Paul's New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology

253 Pages·2010·5.56 MB·English

by  John Milbank

PAUL'S
N EW
M O M E NT
Continental Philosophy and the
Future of Christian Theology
John Milbank
Slavoj Zizek
Creston Davis
with Catherine Pickstock
BrazosPress
a division of Baker Publishing Group
Grand Rapids, Michigan
© 2010 by John Milbank, Slavoj Zizek, and Creston Davis
Published by Brazos Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Milbank, John.
Paul's new moment: Continental philosophy and the future of Christian theology / John
Milbank, Slavoj Zizek, Creston Davis, with Catherine Pickstock.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 978-1-58743-227-9 (pbk.)
1. Christianity—Philosophy 2. Philosophy and religion. 3. Continental philosophy
I. Zizek, Slavoj. II. Davis, Creston. III. Title.
BIU00.M49 2010
261.5'1—dc22 2010023576
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Scripture quotations labeled NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright
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Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Parti: On Paul
1. Paul against Biopolitics 21
John Milbank
2. Paul and the Truth Event 74
Slavoj Zizek
3. Paul and Subtraction 100
Creston Davis
Part 2: On the Liturgy
4. Liturgy and the Senses 125
Catherine Pickstock
5. Subtractive Liturgy 146
Creston Davis
6. A Meditation on Michelangelo's Christ on the Cross 169
Slavoj Zizek
Part 3: On Mediation and Apocalypse
7. Thinking Backward: Predestination and Apocalypse 185
Slavoj Zizek
8. The Return of Mediation 211
John Milbank
Author Index 239
Subject Index 241
vii

We would like to thank Michele Hunt for her work on this project. In
addition, we thank Georgi Georgiev, Joe Hughes, and Caleb Jones for
their help with the IT side of this project.
I (Creston) would also like to thank my students in the spring 2010
continental philosophy seminar at Rollins College, along with my col­
leagues Mario D'Amato and Vidhu Aggarwal at Rollins College for
their stimulating conversation and friendship. I would also like to thank
Rodney Clapp and Arika Theule-Van Dam at Brazos Press for their
brilliant support of this project! Finally, I would like to acknowledge
how significant Jeffrey Hoffheins has been to my life. From youth to
adulthood, you have truly shown me the way. .
IX

At a point when the capitalist world is coming apart at the seams, we
may pause and ask ourselves: what has happened to serious leftist pro­
tests against the unjust and dehumanizing logic of global capitalism?
For the last few decades, any attempt to criticize the inner dark logic of
capitalism has been simply dismissed as passe (or un-American). But
now, as we perch precariously on the brink of total financial-capitalistic
collapse, we may wonder why and under what cultural conditions true
critiques from the Left have been systematically marginalized into non­
existence. Has not the academy utterly failed to name and identify the
perils of greed built into the very heart of the structures of capitalistic
commodiflcation? Can anyone, or any discipline, speak up?
We think there is a discipline or field of study that does possess the
resources to mount an uncompromising stance against capitalism and
its supplement, neoliberalism. That discipline is theology. Of course,
the very meaning of the term "theology" is far from being universally
agreed on (even among the authors of this book). But for the purposes
of our thesis, we need only agree that theology (and the Christian tradi­
tion) serves as a wellspring capable of funding a materialist politics of
subjective truth. Unlike liberalism, theology has a positive truth-claim,
namely, that God's disclosure happens most fully in the Event of Christ's
death on the cross. So this Event forever shatters a world defined by
passive indifference, diluting "truth" to the common denominator, and
clarifies the stakes of a materialist life. Consequently this positive stance
is not founded on an eternal, unchanging idea but in a fragile, contin­
gent Event in time and space.1 Further, this Event gives the ontological
1. Marcus Pound makes this point in his Zizek: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Grand Rapids:
Ecrdmans, 2008).
1