John William Milbank

1. Introduction

John William Milbank (b. 1952) is an English Anglican theologian whose work has significantly reshaped late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century debates about theology’s relation to philosophy, politics, and modern secular culture. Best known as a founding figure of Radical Orthodoxy, he advances the provocative thesis that what is commonly called “secular reason” is not a neutral standpoint but the outcome of specific theological and metaphysical decisions.

Milbank’s thought is centrally concerned with how Christian theology can function as an intellectually rigorous account of reality, rather than as a private, confessional supplement to allegedly self-sufficient philosophical or social-scientific discourses. His writings explore participatory ontology, the nature–grace relationship, and a distinctive political theology that challenges liberal individualism and market-centered economics.

Within contemporary philosophy of religion and political theory, Milbank is often treated as a leading voice in “postsecular” discussions, in which the boundaries between theology, metaphysics, and public reason are reconsidered. Supporters regard him as reviving a rich, pre-modern metaphysical imagination for late-modern contexts, while critics view his project as overly ambitious, historically selective, or ecclesially narrow.

The entry that follows situates Milbank’s life and work within their historical context, traces his intellectual development, outlines his major writings and core ideas, and surveys the reception—both enthusiastic and sharply critical—that his proposals have generated across theology, philosophy, and social theory.

2. Life and Historical Context

Milbank’s life and career unfold within the shifting religious and intellectual landscape of postwar Britain and wider late-modern Europe. Born in 1952 in Kingston upon Hull, he came of age during the cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, a period marked by declining church attendance in Britain, the rise of secular social sciences, and intense debates about the legacy of Christendom.

Biographical outline

Historical-intellectual setting

Milbank’s work is shaped by several overlapping contexts:

• British Anglicanism after “Christendom”: As an Anglican priest-theologian, he writes amid debates over liturgy, ecclesial authority, and the church’s public role in a pluralist society.
• Postmodern philosophy and critical theory: Figures such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida, widely influential in the 1970s–1990s academy, provide both conversation partners and targets for his constructive project.
• Ressourcement and post–Vatican II Catholic theology: The retrieval of Augustine, Aquinas, and Henri de Lubac in Catholic thought forms a crucial backdrop to his recovery of a participatory metaphysics.
• Late-capitalist globalization: Growing economic inequality and the consolidation of neoliberal market policies in the 1980s and 1990s inform his engagement with political economy and social theory.

These contexts help explain why Milbank frames theology as an alternative social theory and why his work consistently addresses questions of modernity, secularization, and the fate of religious metaphysics.

3. Intellectual Development

Milbank’s intellectual trajectory can be divided into several phases, each marked by shifting emphases while retaining a consistent concern with the relation between theology, metaphysics, and society.

Early formation: history, theology, and suspicion of the secular

His undergraduate training in modern history at Oxford exposed him to narratives of progress, liberalism, and secularization. Theological studies and ordination in the Church of England at Cambridge led him to read Augustine, Aquinas, and modern continental thinkers alongside Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. During this period he began to suspect that “secular” social theory rested on theological presuppositions it could neither fully justify nor acknowledge.

Genealogical critique and first system-building (1980s–mid‑1990s)

While teaching at institutions such as Lancaster, Cambridge, and the University of Virginia, Milbank elaborated a genealogical critique of modern social sciences, culminating in Theology and Social Theory (1990). He appropriated Nietzschean and Foucauldian methods to argue that secular disciplines emerged from intra-Christian conflicts and shifts in metaphysics, especially surrounding nature, grace, and the will.

Radical Orthodoxy and collaborative projects (mid‑1990s–2000s)

In the mid‑1990s, collaboration with Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward crystallized into the Radical Orthodoxy movement. This phase emphasized retrieval of Platonist-Augustinian and Thomistic participation, sacramentality, and ecclesial practice as resources for responding to postmodern critiques of metaphysics. Edited volumes and joint works extended his influence beyond strictly theological circles.

Political theology, metaphysics of gift, and economics (2000s–2010s)

Subsequent writings, including Being Reconciled and Beyond Secular Order, integrated his metaphysical claims about participation and gift with more explicit reflections on politics, law, democracy, and economic life. He engaged with Catholic social teaching and heterodox economics, exploring alternative models of social order grounded in solidarity and reciprocity.

Recent directions

More recent work includes reflections on interreligious dialogue (especially with Islam), ecological concerns, and the arts. Throughout, he continues to refine an ontology of peace and gift, positioning Christian theology as a comprehensive intellectual framework conversant with both analytic and continental philosophy.

4. Major Works

Milbank’s major writings span systematic theology, social theory, metaphysics, and political theology. The following overview highlights central works and their primary concerns.

Key monographs and collaborative volumes

These works are often read together as stages of a single, evolving project: from genealogical critique of secular social theory, through constructive retrieval of participatory metaphysics, to detailed proposals in political theology and social theory.

5. Core Ideas and Metaphysical Vision

Milbank’s thought centers on a distinctive metaphysical and theological vision in which Christian doctrines provide a comprehensive account of reality, knowledge, and social life.

Participatory ontology and the metaphysics of gift

Drawing on Platonism, Augustine, and Aquinas, Milbank understands all finite beings as participating in God’s being and goodness. Created reality does not possess autonomous existence; it is a continual reception of divine gift. He frequently characterizes this as a metaphysics of gift or superabundance:

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“Being is given as gift, and therefore as superabundance: ontology is inseparable from charity.”

— John Milbank, Being Reconciled

On this view, metaphysics and ethics interpenetrate: the structure of being is inherently generous, so authentic social relations are likewise marked by gratuity rather than competition or mere exchange.

Ontology of peace versus ontologies of violence

Milbank contrasts his participatory ontology with modern metaphysical frameworks that, in his analysis, treat conflict, scarcity, or will-to-power as basic. He terms these ontologies of violence, seeing them in strands of Hobbesian political theory, certain readings of Nietzsche, or some sociological accounts of society as fundamentally agonistic. By contrast, his ontology of peace claims that harmonious communion—mirroring Trinitarian relations—is more fundamental than conflict, even while recognizing the reality of sin and violence.

Nature–grace and the “suspended middle”

A further core idea is his rejection of a self-sufficient pure nature. Following Henri de Lubac, Milbank maintains that human nature is always already ordered toward the supernatural vision of God. This “suspended middle” between nature and grace undercuts dualistic separations of secular and sacred spheres and supports his thesis that “there is no secular” understood as a fully autonomous realm.

Theology as comprehensive rational discourse

Milbank’s metaphysical vision includes a claim about reason itself: there is no purely neutral, tradition-free rationality. All reasoning is embedded within narratives and practices, and Christian theology offers one such rational, publicly arguable account—capable, in his view, of rivaling and critiquing secular philosophies and social theories.

6. Methodology and Use of Genealogy

Milbank’s methodological hallmark is his adaptation of genealogy—a historical-critical approach associated with Nietzsche and Foucault—to theological purposes.

Theological genealogy of the secular

In Theology and Social Theory, Milbank traces how concepts such as “society,” “the secular,” and “the state” emerge from intra-Christian debates and shifts in metaphysics. Rather than treating the secular as the inevitable outcome of rational progress, he presents it as a contingent product of theological disputes about nature and grace, divine power, and ecclesial authority.

Interweaving critique and retrieval

Milbank’s genealogy is not merely deconstructive. It is paired with ressourcement—a return to pre-modern Christian sources (especially Augustine and Aquinas) to retrieve alternative conceptual possibilities eclipsed by modern shifts. Genealogy thus serves a dual function: undermining the inevitability-claims of secular reason and liberating older theological resources for contemporary use.

Positive and negative assessments

Supporters see this methodology as a powerful way to challenge assumptions of neutrality in the social sciences and to demonstrate the ongoing relevance of theological categories. Critics contend that his genealogies can be selective or tendentious, that they sometimes understate non-Christian or material factors in the emergence of modern institutions, and that they risk replacing one grand narrative with another. Nonetheless, his deployment of genealogy has been influential in postsecular debates about the history and status of “the secular.”

7. Political Theology and Social Theory

Milbank’s political and social thought extends his metaphysical claims into analyses of modern institutions, law, and economics.

Theology as rival social theory

In Theology and Social Theory, he portrays Christian theology as a rival social theory capable of offering comprehensive accounts of community, power, and the common good. Rather than accepting sociology, political science, or economics as normatively authoritative, he regards them as particular, theologically inflected narratives that can be contested by an explicitly Christian vision.

Critique of liberalism and sovereignty

Milbank is associated with a strong critique of liberal individualism and modern sovereignty. He argues that:

• Liberal political theory often presupposes an atomized individual and a background of competition or conflict.
• Concepts of a sovereign state and autonomous “political” sphere derive from theological distortions (e.g., certain readings of divine omnipotence) and late-medieval nominalism.

In Beyond Secular Order, he contends that modern notions of popular sovereignty and representation are parasitic on Christian ideas of personhood and peoplehood while denying their theological grounding.

Alternative social and economic visions

Milbank advances an alternative, often described by commentators as a Christian humanist or postliberal politics. Key features include:

• Emphasis on associational and subsidiary forms of organization (parishes, guild-like bodies, cooperatives) over centralized state or market power.
• Advocacy of economic arrangements reflecting a metaphysics of gift, prioritizing reciprocity, mutual aid, and shared goods over purely contractual exchange.
• Interest in Catholic social teaching (e.g., distributism, solidarity) as conversation partners.

Proponents see in this an imaginative reconstruction of politics and economics around participation and common goods. Critics argue that his political vision can be vague in institutional detail, idealizes medieval Christendom, or insufficiently addresses issues of pluralism, rights, and power imbalances. Nonetheless, his work has become a key reference point in contemporary political theology and the theology–economics dialogue.

8. Engagement with Philosophical Traditions

Milbank’s project is characterized by wide-ranging engagement with both classical and contemporary philosophical traditions, often reorganized around his participatory metaphysics.

Classical and medieval sources

He draws extensively on:

• Platonism and Neoplatonism: Concepts of participation, hierarchy of being, and the One inform his account of created beings’ dependence on God.
• Augustine: Central for his notions of the City of God, love as social ontology, and the primacy of peace.
• Thomas Aquinas: Provides a key framework for analogy, participation, and the integration of nature and grace; reinterpreted through ressourcement readings (notably Henri de Lubac).

In Truth in Aquinas, Milbank and Pickstock argue that Aquinas offers a non-representational account of truth grounded in participation in divine being, positioning Thomism as a resource for postmodern philosophy.

Continental philosophy and postmodern thought

Milbank intensively engages Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, and Badiou. He often appropriates their critiques of metaphysics, power, or subjectivity while contending that they rely upon, or radicalize, earlier theological moves. For instance:

• From Nietzsche and Foucault he adapts genealogy.
• With Heidegger he shares concerns about ontotheology but argues for a distinctively Christian metaphysics of participation rather than Heideggerian “being-toward-death.”
• His exchanges with Badiou and Deleuze focus on event, multiplicity, and immanence, against which he proposes a Christological and Trinitarian framework of participation.

Analytic philosophy and social theory

Although more closely associated with continental thought, Milbank also interacts with analytic philosophy of religion (e.g., debates about divine simplicity and participation) and with social theorists such as Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. He frequently re-reads these figures theologically, claiming that their accounts of economy, rationalization, and religion tacitly depend on particular theological shifts.

Supporters view his cross-traditional engagement as intellectually fertile and boundary-crossing; critics suggest that his readings can be highly revisionary and sometimes insufficiently attentive to the internal diversity of the traditions and thinkers he engages.

9. Critiques and Controversies

Milbank’s work has generated extensive debate across theology, philosophy, and political theory. Responses range from enthusiastic adoption to sharp criticism.

Historical and genealogical challenges

Historians of ideas and theologians have questioned aspects of his genealogies of the secular. Critics argue that:

• He sometimes overstates the continuity between specific medieval theological shifts and modern secular thought.
• Non-theological factors—economic, technological, legal—receive comparatively little attention.
• His portrayal of late-medieval thought, especially nominalism, can be schematic.

Defenders reply that his genealogies are intended as large-scale interpretive narratives rather than exhaustive historical reconstructions.

Debates on nature–grace and metaphysics

Within Catholic and Protestant theology, his alignment with de Lubac has been both welcomed and disputed. Some Thomists contend that Milbank’s rejection of “pure nature” risks collapsing nature into grace. Others argue that he retrieves a more authentically Thomistic participatory metaphysics. Similar debates concern his use of Neoplatonism and claims about an ontology of peace, which some philosophers regard as underdeveloped with respect to the persistence of evil and tragedy.

Political and ethical criticisms

Political theorists and ethicists have raised questions about:

• Ecclesial focus and pluralism: Some see his preference for a robustly Christian social order as insufficiently attentive to religious diversity and non-Christian citizens.
• Romanticizing Christendom: His positive references to medieval social forms are seen by critics as idealized, overlooking historical injustices and exclusions.
• Practical feasibility: Commentators note a relative lack of detailed institutional proposals for realizing his economic and political ideals.

Accusations of insularity and polemic

Some scholars view Radical Orthodoxy, with which Milbank is closely identified, as an insular movement prone to strong polemics against “secular reason.” Others, however, see his work as fostering wide-ranging interdisciplinary conversation. Overall, his writings remain a focal point for debates about the role of theology in public reason and the viability of comprehensive metaphysical visions in late modernity.

10. Legacy and Historical Significance

Milbank’s influence extends across several domains, shaping both academic discourse and broader discussions about religion and public life.

Reframing theology’s place in modern thought

He is widely credited with helping to reopen the question of theology’s status within the university and public reason. By challenging the neutrality of secular disciplines and advancing theology as a rival, comprehensive discourse, he has contributed to the broader “postsecular” turn in philosophy, political theory, and religious studies.

Radical Orthodoxy and subsequent movements

As a co-founder of Radical Orthodoxy, Milbank has influenced a generation of theologians and philosophers who retrieve pre-modern metaphysics to critique modern secularism. The movement has sparked conferences, edited series, and research centers across Europe and North America. Some subsequent projects—such as “political Augustinianism,” various “postliberal” theologies, and renewed interest in participation and analogia entis—engage his work either as inspiration or as a major interlocutor to be qualified or resisted.

Impact on political theology and economics

In political theology, Milbank stands alongside thinkers such as Jürgen Moltmann and Johann Baptist Metz as a key figure reshaping how Christian thought addresses sovereignty, democracy, and the economy. His critiques of liberalism and market individualism have influenced Christian ethicists, communitarian theorists, and scholars exploring alternatives to neoliberal capitalism, even among those who disagree with his ecclesial or metaphysical commitments.

Ongoing debates and research trajectories

Milbank’s work continues to be the subject of monographs, symposia, and doctoral theses. Scholars engage his proposals on:

• The genealogy of the secular and postsecular theory
• The nature–grace relationship in historical and systematic perspective
• Participatory metaphysics and the analogia entis
• Christian contributions to economic theory and practice

While assessments of his project diverge markedly, most commentators agree that Milbank has played a significant role in reinvigorating metaphysical and theological reflection in late-modern intellectual life, ensuring that questions of participation, gift, and the theological shape of the secular remain central to contemporary debates.