Radical orthodoxy steps into the pulpit
The movement's plucky proponents have been known for their philosophy more than their preaching. Until now.
In Review
Preaching Radical & Orthodox
When John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Ward, and friends burst onto the British theological scene with venom and pluck a few decades ago, they demolished their milquetoast liberal predecessors and turned heads even outside theology departments. Few of the arguments of the movement styled as radical orthodoxy were entirely novel. Others before them had said that we should retrieve the church fathers, that the medieval innovation of the univocity of being had birthed such children as secularism and totalitarianism, that Anglicanism could be more Catholic than Rome, that the theology of the gift is more subversive than Foucault and Derrida combined, that the political fruit of orthodox doctrine should be communitarian socialism, and much more. What was new was the mood. Few had said these things with such verve. The Chronicle of Higher Education ran an admiring and slightly nervous piece wondering if they meant it when they said theology should be queen of the sciences again.
Yet radical orthodoxy seemed unpromising for preaching. As Milbank and friends went scrounging for ever more obscure French philosophers to champion as unwitting witnesses to the profundity of the medieval mass, the fruit for preachers seemed spartan. So Preaching Radical and Orthodox is a very welcome volume. All of the leading luminaries are here—the aforementioned triumvirate plus American fellow traveler Stanley Hauerwas and forerunner Fergus Kerr. The book began as a project of John Hughes, a brilliant academic and priest who died tragically young. If this project is any indication, radical orthodoxy could offer a way of preaching at once new and old that renews the whole church.
Books of sermons can be hit or miss, but there is not a clunker in this volume. They can also be theologically diffuse, but there is remarkable synchronicity here: not uniformity, but coherence. Thomas Aquinas appears as a theologian whose work was for the training of social radicals, doing ministry with the poor. A theology of Mary appears regularly, as does an enormously high doctrine of the Eucharist, celebrated and contemplated and made deeply invitational. One might be forgiven for thinking the sermons Catholic. Fully one third of them—and many of the most memorable ones—are by women.
