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Virtue against sovereigntyIn James Arthur (ed.), Virtues in the Public Sphere: Citizenship, Civic Friendship and Duty, Routledge Press. 2018.
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14Religion, Science and Magic: Rewriting the AgendaIn John Milbank & Peter Harrison (eds.), After Science and Religion: Fresh Perspectives from Philosophy and Theology, Cambridge University Press. pp. 75-143. 2023.Inherited discussions of ‘science and religion’ too much assume an interaction between two historically constant phenomena in terms of stories of ‘progress’ and ‘conflict’. Instead, it is better to recognise long-term and varying modes of tension between three different approaches to nature, pivoted about attitudes to ‘enchantment’ and to transcendence versus immanence. Within such a perspective, it appears that the dominant model of science as ‘disenchanted transcendence’ is a Newtonian one tha…Read more
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21Paul against BiopoliticsTheory, Culture and Society 25 (7-8): 125-172. 2008.As others have argued, modern liberalism can be seen as dominated by the biopolitical. In both the economic and the political realms, this involves a contradictory notion of how the natural gives rise to the cultural and the cultural both suppresses and advances the natural. On either side of this divide, uncontrollable excesses arise, which ensure that this immanentist model is never immune from the return of the theopolitical in a bastardized form. Antique notions of natural justice to some de…Read more
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5Number and the BetweenIn Dennis Vanden Auweele (ed.), William Desmond’s Philosophy between Metaphysics, Religion, Ethics, and Aesthetics, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 15-44. 2018.This chapter discusses the topic of mediation, number and mathematics. It aims to find a way to think of mathematics as the soul of reality by means of Wittgenstein and Cantor. This chapter reflects on the modern attempts to rethink mathematics in terms of logics. In Milbank’s view, a revision of this could support the ‘third way’ of a theistic metaphysics, which must, after Erich Przywara and William Desmond, be a metaphysics of the analogy of being or metaxology.
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21A Tale of Two Monsters and Four Elements: Variations of Carl Schmitt and the Current Global CrisisTelos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 2022 (201): 127-145. 2022.IntroductionThis essay is divided into two distinct parts.In the first I shall explore the complex way in which Carl Schmitt’s thought was split three ways: between a Catholic universalism that extends the “law of humanity” to the whole of the globe; a modern defense of the normativity of the absolutely sovereign nation-state; and finally a stress upon the primacy of a more limited civilizational landmass, smaller than that of the whole planet but larger than that of the state. In this third cas…Read more
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Against human rights : liberty in the western traditionIn Costas Douzinas & Conor Gearty (eds.), The meanings of rights: the philosophy and social theory of human rights, Cambridge University Press. 2014.
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8Sequence on modern ontology -- From theology to philosophy -- The four pillars of modern philosophy -- Modern philosophy : a theological critique -- Analogy versus univocity -- Identity versus representation -- Intentionality and embodiment -- Intentionality and selfhood -- Reason and the incarnation of the logos -- The passivity of modern reason -- The baroque simulation of cosmic order -- Deconstructed representation and beyond -- Passivity and concursus -- Representation in philosophy -- Actu…Read more
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3In Triplicate: Britain after Brexit; the World after Coronavirus; Retrospect and ProspectTelos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 2020 (191): 91-114. 2020.
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5Oikonomia Leaves Home: Theology, Politics, and Governance in the History of the WestTelos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 2017 (178): 77-99. 2017.
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Theopolitics TodayIn Dominik Finkelde & Rebekka Klein (eds.), In Need of a Master: Politics, Theology, and Radical Democracy, De Gruyter. pp. 253-270. 2021.
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4Being Reconciled: Ontology and PardonRoutledge. 2003.Both a critique of post-Kantian modernity and a new theology that engages with issues of language, culture, time, politics and historicity, 'Being Reconciled' insists on the dependency of all human production and understanding on a God who is infinite inboth utterance and capacity.
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After Science and Religion: Fresh Perspectives From Philosophy and Theology (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2022.The popular field of 'science and religion' is a lively and well-established area. It is however a domain which has long been characterised by certain traits. In the first place, it tends towards an adversarial dialectic in which the separate disciplines, now conjoined, are forever locked in a kind of mortal combat. Secondly, 'science and religion' has a tendency towards disentanglement, where 'science' does one sort of thing and 'religion' another. And thirdly, the duo are frequently pushed tow…Read more
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9Between Catastrophes: God, Nature and HumanityRevista Portuguesa de Filosofia 77 (2-3): 489-500. 2021.Critical responses to the pandemic have divided between the need to control and defeat it and fears of a new medicalisation of human existence. In the short-term the first response is right, but in the long-term the second. The ideological division on this issue on the left roughly correlates with a relative stress on the power of the market on the one hand or the power of the state on the other. But these are two halves of the same picture: the mechanisation of human life and the artificial ren…Read more
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43The Confession of Time in AugustineMaynooth Philosophical Papers 10 5-56. 2020.The apparent contradiction between subjective and objective approaches to time in Augustine can be resolved if it is understood that he regarded cosmic time and the finite things it engenders as being of itself, in some sense, both psychic and self-recording. This interpretation holds whether or not Augustine affirms a world soul. It is justifiable in terms of the continued applicability of his earlier liberal-arts writings to his later texts and his blending of Plotinian vitalism, Porphyrian sp…Read more
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13Tradition as the Future of Innovation (edited book)Cambridge Publishing House. 2015.What is the meaning of the word tradition ? Are there live traditions today? Does tradition clash with innovation? Is it possible to love the proper tradition and look to innovation at the same time? This study brings together a number of insightful contributions that focus on the complexity of the relationship between tradition and innovation and on the forces that could emerge from it, if tradition is seen to represent the cornerstone for future. The volume is subdivided into four sections: I.…Read more
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8History of the One GodHeythrop Journal 38 (4): 371-400. 1997.The article discusses the history of monotheism from the earliest times to the present. It begins with arguments against the notion of monotheists as an evolutionarily early stage in religion and then proceeds to characterize monotheism in the Old testament. The view that there was every a pre‐monotheistic phase of one ‘national God’ is called into question, along with the priority of the ‘God of history’ over the creator God. Association of the divine with social justice is shown to be common t…Read more
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11The Religious Dimension in the Thought of Giambattista Vico, 1668-1744: The Early MetaphysicsEdwin Mellen Press. 1991.In this two-volume work, the author argues that the avant-garde features of Giambattista Vico's thought stem directly from his engagement with theological traditions, and his concern to develop a Catholic apologetic. This claim is established through a thorough engagement with all Vico's texts.
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6The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?MIT Press. 2009.A militant Marxist atheist and a "Radical Orthodox" Christian theologiansquare off on everything from the meaning of theology and Christ to the war machine of corporatemafia.
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126Postmodern critical augustinianism : a short summa in forty-two responses to unasked questionsIn Simon Oliver & John Milbank (eds.), The radical orthodoxy reader, Routledge. pp. 225-237. 2009.
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13The Last of the Last: Theology, Authority and DemocracyRevista Portuguesa de Filosofia 58 (2). 2002.Theology finds itself in search of the locus of authority: should theology seek to defend its theses in function to the critical norms established by Western academic culture? Or should it guide its reasonings according to the teachings of the Church? The article shows that the way forward involves an historical and conceptual examination of the epistemic change occurring around 1300. Univocity and representation became progressively dominant concepts in the West; the result is that reason began…Read more
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48Liberality versus LiberalismTelos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 2006 (134): 6-21. 2006.Today we live in very peculiar circumstances indeed. The welfare of this world is being wrecked by the ideology of neo-liberalism, and yet its historical challengers—conservatism and socialism—are in total disarray. Socialism, in particular, appears to have been wrong-footed by the discovery that liberalism and not socialism is the bearer of “modernity” and “progress.” As the suspicion arises that perhaps modernity and progress are themselves by no means on the side of justice, then socialists t…Read more
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21The body by love possessed: Christianity and late capitalism in BritainModern Theology 3 (1): 35-65. 1986.
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28Vico's science of imagination : D.P. Verene (review)History of European Ideas 4 (3): 337-342. 1983.
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161Can a Gift be Given? Prolegomena to a Future Trinitarian MetaphysicIn Rethinking Metaphysics, Jones, L Gregory (Ed), Blackwell. pp. 119-161. 1995.The article claimed: 1) That a gift "can" expect a return. 2) That only a reciprocal gift can occur at all. 3) That the mark of a gift is non-identical repetition rather than unconditional freedom. 4) That Christianity thinks unlimited gift-exchange free of fetishization it objects. 5) That Christian "agape" is more like an exchanged gift than a free gift. 6) That the true, exchanged gift is not "before" being
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165Review Article: A Closer walk on the Wild Side: Some Comments on Charles Taylor's A Secular Age: Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). x + 874 pp. US$39.95 (hb), ISBN 978—0—674—02676—6 (review)Studies in Christian Ethics 22 (1): 89-104. 2009.
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Nottingham UniversityRegular Faculty