John Milbank and the mystery of the supernatural : his postmodern engagement with Henri de Lubac
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study aims at reading Anglican theologian John Milbank through the lens of French Catholic theologian, Henri de Lubac’s central concept of the idea of the supernatural. Henri de Lubac’s so-called, surnaturel thesis means that there is no reserved realm, which neo-scholastic theologians call pure nature (natura pura), independent of God’s grace. This means that nature and the supernatural constitute an organic unity. Milbank appropriates de Lubac’s thesis through and through. De Lubac’s idea of the supernatural penetrates Milbank’s all theological reflection ranging from ontological issues to political ones. One important point in Milbank’s appropriation of de Lubac’s surnaturel thesis is that he emphasizes the relationship of the supernatural to human language. For him, human language itself is supernatural in character. This means that human culture, which is constituted by human language, is itself theologically constituted. In other words, there is no neutral culture, but cultures based on particular theological convictions. From this insight, Milbank emphasizes, with de Lubac, the necessity of Christian philosophy which will be the true basis of human culture. Crucial to Milbank’s theological project is the centrality of the Church in the establishment of Christian culture. For both Milbank and de Lubac, the Church is not a means for atemporal salvation, but itself the goal of salvation. The Church is to be the place of heavenly peace which the Eucharist represents. Milbank is convinced that only the Church has the power to counter the neo-liberal capitalist order that is based on the ontology of violence.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.014 | 0.031 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".