RECONCILING AUGUSTINE AND AQUINAS: AN INTRODUCTION TO RADICAL ORTHODOXY’S POSTMODERN THEOLOGY
RECONCILING AUGUSTINE AND AQUINAS: AN INTRODUCTION TO RADICAL ORTHODOXY’S POSTMODERN THEOLOGY

Summary/Abstract: Radical Orthodoxy, a postmodern theological movement in the West, seeks to return to a pre-modern understanding of theology that dissolves barriers between faith, philosophy, and the arts. To do so, its proponents – most notably, John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock – must reckon with Aquinas, whose theology starkly distinguishes the disciplines. Because Aquinas’s influence threatens to undo Radical Orthodoxy’s project, he must be reinterpreted. The movement articulates a novel epistemology, arguing that Truth is convertible with Being and, thereby, revealing a new relationship between reason and faith. This reinterpretation depends in part on the seamless alliance of Thomistic and Augustinian theology; hence, Augustine is logically a crucial secondary target of the movement. The danger, of course, is that Radical Orthodoxy appropriates Augustine’s works – especially his Confessions – by paying little or no attention to his particularly imaginative and rhetorical form of theologizing, leaving unanswered important questions regarding the project’s success as truly post-modern.

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