On the acknowledgements page of Theology and Social Theory John Milbank thanks, rather abruptly, ‘Rowan Williams, who taught me theology’. No other teacher is recognised. The formal teaching was at Westcott House, Cambridge, in the mid-70s; but there is evidence enough that the current Archbishop of Canterbury has been an abiding influence on the whole of John Milbank’s theological career. In the crowded Metro of Milbank’s footnotes, it is rare to see a face more than once; but Williams appears five times in The Word Made Strange, speaking variously of Barth, Arius, Lossky and Gregory of Nyssa. And often, Milbank’s ideas seem closely related to those of his teacher. The concept of poesis in Milbank’s ‘A Critique of the Theology of Right’ (1989) - ‘the ceaseless re-narrating and ‘explaining’ of human history’, a self-exceeding act — is clearly the twin of Williams’ ‘generative revelation’ — ‘events or transactions in our language that break existing frames of reference and initiate new possibilities of life’ — in his essay ‘Trinity and Revelation’ (1986). But this example serves not just as a demonstration of Williams’ influence on Milbank; it also shows how Milbank overtakes his teacher, tackling on a grand scale ideas that are in Williams rather tentative. For Milbank, the idea that somehow Christian experience generates its own momentum of truth contributes to the overthrow of Kantian transcendentalism; for Williams, the same sort of idea provides ‘a way of thinking’ about the Spirit’s work in the church. Milbank’s theological ambition seems much greater than Williams’.

The Common Man (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1950). 177.

Collected Works (San Francisco: Ignatius, [1908] 1986), I, 214. Italics added.

Kant thinks that our judgments in all three parts of Critical Philosophy: metaphysics, practical judgment, and aesthetics, entail antinomies, antinomies that were to be resolved in analogous ways. For example, in aesthetics, the dictum de gustibus non disputandum is antithetical to the claim that if we could not dispute questions of taste, we could contend for them and expect others to agree (Kritik der Urteilskraft paras. 56, 57, B232-240; A229-237). He putatively resolves the antinomy by claiming that the judgment of taste in the thesis does not presuppose ‘distinct’ concepts, but the judgment of taste in the antithesis presupposes an ‘indistinct’ concept, a super-sensed substratum of appearances.

I agree that our judgments in questions of metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics face philosophical problems. There seem to be two ways in which we engage with others in discussing these judgments, the mode by which we say, “Don’t argue! Hutton’s Hams are the best”, and the mode by which we submit to the invitation, “Come now, and let us reason together” (Isaiah 1.18). I argue that our judgments in questions of fact and of morals and of beauty are made with authority. I argue, further, that our expressed judgments in all three spheres are required to be submitted to the authority of others. This is not an antinomy, since each proposition is consistent with, and even entails, the other.

But, you may say, I rarely, if ever, have any authority, since I am compelled by the facts to think what is the case, what is true.

The last few decades have seen a revival of interest among Anglo-American philosophers in natural theology, especially in what is an important part (though not the whole) of it, philosophical arguments for God’s existence. Of course, such arguments have been discussed for centuries, but the present situation contrasts strikingly with much of the twentieth century, when it was assumed by most analytic philosophers that they had been refuted definitively by Hume, Kant, and some later philosophers. There was, too, at that time opposition to the whole enterprise of natural theology in certain theological quarters, most notably, as we shall see, in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics.

No doubt discussions will move to and fro in future centuries, as they have done in past ones. My purpose now, however, is not to follow particular arguments and their counter-positions, but to suggest that there at least two good religious reasons (apart from Biblical texts like Rom. 1:19-20 and Acts 14:17) why natural theology is likely to flourish perennially: (1) behind particular arguments there are certain natural human reactions, especially wonder — not just at the beauty or intricacy of the world, but also at its very existence, at the fact that there is something rather than nothing; (2) theistic arguments are inverse forms of fundamental religious doctrines, e.g. Cosmological arguments reverse the doctrine of Creation, in that the latter claims that God brought the world into being and sustains it in being, whilst the arguments seek to infer His existence from that of the world or from some very general feature of it.