Wayne J. Hankey

Theoria versus Poesis: Neoplatonism and Trinitarian Difference in Aquinas, John Milbank, Jean‐Luc Marion and John Zizioulas

The totality with which postmodern Christian theology asserts its right to proceed independently of philosophy is, in fact, philosophically situated and determined. Heidegger, primarily, defines theologys project by his narration of Western Fate in terms of onto-theology. Two trinitarian differences are required of theologians who understand theologys situation thus: the first, associated with the procession of the Logos, requires getting beyond philosophy; the second, associated with the Spirit, requires getting beyond theology to poesis. Following Heidegger transforms theology into poesis and praxis. Beginning from a criticism of Aquinas implicit in a contrast made by Milbank between true trinitarian differential ontology and that possible from within Aristotelian categories like potency, act and actus purus , the paper considers what response might be made on behalf of medieval western philosophical theology and its development of trinitarian difference within theoria. The argument is that its union of Neoplatonic negative theology and metaphysics does not escape being onto-theology but does provide genuine trinitarian difference.

Radical Orthodoxy's Poiesis: Ideological Historiography and Anti-Modern Polemic

For Radical Orthodoxy participatory poiesis is the only form of authentic postmodern theology and determines its dependence upon, as well as the character of, its narrative of the history of philosophy. This article endeavors to display how the polemical anti-modernism of the movement results in a disregard for the disciplines of scholarship, so that ideological fables about our cultural history pass for theology. Because of the Radical Orthodox antipathy to philosophy, its assertions cannot be proven rationally either in principle or in fact, and its followers are reduced to accepting its stories on the authority of their tellers. The moral and rational disciplines are replaced with a postmodern incarnational neo-Neoplatonism in which the First Principle and sensual life are immediately united, without the mediation of soul or mind. With this disappearance of theoria, surrender to the genuinely other, or even attentive listening, become impossible.