In The Economy Of The Divine A Response To James K. A. Smith

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Pentecostal Theology, Volume 25, No. 1, Spring 2003

In the Economy of the Divine: A Response to James K. A. Smith

Graham Ward

I wish to organize my response to Professor Smith’ s article with respect to three topics: his analysis of the history of Radical Orthodoxy , his analy- sis of the Ž ve emphases evident in the theology of Radical Orthodoxy , and his argument for a rapprochement between this theology and that of Pentecostalism . My response is not some counterattack on behalf nor defense of Radical Orthodoxy, partly because there is no substantive RO position as such to defend or with which to attack. I recognize Smith’ s account of RO and I believe, given the way he outlines Pentecostal the- ology, that a productive conversation is possible. My remarks, then, con- stitute more of a commentary upon, and sometimes a correction of points raised in, Professor Smith’ s text. But I must begin by saying there is some- thing de trop or maybe just ironic about Professor Smith’ s argument— for his most recent book is to be published in the Radical Orthodoxy series next year.

With regards to the history of RO, I would like to take issue with two points in the article. First, the view that John Milbank’ s Theology and Social Theory “ became the manifesto for an agenda described as ‘ Radical Orthodoxy.’ ” There are two common misconceptions expressed here. One is that John Milbank is the founder of the “ movement” and the other is that the Introduction to the volume of essays entitled Radical Orthodoxy constituted a manifesto for this movement. Let me put aside for later the question of whether RO is a movement at all, and draw attention to some historical facts.

The idea for the book series was developed jointly between John and me, after I was asked by a publisher to think about editing a series for his theology list. I approached John about the possibilities of joint edi- torship on a series that aimed to provide a forum for a number of the- ologians engaging in social, political, and critical theory and metaphysics, on the basis of tradition-based reasoning. These theologians included Rowan Willliams, Fergus Kerr, and Nicholas Lash in Britain; Stanley Hauerwas, David Burrell and Peter Ochs, in the States— each of whose work had been important, in different ways and to different degrees, for the shaping of our own projects. There was no doubt that Theology and Social Theory had been important in giving expression to this refusal to

© 2003 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden

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conduct a theological enquiry on a secular basis. But Theology and Social Theory was not a foundational document when John and I came to write the proposal for the series we would edit. (Catherine Pickstock was asked to join the editorial team later, when the series had already been accepted by Routledge.) Many of the “ themes” later outlined by Smith, for exam- ple, are evident in most of the theologians named above, most particu- larly the critique of modernity and liberalism. My own doctoral work conducted under Williams, Kerr, and Lash, examined the theology of Karl Barth. So while appreciative of the powerful theological critique of Theology and Social Theory and while acknowledging my agreement with many of the positions outlined, the series was not deŽ ned in terms of John Milbank’ s early theology.

Secondly, and this too is partly an historical matter, the “ Introduction” to the opening volume in the series, Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology , was written as a commentary upon the essays contained in that volume. In pointing up the distinctiveness of those contributions for contempo- rary theology, the “ Introduction” placed the essays in a series of com- parative and contrasting contexts: the implosion of secularism, some postmodern thought, Barthian neo-orthodoxy, postliberalism, and nouvelle theologie. By doing this, certain shared emphases became evident both among contributors and with respect to contemporary theology. The “ Introduction” articulated some of those emphases. The “ Introduction” was not announcing a cultural program for theological action as such; in fact, the editors rarely meet now— we are so dispersed. It was, however, a conscious act of enunciation. By that I mean that the tone of the “ Introduction” was polemical; it was asking for further engagement in the way Karl Barth’ s second edition of Der Romanbrief asked for further engagement. To understand the signiŽ cance of this by now infamous “ tone” (conŽ dent? arrogant? measured?), it is necessary to recollect the important critique of secular reasoning that all the essays in that collec- tion share. For centuries now secular reasoning has deŽ ned public truth. The critique of such reasoning, then, must contend with this hold on public opinion and seek to produce spaces in which its own contribution to public debates can be heard. One source of the misconception of RO among fel- low Christian theologians has been that the “ Introduction” was setting up a new and better Christian theology than anything else on offer. This mis- conception arises because it is assumed that the volume is addressed to other Christian theologians in order to point up their deŽ ciencies. But that assumption is wrong. That Ž rst volume is not primarily addressed to Christian theologians but to the imploding world of secular reasoning with

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which it opens. Hence the titles of the essays act as interdisciplinary bridges for opening wider cultural conversations: aesthetics, music, sex, nihilism, the city, the body and so forth. The essays explore areas in which con- temporary society has invested much of its thinking, money, manipula- tions, and values. The tone of the “ Introduction” is strategic for opening up critical engagement with these important contemporary cultural emphases.

Allow me brie y, then, to return to the question of RO as a move- ment. From my account of the way the “ Introduction” came to be writ- ten I hope it is evident that the extent of the contributors’ shared concerns and theological approaches surprised both the editors and contributors alike. The papers were exchanged in draft form at a colloquium held prior to the publication of the volume, to facilitate discussion among the con- tributors about each other’ s work. The essays were not written, then, to a prescribed doctrinal format. Hence some of the contributors have, sub- sequently, kept a critical distance from what has become the mythos, even ideology, of RO. Smith is right to insist on the plural “ movements” of RO, but I wonder whether this phrasing still gives too much weight to the concept of “ movement.” RO has no program, it has no headquarters, it has none of the deŽ nitiveness of, say, the Yale School (a “ School” both Frei and Lindbeck wished to downplay). I prefer to call RO a theologi- cal sensibility, a sensibility shared to a greater or lesser degree with sev- eral other contemporary theologians, including the British and American theologians named above, any of whom we would publish in the series were they to offer us their manuscripts. Hence the criticisms about what RO does not do— particularly the criticisms (expressed again by Smith) that it pays little attention to scriptural exegesis or that Radical Orthodoxy has nothing to offer Christian feminism— arise because of the limitations of the scholarly specialties of those early contributors. As series editors we have actively invited contributions from Christian feminists and bib- lical scholars. Further, it must also be pointed out that both Gerard Loughlin’ s and my work are concerned with questions of gender and the relationship between the Scriptures and Christian theology.

At this point let me engage with Professor Smith’ s assessment of the “ themes” of RO. He lists Ž ve: its critique of modernity and liberalism, its post-secular thinking, its commitment to a theological account of the material that would emphasize the sacramental and liturgical, its concern with affectivity and aesthetics, and its desire to offer cultural critique of secularism and to press for cultural transformation. Under these headings he observes more speciŽ cally the doxological character of the theology, its sociopolitical re ections, and its critique of modernity’ s dualisms (faith

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and reason, private and public, subjective and objective, etc.). While these Ž ve themes obviously overlap, I would also point out that some of the contributors to the Ž rst volume or to the series develop one or more of these themes but not all. I would agree with Smith that these themes are evident in the work of those contributing to the RO series, though I would not accept the aesthetics theme as he characterizes it and would give more emphasis to a theme that is more fundamental than Smith’ s description appears to warrant. I would also wish to add a theme that may be impor- tant for the rapprochement with Pentecostal theology that Smith is argu- ing for— that is, RO’ s ecumenism.

With respect to aesthetics and the role of the sublime, both John Milbank and I have written about the difŽ culties of modernity’ s concept of the sublime or what Michel de Certeau termed “ white ecstasy.” The rhetoric of the sublime can mask a profoundly nihilistic desire for oblivion or complete monistic integration that is given a religious coloring. The work of Mark C. Taylor, John D. Caputo, and, more recently, Thomas Carlson exempliŽ es this religious appropriation of the modern/postmodern sub- lime and its dangers. Thus, there is more to add, and some clearer dis- tinctions to be drawn, about the articulation of what I, after John, would call Christian poeisis. Christian poeisis does not announce a theology of the sublime along the lines of some deconstructive atheologians in the United States who, to my mind, articulate the late gasps of a liberal ide- ology. The emphasis upon the affective side of human nature by those who have written for RO, on the other hand, is certainly right. Many of the contributors to the series or to the Ž rst volume critique modernity’ s concept of the self, wishing to deŽ ne selfhood and Christology in terms of relationality, performance, and participation.

Participation is a more fundamental theme than Smith’ s account seems to suggest. I was somewhat surprised it did not have a section all to itself in Smith’ s classiŽ cation, for it is the key to understanding my continuing engagement with analogy and allegory; Catherine Pickstock’ s continuing engagement with Plato; John Milbank’ s long engagement with the ontolo- gies of Nyssa, Augustine, and Aquinas, and the more general interest in metaphysics. It is frequently these philosophical engagements which have led to some of the writings in the RO series being described as obscure, over intellectual, or too abstract. But the engagements are understood by those of us trained as philosophical theologians— which is by no means all of us, as the work of Cavanaugh, Long, and Bell demonstrates— as essential. And the issues involved are complex— though they are as polit- ical and economic as they are abstract. What is essential also is the fre-

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quently genealogical nature of these engagements. That is, several writ- ers in the RO series seek to understand how a certain metaphysics in modernity and postmodernity has come about in and through the trans- formations in Western metaphysics more generally. This genealogical approach arises out of a commitment to an incarnational and sacramen- tal worldview— that is, to the historical and cultural embeddedness of a particular that, in its very particularity, participates in a universal, trini- tarian operation.

It is the nonfoundational universalism of trinitarian participation that allows for a new ecumenism. For the ecclesiology implied by it exceeds the rigidity of both dogmatic systems and institutions that police the inter- pretation of such systems. In ways that are as yet undeŽ ned by contrib- utors to RO, though many of the contributors to the series are not Anglicans, Anglicanism is a metaphor for cross-ecclesial transactions: Protestants meet Catholics and both encounter Orthodoxy and various forms of Nonconformity that issued from the Reformation debates.

It is at this point that we can turn to the Ž nal section of Smith’ s arti- cle, the rapprochement between Pentecostal theology and the emphases of the theological sensibility expressed in the series Radical Orthodoxy . If, as I would argue, reasoning on the basis of a Christian doctrine of par- ticipation is the most fundamentally shared characteristic of RO, then pneumatology is central to this sensibility. As I worked on the doctrine of analogy in the theology of Karl Barth it became increasingly apparent to me how inadequate was his pneumatology. It became apparent to Barth himself, who at the end of his life suggested that he should have begun his Church Dogmatics with a doctrine of the Spirit. But he was unable to do so because, I would suggest, the whole of his work is a response to an overemphasis on pneumatology he believed was evident in Schleier- macher and bequeathed by Schleiermacher to the nineteenth- and twentieth- century liberals. Barth’ s theology is, I suggest, completing Schleiermacher’ s, in the sense that it provides the other half of a single conversation. For there to be knowledge of God at all there must be a participation of the words in the Word, of creation in the uncreated, of the human in the divine: par- ticipation but not con ation, similitude but not identity. The importance of a doctrine of the Trinity in which difference vouchsafes alterity— with- out it ever becoming the principle of the pure or absolute alterity of certain postmodern yearnings— is paramount. In this way, RO engage- ments with the social, the cultural, the political, the anthropological, the historical, and the metaphysical, as observed by Smith, all issue from the implications for theological reasoning of what Stephen Long called the

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“ divine economy.” I am in no position to say what Pentecostal theology can learn from this return to the pneumatological account of Christ and creation that attention to the doctrine of the Trinity demands. As an out- sider I would ask whether, in the importance given to the Spirit, equal importance is given to the christic and the carnal as also to what MacKinnon called the “ healthy agnosticism” with respect to the Godhead in itself. In other words, does Pentecostal theology have an adequate Christology and a sufŽ ciently re exive account of the analogical nature of theological claims? I cannot answer these questions, though I welcome the sugges- tion that contributors to the Radical Orthodoxy series might Ž nd impor- tant resources for their future work in Pentecostalism’ s attention to the “ prophetic critique in biblical models.” The genre of “ prophetic litera- ture” is important for the way RO perceives itself both with respect to cultures informed by a secularism that is imploding and the furtherance of a critical theological tradition.

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