mir - panentheist reading of john milbank

A PANENTHEIST READING OFJOHN MILBANKmoth_1763 526..560

AMENE MIR

There is no one place in Milbank’s writings where one can point to a clearlydelineated doctrine of God. It is scattered amidst a range of theological andphilosophical commentary covering the whole range of theology and phi-losophy from Plato to Derrida, Augustine to McFague. This article does notquestion Milbank’s sometimes controversial readings of these thinkers. Itseeks rather to glean the tenor of Milbank’s own understanding of the natureand attributes of God and their bearing on the question of creation’s relationto the divine, especially in the light of his return to the participatory theologyof Augustine and Dionysius.1

In this return Milbank radically uproots much of the theological and philo-sophical endeavour of modernity2. This article, however, will argue for evi-dence of a far more radical turn in Milbank’s thought towards panentheism.Namely, that creation is embraced and contained within the life of the divine,such that creation and the divine can be said to be in dipolar asymmetricalrelation.3 Milbank makes no explicit mention anywhere in his work of theword “panentheism”. Yet, as one looks more closely at his writings, it cer-tainly becomes possible to give a panentheist reading of his thought. Thisarticle, then, is essentially a “colouring-in” of the latent and implicit under-lying panentheistic contours to be found in Milbank’s thought in order toreveal the hidden implications flowing from his understanding of God andthe divine relation to creation.

Initially it appears that Milbank offers a strong defence of classical theismand divine transcendence4 as found for example in the thought of Aquinas.Here God is “pure act”, “As infinite power which is unimpeded, nothing inGod can be unrealised, so that it would appear that God is actus purus. . . .”5

Amene Mir9 Mylne Close, Upper Mall, London W6 9TE, [email protected]

Modern Theology 28:3 July 2012ISSN 0266-7177 (Print)ISSN 1468-0025 (Online)

© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Milbank speaks of God as “. . . a plenitudinous supra-temporal infinitewhich has ‘already realised’ in an eminent fashion every desirable effect.”6 InGod there is “. . . an infinite coincidence of act and power. . . .”7 God’s “sim-plicity” has “. . . no outside, and therefore it is also beyond the contrast‘self-sufficient’ versus affectable-from-without.”8 God does not “become”9 orenter time.10 Divine aseity, immutability and impassibility are underlined inthat God “. . . never, properly speaking, interacts with creatures.”11 God is“. . . utterly replete and self-sufficient. . . .”12; “. . . nothing can be added todivine knowledge or divine power.”13 Nor can anything be taken from theimpassable God.14 Considering the problem of evil, Milbank agrees that itwould be an error even to argue for a temporary putting aside of divineomnipotence.15 He notes Aquinas’ “agnostic reserve”16 in considering finitereality’s relation to the divine: “It is only Aquinas’ agnosticism which reallyexemplifies the principle that there is no ratio between finite and infinite, andupholds the ontological difference.”17 We will see, however, that in his desirefor a return to a participatory theology Milbank will depart from a straight-forward reiteration of classical theism allowing for a strong panentheisticreading of his work.

Milbank is well known for his rejection of Duns Scotus’ univocalist ontol-ogy. This rejection rests in part, I would argue, in its failure to offer anadequate doctrine of divine transcendence. This may seem an odd claim tomake. After all, Scotus’ God is not that of an immanent force identified withcreation but a distant and removed deity who if he intervenes does so onlyoccasionally and by seeming arbitrary acts of will.18 The offence, however,against transcendence in Milbank’s eyes is that Scotus allows for an ontologyin which Being is itself a transcendental category prior to the divine, in whichboth creation and the divine share, albeit God possessing Being to an eminentand infinite degree unlike created beings which possess it only finitely. Inturn, Creation, by sharing in transcendental being, comes to possess its ownautonomy grounded in this prior transcendental category without need forthe initiating and sustaining presence of the divine. “Being” becomes“. . . transcendentally indifferent to infinite and finite . . . the finite Creationfully is, in its own right as Creation. . . .”19 With Scotus we end up with thewrong type of transcendence (a mere removal of the divine from an autono-mous creation), and the wrong type of ontological divide (God, althoughseparate from creation, univocally shares with creation in a transcendentground of Being). God is “reduced” to being one more “being” (albeit infi-nite) amongst other “beings” (finite). Milbank names this error ontotheology.20

It is an ontology unconstrained by, and transcendentally prior to theologicaltruth.21 Milbank would assert that modernity and notions of the secular inpart arise from this theological error, in which finite reality can be under-stood as having an ontological grounding apart from its participatory relationto the divine. Finite reality becomes an end in itself to be studied bothphilosophically and scientifically.22 Milbank responds that unless we

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. . . redefine being and knowledge theologically . . . the radical othernessof God, will never be expressible in any way without idolatrously reducingit to our finite human categories.23

Further, for Milbank, this theological error undergirds the nihilism implicitin modernity’s world-view, for a transcendental univocal Being can only“exist” in so far as it is instantiated in some way or other, beyond which thereis nothing.24

Milbank’s rejection of Scotus’ transcendental univocity as the medium of“differentiated content” will be important in arriving at a panentheisticreading of his work. For Milbank believes Scotus’ position leads to a pureheterogeneity of instantiated content25 in which God’s relation to creationcomes to be understood as “. . . a bare divine unity [who] starkly confrontsthe other distinct unities which he has ordained.”26 For Milbank such arelation denies to theological discourse the use of analogy and hierarchywhich he holds essential to a correct understanding of creation’s relation tothe divine and the preservation of a correct doctrine of divine transcendence.For heterogeneity exemplifies itself as non-hierarchical and arbitrary,27 result-ing in difference (in contrast to analogical “likeness”) that has to be continuallyheld back from conflict by a “ruling monarch” and a coercive and arbitrarywill in a shared theatre of action. God becomes one more causal influenceamongst others.28 Divine transcendence, then, for Milbank is not primarilyabout God’s distance from creation, from which the divine occasionally inter-venes, but certainly it does, as we shall see, include a notion of “ontologicaldivide” through an analogical and hierarchical understanding of participa-tion that Milbank truly believes preserves a correct understanding of divinetranscendence.

Milbank’s defence of divine transcendence is further displayed in his rejec-tion of “immanentism” and his attack on so-called “eco-theology”.29 Part ofthe reason for the rise of this particular “error” Milbank suggests lies in theScotist roots of modernity. Here, creation is no longer understood in itsparticipatory relation to the divine but as occupying its own autonomousground of “being”. Subsequently, nature in and of itself can be “objectified”according to “laws” governing the inter-relationship of physical bodiesthrough scientific “experiment”, to be supplemented later by the determina-tion of the “laws” governing the nature of human societies.30 Ironically, Godbecomes identified with these immanent laws.31 Such a “. . . purely imma-nent, embodied, developing limited Godhead . . .”32 becomes merely a “spiri-tual” factor within the world, which in turn imposes limiting constraintsupon him.”33 With immanentism God comes to be identified with “lure” and“process”.34 Divine omnipotence is rejected in favour of a God who “. . . doeshis best . . . to persuade recalcitrant nature. . . .”35

It is in the context of defending divine transcendence that Milbank con-fronts what seem to be certain theological “impossibilities”36. Namely, that a

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transcendent God can create and that such a God can become incarnate.“Impossibilities” because they offend against divine transcendence anddivine aseity. Why should God to whom nothing can be added create? Howcan this God become incarnate in time? Does not the incarnation involvechange in the Godhead? Milbank notes that whilst for Aquinas creation “. . . isexterior to God . . .” Milbank asks how should we understand this, since“. . . there cannot really be an exterior to God since he is all in all”?37

Whilst preserving divine transcendence Milbank seeks to give answers tothese aporias and begin to undo what he sees as the errors of modernity bya return to the participatory theology of Augustine and Dionysius. For thequestion at the heart of his Radical Orthodoxy project is the question ofcreation’s relation to God and of how much of the theological understandingof the last six hundred years has undermined a correct understanding of thisrelationship.

Given the importance of divine transcendence to Milbank’s theologicalposition, it might seem incredible to offer a panentheistic reading of his work.Yet I will suggest that it is only within such a reading that the method bywhich Milbank deals with these aporias can properly make sense. ForMilbank pushes further the Dionysian idea that God as utterly replete andself-sufficient can share himself with another38: a God who is replete; a Godwho shares his life with what is “not God”. The one is necessarily self-contained; the other goes beyond self-containment to another. I will show thatthis pushing further of the Dionysian idea leads Milbank into importantqualifications of classical theism. We will see evidence of a developing yetunacknowledged dipolarity in his doctrine of God: God as he is in himself;God in his ecstatic sharing in relation to another.

Milbank’s treatment of God’s ecstatic “going beyond” self-containment to“another” underpins his understanding of the nature of culture, languageand history. Scotus’ univocal ontology allows creation an autonomous space,the secular, on which God “acts” occasionally and from “afar”. Here revela-tion is received arbitrarily from “without” to become an “object” of theologi-cal study and scrutiny.39 Milbank’s understanding of “revelation” is verydifferent. He argues that for the Church Fathers “. . . revelation . . . is . . . con-joined intrinsically and inseparably with a created event which symbolicallydiscloses that transcendent reality, to which all created events to a lesserdegree . . . point.”40 God is revealed to us not from without but is embeddedwithin culture, and indeed pre-eminently in human makings, in language andhistory.41

Here lies the essence of Milbank’s return to a participatory theology. Cre-ation’s relation to the divine rests not with a “far off” God revealed by anextrinsically imparted revelation in which grace comes from “without”, butby a creation that can only be viewed and finally defined by its orientation tothe divine, leaving “. . . nothing in nature which the light of faith might notre-interpret and indeed no true nature which has not been transfigured by



grace.”42 It is a creation that participates in God. The hard and fast distinctionbetween revealed religion and natural religion, between faith and reason,between nature and grace, is overthrown, for creation in toto cannot beunderstood other than in its relation to the divine.43 For Milbank such anapproach can be interpreted as a kind of appeal to a natural religion andnatural theology,44 not in terms of a remote designing deity (whose vestigialeffects we can discern in the “laws” governing an autonomous nature “left-to-itself”) but rather in terms “. . . of the corporeal depth of things . . .” inwhich “. . . we take the surface of things as signs disclosing or promising suchdepth.”45 This “depth” relates to a thing’s actual existence over and againstnothing in so far as it held in the mind of God46: “. . . the world is God’sspeaking it out of a void. . . .”47 This “grounds” actuality in the divine ratherthan in Scotus’ transcendental Being which is in and of itself “nothing” otherthan it’s finite instantiations.48 In dealing with the aporias of how a God whois replete can create we begin to see here intimations of a panentheist positionas Milbank pushes further the Dionysian vision of God’s ecstatic “goingbeyond” self-containment to “another”. In place of an autonomous ground-ing for the created order Milbank agrees with Jacobi and Hamann in theirinsistence

that no finite thing can be known, not even to any degree, outside its ratioto the infinite; hence they denied the validity of the enterprises of ontol-ogy or epistemology as pure philosophical endeavours, or else arguedthat if they were valid their conclusions would be nihilistic. . . .49

We have noted that in defending divine transcendence Milbank mentionsAquinas’ “agnostic reserve”,50 in which there can be no ratio between thefinite and infinite, thus upholding the ontological divide between the divineand creation. In Milbank, however, we see a shift, such that the finite cannotbe known outside its ratio to the infinite. This is not in terms of an assertionthat God and creation operate on the same plane of activity only to bedistinguished in terms of a ratio of lesser or greater proportionality as found ina univocalist ontology, but rather in terms of a gifted participation. Herecreated actuality is understood as pure “gift”: “. . . in Creation there are onlygivens in so far as they are also gifts: if one sees only objects, then onemis-apprehends and fails to recognise true natures.”51 Created things canonly be gifts; all that they are is given, the created is the gift through andthrough, with no being, substance or material that is ontologically “prior” toor independent of gift. It is only within the infinite that the finite can be knownas “gift”. The “gift” is only through its participation in the ecstatic outpouringof the divine. In terms of the relation between the created and the divineMilbank writes,

. . . gratuity arises before necessity or obligation and does not evenrequire this contrast in order to be comprehensible. The creature ascreature is not the recipient of a gift; it is itself this gift.52

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“Apart” from this “givenness” there can be no “being”.53 Consequently, therecan be no prior medium to which grace is conveyed extrinsically. To deny thisis to fall into the trap of the univocalist ontology of Scotus in which “being”becomes a universal common medium between God and creatures in termsof a shared esse, in which grace (like revelation) is conveyed to a pure natureextrinsically.54 Milbank’s position here reaffirms the rejection of any sharedratio between the created and the divine in terms of a proportionally “shared”or “prior” ground in which both divine and finite reality participate as distinctunities.55 Rather, participation is to be understood in terms of the “move-ment” from the divine understood as pure gratuity, such “. . . that no finitething can be known, not even to any degree, outside its ratio to the infi-nite. . . .”56 The relation, then, between creation and the divine for Milbank isnot of an “exterior” God, who acts from afar, but one of deepest intimacy. Itis a creation as contained in the divine such that to understand God as“cause” and creation as “effect” is not to understand “cause” as preceding“effect” but rather “cause” as realised in “. . . the event of the giving of theeffect.”57 This Milbank describes as a Neoplatonic rather than as an Aristote-lian understanding of cause58.

It is in the light of this Neoplatonic understanding of causality that Milbankreads Aquinas. Creation is intimately and internally related to the divine:

. . . for Aquinas, in the case of divine causality, the decision to create andthe ‘eminent’ reality of creatures are included in the eternal uttering of theLogos. . . . an effect does not really come after a cause, since only the effectrealises the causal operation and defines it.59

Indeed it is “. . . the entire gift of the effect and the emanation of the effect,which itself defines the cause as cause.”60

In contrast to the ontotheology of Scotus, Milbank describes his own posi-tion as a theontology61 which avoids the need for theological discourse to befirst situated and defined within the parameters of a metaphysical discourseconcerned with “being” and “substance” indifferent to its finite and infiniteinstantiations. Rather, creation is to be understood in terms of sheer divinegratuity. Milbank insists on reading Aquinas within this participatory tradi-tion; “Creatures, for Aquinas. . . . are radically accidental. But not thereby ofcourse, accidents of the divine substance; rather they subsist by participationin this substance.”62 The relation being described here “between” the divineand creation is not of a God who is in creation, but more precisely a creationthat is in God. Another way of describing this would be panentheism.

We see here that, in relation to Aquinas, Milbank makes reference to thelanguage of “accidents” and “substance”. In developing his own return to aparticipatory theology Milbank himself, however, rejects the use of suchlanguage in talking of the divine relation to creation.63 In place of “substance”Milbank wishes to speak of relation: finite reality can only be understood inrelation to divine gratuity. There can be no substantial medium between



divine gratuity and finite reality. Creatures are, not by inhering in any priorsubstance, but solely through their actual participation in the divine. Therejection of ontotheology, of Scotist Being, and of Thomist language of sub-stance and accident for that of an understanding of finite reality as a relationalparticipation in the pure gratuity of the divine allows a strong panentheisticreading of Milbank’s position, for if creation here is not within the divinewhat other relation to God can it have? There can be no without, no autonomythrough any shared ground in terms of a univocalist ontology. Nor is actu-ality for Milbank the inhering of some formal or abstract idea in any priorsubstance. It is through and through relational in terms of a participation inthe divine. Milbank writes approvingly of Eriugena’s assertion that “. . . Godacts and knows because he internally ‘makes’ or ‘creates’.”64 That creation is notidentical with God (pantheism) but is rather within God in relationship—panentheism—is underlined by Milbank when he says because Eriugena’sontology is “. . . based on God as internally ‘creator’ . . . [he] is therefore moreprofoundly Christian than Aquinas.”65 Why should this be so? The answer forMilbank is that under the influence of Aristotle Aquinas “. . . thought ofmaking as merely a modification of existing forms. . . .”66 i.e. as the manipu-lation of some pre-existing external “substance” or “matter”. The clear impli-cation of Milbank’s rejection of “substance” in favour of “relation” ispanentheist, that there is nothing “external” to God, substance does notunderlie God’s creative activity. The whole act of creation is radically andcompletely internal to God. It is a relation through participation in the divine,not through a sharing in some external “being” or “substance”. Milbank’sreferences to creation’s “externality” then, need to be understood in thiscontext:67 not that creation should be considered as outside the divine68 butrather as not identical with the divine yet nevertheless internal to it:

The harmony of the Trinity is therefore not the harmony of a finishedtotality. . . . the doctrine of the Trinity discovers the infinite God to includea radical ‘external’ relationality.69

We can read this in terms of an asymmetry between God and creation—God includes creation but creation cannot be said to include God, thuspreserving divine transcendence. For panentheism too affirms the error ofpantheism, namely, that because God includes creation we should deem Godand the world to be in symmetrical relation. There is no symmetry betweenGod and creation, but nor is there any “medium” between God and creation,allowing creation to be understood as purely external to the divine. Ratherthere is only a pure relationality flowing from a transcendent asymmetricaldivine gratuity.

The created world of time participates in God who differentiates; indeedit is this differentiation insofar as it is finitely ‘explicated’, rather thaninfinitely ‘complicated’. Just as God . . . is not a ‘substance’, because he is

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nothing fundamental underlying anything else, so there are no absoluteself-standing substances in creation, no underlying matters not existentthrough form and no discrete and inviolable ‘things’.70

Milbank further reads Aquinas as saying that creation can only be understood“. . . as a self-exceeding—that is to say as the lesser and other to God whichonly exists . . . as always cancelling this lesserness and otherness.”71 This“cancelling” of the “lesserness” and “otherness” of creation occurs throughthe excess that the divine gratuity engenders in creation itself. Milbank usesthe analogy of “suspiration”, the “breath” of the divine which “goes forth”in creation and “returns” deified: “God’s goal is the existence of creaturesoutside himself, yet since there is nothing outside God, all creatures suspire. . . only in returning to God and attaining an outcome in excess of their firstoccasioning.”72 This leads Milbank to suggest that even the resulting “excess”the divine gratuity engenders goes beyond what God himself envisages.

Here the final upshot—deification—is extraordinarily in excess of theoriginal goal—Creation—since it would be pointless for God to aim fordeification, which is already himself. This strange structure—outcome inexcess of goal—only applies to the relation between God and Creation,and is a result of its ‘impossibility’.73

This idea of creation going “beyond” and in “excess” of its goal coloursMilbank’s understanding of the divine and its relation with creation. For thedivine cannot be understood in terms of an undifferentiated unity, a heno-logical totality74 as in Neoplatonism where the accommodation of differencewas problematical. For example the Plotinian One cannot be participated insince it dissolves all distinctions and even reasonings.

By contrast, for Christian theology the hyper-diverse and eminentlyintellectual essence of God can . . . be imparticably participated. . . .everything . . . not just humanity, is already as itself more than itself, andthis more is in some sense a portion of divinity. (Everything is thereforeengraced.)75

The “in some sense” of this last quotation leads us to ask, “In what sensecan Milbank mean?” A panentheistic reading of Milbank explains “in whatsense” creation can be “as itself” yet “more than itself”, as already“engraced” as, in some sense, a “portion of divinity”. For it is the intimaterelation between the divine and creation by which all that is, all that is“other” to the divine, is held and “contained” within the divine. After all it isMilbank himself who criticises Scotus for destroying the basis of a participa-tory understanding of creation’s relation to the divine precisely by his eleva-tion of finite being to ontological equality with infinite being, such that itcan be understood “. . . as standing ‘spatially’ alongside the infinite.”76 WhatMilbank rejects is the very ontological “exterior” complementarity of creation



in relation to the divine, between finite and infinite, as found in Scotus’theology.77 This stands in contrast to the panentheism to be found here, wherecreation is related to the divine not as divine itself, but as that which “sus-pires” from within the divine in such a way that creation can never be “exte-rior” to the divine life, for its very being is to participate in the divine.Creation for Milbank is not “lifted up” into the divine as in Scotus’ theology,where in the case of human being the possibility of the beatific visioncan only be a divinely extrinsically willed supplement; rather it already is“engraced”.78

This panentheistic intimacy between creation and the divine can be read inMilbank’s treatment of the Trinity. His prioritisation of the immanent overthe economic Trinity79 allows him to speak of a coinciding of human anddivine poesis in history. In Milbank’s Trinitarian theology, creation is broughtto the very heart of the life of the divine in a very intimate and dynamic wayso different from classical models of God’s relation to creation,

For the Trinitarian God does not possess the unity of a bare simplicity, anaked will, nor does he stand in an indifferent relationship to what hecreates. God’s love for what he creates implies that the creation is gener-ated within a harmonious order intrinsic to God’s own being.80

Once more Milbank sets this understanding against that of Scotus wherethe world is no longer “. . . enfolded within the divine expressive Logos. . . .”where the divine is understood as an extraneous presence, a bare divineunity which “. . . starkly confronts the other distinct unities. . . .”81 ForMilbank creation can only be understood within a consideration of God asTrinity, here understood as more than an undifferentiated unity but rather asthe origin and source of all difference, not only in the Godhead itself but increation too. As such the Trinity is not a finished totality, and nor does it standin a Scotist external relation to all difference but rather “. . . the Trinity dis-covers the infinite God to include a radical ‘external’ relationality.”82 “Exter-nal” is once more in inverted commas because there can be no “externality”in any Scotist sense but rather because creation is “other” to the divine, yetenfolded and included within the divine. Milbank argues that the economicTrinity can only really be understood in relation to the Fall rather than to theact of creation itself. One is not talking, therefore, of an incidental relationbetween God and creation, between God and difference, but one that goes tothe very heart of what the divine is as the inclusive source of all difference.“Properly speaking there is only an immanent Trinity, participated in bycreation.”83

Hence, Milbank criticises Scotus for disassociating the act of creation adextra from the act of generation ad intra that is the life of the Trinity.84 Milbankwrites, “. . . God in his creation ad intra in the Logos ‘incorporates’ withinhimself the creation ad extra, including human history.”85 It is only in thiscontext that one can understand Milbank’s elaboration of human poesis,

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culture and history in terms of its coinciding with divine poesis such that inhuman poesis, culture, and history God is revealed not from without creationbut from within it, as completely and utterly constitutive of all that is. Createdreality is none other than its relation to the divine through participation in thedivine.86 There is no “remove” between God and creation by which the divine“underlies” finite reality, whether in terms of a divine “substance” or indeedof any other “substance”. It is for this reason, in terms of a participatorytheology, there can be nothing “discrete” or “inviolable” in and of itself,87 forfinite reality is through relation to the divine and because of this is intimatelyrelated to all other “difference” as “held” within the divine life.88 The “logic”of this position, as Milbank points out, is that God never interacts withcreation89 precisely because there is no “remove” between God and creation.90

Creation is panentheistically embraced within the life of the divine.It is in this light that Milbank reads the Cappadocian Fathers,91 whom he

draws upon to develop his own understanding of both human and divinepoesis as coincidental and as opening up the dynamic possibilities of partici-pation.92 For Milbank a substance metaphysic gives rise to a “once-and-for-all” definition of “things” as “static”, “discrete” and “heterogeneous”.93

Rejecting this in favour of a participatory model leads to a multi-faceted viewof actuality in terms of “. . . infinitely revisable . . . networks of relation”,94 notin terms of the agonistic heterogeneity of Scotus’ transcendental univocity,95

but in which all difference originates and is contained within the divine.In this essentially panentheistic understanding, Milbank makes a crucial

qualification of Aquinas’ metaphysics to better accommodate Aquinas to aparticipatory understanding of creation’s relation to God: if Thomist partici-pation in esse is prised apart from “lower level” form/matter dualism thenthis would permit “. . . the idea that human beings, in their cultural reality,are clusters of differentia . . .” which are held together “. . . as grace-givenparticipations in the divine unity. . . .”96 This allows Christian thought to arriveat “. . . a peaceful affirmation of the other, consummated in a transcendentinfinity.”97 Milbank terms this a metaphysics/metasemiotics of relation ratherthan of substance.98

Is such a panentheistic reading of creation’s relation to the divine as I amattempting here merely a type of emanationism as found for example inNeoplatonism? The answer is “yes” and “no”. Yes, Milbank himself recogn-ises that in contrast to Aristotelianism’s “. . . cosmic and unassistedvision . . .” of an ordered reality, Neoplatonism attempted to explore theboundary between supernatural deity and material nature by reference to theinnate belonging of the soul to the supernatural. It was this latter vision thatthe Church attempted to “Christianise”.99 We have referred above to Mil-bank’s use of the idea of “suspiration”.100 But the answer is also “no” because,as Milbank elaborates, in his return to a participatory model we see that thereis nothing “alien” to the divine, there is no “divide” or “medium” that acts asan interface between the divine and creation, between God and difference.



Creation does not “fall” into something “alien” and intrinsically evil, thatgives rise to the distinction in the Trinity between the immanent and theeconomic. Rather the relation of creation to the divine is understood byMilbank in terms of the prioritisation of the internal life of the Trinity itself aspre-eminently immanent, as “contained” in the “movement” between thepersons of the Trinity.101 So, we are not talking of creation’s relation to thedivine in terms of an “externalisation” through emanation but a panentheistic“internalisation” of creation within the divine that stands in contrast to Neo-platonic emanationism. It is the case, however, that sometimes Milbank’slanguage can be confusing if one does not pay close attention to it. Forinstance, in his discussion of the shift in meaning around the mid-thirteenthcentury of the Latin influentia as applied to the understanding of creation’srelation to the divine, understood as “. . . a ‘flowing in’ of something higherto something lower to the degree that it could be received.”102 Milbank,however, in unpacking the meaning of this word in the context of his ownparticipatory theology, actually colours this word’s meaning more subtly, inthat “higher” and “lower” although other to each other are not “alien” to eachother in a way that for instance “matter” would be to the One in Neoplatonicemanationism. Rather, for Milbank, creation is nothing other than divineinfluentia. Creation is not a “medium” through which God is in “external”relation, but is itself within God. “The creative influence of God does notinfluence creation, but posits creation as influence. . . .”103 Certainly, the rela-tion here is radically asymmetrical, since it is the infinite God who positsfinite creation as influence, but it is a relation of the greatest possible intimacythough the participation of finite reality in the life of the divine as a result ofan initiatory divine gratuity. In essence, Milbank’s summing up of this can beread as strongly panentheistic. “Hence God is the single influence, the singleunilateral and total cause of everything. . . . he causes by sharing his ownnature, by giving his gifts to-be. . . .”104

Further evidence for this reading is given in how Milbank contrasts hisparticipatory theology with that of Scotus. After the mid-thirteenth centuryinfluentia came to be understood as an extrinsic conditioning, in which divinecausality began to be thought of as a “general” influence, supplemented by“special” influences—miracles and the action of grace—competing with spe-cific finite causes in a shared concursus or ontic plane.105 Here creation is nolonger held within the divine for the divine “comes” to the finite “discretely”and “externally” very much in the way of any other “cause” sharing an onticplane, albeit as a potentia absoluta. Milbank writes of this that “. . . there wasnow a dubious reciprocity . . . pertaining between an ontically reduced Godon the one hand and ontic creatures on the other.”106 Here too we see anexample of the “wrong” sort of divine transcendence in which the infiniteand finite collaborate in a single field of operation. This stands in contrast toa divine gratuity which transcends any ontological realm, and throughwhich the divine grants participation in its life, giving rise to finite reality, an

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influentia or “flowing-in” of the infinite to the finite. Whilst the finite is, then,held within the divine, it can be read as held in complete and absoluteasymmetrical relation to the divine, “being” having no ontological statusother than what is “gifted”, thus preserving the divine transcendence, theGiver of the gift.

It is in the context of this panentheistic reading that we can make sense ofMilbank’s uses the word “coincident” to describe the relation between divineand human poesis.107 This is not a “coinciding” in terms of causal action withina shared ontic plane, but rather is an “unfolding” of the finite within theinfinite, such that through participation there is always a “depth” to thingsthat actually makes them what they really are, as grounded within the divine.As such, creation is the work of the divine as much as it is the work of thefinite as it participates in this “unfolding”. We have mentioned above howNeoplatonism attempted to explore the boundary between supernaturaldeity and creation by reference to the innate belonging of the soul to thesupernatural,108 and of how Milbank rejects notions of “substance” for that of“relation”.109 We can draw out the implications of this further and say that, forMilbank, in the unfolding of creation from the infinite there is an innatebelonging of all reality, not just the human “soul”, to the divine. Thus,Milbank can describe nature as “. . . sutured by psyche. . . .” and that itsunfolding is realised in a participation in the divine vision that is “. . . entirelypsychic in character. . . .”110, a natural orientation towards the supernaturalwhich exists only by participation, without which relation there would benothing.111 It is true that Milbank rejects the notion of God as “world-soul”112

but he does so very much in the context of an “immanentism” that identifiesnature with the divine and thus overthrows divine transcendence.113 Panen-theism avoids such an identification as it can be elaborated within an asym-metrical understanding of the relation between creation and the divine thatpreserves divine transcendence. Within this context Milbank comes as nearas possible to a notion of the divine as “world-soul”.114 For Milbank, thedivine is the animating principle of all that is, not as a Prime Mover, or acausal principle within creation, but as the gratuitous ground of creation’svery own “unfolding” through its participation in the divine. The relation ofthe finite as held within the infinite is, for Milbank, theologically all we canpoint to when we speak of what is truly real:115

. . . there are no absolute self-standing substances in creation . . . no dis-crete ‘things’. One can only think of . . . inherently interconnected ‘quali-ties’ which . . . participate in the divine creative power/act . . . which isthe condition of their mutual externality . . . through time.116

Milbank writes in this last quote that the participation in the divine of allthat makes up finite reality “is the condition of their mutual externality”. Thiscalls for a panentheistic emphasis in reading Milbank’s work, for how one“thing” is ordered to “another” lies not in Scotus’ distinct unities confronting



each other; it lies rather in the hierarchical ordering of one thing to another asenfolded within the divine, in whose unity all difference is “interconnected”and contained.117 Milbank calls this “. . . a plenitudinous supra-temporalinfinite which has ‘already realised’ in eminent fashion every desirableeffect.”118 The relations between finite “things” reflect that found within thedivine unity. This divine unity, however, is not static but is one that “over-flows”, a Dionysian understanding of divine unity, as “. . . both a dynamichappening and a complex relation. It is . . . transcendental peace which ‘over-flows in a surplus of its peaceful fecundity’, ‘preserving [all things] in theirdistinctness yet linking them together’.”119 For Milbank, the finite and infiniteare inextricably related: the infinite “overflows” within itself as “surplus”;the finite cannot be but in relation to the infinite, which relation is the infi-nite’s “finite explication”.

There is an unacknowledged dipolarity to be found in Milbank’s thoughtbetween the divine and creation, a dipolarity held together in asymmetricalpanentheistic relation, thus preserving divine transcendence with the finite inparticipatory relation to it.120 The divine is not a unity beyond the infection ofdifference. For Milbank here lies a Christian transformation of Neoplatonism“. . . situating the infinite emanation of difference within the Godheaditself.”121 In this context Milbank can speak of God’s infinity as a “. . . neverexhausted ‘surplus’.”122 Unlike finite reality, which participates in the divine,God can never be limited. Again we find a further dipolarity here; that whichemanates from the divine, the actual; and that which is still yet “surplus”, theunlimited of pure possibility. Milbank ends up radically modifying the clas-sical understanding of God as actus purus understood as infinite “realisedact”, in favour of allowing there to be potential within the divine understoodas “infinite unrealised power”. This is presented within a Trinitarian frame-work: “Infinite realised act and infinite unrealised power mysteriously coin-cide in God, and it must be this that supports the circular ‘life’, that is morethan stasis, of the Trinity.”123 It is because God is Trinity that Milbank canapproach the divine in terms of unity in difference and difference in unity,allowing an “openness” to creativity in which “. . . the play of poten-tial . . . introduces relation as a moving and dynamic element.”124 This in turnqualifies God’s knowledge. It is because God’s infinity is a never exhausted“surplus” that

The unity, harmony and beauty of the emanation of difference can-not . . . be anticipated in advance, even for God himself. As Eriugena rea-lised, God’s knowledge is not ‘before’ but in the infinity of generation,and this knowledge can only be ordered, only be, in some sense, asDionysius says, ‘limited’ if it is the infinite happening of the new inharmony with what ‘precedes’ it.125

Dipolarity, then, is to be found too in Milbank’s understanding of divineknowledge, in that, on the one hand, God’s knowing appears not to anticipate

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the actuality of participation, yet God does have perfect knowledge of all thepossible ways, realised and unrealised, in which he can be participated, thislatter infinite plenitudinous vision forming the “template” of the finite as it isrealised in participation. The unfolding of the infinite plenitudinous visionthat is the creation then is also an enfolding of its finite instantiation within thedivine as it originates and as it is known. This process is nothing other than“. . . the divine self-realisation in finitude. . . .” and creation’s own participa-tion in “. . . God’s infinite self-realisation. . . .”126 The dipolarity we find herereinforces the panentheistic nature of this vision which can be read in termsof the asymmetrical realisation of the finite in the infinite, the one the unlim-ited transcendent infinite “surplus” of all possibility, the other the createdpartial finite realisation of the divine vision in time.

Milbank illustrates this dynamic character of creation’s relation to thedivine by drawing on Deleuze’s insights into the nature of the Baroqueunderstood as an “infinite” ornamentation “overtaking” that which it actuallyembellishes, “. . . every detail . . . is a ‘fold’ within an overall design, but thedesign itself is but a continuous unfolding, which reaches out ecstaticallybeyond its frame towards its supporting structure.”127 We can read in such adescription the asymmetrical relation between finite and infinite, of “fold” to“unfolding”, which overflows into an exuberance of difference within theunity of an overall vision (its supporting structure) that is not constrained butemanates ecstatically in creation, the divine making. Such a vision of cre-ation’s relation to the divine, the “unfolding” as contained within the “fold”,the “finite” within the “infinite”, creation within divine gratuity, is panen-theistic in nature. Milbank’s “return” to a participatory theology is a “return”to a Dionysian baroque in which creation’s relation to the divine is one ofutmost intimacy.128 As Milbank says elsewhere, illustrating the dipolarity wehave found, “The God who is, who includes difference, and yet is unified, isnot a God sifted out as abstract ‘truth’, but a God who speaks in the harmo-nious happening of Being. . . . God must be known both as the ‘speaking’ ofcreated difference, and as an inexhaustible plenitude of otherness. . . .”129

Here the intimate relation between human and divine poesis is revealed:history, culture and language are not alien to the divine but are the divine’sactual revelatory unfolding. The recognition of transcendence in terms of anasymmetry between the finite and the divine does not then release a“secular” space of human autonomy. Rather, with the divine, not only increation but in history, culture and language, human beings are to be under-stood as co-partners of God.130 For Milbank any attempt to deny this is todesacralise creation as participatory in the divine.131

It is here perhaps that Milbank’s “return” to a participatory theology is atits most radical. For he accepts that those who have espoused a participatorytheology have usually limited participation to a divine sharing of “being” and“knowledge”, playing down the importance of language, culture, time, andhistory as engendering divine relativism. Conversely, those who stress these



areas have usually rejected the possibility of participation in the divine inorder to preserve creaturely autonomy. Milbank, however, marries the two.He writes,

Thus when we contingently but authentically make things and reshapeourselves through time, we are not estranged from the eternal, but enterfurther into its recesses by what for us is the only possible route.132

The language of panentheism is clearly evident here: that of not being“estranged”, an entering “further into” the divine. Human “making”appears to be a further intensification of finite creation’s participatory relationto the divine, an entering into the deeper “recesses” of God. Creation doesnot come to the divine from “without” but is clearly understood as alreadybeing “within”, with the ability to “deepen” this “within-ness”.133 Milbankaccepts that such a perspective throws up massive aporias for understandingthe divine and its relation to contingency.134 I shall argue in the conclusion ofthis article that Milbank’s return to a participatory theology actually leadshim to qualify the classical attributes of God in some very easily overlookedbut significant ways as he grapples with these aporias. In so doing we shallsee further evidence of what essentially is a panentheistic participatory modelat the heart of his understanding of creation’s relation to the divine.

Milbank criticises Aquinas for falling short of Eriugena’s vision where“. . . ‘making’ . . . is, for Christianity, a transcendental reality located in theinfinite, and God acts and knows because he internally ‘makes’ or creates’.”135

Whilst Milbank seeks throughout his work to read Aquinas in a participatorylight, in one important passage he admits that Aquinas actually denies partici-pation. He does so for two reasons: firstly, under the influence of Aristotle,Aquinas saw “making” as merely the modification of existing forms; and,secondly, because of a dual rejection of the idea of God as internally creativeand of the created as itself creative—the created being for Aquinas merely assomething “which is”. He goes onto say,

. . . it is vital to realise that contingent ‘making’ should naturally be con-ceived by Christianity as the site of our participation in divine under-standing. . . . The great failure of modern Christian ontology is not to seethat secular reason makes the unwarranted assumption that ‘the made’lies beneath the portals of the sacred, such that a humanly made world isregarded as arbitrary and as a cutting off from eternity.136

Whilst for Milbank all “making” has its origin in the divine this is not to saythat creation cannot fall short of the divine vision for it. This brings us to acloser consideration of the place of analogy and hierarchy in Milbank’sthought and of how creaturely “making” relates to the vision the divine hasfor creation. Panentheism after all is not the same as pantheism where sym-metry between the divine and the world means that creation cannot “fallshort” of the divine vision for it.

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In his insistence on the central importance of hierarchy and analogy forChristian thought137, Milbank is offering an alternative to Scotus’ transcen-dental univocal ontology and a “return” to what he understands as an oldertradition in which everything is linked,138 more especially linked within thedivine. In contradistinction to both the univocity of Neoplatonism in whichall distinctions are dissolved, and the equivocity of univocal transcendentalbeing which ends in an ontology of pure antagonistic difference, Milbankargues for a God who is “hyper-diverse”.139 Analogy for Milbank embracesdifference as contained within the divine and so does not seek to reduce it toa common essence;140 nor does it arrive at an external equivocation of distinctunities standing over and against each other. For in the most fundamental ofsenses all things belong together in God without fusion of difference,without detriment to unity. Thus Milbank speaks of God as “. . . the infiniterealisation of this [analogical] quality in all the diversity and unity of itsactual/possible instances.”141 Creation is the analogical reflection of this“holding together”, the finite explication of the infinite in terms of participa-tion in the life of the divine.

One might argue that this finite analogical reflection of the divine is“without” the divine rather than held panentheistically “within” it. But as wehave seen above, for Milbank creation in and of itself has no autonomous“being” as found in Scotus’ transcendental univocity.142 Milbank says that hisunderstanding of participation is a mathexis of donation.143 Apart from par-ticipation in the divine, creation can have no reality, it is nothing.144 Creation,then, is not an equivocal “other” nor is it a univocal “same” but a relation thatproceeds from and within the divine in participation and analogical “like-ness” such that it bears the “mark” of the giver.145 Creation is analogical“reflection”.146 Against the Scotus’ “plane of immanence”147 in which “being”manifests itself, beyond which manifestations being is “nothing” in itself,148

creation’s participatory analogical “likeness” to the divine points to the imageof the divine, as an entering more fully into the divine:

. . . . God’s Oneness contains within itself a superabundant plenitudewhich our very diversity—or very difference from God—seeks toexpress, albeit analogically. . . . Precisely because God is One, no other-ness lies outside Him, and since this oneness cannot ever be diminished,it can be entirely shared amongst all . . . variety.149

Milbank offers, then, a theological rather than a metaphysical perspective onthe nature of “cause”. The metaphysical understanding of “cause” is thatwhich is “prior” to its “effect”. To understand causality in terms of partici-pation is “. . . to know God as cause—as supreme form, as supreme goal, assupreme being, perfection and manifestedness of things . . .” and this“. . . must mean to enter more deeply into effects, in such a fashion that onestarts to know more of them also in their source and origin.”150 There is no“prior” or “after” but rather “effects” are contained within their “cause”, that



is panentheistically within the divine. To “enter more deeply into effects”,then, is to enter more deeply into that relation that gives them “effect”.151 Thisstands in contrast to the “effects” of an “exteriorised” God who ends up as an“abstract” postulation derived from finite reality, the “prior” before the“after” of creation.152 Milbank sums all this up when he says, “Thus analogypresupposes not just a metaphysics of participation, but also a phenomenol-ogy of participation. . . .”153 When we read Milbank panentheistically this lastquotation is of even more significance, framing as it does his suspicion andrejection of any apophatic view of theology and language as ending with“. . . an uncatholic Deus Absconditus . . .” and “. . . an agnostic construal ofanalogy.”154 Analogy can never be “agnostic” because creation always bears,through its participation in the divine, the “mark” of its giver.155 And to enterdeeper into creation is to enter deeper into the divine, to know more ofcreation in its source and origin.

It is for this reason that Milbank insists that analogy is more than themerely semantic, for it points to a real participation in an infinite degree ofeminence rather than simply pointing to a range of finite meaning containedwithin a linguistic concept.156 Participation is not in a “fixed” and “determi-nate” range of possibilities precisely because participation in the divine isparticipation in an infinite which cannot be contained.157 Created “being”,then, for Milbank, is not “. . . an empty, univocal category of mere existenti-ality . . .” but “. . . an attribute of perfection . . .” the finite expression of thedivine.158 Creation is the analogical finite reflection of this infinite range ofeminence, an infinite which is dynamic rather than static. Milbank character-ises this in terms of a contrast between an Aristotelian teleology which aimsat a self-realisation of an original given potential and a Proclean teleologywhich is always orientated to a “raising above” to a new potential.159 Creationcan never be a static and achieved “external” realisation of the divine visionbut a dynamic “going deeper” into the life of the divine in terms of arealisation of the finite in the infinite.160 Discussing Aquinas in this context,Milbank agrees that in this respect God is both architectonic and artisanal.Here once more we find a dipolarity: one “pole,” abstract “architectonic”possibility; the other, concrete “artisanal” actuality. Neither can be divided inthe sense of a “cause” and “effect” metaphysic, but rather the “artisanal” is anentering into the architectonic, a participation of the finite in the infinite. Thisessentially is a dynamic dipolar panentheistic vision of a creation “driven”and unified within the life of the divine,

. . . since God’s theoria is also practice, his ‘preceding’ idea is only realisedwith the completed ‘work’ of his emanating verbum. . . . And since God isesse, he does indeed immediately contain in a unified expression which isalso a single intuition . . . an infinitude of participated knowledge.161

“Practice” and “theoria” cannot be separated but are “contained” in aunified expression that emanates “from” and “within” the divine. The essen-

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tial point to grasp here is that “creation” is not to be understood in terms ofa horizontal plane of immanence where “effects” are “caused” from withoutand which can only be understood necessarily and wholly in relation to thesesaid causes. Indeed, for Milbank, such an understanding can allow no “new”events for within a causal perspective the preceding always “accounts for thelater.” Creation, rather, is to be understood in terms of the “vertical” whichallows for each “event” to be individually constituted in relation to its par-ticipation in the divine plenitude. The contrast is between “caused” sequenceand “hierarchical emanation”.162 That all things “relate” each to the other,then, is not as a result of “causal sequence”163 but because within the divineplenitude all things are held together in graded relevance, which the finite byits relational participation in the divine reflects.164 Each new “event” is atheological “supplementation” of the superadded (the vertical) in which thefinite points to the “more” that is a reflection of the infinite plenitude to befurther instantiated in the finite. This is to “. . . grasp . . . creation in the lightof grace, as itself graced or supplemented. . . .”165 The actuality of finite realityrelates not to any “causal past” but wholly to its present and future partici-pation in the divine such that “apart” from the divine quite literally it isnothing. Milbank writes,

Only if reality itself is regarded as ‘given’ from some beyond does itbecome possible to trust that that which is communicated and circulatedmay assume new meanings which can blend seamlessly with the old. Orinversely, a reality limitlessly receptive to the renewal and perpetuationof gift, understood as that which both surprises and unites . . . must be areality that derives from a source that is always and eternally the pleni-tude of such blending.166

We find here more evidence for a panentheist reading but also for a dipolar-ity: God is both architectonic (theoria) and artisanal (praxis, poesis). Yet thetwo poles, God and creation, cannot be separated but are held together inasymmetrical relation, transcendent infinite “giver” of finite “gift”, the“more” that creation can become lying within the infinite plenitude that is thelife of the divine. That which is “not God”, the ad extra which is creation, ispanentheistically enfolded within the divine, ad intra.

Such dipolarity is to be expected with panentheism, for unlike pantheismcreation and God are not in symmetrical relation nor do they stand as distinct“unities” in external relation to each other.167 As Milbank himself says, “I amnot speaking of the other-worldly as something opposed to the world-in-time.”168 And yet, neither are they the same. We can only read this in terms ofa panentheistic dipolar asymmetrical relation.

We have noted above Milbank’s dislike of the notion of the divine as a kindof “world-soul” primarily because of its immanentist connotations which canso easily topple over into a vague kind of pantheism. Hence he rejects the ideaof God as an immanent “process” and “lure” active and at work within



creation.169 Yet elsewhere Milbank himself makes certain references to God as“lure”. We can only contrast these references to the immanentism he rejectsif we are able to read Milbank panentheistically, where creation and God arenot in symmetrical relation. Thus to understand this use of “lure” it is nec-essary to relate it to Milbank’s description of the divine unity as a “differen-tiated hierarchy”170 and creation as the reflection of it. Hierarchy here isunderstood not in terms of a static immutability which creation must reflect,but a hierarchy in which differences are ordered in graded relevance each tothe other. We can use a simplified analogy to try to understand what Milbankis trying to say here. Let us imagine an infinite series of points expanding inall “directions”. Creation “mirrors” this infinite series in a finite and limitedway in so far as it “traces” itself horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Eachpoint is distinct, yet related to all others around it in an overall unity. So inreflecting this graded and differential hierarchy, creation by its participationin the divine has many paths it can pursue, for there is no fixed singlehierarchy that creation must follow. Hierarchy here is dynamic rather thanstatic.171 There can, then, be a discontinuity between what God may see as the“ideal” path for creation to follow and what creation actually achieves inparticipation in the divine. Creation, and human being in particular, may anddoes “fall short” of the divine vision for it but even as it does it still partici-pates in the divine, for all that it does achieve is “located” in the infiniteplenitude that is the divine life. And as we have seen, this means that cre-ation, history, culture are not only the poesis of the finite—and of humankindin particular—but also of the infinite, of the divine.172 Evil, as opposed to thatwhich merely falls short of the “best” it can possibly be, is, for Milbank,always privative—it has no reality for it can never be “located” within thedivine vision which creation analogically reflects.

It is, then, within this understanding of God’s relation to creation thatMilbank’s references to “lure” have to be understood, namely, in terms of atwo-fold movement, of the divine to creation and of creation to the divine.This movement is asymmetrical, for creation can only move to the divinebecause it is first gifted by the divine, unlike the divine which “moves” tocreation as pure Giver. Divine “lure” does not involve pantheistic immanent-ism, but is to be read panentheistically: the transcendent and infinite pleni-tude “lures” or draws creation deeper into the itself.173 Thus, Milbank speaksof the “. . . lure of analogical participation . . .” but balances this with cre-ation’s own orientation to the divine in which “. . . we have to discover thecontent of the infinite through labour, and creative effort. . . .” Within the“lure of analogical participation” Milbank goes on to say that there are“. . . certain preferred additions . . . deemed essential to our conception of thetrue direction of this process . . .” and it is within this context “. . . that certainhuman products are more desirable than others.”174 The “lure of the analogi-cal” then is not irresistible; there are “preferred additions” if the finite is topursue its “optimum direction” but these “additions” are not inevitable.

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Creation can and does, because of its partial vision, pursue other paths andends, albeit always in terms of its participation in the divine. It is the divineplenitude, however, that always draws or “lures” creation further. Milbankbelieves this understanding lies at the heart of Aquinas’ endeavour; “. . . themetaphysics of participation . . . is immediately and implicitly a phenomenol-ogy of seeing more than one sees, of recognising the invisible in the vis-ible.”175 It is this “more” that draws creation deeper into the divine.176 Thus,for Milbank, the manifestation of perfection is not in an a priori proof pointingto some sublime and unknown horizon (as with Kant). It is, rather, to befound in the created as a “. . . faint conveying of a plenitude of perfectionbeyond its scope. . . . we do not refer to the ‘good’ or ‘life’ of God because heis the source of good or life in creatures; rather we refer to the good or life ofcreatures because they manifest a good which is pre-eminently precontainedin God in an exemplary and more ‘excellent’ fashion.”177

Creation, rather than being understood as an autonomous realm—as inScotus’ univocal ontology—can only be understood in its relation to thedivine, as the limited realised finite manifestation of the infinite.178 An asym-metrical dipolarity is once more evident here. Milbank himself comes close toadmitting such a dipolarity in discussing Aquinas’ arrival at a “. . . mostextraordinary chiasmus . . .” in which God’s presence to creatures “. . . indi-cates that God’s omnipresence simply is God himself, and that there cannotreally be any being ‘other’ than God.”179 In creation, then, we do not “leave” Godbut go deeper into the divine who encompasses all. Milbank reads Aquinas inthis light and understands him to mean that “. . . all creatures subsist by gracein the sense that they only subsist in their constant ‘return’ to full divineself-presence. . . .”180 If “grace” is nothing other than the divine presence, andall creatures “subsist by grace”, if there “cannot really be any being other thanGod”, then creation can only be such as embraced panentheistically. The onlyother alternatives Milbank has rejected: immanentism (pantheism) andScotus’ transcendental univocal ontology. As Milbank says, “. . . there can bea created exterior to God, because God’s interior is self-exteriorisation.”181

But what are we to make of Milbank’s seemingly approving reference toAquinas’ assertion that “. . . God is not really related to . . . Creation . . .” butthat because God’s knowledge is perfect he “. . . knows perfectly the myriadways on which he may be participated in by creatures.”182 This reference iswholly at odds with the tenor of Milbank’s understanding of creation’srelation to the divine as we have so far discussed it. For, if God is not related,it essentially posits a creation that stands in external relation to God, in whichthe divine has knowledge only through contemplation of the divine selfbeyond infection of difference.183 Yet Milbank says that in participation thatwhich is “not God” cannot stand in distinct “external” relation to the divine.The impossibility that creation involves is not that there cannot be a reality thatis “not God”, but that this reality can ever be understood as “exterior” to thedivine. As Milbank says, “. . . the participation of beings in esse involves



something quite other than the external relation between beings, and is, for us,ultimately unthinkable.”184 The “something quite other” can only involve apanentheistic understanding of creation’s relation to the divine, in which whatis “not God” is held within the divine.185 It is the infinite “interior” of thedivine which is also, then, the finite “self-exteriorisation” of God through thedivine gratuity that overflows into a creation that participates within the lifeof the divine.186

This has a bearing on how one understands divine omniscience. It impliesthe relation between God and creation, by which God “knows” his creation,is more than an unrelated, eternal “static”, “abstract” and “fixed” self-knowledge of the various ways in which the divine can be participated in—aswould be implied by a classical conception of divine omniscience. Milbankhimself goes beyond this classical conception in a way that prioritises apanentheistic reading of his work. God’s “eminent” knowledge is not anabstract “totality” but like the divine gratuity itself overflows and embracesall difference in its dynamic and open eventuality.187 God’s knowledge then“. . . is as much present in the individual and accidental as in the generaland substantive . . .” and “. . . unlike the knowledge of the metaphysician,stretches down to every last particular.”188 It is the God who is related whocreates and knows.189

It is precisely in this context that Milbank criticises Scotus for disassociat-ing the act of creation ad extra from the Trinitarian generation ad intra, leadingto a displacement of the Trinity from the centre of Christian dogmatics to aGod of infinite will beyond creaturely participation. The Trinity is not that ofa finished totality. “No theology which defines the divine essence, followingScotus, as infinity and freedom . . . will be able to do justice to the theme ofessential relatedness, because this must include the idea of a knowledge-through-this-relatedness.”190 There is a dipolarity to be found in Milbank’streatment of divine omniscience: a move away from the classical understand-ing of God’s omniscience in terms of a pure contemplation of the divine self,in terms of a plenitudinous “supra-temporal” infinite, to that of omniscienceas a never finished totality. This latter knowledge is not Scotus’ externalknowledge-through-relatedness achieved in terms of efficient causality but aknowledge in terms of the essential relatedness through participation of allthat is within the life of the divine. The infinity that is God is a neverexhausted “surplus” in which finite reality participates and resulting indevelopment and novelty in the finite realm. As Milbank writes, “The unity,harmony and beauty of the emanation of difference cannot, in consequence,be anticipated in advance, even by God himself.”191

Milbank contrasts Scotus’ God understood as a distinct unity externallyconfronting other distinct unities as ultimately “empty” in itself192 with thatof Augustine and Dionysius whose Trinitarian theologies, according to Mil-bank’s readings of them, go further than Neoplatonism “. . . by situatingthe infinite emanation of difference within the Godhead itself. . . .”193 God’s

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knowledge, for Milbank, cannot be that of a static and fixed “self-identicalreality” or a Neoplatonic One beyond the sphere of division and contrast.194

The God Milbank presents here is decidedly panentheistic in character.It is in terms of panentheism, then, that we can make better sense of

Milbank’s statement, “. . . God . . . is replete Being. For this to be possible,God must have gone outside of himself, and yet there is no exterior to God,no sum which might add to his amount.”195 Nothing is added because cre-ation is not in any external relation to God but is panentheistically embracedby the divine. Here we discern an asymmetrical dipolarity between God andcreation: through its relation to the divine, the finite reflects in its life thetranscendent and infinite divine vision in which it participates and in whichit is embraced. As Milbank says,

Not only do being and knowledge participate in a God who is and whocomprehends; also human making participates in a God who is infinitepoetic utterance: the second person of the Trinity. Thus when we contin-gently but authentically make things and reshape ourselves throughtime, we are not estranged from the eternal, but enter further into itsrecesses by what for us is the only possible route.196

Divine simplicity, then, cannot be understood in terms of a God “alone” nora static and eternal “completion” beyond the inclusion of difference. We havenoted Milbank’s prioritisation of the immanent Trinity, and of how the divineemanation that results in finite creation cannot be divorced from the relationsbetween the persons of the Trinity. As such the divine unity does not merelyembrace the difference of the three persons but all difference is embracedwithin the life of these relations as “. . . an absolute origin that is ‘alwaysalready’ difference and succession.”197 The divine is “hyper-diverse”,198

“. . . an outcome exceeding occasion. . . .”199 A simplicity that involves theinclusion of all difference calls for a panentheistic understanding of creation’srelation to the divine,

For the Trinitarian God does not possess the unity of a bare simplicity, anaked will, nor does he stand in an indifferent relationship to what hecreates. God’s love for what he creates implies that the creation is gener-ated within a harmonious order intrinsic to God’s own being.200

Nor does the “harmonious order intrinsic to God’s own being” mean thatGod can be understood here as an archetype that creation reflects apart andseparate from the divine.201 For only in terms of “. . . an analogous exchange ofpredicates between God and finitude, can one conceive of an absolute that isitself difference, inclusive of all difference, unlike nihilism, which can onlyposit a transcendental univocity.”202

Likewise, God as actus purus is qualified in terms of a creation that isconstituted solely by its relation to the divine in which it participates and in



terms of which participation all things are related within the divine unity. Inthis context, rather than God understood as “pure act”, Milbank can writethat God is “eminently becoming”:

. . . eminently that moulding or shaping through which alone subjectscommunicate with each other, and together modify their shared objec-tive medium to produce history. God, as esse, exceeds the contrast ofbeing with becoming, and is eminently becoming.203

This again is significant in pointing to an asymmetrical dipolarity withinthe divine in that whilst God possesses the fullness of the infinite plenitudi-nous supra-temporal vision, the finite explication of the divine vision, asconstituted purely in relation to the divine, means that God can also bedescribed as “eminently becoming”. The “fixed” and “static” conception ofthe divine as actus purus comes to include an open “eventuality” and “dyna-mism”.204 Nor can divine aseity be understood in separation from the Godwho includes all difference. Milbank says we cannot arrive at God or a FirstPrinciple in terms of that which remains self-identical, but rather as that whichis “persuasively communicated . . .” in “. . . the harmony of difference . . .” as“. . . something continuously added to this world. . . .”205 We can furtherexpose this dipolarity by reference to Milbank’s discussion of Dionysius’conception of God as “. . . a power within Being which is more than Being, aninternally creative power.” Milbank argues that this must qualify how weunderstand God as “pure act”.

As infinite power which is unimpeded, nothing in God can be unrea-lised, so that it would appear that God is actus purus, yet it must equallybe the case that no actualisation of every ‘limit’, even an infinite one,exhausts God’s power, for this would render it merely finite after all.206

This means that there is indeed a surplus in the divine that gives rise tocreativity and results in actuality. It is this “surplus” that “overflows” panen-theistically within the life of the Trinity in terms of “. . . a gratuitous creativegiving of existence, and so difference. . . .”207 We see here a dipolarity at theheart of the divine, a “. . . moving and dynamic element . . .” which is a“. . . movement . . . from unity to difference. . . .”208 Milbank sums all this upby saying, “Infinite realised act and infinite unrealised power mysteriouslycoincide in God, and it must be this that supports the circular ‘life’, that ismore than stasis, of the Trinity.”209

Divine omnipotence comes to be re-understood as nothing other than theexercise of “. . . creative love . . .”,210 the finite realisation of the infinite pleni-tudinous vision of the divine. This is a God who embraces creation within thedivine.211

God’s self-sufficiency can only be understood panentheistically, given thatthe Trinity is not the harmony of a finished totality.212 Indeed, Milbank makesthe point more strongly: that which denies “surplus” in favour of a pure

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self-sufficiency can only be doomed to mere “repetition”,213 a God who is astatic and “complete” totality. Rather it “. . . is the God who is related, whocreates, and that from, and within, the ‘compulsion’ of this immanent goal,freedom (as the Spirit) arises.”214 From within the dynamics of the divinerelations between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the divine gratuitous lovebrings to birth finite creation; God’s “. . . ‘power-act’ plays out through, andis constituted by, the Trinitarian relations. . . .”215 From God’s “essential relat-edness” Milbank notes that creation is “intrinsic” to God’s own being.216

Elsewhere, he refers to God “. . . as essentially creative, as ‘compelled’ . . .” tocreate.217 It is the immanent Trinity which is the “site” not only of the imma-nent divine relations but also of the participatory inclusion of creation itself.218

God is not indifferent to the world he creates because it lies—“panentheisti-cally”—at the heart of the Trinity itself.219 God is self-sufficient because thedivine need not look “outside” itself for “completion”. Here, rather, we havea God who embraces all difference in unity, whose very own nature compelsand entails that the divine creates. This is a God who is related; a God whoembraces creation (that which is not-God) within the life of the Trinity thatgoes beyond itself in “dynamic surplus”.

In summary, we can see how Milbank moves away from a classical con-ception of the divine. His God is not “static” and “self-enclosed”. God’s “act”is not “fixed” but can be described as “eminently becoming”. The divineknowledge is not confined to an ideal and eternal vision of all things, butrather like the Trinity is not a “finished” totality and goes beyond itself in“surplus”. God’s “simplicity” is not “bare” but involves the inclusion of notjust the Trinitarian relations but of all difference. God’s self-sufficiency is notthat of a self-identical enclosed being but one that “suspires”, “compelled”from within the divine being to give life to that which is not-God, in relationto which God is not indifferent. Yet all is embraced within the life of theTrinity to which there can be no “outside”220. Creation for Milbank can onlybe understood as “dynamic surplus”, “. . . as a self-exceeding . . .” on the partof the divine, giving rise to a “lesser” and “other” to God. Creation is not thefinite realisation of an immutable and static divine vision but is rather itselfan analogical reflection of the nature of the divine as open, dynamic, asalways “going beyond” itself in “surplus”. “This process is our participationin divine Being, now understood as a participation also in the divine creativ-ity which reveals itself as ever-new through time.”221 That all things “holdtogether” rests not in any causal nexus belonging to creation itself but ratherbecause creation is embraced panentheistically within a divine that holds alldifference in graded relevance.222 There is real relation between creation andthe divine. Creation here is held within the divine as opposed to being“without” a wholly self-sufficient, unchanging, immutable God devoid ofany degree of potentiality. To reject participation of creation in the divineleads, as Milbank says, to “. . . a loss also of a sense of exchange betweeninfinite and finite.”223 Rather, “. . . material things are paradoxically removed



from themselves—referred beyond themselves in order to be recognisedas themselves. . . .”224 We need look nowhere beyond creation in order torecognise the divine, since created esse is nothing other than that whichis “borrowed” from the divine.225 It is “. . . the divine self-realisation infinitude . . .” and creation’s own participation in “. . . God’s infiniteself-realisation.”226

Reading Milbank panentheistically, in which the relation between thedivine and the finite can be understood as both dipolar and asymmetrical incharacter, one can see how it might be possible to address the aporiasMilbank faces in his “return” to a participatory theology, for the answers arealready embedded in his own work if so read. These aporias rest mainly inaccommodating the contingent in relation to the divine, (creation, historicity,time, culture, language) in contrast to a classical conception of a God who is“simple” and who cannot contain any “other”, omniscient and immutable inthat nothing can be “added”, self-sufficient and in “pure act” without anydegree of potentiality. Milbank’s “return” to a participatory theology doesnot allow him to hold a purely classical theism. His doctrine of God “over-flows” its “classical” framework, within which it cannot be contained. If onedoes not accept an explicitly asymmetrical panentheist reading of the relationbetween the divine and creation, in which the polarities between infinite andfinite are not irreconcilable “opposites” but complementary dipolar aspects“contained” within the divine, then how else can the aporias Milbank men-tions be resolved? Indeed, how else is Milbank able to locate all poeticactivity, both divine and creaturely, within the life of the Trinity?227 After all,it is Milbank who criticises secular reason for seeing the world as cut off frometernity.228

Certainly, there is a tension in Milbank’s thought. In places he seems towant to maintain a purely classical understanding of God as replete, immu-table, and eternally omniscient, where the Logos is not really related to thehuman Jesus, nor the divine really related to the finite creation. Thus, it is onlyin the divine “foreknowledge”229 of both (a “foreknowledge” which actuallyis “eternal”) that they are not cut off from the divine. Yet surely this is to denydivine “dynamic surplus” in favour of creation understood as the absoluterepetition of the completely static that Milbank criticises?230 It is a “fore-knowledge” that can never change in relation to another and is “frozen”eternally. Such “knowledge” is the antithesis of all Milbank has been trying tosay elsewhere in relation to a God who is not eternally “closed off” and“static”, giving life to what is not divine in terms of the emanation of allreality from a single divine source231 which includes all difference and is theground of all differentiation,232 a God who is internally creative,233 in whichthere is a “concursus” of the divine and creaturely, the infinite and thefinite.234 Here, creation analogically reflects a hierarchy that is neither a“fixed” nor an eternally “static” foreknowledge, for analogical participationreflects the very nature of the divine itself as “dynamic”.235

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Milbank goes on to say, “This process is our participation in divine Being,now understood as a participation also in the divine creativity which revealsitself as ever-new through time.”236 After all, what are the choices open toMilbank if he is to escape the aporias of a God who is replete yet who creates;of a God who is infinite in relation to a creation that is finite; of a God who iseternal in relation to a creation that is contingent; of a God who is self-sufficient yet goes beyond himself? The answer does not lie in the univocaltranscendentalism of Scotus which, for Milbank, is the source of many of thewoes of modernity. Nor is it to be found in pantheism. Rather, Milbank’sthought demands a reading in which the relation of the divine to the createdis dipolar, asymmetrical and panentheistic. This dipolarity stands in contrastto Hegelian dialecticism which is rooted in an ontological subject in opposi-tion to its object,237 to be “resolved” in some final synthesis of completeinclusion.238 Rather it is the embrace of the finite by the infinite, of creation bythe divine in asymmetrical relation, such that the divine is the transcendentconstitutive ground of all that is. It is only in relation to divine gratuity andgraciousness that the finite can “be” through the gift of its participation in thedivine life. To be “created” is to be “related”, to be inseparably bound withinthe life of the divine. This does not make the divine dependent on creation,for if creation did not exist God would still be God, but as Milbank has stated,such a God would be wholly “abstract”.239 Yet it is the nature of the divine, inthat it contains all difference within the divine unity, that it can go beyonditself in “. . . absolute uninterrupted giving.”240 As Milbank has said, “Justbecause there is no outside to God, God can most freely and ecstaticallyexceed himself. . . .”241 This “excess” is nothing other than panentheistic“. . . because God’s interior is self-exteriorisation.”242 Such dipolarity standsnot in an antagonistic relation to be resolved but lies at the very heart of thedivine creativity itself, that gives rise to that which is “not God” from thetranscendent infinite “ground” that is the divine life. They are distinct yet inasymmetrical relation, Creator and created, the created arising out of andpanentheistically embraced within the life of the Creator. We can agree withMilbank that this is nothing other than “. . . the divine self-realisation infinitude.”243

NOTES

1 John Milbank, Being Reconciled (hereafter BR) (London: Routledge, 2003), p. x; cf. BR p. 194;John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory (hereafter TST), edition, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006),p. xix. Milbank’s “return”, however, is not a nostalgic one in terms of some kind of lapseinto pre-modernity (John Milbank, Word Made Strange (hereafter WMS), (London: Rout-ledge 1997), p. 7f). Rather, the task of theology is to learn from the mistakes of pre-modernthinkers (BR, p. 136). To this end Milbank elaborates a new reading of Augustine andDionysius (TST, p. 263). Certainly he wishes to recover the insights of the Platonic traditionas found within their work, particularly with regard to the integration of philosophy andtheology. His new reading, however, involves bringing to the fore their “. . . latent . . . con-cern both with historicity and with human poesis. . . .” (TST, p. xxiv).



2 BR, p. 194: For Milbank modernity begins from the 1300s onwards with the shift towardsthe created gradually being “. . . accorded full reality meaning and value in itself, withoutreference to transcendence. . . .” Cf. BR, p. 111; TST, p. xxii.

3 Panentheism here is to be understood in contrast to pantheism where the “relation”between the divine and creation is held to be symmetrical such that we would not speak ofa divine-world “relation” but an identification of the divine and the cosmos. In contrast,classical theism’s underlying assumption can be typified as holding that creation is inexternal relation to the divine.

4 TST, p. 297; p. 330.5 TST, p. 430.6 TST, p. 309.7 TST, p. 432; cf. TST, p. 431, “. . . an infinite God must be power-act. . . .”8 WMS, p. 110.9 TST, p. xxvii.

10 BR, p. 203.11 John Milbank, The Suspended Middle (hereafter SM), (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. Eerdmans

Publishing Company, 2005), p. 43. Milbank here is discussing the views of Gilson.12 John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas (hereafter TA), (London: Rout-

ledge 2001), p. 85. Most of the citations used in this article come from Chapter 2 of this workas authored by Milbank himself (see Preface TA, p. xiv). I take it, however, that TA as awhole accurately reflects the views of Milbank in that he is happy to give his name to it asco-author. The few citations outside Chapter 2 therefore are made in this light.

13 TA, p. 35.14 BR, p. 99.15 WMS, p. 23.16 WMS, p. 13.17 WMS, p. 9. This claim is made in the context of a discussion of Kant’s understanding of God’s

relation to creation in terms of an analogy of “proper proportionality” (Prolegomena to AnyFuture Metaphysics). Here God and man share in a univocal “efficient causality” in terms ofa ratio of proportion: man having the lesser ratio, God the greater. Hence God “constructs” theworld outside himself according to this greater ratio of univocal efficient causality. Incontrast, an artisan, for example, constructs his object outside himself according to a lesserratio. Milbank makes the point that for Aquinas there cannot be any such ratio between Godand the world or the infinite and finite, for God and the world do not operate in the sameplane of action. Milbank sees Kant’s “offence” as an undermining of the divine transcen-dence, even though he accepts Kant is agnostic as to what God is in himself.

18 BR, p. 77. Thus, for Milbank Scotus’ God involves “a loss . . . of a sense of exchangebetween infinite and finite.” God ends up as “. . . a one-way giver. . . .”; BR, p. 78, “. . . theScotist God has become more like a bestowing tyrant.” Cf. TST, p. 15.

19 BR, p. 74 and 76 cf. TST, p. 16; BR, p. 194.20 WMS, pp. 40ff; TA, p. 35; cf. SM, p. 96.21 John Milbank, Radical Orthodoxy (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 23 (hereafter RO). This error

too gives rise to philosophy as an autonomous discipline, the content of which is theelaboration of this ontology and the separation of reason and faith, in which theologybecomes “. . . a regional, ontic, positive science, grounded either upon certain revealedfacts or upon certain grace-given inner dispositions or again upon external present author-ity (the Counter-Reformation model.)” RO, p. 24.

22 Cf. BR, p. 74.23 RO, p. 22.24 TST, p. 306. “This transcendental univocity, being entirely empty of content, and indeed the

medium of a sheerly differentiated content, cannot possibly appear in itself to our aware-ness, but can only be assumed and exemplified in the phenomena which it organises.”

25 TST, p. 306.26 TST, p. 15.27 TST, p. 302.28 WMS, p. 262; SM, pp. 93 and 94; TST, pp. 15 and 435; cf. TST, pp. 14 and 26f. where Milbank

discusses how this conception of voluntarist sovereignty influenced in part a new meta-physic of political power, later giving rise to modern absolutism.

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29 See WMS Chapter 11: “Out of the Greenhouse” pp. 257ff.30 WMS, p. 258f.; cf. TST, pp. 38, 40f. where Milbank refers to sociologists and others who

delineate the “hidden hand” of God as being at work in these social “laws”.31 “. . . God as embodied in nature, as gravity, mysterious ether active principle, world-soul,

general law; newly limited by the intractabilities of matter, and newly verifiable throughthe evidence of his operations.”(WMS, p. 260).

32 WMS, p. 262.33 WMS, p. 264.34 WMS, p. 264.35 WMS, p. 262. Milbank goes on to say, “. . . Creation is not ex nihilo, but an evolution from

small time beginnings somewhere on the cosmic prairie, to ever greater complexity. . . .”Cf. WMS, p. 260: “For by ‘turning to nature’, we cannot really find the key to ‘value’.”

36 TA, p. 85f.37 TA, p. 85.38 TA, p. 85.39 E.g. SM, p. 34, as “. . . extrinsic divine decree. . . .” Milbank criticises Barth’s theology as

being complicit in this model that has so fashioned modernity—see RO, p. 33 note 1:“Theology is not positive knowledge of an object [whether of God, Christ, or a ‘deposit’ ofpropositional revelation], but finite intimation of infinite understanding.” Cf. WMS, p. 28f.;SM, p. 31; and BR, p. 119 where Milbank describes how with the birth of modernity a“. . . literal punctilinear revelation . . .” became “. . . now the only trace on earth of aninscrutable deity.”

40 RO, p. 24.41 TST, p. 139, where Milbank says acknowledgement of transcendence does not release “. . . a

secular space of human autonomy . . .” rather “. . . human origination is seen as coincidentwith divine, sacral origination.” Cf. TST, p. 150f.—where Milbank discusses Herder’s“expressivism” such that unless we recognise human creative expression is something“. . . which is not merely our own, [then] there can be no truth of any sort.”

42 RO, p. 30.43 See e.g. TST, p. 252 where Milbank with Aquinas rejects the view that reason can ever be

autonomous in relation to faith. Rather the distinction between faith and reason is located“. . . in a much more fundamental framework of participation of all human rationality indivine reason.” Such that all knowledge remotely implies faith in God, and which in turnstrengthens our grasp of “natural” reason. Cf. RO, p. 24 where Milbank, discussing Jacobiand Hamann, says, “. . . there can be no reason/revelation duality: true reason anticipatesrevelation, while revelation simply is of true reason which must ceaselessly arrive. . . .”

44 RO, p. 27.45 RO, p. 27; cf. BR, p. ix, “. . . when we contingently but authentically make . . . we are not

estranged from the eternal but enter further into its [the divine’s] recesses by whatis . . . the only possible route.”

46 RO, p. 29.47 RO, p. 30.48 RO, p. 32; cf. RO, p. 37 n.49: “. . . a philosophical treatment of being on its own, or the search

to know being by reason, will reach aporetic and nihilistic conclusion.”49 RO, p. 24.50 See above p 527.51 BR, p. xi; cf. TA, p. 34.52 SM, p. 43; cf. RO, p. 29.53 WMS, p. 97f. Creation can only participate in the divine as in toto wholly constituted by

divine gratuity. This stands in contrast to the more partial and limited understanding ofparticipation in strands of Hellenistic thought, in which an eternal and uncreated “matter”takes “form” by participating in an “ideal” (transcendent or otherwise) or in which asemi-divine power “moulds” prime matter, presupposing notions of a prior “self-sufficiency” or “self-grounding” for finite reality (BR, p. xi). Thus too, for Milbank thearrival of Aristotelianism from the 1300s onwards created a crisis for the theology of grace(SM, p. 101). Part of the limitation Milbank sees in Aquinas is due to Aristotelian influence(TST, p. 432). Whilst, for Milbank, Platonism has the advantage over Aristotelianism in thatit ultimately speaks of what is as partially the manifestation of a transcendent source (see



WMS, p. 40), nevertheless, because of this partiality, Milbank’s aim is to provide a Christiancritique and theological transformation of Neoplatonism in terms of the location of alldifference within the divine itself (TST, p. 435f.; WMS, p. 50).

54 SM, p. 45f.; cf. SM, pp. 92, 93.55 Cf. SM, p. 46 where Milbank agrees with de Lubac that any notion of a “. . . pure nature in

fact ruins the articulation of divine gratuity.”56 RO, p. 24.57 TA, p. 31.58 TA, p. 31f. Here Milbank is delineating a theological understanding of creation beyond

metaphysics where “. . . metaphysics tends to view cause as straight-forwardly prior to,and independent of, its effects.”

59 TA, p. 31—my italics.60 TA, p. 32.61 TA, p. 35; cf. WMS, p. 40f. where Milbank discusses the origins of both ontotheology and

theoontology and their bearing on subsequent philosophy and theology. Also, SM, p. 96,where Milbank discusses Bruaire’s comparable “ontodology”.

62 TA, p. 35—my italics.63 WMS, p. 110. For Milbank the “suspicion” of substance arises from “. . . a theological

metacritique of the metaphysical tradition.” “Substance” for Milbank is not integralto the definition of Christian orthodoxy. Indeed it was the “suspicion of substance”that for Milbank allowed “. . . the first ‘linguistic turn’ in modern thought.” Cf. WMS,p. 98.

64 TST, p. 431—my italics.65 TST, p. 432.66 TST, p. 432.67 Cf. BR, p. 63 where Milbank discusses the theological “. . . impossibility that anything else

should exist outside God, who is replete Being. For this to be possible, God must have goneoutside himself, and yet there is no exterior to God, no sum which might add to hisamount.” And BR, p. 65f.: “Just because there is no outside to God, God can most freely andecstatically exceed himself; just because God can’t share anything, he can share everything.”Cf. WMS, p. 110.

68 Cf. WMS, p. 110 where Milbank says we cannot actually talk of God’s self-sufficiency, for todo so implies that there is an outside to the divine.

69 TST, p. 431—my italics.70 TST, p. 431.71 BR p. 66.72 BR, p. 69f.73 BR, p. 66—my italics. Cf. BR, p. 74 where Milbank points out that unlike Aquinas, Scotus

does not share the perspective of the impossibility of creation, for Scotus takes the viewthat “. . . being is transcendentally indifferent to infinite and finite . . . the finite creationfully is, in its own right as Creation, and holds ground ontologically, simply as what Godhas determined it should be.” In contrast, Aquinas, recognising the impossibility of cre-ation, held that for the finite to be constituted by the infinite it must “suspire” and in this“. . . be self-cancelling. . . . [and] must aspire to return to God.”

74 WMS, p. 80; cf. TST, p. 430.75 BR, p. 115. Even with Plato there is a chaotic material residue that does not participate in

ideal reality. It is in this context, Milbank argues, that participation is logically more Biblicalthan Hellenistic.

76 BR, p. 76—my italics.77 BR, p. 74—such that “. . . being is transcendentally indifferent to infinite and finite . . . [in

terms of which] the finite Creation fully is, in its own right as Creation, and holds groundontologically, simply as what God has determined it should be.”

78 BR, p. 74f. Thus for Milbank humans in particular have an infinite natural capacity capableof the highest possible relation with the divine by virtue of their participation in the divine.

79 WMS, p. 182.80 TST, p. 437—my italics.81 TST, p. 15—my italics.82 TST, p. 431—my italics.

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83 “However, since the fall ‘entraps’ the divine glory which is Trinitarian, an ‘economic’presence of the Trinity as such in creation (Incarnation, Spirit, Church) becomes tragicallynecessary. . . . Or, indeed one might go further to say that the fall alone occasions theexistence of an economic Trinity.” (WMS, p. 182).

84 WMS, p. 177.85 WMS, p. 80. Cf. WMS, pp. 112, 155 where Milbank points out that in contrast to postmod-

ern nihilism, a Trinitarian vision can arrive at a peaceful affirmation of the other consum-mated in a transcendent infinity.

86 TST, p. 431: “Just as God . . . is not a ‘substance’ because he is nothing fundamental under-lying anything else, so there are no absolute self-standing substances in creation, nounderlying matters not existent through form and no discrete and inviolable ‘things.’ ”

87 TA, p. 85: “. . . participation of beings . . . involves something quite other than externalrelation between beings. . . .”

88 Cf. SM, p. 15f. where Milbank discusses de Lubac’s understanding of this position in termsof which “. . . human being . . . retains a profound ontological kinship with the divineorigin . . .” a position abandoned by late medieval and early modern scholasticism. Else-where Milbank notes Olivier Boulnois’ contention that it was the arrival of Aristotelianismthat ultimately gave rise to the notion of a “pure nature” and the conception of “grace” asextraneous. See SM, p. 101f.

89 SM, p. 43.90 Milbank notes de Lubac’s reading of such a position in Aquinas as “gift without contrast.”

See SM, p. 97f.91 E.g. Gregory of Nyssa: creation is to be understood in terms of combinations of divine logoi;

Basil of Ceasarea: that there is no substratum of “material” behind “appearance”, all beingis sustained by the Creator’s power alone. Milbank also notes the affinity of aspects ofBerkeley’s thought with this tradition. See WMS, pp. 97ff.

92 TST, p. 139: “. . . human origination is seen as coincident with divine, sacral origination.” Cf.WMS, p. 127 in which Milbank describes God as “. . . co-partner in responsibility. . . .” andTST, p. 438: “The God who is, who includes difference, and yet is unified, is not a God siftedout as abstract ‘truth’, but a God who speaks in the harmonious happenings of Being.”

93 Milbank for instance points to the hard and fast dictionary denotation and location ofthings that a substance metaphysic entails (WMS, p. 99) ending in “. . . the glorificationof mere originality. . . .” (TST, p. 308). This forms part of the basis of Milbank’s criticism ofmodernity in that science comes to be understood as the manipulation of autonomousfixed “objects” in contrast to the plasticity of the postmodern world view (the latter whichactually “fits” better Milbank’s understanding of the pre-modern as the prioritisation ofever-changing relations) in which meanings are “fluid” (BR, pp. 202, 203; cf. BR, p. 107).Milbank, too, accuses capitalism of being complicit in a metaphysic of spatial identitywhich it seeks to “define”, “hold on to” and “store”, and thereby desacralise, closing off thecreated to its transcendent origin. See BR, pp. 170 and 171.

94 WMS, p. 99—my italics.95 TST, p. 15.96 WMS, p. 111—my italics. The problem for Milbank lies with Aquinas’ Aristotelian legacy,

whereas the Cappadocian Fathers are clearly Platonic in their thinking. Thus Milbankadmits that participation is actually denied by Aquinas (see TST, p. 432). Insofar as there isa form/matter dualism in Aquinas we can say there is too a residual medium that conveysthe divine from without in contrast to a participatory model in which creation is whollyconstituted by divine gratuity. It is no surprise, then, that Milbank’s return to a participa-tory understanding of creation’s relation to the divine will find difficulties dealing with thedivine attributes as understood by Aquinas in which creation is understood as somehow“exterior” to the divine (see TA, p. 85).

97 WMS, p. 113—my italics.98 WMS, p. 112.99 SM, p. 18.

100 BR, p. 69f. See page 533 above.101 WMS, p. 182.102 SM, p. 89f.103 SM, p. 90.



104 SM, p. 91—my italics.105 SM, p. 92f.106 SM, p. 94.107 TST, p. 139.108 SM, p. 18.109 WMS, p. 112—see above page 535.110 BR, p. 107.111 BR, p. 114f.112 WMS, p. 260.113 WMS, pp. 257ff.114 WMS, p. 103: Milbank looks favourably on Berkeley’s propagation of a “theological

physics” in which the latter takes the Platonic step of seeing that all the parts of the worldare “. . . such ‘that they seem animated and held together by one soul.’ ”

115 This too is the basis of the theological understanding of Truth that Milbank and Pickstockespouse in Truth in Aquinas. E.g. see TA, p. 11: “. . . truth is also a property of all finitemodes of being in so far as they participate in God. . . .” Cf. TA, p. 8: The Truth of a thing isan aspect of Being as it exists “. . . supremely in the divine Soul.” And TA, p. 23 discussingAquinas’ understanding of Truth: “Were one to attempt to comprehend a finite reality notas created, that is to say, not in relation to God, then no truth . . . could ensue, since finiterealities are of themselves nothing and only what is can be true.”

116 TST, p. 431—my italics. Cf. WMS, p. 103 where we see how close Milbank’s position is tothat of Berkeley’s, of a creation “animated and held together by one soul”. Cf. TST, p. 408fwhere Milbank discusses St. Augustine’s overcoming of the antinomy of the polis andpsyche, in which the political community is to be seen as an “individual” ruled over byChrist and its bearing on the analogical relation of the divine as the world-soul andanimating principle of creation.

117 TST, p. 15.118 TST, p. 309.119 TST, p. 436; cf. TST, p. 430. “This movement, as Dionysius explains, is from unity to

difference, constituting a relation in which unity is through its power of generating differ-ences and difference is through its comprehension by unity.”

120 Milbank writes, “. . . God is superabundant Being, and not a Plotinian unity beyond Beingand difference . . . a power within Being which is more than Being, an internally creativepower.” (TST, p. 430).

121 TST, p. 435—my italics.122 TST, p. 436.123 TST, p. 430.124 TST, p. 430.125 TST, p. 436—my italics.126 TST, p. 436.127 TST, p. 436.128 TST, p. 436.129 TST, p. 438. Note the dipolarity here, God as the “speaking” of created actual difference and

God as an inexhaustible, i.e. infinite, plenitude of “otherness”.130 WMS, p. 126f.131 TST, p. 133. Milbank holds that the writers of the Old Testament understood this,

“. . . human origination is seen as coincident with divine, sacral origination.” (TST, p. 139).132 BR, p. ix; cf. TST, p. xxiv where Milbank refers to his new reading of Augustine and

Dionysius involving bringing to the fore their “. . . latent . . . concern both with historicityand with human poesis. . . .”

133 E.g. See BR, p.66. Deification is not the imposition of an external grace but something thatis already inherent within human being.

134 BR, p. x.135 TST, p. 431.136 TST, p. 432f.—my italics. “Beneath” should be taken in the sense of “beyond”, “outside”. It

is interesting to note here that for Milbank the origins of modernity and its errors have theirroots not just in Scotus’ univocalist ontology but also in the medieval reappropriation ofAristotle. Thus Plato, for Milbank, stands in contrast to Aristotle, given that Plato

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“. . . never sought a categorical inventory of what ‘is’ in the world, nor explained what is inbecoming through an ultimate efficient or final causality, but rather referred what becomesto a partial manifestation (donation?) of a transcendent source. . . . (WMS, p. 40)” Cf. SM, p.101; SM, p. 17f.; cf. WMS, p. 40.

137 TST, p. 297.138 BR, p. 194; cf. BR, p. 111.139 BR, p. 115; cf. TA, p. 13.140 TST, p. 429f.; cf. TA, p. 13f.141 TST, p. 307.142 Thus for example, Milbank points out that for Cajetan and the neo-scholastics human

nature can be specified without reference to God or only in relation to God as an externalefficient cause. In no way does the created anticipate grace. Thus when grace “arrives” it isas overwhelming exterior force. See SM, p. 30.

143 BR, p. xi. cf. BR, p. 115 where Milbank criticises Scotus for creating “. . . a new space ofunivocal existence . . .” in which a thing’s existence is a question of its simple “thereness”,a question of “being” in abstraction from any consideration of its divine derivation accord-ing to a participatory framework.

144 It is in this light that Milbank reads Aquinas: “. . . finite being is not on its own accountsubsistently anything, but is granted to be in various ways. . . . Nothing, for Aquinas, in thefinite realm properly ‘is’ of itself, nor is ‘subsistent’ of itself, nor is essentially formed ofitself. . . . all finite being emerges from nothing only as, and through, its likeness to thedivine.” (TA, p. 34).

145 BR, p. Xi.146 SM, p. 99.147 BR, p. 194.148 Cf. TA, p. 44 where Milbank describes transcendental being as “. . . an empty, univocal

category of mere existentiality, and no longer an attribute of perfection. . . .” This results insheer arbitrary heterogeneity and equivocity which has become the defining theme of moder-nity. See TST, p. 299f and TST, p. 306f.

149 TA, p. 13; cf. TST, p. 15 where Milbank notes that it is no surprise that Scotus played downthe Trinity in favour of voluntarism: “No longer is the world participatorily enfoldedwithin the divine expressive Logos, but is instead a bare divine unity starkly confronts theother distinct unities which he has ordained.” Cf. WMS, p. 80; cf. TST, p. xxvii whereMilbank favourably points to Eckhart’s Trinitarian theology in answering these sorts ofissues.

150 TA, p. 32.151 E.g. see BR, p. 107: “Emanation by contrast is not causality (efficient causality), and permits

the event, because it views an effect as the development of the cause, which itself unfoldsand defines its very nature. . . .”

152 Cf. TA, p. 85 where, writing with Pickstock, Milbank says, “. . . the participation of beingsin esse involves something quite other than the external relation between beings, and is, forus, ultimately unthinkable.” Cf. WMS, p. 9.

153 TA, p. 48.154 TA, p. 48.155 BR, p. xi.156 SM, p. 30f. This too throws into question the stark divide between natural and revealed

theology as portrayed, for example, by Barth, in which revelation stands over and againsta nature depraved and passive in the face of the divine. Cf. WMS, p. 15: “For Aquinas thepossibility of analogy is grounded in this reality of participation in Being and goodness.Analogy is not, as he conceived it, primarily linguistic. . . .” Cf. TA, p. 46.

157 TST, p. 436. This conception too colours Milbank’s understanding of virtue, not as anAristotelian achievable “mean” between two extremes to be “arrived at” through heroiceffort (an immanent telos discoverable by reason). Rather, virtue is understood as a“surplus” that is always “more”, beyond containment and so involves an “always-going-beyond” (a transcendent “lure” that is found through our participation in the divine). SeeTST, pp. 338 and 366.

158 TA, p. 44.159 SM, p. 101.



160 RO, p. 29; cf. TA, p. 42: “. . . material things are paradoxically removed from themselves—referred beyond themselves in order to be recognised as themselves. . . .”

161 TA, p. 40.162 BR, p. 107.163 BR, p. 180.164 BR, p. 107: “. . . at the top of the ladder there is Unum or Esse which holds in ‘complicated’

fashion the entire ‘explicated’ sequence (to use Nicholas of Cusa’s terminology).”165 TA, p. 51; Cf. BR, p. 180: “. . . future contingency is super-added to the present, and not

emergent from it by mere instrumental causality—whose absolute sway would demandthat everything was given from the very first instance of time.”

166 BR, p. 171.167 TST, p. 15.168 BR, p. 177.169 WMS, p. 264.170 E.g. see TST, p. 435f, where Milbank contrasts the Christian accommodation of difference

within the divine unity as found in Dionysius with that of pagan Neoplatonism where theOne is “. . . beyond the sphere of division and contrast. . . .” For Dionysius “. . . unityceases to be anything hypostatically real in contrast to difference, and becomes instead onlythe ‘subjective’ apprehension of a harmony displayed in the order of differences. . . . unityhas become both a dynamic happening and a complex relation.” For Milbank both Augus-tine and Dionysius “. . . went further by situating the infinite emanation of differencewithin the Godhead itself. . . .”—my italics.

171 See BR, p. 107 where Milbank discusses this with reference to Nicolas of Cusa: “. . . thereis Unum or Esse which holds in ‘complicated’ fashion the entire ‘explicated’ sequence. . . .”

172 WMS, p. 126f.; TST, p. 139. Thus, revelation is embedded in culture and history rather thanarriving from some extrinsic source. See BR, p. 122; BR, p. 119; SM, p. 31; TST, p. 432f; in thiscontext the Trinitarian God is more than just social, it is “. . . a cultural God.” (WMS, p.80—Milbank’s italics).

173 BR, p. 66: This “going deeper” ends for Milbank in “deification”. Thus, he gives his readingof Aquinas: “. . . deified humanity comes more and more to participate in the Son’s returnto the Father within the Trinity.” But this too involves the whole of Creation: “And since,for Aquinas, the Creation is not really outside of God, it is, through humanity, able to makean adequate return of love and honour to God. . . . God is able in the Creation to realise atelos commensurate with his own infinite nature.” It is a “going-deeper” of the created intothe divine of that which is already properly there within the divine. Cf. SM, p.108, whereMilbank writes “. . . of . . . the cosmos as lured by grace. . . .”

174 TST, p. 309. This too allows Milbank to escape the charge of relativism as certain historicaland cultural “makings” will be more conducive to “discovering” the divine purpose forcreation than others.

175 TA, p. 47. Even though elsewhere Milbank says Aquinas “denies” a theory of participation.See TST, p. 432. This denial explains Milbank’s assertion that Aquinas is not “. . . retrievablewithout revision. . . .” See WMS, p. 17. cf. TA, p. 41 where Milbank says his approach is togive an essentially Platonic and theoontological reading of Aquinas.

176 BR, p. ix; cf. SM, p. 42 where Milbank notes de Lubac’s suggestion “. . . that without the lureof grace there would be no self-exceeding élan that generates the diversity and restlessnessof human culture.”

177 TA, p. 47. Hence Milbank’s rejection of apophaticism and any agnostic construal of analogy.See TA, p. 48.

178 TST, p. 309.179 TA, p. 37—my italics.180 TA, p. 37f.181 TA, p. 86—my italics.182 TA, p. 86; cf. Milbank’s assertion elsewhere: TST, p. 437: “For the Trinitarian God does

not . . . stand in an indifferent relationship to what he creates.” And WMS, p. 182: “. . . oneshould insist that God is the God who is related, who creates. . . .”

183 TST, p. 434. It is such a being, as found both in Plotinian Neoplatonism and Scotistvoluntarianism, that Milbank criticises: “. . . the only transcendental self-identical reality isthe recurrence of an empty will, or force . . .” emphasising respectively divine unity and

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absolute simplicity at the expense of the inclusion of difference and ultimately issuing innihilism. See TST, p. 435—my italics. Cf. TST, p. 437: in contrast the divine “. . . is an absolutethat is itself difference, inclusive of all difference. . . .” and BR, p. 115, where Milbank arguesthat Christian theology must hold to a God who is “. . . hyper-diverse. . . .”

184 TA, p. 85—my italics.185 “. . . there cannot really be an exterior to God since he is all in all.” (TA, p. 85); cf. BR, p. 63:

“. . . there is no exterior to God, no sum which might add to his amount.”186 In terms of the nature of the divine, Milbank therefore favours “surplus” over pure

self-sufficiency. See BR, p. 170. cf. TST, p. 437.187 TA, p. 86; TST, p. 436: God is a “. . . never exhausted ‘surplus’ . . .” and this “. . . means that

the context for development is always open to revision by the development.” Cf. TST, p. 430:within the divine there is a “. . . moving and dynamic element . . .” which is a “. . . move-ment . . . from unity to difference. . . .”

188 BR, p. 71. Phrases such as “stretching down” need to be understood in terms of divineemanation and not as from one distinct unity to another; they need to be understood as notinvolving any degree of efficient causality but in terms of relation and donation by whichthe finite is constituted by its participation in the divine, apart from which it has no realityin or of itself. Cf. WMS, p. 14: “. . . Being is not ‘mere fact’ [but] . . . sheer ‘givenness.’ ”

189 WMS, p. 182.190 WMS, p. 177.191 TST, p. 436. Milbank here approvingly refers to Eriugena and Dionysius, who “. . . realised,

God’s knowledge is not ‘before’ but in the infinity of generation, and this knowledge canonly be ordered, only be, in some sense, as Dionysius says, ‘limited’, if it is the infinitehappening of the new in the harmony with what ‘preceded’ it.”

192 “Empty” because Scotus’ God is devoid of difference. “The only transcendental self-identical reality is the recurrence of an empty will. . . .” (TST, p. 435).

193 TST, p. 435—my italics. For Milbank this does not simply refer to the procession of thedivine persons but also to creation itself as originating within the life of immanent Trinity.See WMS, p. 182; cf. TST, p. xxvii.

194 TST, p. 435; TST, p. 436: “. . . unity has become both a dynamic happening and a complexrelation . . . ‘preserving [all things] in their distinctness yet linking them together.’ ”

195 BR, p. 63.196 BR, p. ix.197 WMS, p. 176.198 BR, p. 115.199 BR, p. 78.200 TST, p. 437. Milbank’s understanding of divine unity and simplicity as inclusive of all

difference stands in contrast to the strongly voluntarist Scotus. E.g. see TST, p. 435: “Theonly way the voluntarists could characterise God in contrast to this was to emphasise hisunity and absolute simplicity; these become properties of a sheerly inscrutable will ofwhom no finite qualities can be eminently predicted.”

201 Creaturely participation in the divine means, as we have seen, that “The God who is, whoincludes difference, and yet is unified, is not a God sifted out as abstract ‘truth’, but a Godwho speaks in the harmonious happening of Being. In the context of an ontology ofdifference.” (TST, p. 438).

202 TST, p. 437. In that “transcendental univocity” issues in pure heterogeneity for Milbank, itdenies difference as embraced within a primordial harmonious unity and order, and isthereby constituted by ontological violence: “. . . univocity of being . . . upholds differenceas violence (TST, p. 309).” Pagan “peace” and “order” becomes nothing other than “. . . thearbitrary limitation of violence by violence (TST, p. 391f.).” Cf. TST, p. 440.

203 TA, p. 87.204 This “dipolarity” is illustrated not only in Milbank’s understanding of God as Creator but

as we have seen in how he understands God as the God of culture and history. See WMS,p. 126f.; TST, p. 139. See p. 539 above.

205 TST, p. 437—my italics. The use of the word “persuasive” is interesting here, being indica-tive of God as the ultimate “lure” of creation. See above p. 544; cf. TST, p. 308 whereMilbank points out that univocity leads to the glorification of the original whilst analogicalprocess “is a constant discrimination of preferences and erection of hierarchies.”



206 TST, p. 430.207 TST, p. 429.208 TST, p. 430.209 TST, p. 430.210 WMS, p. 23.211 “One can only think of the elements of creation as inherently interconnected ‘qualities’

which combine and re-combine in all sorts of ways . . . which participate in the divinecreative power/act. . . .” (TST, p. 431).

212 TST, p. 431.213 BR, p. 170; cf. TST, p. 437 and TST, p. 435: “. . . the only transcendental self-identical reality

is the recurrence of an empty will. . . .”214 WMS, p. 182—my italics.215 TST, p. 430.216 TST, p. 437.217 WMS, p. 177; cf. WMS, p. 182: “. . . God is the God who is related, who creates and that

from, and within, the ‘compulsion’ . . . freedom . . . arises.”218 WMS, p. 182.219 TST, p. 437.220 BR, p. 65f.221 TST, p. 308.222 Creation is not the glorification of an “original” but the constant discrimination of prefer-

ences. See TST, p. 308.223 BR, p. 77; cf. TST, p. 308.224 TA, p. 42.225 TA, p. 41.226 TST, p. 436; cf. TST, p. 431.227 As Milbank writes, “. . . the notion of a participation of the poetic in an infinite poesis is to

be complemented by the notion of a participation of reciprocal exchanges in an infinitereciprocity which is divine donum.” (BR, p. x).

228 TST, p. 433.229 BR, p. 73f.230 BR, p. 170.231 TST, p. 416.232 TST, p. 429.233 TST, p. 431.234 TST, p. 215.235 “If analogy is seen as entering into all unities, relations and disjunctures, then it is rendered

dynamic: the likenesses ‘discovered’ are also constructed likenesses (whether by natural orcultural processes) which can be refashioned and reshaped. And if certain things andqualities are ‘like God’, then it must also be true that the analogising capacity itself is ‘likeGod’.” (TST, p. 307).

236 TST, p. 308.237 TST, p. 156.238 Milbank of course recognises that Hegel does not achieve quite such an eventuality; hence,

he deems Hegel as at heart “gnostic”. See TST, p. 161.239 TST, p. 438.240 BR, p. 67; cf. WMS, p. 182: “. . . one should insist that God is the God who is related, who

creates, and that from, and within, the ‘compulsion’ of this immanent goal, freedom . . .arises.”

241 BR, p. 65f.242 TA, p. 86—my italics.243 TST, p. 436.

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mir - panentheist reading of john milbank

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