You’re on the look-out for an introduction to John Milbank or radical orthodoxy.  You pick up a book with the title The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural (Eerdmans, 2005).  You put it back down, looking for something seemingly less esoteric. You shouldn’t. 

Although The Suspended Middle seems not even obliquely like a short introduction to radical orthodoxy, actually it functions quite nicely as such, and I recommend it.  Why?  Well, first of all, it is short and well written.  In these brief pages, Milbank provides a compelling introduction to and summary of de Lubac’s theology of nature and grace and the paradox of the supernatural. 

A quick summary may help.  De Lubac exercises a discourse that is suspended in the middle between nature and grace (hence the title). Milbank believes that at the heart of de Lubac’s theology is a doctrine of the supernatural that makes the supernatural (grace) something that intrinsically completes nature.  He might say, We have a latent mystical orientation to the beatific vision; we become what we see; we know as we are known.  By grace we become the very gift we receive, and in this way, reception and recipient become one and the same (what Milbank late in the book calls “exchange without reciprocity” (91) or “gift without contrast” (97)).

This thesis is so foreign to most theologies formed in the West that it bears repeating.  I’ve read the thesis stated in a variety of ways throughout the book, and I still have trouble getting my head around it.  So, two thesis-like quotes from Milbank: “Grace, one might say, is ‘the art of spirit-governing.’ Just as human beings fulfill, for example, the proper potential of wood by making a table and yet wood would never ‘tableize’ by itself, but needs to be ‘given’ the form of table, so we are elevated (with the angels) by a divine art that does not abolish but fulfills our nature, though in a contingent, unexpected way” (100).  And from the introduction: “That which is wholly done for us by God, namely deification by grace, is yet also our highest act and as such properly our own—even that which is most properly our own” (ix.)

These two quotes alone should make curious at least enough readers of this column to have made it worth the while, but in case you need more convincing, a few parting comments are in order.

First, The Suspended Middle functions as an excellent primer in the theology of a few other high caliber theologians, especially Thomas Aquinas and von Balthasar.  Since de Lubac has come under criticism especially by a few neo-Thomistic schools, it is no surprise that Milbank treats these debates in some detail. The most important turn here is Milbank (and others) finding de Lubac both Augustinian and Thomistic.  He explores the synthesis of these schools as they relate to a theology of gift (a topic on which Milbank has taught and written extensively).  This theology is best summarized, again, in Milbank’s own words: “The creative influence of God does not influence creation, but posits creation as influence (it is ‘a gift of a gift to a gift’).  In this sense, it is radically unilateral. Yet it is paradoxically so unilateral that it gives even the recipient and the possibility of her gratitude” (90). 

The link to Hans Urs von Balthasar is also straightforward.  It is von Balthasar who coined the phrase “suspended middle” to characterize de Lubac’s theology.  He wrote, “De Lubac soon realized that his position moved into a suspended middle in which he could not practice any philosophy without its transcendence in theology, but also any theology without its essential inner structure of philosophy” (11).  This quote illustrates precisely why Milbank’s book is an eye-opening introduction to radical orthodoxy.  It introduces us to a primary resource of the radical orthodox movement (de Lubac) and simultaneously raises concern in us over a primary thematic of the movement (challenging the autonomy of philosophy in relation to theology).

The book bears fruit in repeated readings.  I have seldom read a book that so carefully deconstructed some of my preconceived theological assumptions and then drew me into a larger, more catholic and visionary sensibility. 

The last sentence of the book will either clarify or make more difficult the contention that Milbank himself is either radical or orthodox, both or neither.  He writes, “Never specifically consented to by de Lubac, but always exerting its own original lure, was Origen’s vision of apocatastasis: the universal Christological salvation of spirits and through this, the eternal re-establishment of all things. C’est du reel précis” (108). 

Milbank is widely recognized as having reinvigorated a “theology of gift” as it relates to grace and the supernatural. His work has influenced my preaching and thinking on gospel and grace at an incredibly deep level. Another book that has had a similar effect is Risto Saarinen’s God and the Gift: An Ecumenical Theology of Giving (Liturgical Press, 2005). If this column encourages a few of my fellow Lutheran clergy to read these volumes and discuss them here, my heart will be made glad.

For those who cannot fit the books into this year’s book budget, I provide these links as resources for further reading:

This is the centre that Milbank directs, and there is much available to read and study.

I still have not figured out how Google is doing this, nor whether it is legal, but Saarinen’s God and the Gift: An Ecumenical Theology of Giving is available on-line at the Google book project.

Milbank’s The Suspended Middle is also available on-line from the Google book project as well.