This is fucking crazy (forgive my Bulgarian) and just slightly idolatrous:
[The church] is the continued event of the ingestion of the body of Christ
And yes, it’s the desperately frenetic Alasdair Maclagan (who knows deep down that Theology and Social Theory was his only good book) slagging off against Adam Kotsko of An und für sich. Actually, the worst of it is the sign of someone well past his prime dismissing any new work as worthless and unable to recognise, graciously, something far smarter than his own limited capacities.
Update: The Dunedin School has taken this to its reductio ad absurdum to argue: a) this means that the church is Christ’s poo; b) that theology, since it can arise only from the church, is therefore the poo that comes from the poo of the church. However, at this point, the DSs get it wrong, arguing that Christ is the final step of this scatotheology. No, Christ is the source, the original nourishment that produces excrement in the first place (the church), of which theology is thereby the secondary product.
18 March, 2010 at 12:29 pm
I don’t understand – it’s a “fact”? Pompous old (jealous?) pommy git.
18 March, 2010 at 12:44 pm
And just to add to the whole pseudonym issue, do you see that this part of the quote by Milbank/Maclagan in the interview with Nathan Schneider is actually attributed to NS??!!
ALSO, just a note on the whole “romantic conservatism” issue – see that M/M would like to roll back the sexual revolution and return to the good old days. According to him, “Marriage and the family, for all their corruption and misuse, are at base democratic institutions.”
Perhaps he means one of those democracies where only certain people can vote, own property, divorce etc etc … Hmmm …
18 March, 2010 at 5:56 pm
Yes, and be worth at least 10000 pounds. M/M is actually in favour of monarchic anarchism – so forget about democracy.
19 March, 2010 at 6:20 am
I was amused by the assertion that one should support gay civil partnerships but not marriage because….. *vague handwaving*
19 March, 2010 at 7:36 am
And they are definitely against any idea of gay couples adopting kids.
18 March, 2010 at 1:08 pm
no doubt there is a little bit of confusion within the ranks of politics at the moment (about, say, how progressive and feminist is Hustler magazine actually), but the notion of ‘returning’ to the parish is a total fantasmatic reaction the other way.
I’ve also never really understood the RO mobilisation of the sacraments as sympathetic magic for politically conservative purposes. Surely the act itself is polyvalent depending on how and where it is articulated.
I’ve found much of Milbank’s stuff not so bad diagnostically, but quite unappealing when he moves into the prognoistics.
18 March, 2010 at 5:57 pm
That’s the bottom line with any intelligent conservative – and Milbank is increasingly showing his colours as a deeply conservative thinker: they ask the some of the best questions and then fuck up with the solutions.
18 March, 2010 at 7:15 pm
I think in Lacan-ese it’s called the objet petit a isn’t it? The fantasy of paradise lost when those gays/feminists/immigrants stole our enjoyment. It’s a pretty poor place to look; a past that never existed. Speaking of conservatism, have you heard about Waleed Aly’s Quarterly Essay, Roland?
18 March, 2010 at 10:58 pm
It makes in its own circular logic. If you dismiss non-theological social analysis, then dismiss all theology that is not done out side churches as illegitimate theology, where can you go but to statements like that and the notion that, at best, you’re left with internal-self corrections?
Funnily enough, if this sort of statement was coming from within British Marxism not the Church of England it would have “CULT” written all over it.
18 March, 2010 at 10:59 pm
That should say:
It makes SENSE in its own circular logic. If you dismiss non-theological social analysis, then dismiss all theology that is not done IN side churches as illegitimate theology, where can you go but to statements like that and the notion that, at best, you’re left with internal-self corrections?
Funnily enough, if this sort of statement was coming from within British Marxism not the Church of England it would have “CULT” written all over it.
19 March, 2010 at 7:38 am
That’s the old Milbank double-move: every system of social thought has an implicit or explicit theological basis. In case of the first you flush out that basis and then show how it is ‘wrong’ theology. In case of the second, you simply point out that it too is ‘wrong’ theology. And then you simply put forward the ‘right’ theology, which happens to be your own.
19 March, 2010 at 7:39 am
Remy, yes the standard reactionary utopia that looks back a golden age that never existed …
19 March, 2010 at 11:49 am
Ha – your bullshit detector zeroed in on the same phrase.
http://dunedinschool.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/milbank-the-church-as-poo/
19 March, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Yeah – I repent on the God-Man bit. I had the emanating back-to-front.
19 March, 2010 at 9:27 pm
But then he is the alpha and omega …
21 March, 2010 at 7:27 pm
But think about all this shit as fertilizer. Anyone for mushrooms?
22 March, 2010 at 8:50 am
Or rather, eat shit; 20 billion flies can’t wrong.
24 March, 2010 at 9:34 pm
Fuel; 200 million fires can’t be wrong either…