The Word Made Strange: Theology, Language and Culture

by John Milbank

The essays in this new book from John Milbank range over the entire field of theology, and both extend and enrich the theological perspective underlying his earlier Theology and Social Theory. The essays are focused around the theme of a theological approach to language, and offer a richly textured and broad ranging inquiry which will contribute to a variety of contemporary debates.

Genres: Theology, Philosophy, Language, Religion, Essays

298 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1996

About the author

Professor John Milbank is Professor in Religion, Politics and Ethics and the Director of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham. He has previously taught at the Universities of Lancaster, Cambridge and Virginia. He is the author of several books of which the most well-known is Theology and Social Theory and the most recent Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon. He is one of the editors of the Radical Orthodoxy collection of essays which occasioned much debate. In general he has endeavoured in his work to resist the idea that secular norms of understanding should set the agenda for theology and has tried to promote the sense that Christianity offers a rich and viable account of the whole of reality.

Reviews

[Freddie Murfin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful, fascinating read that got me through the first few weeks of the Coronavirus pandemic. There are of course many writers being discussed here (Herder, Hamann, Vico, Gregory of Nyssa, etc.) as is expected in a work by someone like Milbank, yet I think the two most important figures he engages with - are Aquinas and Hegel. It's probably best to at least have some background, understanding of these two prior to engaging with his work as the book is mostly a reworking/reinterpretation of their ideas. I'll leave a brief summary below, as a taster.

For Milbank, poesis is ‘the ceaseless re-narrating and ‘explaining’ of human history under the sign of the cross […] as an utterly concrete allegorical outline, which remains, precisely by that token, all the more a mere sign of that mystery into which it must still enter in order to define itself.’ What appears here is a redemptive re-narration, a socially embodied poesis, and the ‘tragic abyss’ that is ‘represented rather than mutely indicated […] in its historical occasion and final non-necessity, [with] the obscurity of its opening [being] yet bounded and enabled by the concrete instance of a ‘ruin.’’

‘A historicist theology knows that the whole thing […] is the product of our representation, and it is the whole picture which must be […] an imperfect registration of [a] final reality.’

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

See my review of the Smith book. Surely interesting but impossibly dense, to me at least.

[David Mosley · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of essays that have certainly made this reader think and even rethink some things.

[David Goetz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just re-read the programmatic essay, "The Name of Jesus," and found it irritating and insightful at the same time. Definitely worth reading, though.