-for-eye justice.  The serpent deceived Eve, and as a result Adam and Eve were cast from the garden.  It’s just that Satan the deceiver be deceived.  We receive Satan and Satanic oppressors as a strategy of protection, but also as an act of just retribution against Satan.

But there is more to the wisdom of serpents.  Solomon observed that one of the four small things that are “exceedingly wise” was the lizard who can be grasped with the hands “yet is in kings’ palaces” (Proverbs 30:28).  Reptiles are shrewd in their ability to slip into places designed to keep them out.  This is the wisdom of Jesus’ serpentine disciples.  Persecutors lay hands on believers, drag them before kings and governors, and – magically – Christians have slipped into king’s palaces, ready to speak a word inspired by the Spirit.

Through persecution, the mission to Israel will become a mission to the Gentiles.  The Jews will not only “scourge you in their synagogues,” but will bring them “before governors and kings” (vv. 17-18).  Without persecution, Jesus’ disciples would never gain access to Gentile rulers.  The Twelve don’t have to prepare persuasive speeches; the Spirit will testify to the Gentiles through them (v. 20).  So long as Jesus’ disciples remain as innocent as doves, their Lord will give them surprising access, and Spirit-filled speech, before the highest of men.

Certainly the first.  But the second is also true.  According to 1 Corinthians 12:12, “Christ” names the head-and-body totus Christus, and Christ-head without a body would be a monstrous Christ.  A Christ without a body would be a dis-embodied Christ.

It seems a perichoretic relation: Christ is filled with all the fullness of God, and fills God; we are brought into that relation of mutual indwelling, so that as we are filled with Christ in whom the fullness dwells, we also fill and complete Christ.

Paul had pre-refuted this later development by giving pleroma an earthly address and a history.  The body, He says, is the pleroma of Chrit (Ephesians 1:23), and this fullness is not achieved all at once but over time, as we all mature into the “fullness of Christ” (4:13).  Gnostics looking for the pleroma did not need to ascend beyond this world or the body, because the fullness was right there in front of them, in the body of the one in whom all the fullness dwelt in bodily form.

The proverb is structured in parallel:

In the triumph of the righteous

Much glory

But in the rising of the wicked

Hide men.

“Triumph” doesn’t quite capture the force of the Hebrew verb ‘alatz.  It is used only a handful of times in the Hebrew Bible.  Hannah “exults” in Yahweh because the Lord has vindicated her by giving her a son, vindicated her against her rival wife; she exults because the Lord has raised up her horn (1 Samuel 2:1).  1 Chronicles 16:32 calls on the fields to “exult” before the Lord.  Exultation is connected with victory (Psalm 5:8-12 [v. 11]; 9:2, with the context of verses 3f.; 25:2; 68:1-3), but the word doesn’t refer to the victory itself so much as the praise and emotional high that comes with victory.  “Boast” would not be a bad translation, and that brings Proverbs 28:12 directly into contact with Paul’s repeated references to the “boasting” of the righteous (Romans 15:17; 1 Corinthians 1:31; 2 Corinthians 10:17; Galatians 6:14).

When the righteous exult in victory, the proverb says, there is glory.  This particular word for glory is first used with reference to the “beauty” of priestly garments (Exodus 28:2, 40; cf. Psalm 96:6), and can mean not only physical, external beauty but the “glory” or honor that we pay to God in our praise (Psalm 71:8).  In context, the glory that accompanies the exaltation of the righteous is contrasted with men going into hiding when the wicked arise.  That implies that glory refers to something visible, evident.  When the righteous are victorious, it is safe to bring glory, talent, gifts, treasures out in the open.

When the wicked achieve primacy (are raised up on high, as stars in the heavens), then it is dangerous for glory to be seen.  Men go into hiding.  This is an important dynamic of political history.  Wicked rulers suppress talent and energy by pushing men into hiding.  They may hope to achieve glory, but they achieve the opposite – a drain of glory.

The Proverbs specifically says that adam hides when the wicked rise up, and that takes us back right to Genesis 3.  Adam went into hiding when he gave way to the serpent’s temptation.  The serpent, the wicked one, was raised up above him, and instead of exulting over the serpent, he hid from God.  Throughout the old covenant, the wicked are continuously rising and the righteous are hidden.  In Jesus, however, the righteous one finally exults in triumph over all His enemies.  He is raised up, and Adam comes from hiding to share in the glory of the Last Adam.

PROVERBS 28:13

Again, the proverb is structured in parallel:

Whoever hides his rebellion

Succeeds not

But whoever makes known and forsakes

Finds compassion.

Another proverb about hiding, though using a different verb.  The word for “transgression” means “rebellion” or trespass, and describes not inadvertent sins but willful trespasses against others.  Hiding a rebellion might take several forms: It might be that one rebels, and then tries to cover up the rebellion; or, one might promote covert rebellion, hiding the rebellion even as the rebellion is taking place; or, one might hide rebellion within, in the heart, while making a hypocritical show of deference and submission.  Any sort of hiding, though, is counter-productive.  God sees the heart, and He sees the secret things; everything is open and laid bare before Him, and so we can never hide rebellion.

And the Lord frustrates rebels: They do not succeed.  Perhaps for a time, perhaps for what appears to be a long time.  Even when they look like trees, they are grass and will fade away.

Importantly, the contrast in the verse is not between rebels and non-rebels.  Like a good Calvinist, Solomon assumes that everyone is a rebel.  The only difference is what one does with the rebellion.  And, paradoxically, the way to success is uncovering the rebellion.  It seems that the best way to escape the consequences of rebellion is to keep it in hiding forever.  Solomon says, “Cause it to be known.”

Confession and making-known is important, but Solomon adds “forsake.”  It’s the word used of a man leaving home for his wife (Genesis 2:24) and it’s used of physical bonds and burdens.  Making rebellion known is the first step.  Cutting ties is the second.

This proverb rings changes on the paradoxes of concealment, covering, and unveiling that are at the heart of the sacrificial system.  When Adam sinned, he went into hiding, seeking to conceal his rebellion and shame.  To be redeemed, he had to come out of hiding, and had to strip off the fig leaves that covered him.  Only then did he receive a proper covering, an “atonement” covering of garments, which were also garments of glory and beauty.

Those who confess and forsake rebellion find “compassion.”  In the structure of the verse, that is the counterpoint to “no success.”  They don’t seem to be opposites; in fact, they don’t even seem to be within the same realm of discourse.  What hath prosperity to do with compassion?  But of course, what ensures that our way succeeds (in the proper sense) is that our way is overshadowed by the compassion of God.

PROVERBS 28:14

Fear is not always a blessing.  The curse of the covenant is that Israel will be in continuous dread (Deuteronomy 28:66-67), and Job (4:14; 23:15) dreads God.  When Yahweh comes to the wicked, He strikes fear into them (Psalm 14:5), but if the wicked are fearful before His face, the righteous are secure and rejoice.  If the Lord is with us, whom shall we dread (Psalm 27:1).  But the proverb tells us there is a kind of fear that is healthy, and a kind of fear that should be permanent.  Blessing comes to the fearful in this sense, and the implied object of fear is Yahweh.  Fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom; continuous fear of Yahweh is the beginning of blessing.

It’s the adam who fears here.  The word for man in each of these three verses is adam, and that suggests that they are all reflections, in one fashion or another, on the first man in the garden.  Adam was cursed precisely because he failed to fear always, but the Last Adam is the truly blessed man, who fears and obeys His Father.

The “Blessed is he” form reminds us of Psalm 1 and Psalm 32.  The man who fears is likewise the man whose transgression is forgiven, and the man who meditates on the law of the Lord day and night.  “Continuously” in Proverbs 28:14 translates tamid, used originally for the various “continuous” rites and institutions of the tabernacle worship: Showbread is continuously before the Lord, the lampstands continuous burn, Aaron wears a memorial on his heart and on his forehead continually before Yahweh, incense ascends perpetually, and the fire of the altar is to be kept burning.  The tamid offerings are the daily, continuous ascension offerings.  That one fears continuously thus hints at continuous sacrifice: The one is blessed who fears and continuously offers himself as a living sacrifice.

Pharaoh, we might said, is the counterpoint.  He has no fear of Yahweh.  “Who is Yahweh?” he asks, and then hardens his heart (Exodus 7:3).  Israel often enough acts like Pharaoh, hardening their necks instead of receiving the easy yoke of Yahweh (2 Kings 17:14).  The histories of Pharaoh and of Israel are, as Paul indicates (Romans 9-11), cautionary tales for the nations.  Their histories are summed up by this proverb: hard-hearted men and nations are destined for a fall into “evil.”

PROVERBS 28:15

Rulers are supposed to be protective of their people.  They are shepherds.  Rulers are also compared to powerful predators: David’s Son is the “lion” of the tribe of Judah.  When righteous rulers are compared to lions, it is because they are a terror to the enemies of their people.  Yahweh Himself is a lion who is roused to roar against and defend Israel.  Rulers are not to prey on the flock.  Proverbs 28:15 describes wicked rulers as predators who are revved up for attack.  Roaring is a prelude to the kill, as Isaiah says about the “distant nation” that the Lord is raising up against His unfaithful people (Isaiah 5:29-10).  The bear in the proverb rushes around like an army scurrying over a defeated city (Isaiah 33:4; Joel 2:9; Nahum 2:4).

The threat of uncontrolled, wicked rulers falls especially on a poor people.  They are defenseless against the predatory rulers, and have no recourse to bride him or hire protection.  They are entirely vulnerable before the roaring lion and rushing bear.

The word for ruler, mashal, describes the government of the stars over the night (Genesis 1:18) and other forms and types of government.  It is, however, also a pun on the word for proverb or parable (Number 21:27; Proverbs 1:1, 6; 10:1; Ezekiel 12:23).  The wicked ruler is somehow being associated with the wisdom of the proverbs themselves.  Perhaps this indicates that the ruler is sly and cunning, operating by a wicked form of wisdom.

Jesus is the poor one, who is oppressed by bulls of Bashan who open their mouths like lions against Him (Psalm 22).  He is the Lamb led to slaughter, who gives Himself to be torn in pieces like a kid.

PROVERBS 28:16

Yet another proverb about rule.  Here, the word for ruler is not mashal but nagid, derived from nagad, “announced one.”  In technical terms, the nagid is the crown prince.  The syntax of the Hebrew is different from that the NASB translation.  Instead of “the prince who is a great oppressor lack understanding” the relation is reversed, “the prince lacks understanding and increases oppression.”  The lack of understanding seems to be the root and cause of the oppression, rather than being an inference from the oppression.

“Understanding” is among the gifts of the Spirit given, along with wisdom, to Bezalel and Oholiab (Exodus 31:3; 35:31; cf. 1 Kings 7:14).

Just as a craftsman must have understanding of his materials, tools, and goals in order to produce a beautiful object, so there is a craft to rule – state-craft.  That is what the oppressor lacks.  He doesn’t understand the materials that he is manipulating (that is, people), doesn’t understand how to use the tools without ripping the materials apart, doesn’t know what’s he’s trying to accomplish.  Lacking this understanding, he will end up being oppressive and abusive to his people.

“Oppression” seems to be more precisely “unjust gain” or “extortion.”  Extortion from the people reveals a lack of understanding of rule.  Rulers who extort from their people – whether they extort through high taxes, through conscription, through other means – are enriching themselves, so they think.  They believe they will enhance their rule by squeezing more from their people.  The result is the opposite.  They don’t understand that the glory of the kingdom comes from the flourishing of the people.  They don’t understand their material or their tools.

A good ruler is full of hate – hate for rape and predatory confiscation from his people.  The word for “unjust gain” in the second half of the proverb means plunder from enemies (Judges 5:19; Micah 4:13).  The ruler lacking understanding treats his people like enemies, plundering them as if he has defeated them in battle.  A ruler who renounces extortion, and suppresses unjust gain within his kingdom, is prolonging his days.  He will rule for a long time, and will live a long life.

Milbank argues that a proper theological response to postmodernism must be discriminating.  He accepts the postmodern critique of “substance,” and thinks that Christianity can get along without employing this notion.  But other aspects of the postmodern attack on traditional philosophy cannot be admitted by theology.

His critique of postmodernism proceeds by three steps: first, he argues that genealogy requires an ontology of violence; second, he claims that this ontology has no claim to being anything more than another myth, another way of telling the story: ahs no justification for claiming to be more than just another contingent description of the world; third, he concludes that this is “an entirely malign mythology.”

Genealogy first: According to Nietzsche and Foucault, their historical method exposes what is really going on in history.  Nietzsche tells history in a way that everything is reducible to an exercise of the will to power.  Christianity is especially perverse precisely because it masks its will to power under an apparent renunciation of power.  But there is a basic difficulty with genealogy.  On the one hand, it posits that all cultures are rationalizations of power and violence, while arguing on the other hand that certain cultures are closer and more overt in their commitments to power and violence than others.

Milbank argues effectively that genealogy is just another way to tell the story, and does not have any privileged position among the various ways one could tell the story of history.  How can genealogy justify its claim that power and violence is the basic reality of history? Not in terms of genealogy, but only by a prior  metaphysical commitment.  Though Nietzsche announces the end of metaphysics, he in fact only offers a different metaphysics.  In fact, the only reason why genealogists focus on power and violence is because they have assumed a particular ontology, an ontology of violence.

Thus, Milbank moves into the second stage of his analysis of postmodernism: genealogy requires an ontology that makes violence ultimate.  Milbank charges that post-Heideggerian philosophy is essentially Gnostic in that it treats creation as inherently, metaphysically fallen, conflicted, violent.  No redemption is possible.  A second factor is the belief that all difference is conflicted difference.  There is no ontological basis in Heidegger or his followers for a harmony of difference.  Violence and conflict are “ontologized,” projected as the ultimate reality.  For Derrida, for example, all interpretation is a matter of doing violence to the original text; interpretation is always subversive.  Milbank asks, Why? And thinks that the answer is that subversion and conflict has been presupposed as the most fundamental reality.

Like sociology, genealogy ultimately ends up with an ahistorical account of history.  For sociology, “society” is a basically unchanging something that is productive of the religious, cultural, and political shape of things.  For genealogy, power is reified and becomes an ahistorical, unchanging reality, the bedrock underneath the shifting patterns of history.  Milbank is here more “postmodern” than Nietzsche, in that he doesn’t think there is any unchanging “bedrock” of history, but only continually shifting patterns.

Third, Milbank wants to show that this mythology is entirely malign.  Genealogy ends up being complicit with and approving of the violence it claims to expose and unmask.  As noted above, Nietzsche and Foucault begin with the belief that all culture is ultimately about power and violence.  They claim that even Christianity, which seems to put a premium on peace, is really just a clever way of covering real intentions and goals, power. Christianity is the real enemy for Nietzsche precisely because it veils its will to power under a cloak of renunciation of power.  But if power and violence is the real and basic story, then we should conclude that those societies that are open about their commitment to power and violence are in some sense “truer” than those that veil that commitment.  Fascist regimes are more honest, and therefore more moral, than Christian societies, and so too for ancient heroic societies.  Milbank suggests that Nietzsche read Augustine back to front: He agreed with Augustine that pagan virtue was merely self-assertion and violence, but revels in that discovery instead of condemning it, as Augustine does, in the light of an alegernative configuration of human life.

Milbank argues that, for all their differences, postmodernism and antique philosophy share a commitment to violence.  There is a hidden continuity between antique virtue and postmodern chaos.  Thus, a revival of antique virtue cannot meet the challenge of postmodern nihilism.  We need a wholly new ontology, one that rejects the ultimacy of violence.  The only alternatives left are nihilism and Christianity.

Here Milbank, though appreciative of MacIntyre’s work, is also critical of what he sees as an effort to revive antique virtue.  MacIntyre treats the philosophy of Aristotle as a universal, while Milbank insists that rationality is not equivalent to Aristotle.  Aristotle’s was contingent philosophy, and it was tied to the oppressive structures of the ancient polis.  Try as we might, we cannot detach Aristotle from this social and political setting.

Milbank also suggests that MacIntyre is not sensitive enough to how radically Christianity revises even the form of ethics.  For Aristotle, Milbank says, what made virtue real was phronesis, prudence.  Prudence regulates love.  For Aquinas, as for Christianity generally, love is the highest virtue, and love regulates prudence.  Further, the primacy of the “mean” in Aristotle’s philosophy is tied to notions of virtue as victory, victory in this case over passion, and thus makes violence inherent to ethics.  Ethics, for Aristotle as for Kant, is an “overcoming” of chaos, the chaos of natural inclinations or passion.

Milbank appeals to Augustine’s City of God as a “deconstruction” of antique Roman virtue since Augustine shows that even the virtues of the pagans were “splendid vices.”  According to Augustine, even the virtues of pagan Rome reduce to an exercise of violence.  Virtue, as MacIntyre points out, originally was connected with excellence in an agonistic, a conflict situation: had to do with conquest.  This association with violent suppression was never removed from conceptions of virtue.  For Romans, the virtuous man is one that suppresses and gains victory over his passions.  Politically, this translates into empire: By controlling his passions, the Roman gained glory and pre-eminence.  Virtue was still a matter of conquest in a conflict, and the Roman peace is Roman virtue writ large, a process of limiting power by power, limiting violence by alternative violence.  This is all rooted in cosmologies that conceive of “creation” as a matter of the demiurge controlling chaos.  For Milbank, ontology, politics and ethics are of a peace, for both ancient thought and for Christianity.  At each level, there is violent conquest of chaos in ancient thought and culture.  As Milbank strikingly puts it, for antiquity, there can be no virtue without conflict and competition, and thus no virtue in heaven, where conflict has ceased.  For Augustine, virtue is preeminently found in heaven, since virtue is harmony and love.

What Christianity thus provides in response to modern social theory, postmodern nihilism, and antique virtue, is a “counter-history,” a “counter-ethics” and a “counter-ontology.” The counter-history is the history of Christ and his church.  This is the Christian “metanarrative” within which all other stories and events must find their meaning and place. The church “defines itself as both in continuity and discontinuity with the community of Israel; later on it defines itself as in still greater discontinuity with the ‘political’ societies of the antique world. This account of history and critique of human society is in no sense an appendage to Christianity — on the contrary, it belongs to its very ‘essence.’”  This implies “a gigantic claim to be able to read, criticize, say what is going on in other human societies,” which “is absolutely integral to the Christian Church.”  In fact, “for theology to surrender this claim, to allow that other discourses  – the ‘social sciences’ – carry out yet more fundamental readings, would therefore amount to a denial of theological truth. The logic of Christianity involves the claim that the ‘interruption’ of history by Christ and his bride, the Church, is the most fundamental of events, interpreting all other events. And it is most especially a social event, able to interpret other social formations, because it compares them with its own new social practice.” Augustine was able, from the perspective of this history, to redescribe the whole history of paganism, and expose it as based on violence, pursuit of self-interest and dominion for its own sake.

The counter-ethics is the church.  Milbank challenges common claim that Augustine is the precursor of liberal and individualistic Christianity and shows that Augustine’s Christianity is inherently social.  Augustinian Christianity did not wholly reject the ancient association of ethics and the polis.  For Christianity, ethics is still located and fulfilled in community, but the community was the new community of the church.

Within this counter-society a new social practice takes place.  Instead of rivalry and victimization, the church is a place where priority is placed on forgiveness of sins and bearing of one another’s burdens.  Moreover, the new polis of the church offered another form of rule: Instead of the rule of coercion, it offered a pastoral model of rule.  There is still, Milbank argues, a place for coercive means under certain circumstances but this is not to be domination for its own sake, but always, as Augustine argued, for the good of the one who is coerced.  Even coercion is infused with and qualified by love.

In this new city, peace is not the mock peace of Rome. Augustine said that the peace of Rome was not really peace.  In Rome, power limited and kept power in check.  True peace is a matter of absolute harmony and love.  True peace as a consensus in love.  For Christianity, too, virtue is not a suppression of the passions, not a suppression of desire, but a redirection of desire to its proper object.  Neither peace nor virtue rests on violence.

Under counter-ontology, Milbank stresses several Christian teachings that undermine both antiquity and postmodernism.  Essentially, he wants to show that Christianity posits the ultimacy of peace over conflict, and that the ultimate reality for Christianity is a harmony of difference.  Unlike postmodernism, Christianity does not see difference as inherently conflicted difference but rather sees difference as the essential obverse of communion and harmony.  Milbank employs a musical analogy, drawn from Augustine’s De Musica.

The ultimate reality is the Triune God.  Milbank is unashamedly Trinitarian, and for him the philosophical implication of the trinity is that ultimate reality is a matter both of difference and of harmony.  God is not an undifferentiated monad: He is Three, and thus difference is not threatening.  Difference is a principle that describes the highest reality of all, yet this difference is not a difference of antagonism and violent conflict.  It is a difference in unity, a difference united in love, a harmony of difference.

The other important point here is that Christianity does not teach that violence and evil are inherent in the creation, and more than they are inherent in the Trinity.  Christianity teaches an originally good and harmonious creation, a peaceful kingdom, which was destroyed by a historical fall.  Violence and evil and death are not therefore inherent in creation but are in this sense contingent, and because of this it is possible for the world to be redeemed.  Augustinian Christianity gives violence and evil “no ontological purchase,” since evil is simply the privatio of some good.  Because evil is located in the will, it doesn’t exist as a thing.

Finally, he returns to his earlier points about “poesis.”  The great failure of Christian ontology, he claims, is the failure to challenge the modern concepts of the “made” as a sphere of secularity.  This failure has meant a failure of Christianity to provide a cultural and political perspective that could challenge modernity.  Trinitarian theology can, however, provide a robust constructivist perspective that is not secular.  Christianity teaches that there is a “making” within God Himself, since the Father “begets” the Son.  This kind of begetting is mirrored in the creation.  Making is not an alienation from God, no merely practical or instrumental activity, but is the fulfillment of the imago Dei.