Session 8: John Milbank
The
Theology Reading Group
invites you to our next session on
John Milbank
on Wednesday, 19th June
at 5 p.m.
*** in H501 ***
(Humanities Building, English Department)
is a prolific contemporary theologian who is also a poet with a fascination for the mythic 鈥渕atter of Britain鈥� and for folk motifs and fairy tales. He is regarded as a leader of the theological movement which arose in the 1990s styled 鈥淩adical Orthodoxy鈥� 鈥� arguably the most original new wave in Britain since the Oxford Movement. Deeply versed in postmodern philosophical trends, he opposes an assimilative theology in favour of one equipped to propose a different version of modernity from within its own resources, one based on a participation in the divine rather than the 鈥渙ntological violence鈥� of setting matter against mind, language against meaning or nature against grace. A key to this is his notion of the 鈥渄iagonal鈥� as a trajectory which does not deny such co-ordinates but engages fully in them so as to exceed them not as a chaotically open (and therefore self-sealing) indeterminate finitude but as a participation in a higher gift of generous and love-grounded relationality.
The texts for this session ("Glissando: Life, Gift and the Between" (in Between System and Poetics) and "The Eight Diagonals", (short introduction to John Milbank's volume of poetry, The Legend of Death) can be downloaded from our . 鈥淕lissando: Life, Gift and the Between鈥� proposes an ontological reading of evolutionary dynamics, whilst 鈥淭he Eight Diagonals鈥� gives a brief but brilliant overview of his thought in relation to his poetics.
This session will be chaired by Peter Larkin.
