John Milbank on the eastward movement of western theology

[@edwinpena7002]

This is a clear perspective of John Milbank about Radical Orthodoxy. Also it challenged the traditional view of the rationalistic modernity that have been influenced our modern and post modern theology in most of the western theological institutions, but more than that I found his proposal of developing a theological perspective that is able to challenge the dominant narrative of postmodernists in which theology has to use the secular scientific approach to the subject of Christian Faith, rather to empower theology as the reflection that is able to challenge this paradigms and brig theology to the centre of our posts modern life with clear political, social, economical,ethnic proposals for our times.

[@Kobe29261]

This has been incredibly empowering. Thank you so much! I wish we'd make 15-30 min extra in all churches for digesting thoughts such as these.

[@brucefetter]

reason and freedom as true and shown in desiring the Good. That is Orthodox.

[@williambenton5784]

Great lecture,very thoughtful!

[@gennadii595]

Когда будет перевод

[@holger3943]

Awesome.

[@MrArchy108]

why there is no subs?

[@jcawalton]

Brilliant.

[@wordscapes5690]

Please don’t come back. We don’t miss you at all. 🎉

[@brucefetter]

And not only the Russian, but Eastern Christianity as a whole. We cannot pick a part of "eastern" Christianity and claim it as somethgn to attain or recover without returning or attaining the whole. Otherwise it is just another attempt at Frankenstein ecclesiology. I have grown more and more convinced that how we worship is and Who we worship cannot be seperated, as the poverty of much of the western non-tradition traditions (i won't use the word liturgical) sadly demonstrates.

[@ALLHEART_]

13:41

[@Artemushka1]

The whole IRONY is that Christianity in its pure form came to British Islands as early as year 36-60 AD... and was flourishing up untill Henry VIII came on stage of the history...

[@rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr1]

The first break was actually the arrival of the Normans. Celtic Christianity had a very different flavor; much more like Eastern Christianity than the Arian-flavored German churches that came to dominate the second millennium.

[@Ebergerud]

This talk must have been done before the Anglican Church collapsed into the pitiful wreck it is today.

[@TheGuiltsOfUs]

Then he never understood rabbi Yeshua in the first place, radical Torah observance - not its abandonment for pagan ideas!!

[@paulnurmi302]

Very confusing.

[@stevenhunter3345]

It isn't confusing for anyone who has a background in theology.

[@rabbyssi4392]

Paul Nurmi Yea I don’t blame you. Perhaps I can paraphrase... basically Milkan is characterizing the nature of Western theological discourse in the past ~60 years. He characterizes Western theology as no longer dominated by opposing dogmas, but is now dominated by opposing methodologies of discourse. Milkan believes that secular/intellectual reasoning originally developed as an extension of religious thought - he also believes that such forms of reasoning fail because of the necessity of reason to play some justificatory role for beliefs we already have. He sees instances of this failure rife in what he calls “classical orthodoxy”, where liberal and conservative minded people use secular reason to justify their own beliefs. Notice that according to Milkan, these people take the distinction of nature (secular aspect of reality, divorced from God) and grace (presence of God) for granted, when in fact this distinction was a *Christian* development that occurred in the middle ages. He questions the salience of this distinction and advocates for “romantic orthodoxy”, where nature and grace are seen as interrelated. Milkan advocates for a creative, imaginative approach to theology in an effort to transcend secular reasoning and the dichotomy at large. in my own view, this would necessarily involve a psycho-spiritual dimension to such a discourse... a dimension that can be explored through phenomenological and poststructural inquiry. The problem, though, is that it’s reeeeeally hard, perhaps impossible, to divorce yourself from these ‘secular’ faculties that we all seem helplessly subject to. & I think that these faculties have been growing stronger in the West since time immemorial. So strong, that we now see poststructural philosophy engage in reasoning that undermines itself. (See Derrida, fascinating stuff) I am not a Christian (nominally, at least), nor am I a theologian. But as a philosopher, I think Milkan is onto something, something very characteristically Nietzschian. I think this whole project of radical orthodoxy will amount to something significant, someone just has to take it one step further...

[@TheCookieFlavaJAR]

@@rabbyssi4392 Unless it can really and authentically find a new language AND PRAXIS (ideally a selfless act) to establish itself in the West its far more likely to become something closer to Schopenhauer WHICH IS A LOT WORSE! As a religion which can only speak in the language of the Asthete, the negation of the self and describe itself by what it is not. This is quite possibly the creation of a religion of inertia and painful existential limbo. Quite fitting since it will mostly describe and is built by an increasingly inert Christianty. Eventually the only adherents will be the sexually inept, suicidially depressed, experience junkies, artists and Humanists. It don't want it fail but I will be incredibly impressed if it succeeds.

[@rabbyssi4392]

TheCookieFlavaJAR I largely agree with you. I was much more enchanted by RO a year ago, looking back now it still is a nice change of pace from the usual negative dialectics and exercises of suspicion. But much of academia would also be subject to your criticism... affirming the self these days implies holding some positive cultural construct which is inevitably exclusionary; such a deed is becoming an ever greater sin. But I am curious about what you mean that a new language is needed. Do you mean a language in the West that is aware of its logocentrism and its “left-brained” dominance which incorporates more faculties associates with “right-brain”? If so, then yes, agreed! btw I believe the bicamerality of mind is mappable to the nature/grace divide (& the divine masculine/divine feminine divide). But Milbank advocating for the reconstruction of the cultural elements which caused these binaries to occur in our language as an “Eastern turn” is misguided because the Eastern church fathers never experienced such an extreme individuation of the intellect (which led to capitalism imo) divorced from what we might call the “heart”. The orthodox church fathers do not have adequate tools at their disposal to cope with postmodernity, nor for the traumas that postmodernity is a reaction to... yet RO wants a language that will bring us to a pre-Aquinean cultural landscape and re-imbue the world with the divine mystery. Such a cultural phenomenon seems noble to strive for, yet it is clearly impractical and morally deficient because it would necessitate SUPPRESSING the awareness of the traumas of the West - an awareness which is inflaming culture so badly. On a final note, I think psychoanalytic theory is the best direction we have to bridge the negation of self a la Schopenhauer and affirmation a la Nietzsche. Just what “self” are we negating in the first place? What part of us are we affirming? Our egos? Or something more? What entities in the pleroma should be be calling for help? Thanks for your comment :)

[@rabbyssi4392]

Lol I just noticed that I was writing “Milkan” instead of “Milbank” in my first comment. Is “Milkan” somewhere between “Millikan” and “Milbank”? Who knows?!

[@nicksum29]

After your last hideous comment: ....................... (it is the sound of me shaking your dust from my sandals)

[@DarkMoonDroid]

5:14 LOL No. 19:06 BOOM! 24:51 Oooooh! 30:50 You know where believing that got me? Abandoned, divorced, estranged from my children, evicted, homeless, chronically poor, exploited, traumatized and eventually psychotic. Be careful throwing such words around. The consequences can be deadly. 32:26 You forgot Blake.

[@nicksum29]

Here is my definition of Son of God: As opposed to the term son of god used to describe numerous prophets and peoples in Torah, THE Son of God refers to the physical embodiment of God Himself upon earth in the figure of Christ, the Messiah. Jesus uses the term singularly. It does not refer to a mere filial relationship, but a relationship of closeness, or oneness. Homosexual lifestyle: it does not exist. It is a nasty right-wing fiction invented by the seedier side of Christianity.

[@JudithMatta]

Somewhat "tortured" views in his attempt to bring patristic Spirit-filled and Light-filled "nous" (intelligence- our personhood), into alignment with a medieval view from Roman Catholic (and daughter churches) west. He's made a valiant attempt, but mistakes are discernible, (i.e. including "Origen" with our Orthodox Fathers and I'm certain he would include Augustine of Hippo); without these distinctions, he will fall short of truly understanding the completely Differing Definitions of Faith, Reason, and the entire Personhood as taught by our Orthodox Apostolic Fathers. St. Irenaios' " Preaching of the Apostles" is a good place to begin in our search to understand the "original" simple-yet-profound understanding of Holy Scriptures which is missing from the sterility of western rationalism. See more from Archbishop Lazar (Puhalo) on "Theology made simple" videos here, and our own contributions under "Judith Irene Matta" in defining the chasm between East and West, Orthodox Christianity and philosophical systems in the western churches, above all the Mother of all heresies, the Papacy.

[@brandonmunson2554]

Augustine is a saint of the Orthodox Church. Origen is often cited by theologians of both East and West. He never became a saint, but he is undeniably a major influence o ln both Eastern and Western theology.

[@JudithMatta]

Sorry - no relics, no troparia/kontakia - and no record of where he is buried to honor his relics. Augustine appears only in last two centuries in Russian hagiographies, because of the Latin influence which dominated their seminaries.

[@brandonmunson2554]

Judith Irene Matta Augustine was a saint of the undivided Church long before the Great Schism. It was not because of Latin influence on the seminaries, but because to deny Western saints would be to deny that the Western Church was EVER Orthodox, and this is contrary to the Ecumenical Councils. It is true that Augustine was not influential upon Eastern theology, but he is still a saint. Frankly, you do not have the ecclesiastical authority to say otherwise.

[@jacquelynchoate9579]

I agree with Brandon Munson's assessment, although I would even go farther. St. Gregory Palamas, certainly a champion of Eastern Christianity by anyone's standards, refers to Augustine as "one of the wise and apostolic men." In his 150 Chapters, he clearly borrows from Augustine's De Trinitate, both in terms of his Trinitarian metaphors (e.g. memory, intellect, and will; lover, beloved, and the love between them) and even in his more explicit treatment of the immanent Trinity. For example, he writes, the Son "possesses this love as co-proceeding (συμπροελθόντα) from the Father and himself and as resting connaturally (συμφυῶς) in him." To put it simply, the anti-western polemic pushed by Lossky and Romanides is just bad scholarship, and unfortunately it's become a common misconception, which has (mis)led many into adopting an unnecessarily hostile and defensive stance. In my view, Florovsky's approach is much more reasonable. For Florovsky, a real neo-patristic synthesis has to include western figures like Augustine and Aquinas. Further, to call the ghastly spectacle of the Petrine seminaries a consequence of Latin influence is completely off base. It's true they used Latin, but other than that rather insignificant detail, the deleterious effects are all due to Peter the Great's horrendous efforts to turn the ROC into a department of state, along the lines of what he saw in Protestant countries. His abolition of the patriarchate and establishment of the holy synod (administered by a lay oberprokurator) is the exact same model he found among the Lutherans, who are hardly representative of traditional Latin Christianity i.e. Roman Catholicism. All that being said, as the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras declared in 1968, "Today union is the ἀνάγκη, our destiny." And as one of the Cardinals from the Roman Catholic Church has also said, "In order to unite, we must first love one another. In order to love one another, we must get to know one another." Let's follow these wise words rather than allow ourselves to be misled into divisiveness - I say this as an Orthodox Christian.

[@k.arlanebel6732]

@@brandonmunson2554 Augustine is a heretic and has been declared so by Archbishop Lazar and many others. Augustine's teachings are in direct conflict with Orthodox theology and nothing makes this not true. If you want to believe that Augustine is a 'saint' you are free to do so. And also the early Church was not undivided in Augustine's time: It was divided by Augustine who rejected Orthodox theology.

[@eaton55r]

Power Switch this month my guess Power Plant is nice for russia. Orthodox employees and engineers doctors. Ooooo. Philosophers. Couple mathematicians (numbers and even hard toooo smell.. All things are permissible... All things are not beneficial. Everyone please go home and get busy taking care of our garden. NOW. It is a choice. Beneficial = G))D? Do I need to go on here. Message is from the worlds Wurst Stori Tell her. Almost promise. Maybeeeee.

[@eaton55r]

Stupid... Why to that?

[@eaton55r]

I always enjoyed seeing house first sight. Easy to walk faster.

[@nicksum29]

You can't blame atheism for all religious troubles. There are very serious issues that religion needs to address adequately: homophobia, sexism, racism, xenophobia, religious exclusivitsm, and other nasties that have made atheism so much more attractive.

[@jasonaus3551]

Who are you yelling at

[@nicksum29]

You still have not answered the "homosexual behaviour" dilemma. Are you even bothering to read what I write?

[@nicksum29]

Sorry, but earlier you defined people who supported gay people as engaging in the "homosexual lifestyle" which you now define as "homosexual behaviour" which means gay sex: anal, oral, etc - which means most heterosexual people are homosexual. Which is it? You can't have both. Be clear. And what I proposed was not unitarianist at all. Unitarianism denies that Christ is God. I did not do that. I defined the Son of God, not the Trinity. Would you like a definition of the Trinity?

[@nicksum29]

You regurgitated doctrine, which tells me you don't really understand the significance of the phrase "Son of God". All you gave me was metaphysical rant. Hot air. "Homosexual lifestyle" you seem more confused about: first you say it is those who "engage in homosexual behaviour", so what you mean is the sex acts: anal sex, oral sex, or both (which actually defines heterosexuals, too). Then you say it means not only gay people, but non-gays who support them. And you think GAYS are confused! Gosh