Nature, Grace, and Secular Culture
A Comparative Study of John Milbank and Joseph Ratzinger
- Theology
- Publisher: Pickwick Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2024
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Publisher's Description
The relationship between nature and grace is a key debate in Fundamental theology. The understanding of how nature and grace relate to each other is also a critically important part in comprehending the underpinnings of Western secular culture, and therefore, how best to evangelise it. This book compares John Milbank and Joseph Ratzinger, two relatively recent theologians, who have both drawn from the insights of Henri de Lubac, and have attempted to address the challenge that secular culture presents to the mission of the church. In demonstrating and comparing how each author's approach to the nature-grace couplet consequently determines their respective approach to secular culture, it is hoped that responses to the challenge of secular culture might be more comprehensively considered.
Endorsements (4)
“Father Irdi makes a substantial contribution to both theology and public life in offering a comparison of John Milbank and Joseph Ratzinger on the question of nature and grace. He shows how the church, by understanding the specific theological presuppositions behind secular culture and adopting a balanced, intrinsicist view of nature and grace, as well as an appropriate theology of politics, may be able to successfully challenge the secularist attempt to silence people of faith in the public square.”
“Irdi presents us with a concise and readable account of two correctives to the modern split of the secular from the theological order. Ratzinger prefers a personalist engagement of graced activity with a world divorced from God. Milbank envisions a church of socialist scope, whose role is to critique a society that already inhabits the world of grace. Irdi’s study urges us to consider how the church engages the world.”
“In this new work, Father Christian Irdi engages John Milbank, Joseph Ratzinger, and their critics in a multilateral dialogue on the crucial question of secularization and its pastoral ramifications for the universal church in the modern world. Irdi’s meticulous examination of his two theologians’ respective approaches to the nature-grace question helps his reader navigate securely through these often stormy seas. Irdi’s historical and biographical analysis, moreover, enables his reader to enflesh the theology at the heart of the debate and to recognize its vital importance for contemporary society. Nature, Grace, and Secular Culture itself serves as a model for how one ought to do theology in the twenty-first century.”
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