The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? - Slavoj Zizek and John Milbank

There was a time when, amid the Christian apologetics fervor of my teens, I was enraptured with the idea of theists and atheists debating one another. In my later high school years, I often listened to every apologetics podcast I could download on my iPod mini, avidly devouring debates between the likes of Christian apologists like William Lane Craig, Norman Geisler, and Frank Turek against the New Atheist views of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennet. Within the first few weeks of my undergrad career, I spent two hours debating one of the infamous fire-and-brimstone preachers who would set up their signs in the center of campus and antagonize students (primarily women) for their evil actions (such as wearing jeans and having careers. *gasp!*). I even led an apologetics club during my college tenure and we organized several debates between different theologians and secular thinkers on campus.

However, as time went on, I realized more and more that these debates often went nowhere. They became quite predictable and boring, as each side articulated the same old hackneyed talking points at one another, neither side truly engaging the other in new, fresh, or interesting ways. These debates, at the end of the day, have become a sign of the epoch of modernity, in which mediating metanarratives compete to synthesize the complexities of historical reality into a single, cogent narrative. They thus become nothing more than repetitious, self-propagating vehicles for an ideology that works to maintain the political, cultural, and political status quo.

After my stint as a budding apologist collapsed before my eyes during my sophomore year of college, I then began to study religious phenomena through a psychological and literary perspective, culminating in my undergraduate thesis on the various ways we construct the category of the “monstrous.” Keenly aware of my personal history and academic interests, one of my history professors recommended a book to me one day during his office hours. Since distancing myself from such dead-end religious debates in my later undergrad career, when reading the cover of Slavoj Zizek and John Milbank’s book, The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?, I was initially wary. After hunting the book down within the labyrinth of Powell’s Books in downtown Portland, I then spent the next four years struggling through this dense dialogue.

Overview:

This book consists of 3 main essays: an introductory essay from Zizek, a response from Milbank, and then a final rebuttal from Zizek. What they hold in common, however, is the central motif that can be found in the title of the book: namely, the monstrosity of Christ. This may come off as provocative to many, but by “monstrosity,” Milbank and Zizek are referring to a line from Hegel’s lectures, in which he describes Christ (as both human and divine) as a “monstrous compound,” shattering our understanding of the normative structure of reality through its utter grotesque strangeness. They both see this peculiar, idiosyncratic feature of Christ to be the foundation for Christianity. For Milbank, this paradoxical monstrosity is a direct representation of God’s extravagant and ridiculous love, from which the monstrosity (namely, God and man) takes its form. For Zizek, the monstrosity is found in the event in which God is alienated and loses faith in himself, thus signifying the ultimate death of God as the Big Other. The rest of the book lays each of these perspectives out in excruciating detail, as it pits Milbank’s Radical Orthodoxy against Zizek’s radical (confessedly heterodox) theology. The arguments of each of these essays are incredibly technical and complex and are thus difficult to succinctly summarize. For the sake of this review, I will merely attempt to give a rough sketch of the central thesis of each of their essays.

First of all, Zizek starts his first essay by outlining how Hegelian dialectics is uniquely positioned to address contemporary theology. Zizek posits that Christianity is uniquely radical because God Himself becomes an atheist; on the cross, when Christ calls out to heaven, “Father, why have you forsaken me,” Zizek interprets this as the negation of the negation. The Crucifixion, in Zizek’s reading, is not a metaphysical event that supernaturally relays the forgiveness of sins, but is rather a radical alienation of God from God. This serves as a signifier of the nonexistence of the Big Other, who serves as the ultimate guarantor of meaning. Just as in psychoanalysis, the treatment is done when the patient comes to realize that the Big Other does not exist. Instead, we are left totally alone, fully responsible for ourselves.

Thus, Zizek makes the bold claim that, as a committed atheist, he is closer to the kernel of Christianity than Milbank, as only an atheist can thus become a true believer. Zizek writes, “It is only in this monstrosity of Christ that human freedom is grounded; and, at its most fundamental, it is neither as payment for our sins nor as legalistic ransom, but by enacting this openness that Christ’s sacrifice sets us free” (82). The Holy Spirit, in Zizek’s view, is then incarnated in the body of believers, rather than existing as a separate entity. It is this community of radical believers, not confined to the Church, but held together in solidarity through political action, that can work against the mechanisms of global capitalism and exploitation.

In response, Milbank agrees that the community of believers is the site of emancipatory possibility, but mainly disagrees about how to get there. In Milbank’s estimation, the logic of paradox- in which opposites exist simultaneously without resolution- is a better system than Hegelian dialectics to describe our contemporary existence and the vision for Christian theology. Milbank rejects Zizek’s estimation of the death of God, arguing that humanity and God occupy two different realms: the “ontological” (essential) and “ontic” (actual). Milbank charges Zizek with utilizing univocal language through his use of dialectics (which he charges with resolving the tension between opposites) and then outlines the analogical language of paradox, which allows contradictions to exist in tandem without resolution.

Harkening back to his earlier magnum opus, Theology and Social Theory (1990), Milbank asserts that the modern construction of the “secular” is a fiction, or more accurately, a Christian heresy. He writes, “From a Catholic and radically orthodox perspective we have not passed definitely into a postmedieval fuller realization of Christianity. Instead, we are still living out a “certain” Middle Ages that is univocalist, voluntarist, noministically equivocal, and arcanely gnostic” (218). Accordingly, Milbank utilizes the works of Augustine, Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, Nicolas of Cusa, and other Catholic humanists to propose an alternative, Trinitarian-centered way of living as opposed to what he describes as Zizek’s “Protestant” lineage, which he accuses is lacking in poetry and beauty. As such, Milbank sees his Catholic critique as an ethical position in which the pleasures of this world can be enjoyed through Trinitarian participation in the world, namely because these are earthly emanations of the joy inherent in the transcendent divine. Milbank essentially sees his theory as an attempt to balance both poetry and reason, or the aesthetic and the rational dimensions of experience.

In his rebuttal, Zizek essentially doubles down his commitment to materialism, making sure to note how he believes Milbank misunderstands him. While Milbank would accuse him of ignoring the implications of embodied consciousness, Zizek insists that this is wholly found in subjectivity itself, in what Heidegger would call being “thrown” into the world. Zizek then, in typically controversial fashion, goes so far to claim that it is “Milbank who is in effect guilty of heterodoxy, ultimately as a regression to paganism: in my atheism, I am more Christian than Milbank” (248). Zizek believes that Milbank is too concerned with reconciling with an ultimate harmony, which leaves no room for the wholly negative, shattering Event (such as the Crucifixion and, in Zizek’s view, the news that “God is dead”). Following Altizer, Zizek posits that every version of Christian dogma has ultimately served as a defense against the traumatic core of incarnation/death/resurrection, and that true Christianity only comes close to this core at its most apocalyptic moments. In our current crises of global capitalism, ecological catastrophe, and political cynicism, it is only such an apocalyptic stance that can begin to construct a radically different world. Zizek then goes on to give an impassioned defense of Protestantism and contemplates the relationship between drive, desire, and the law.

In short, their arguments revolve around the single point of the Christian Crucifixion and its meaning for our contemporary political and cultural context. On the outset, Creston Davis (the editor of this exchange) offers a succinct summary: “For Milbank, God’s act of Incarnation saves the world from itself by opening up a way beyond the material realm into the beyond of the infinite life of God, whereas for Zizek the same event signals the reality of a radical, even Kierkegaardian, leap of faith without guarantee- the abyss opens up, allowing for the coordinates of a life of real yet terrifying freedom for both God and human beings” (18). Both of these authors examine the dialectical method of Hegel, contemplating its usefulness in furthering a more politically radical vision of Christianity. Zizek believes that Hegelian dialectics (thesis, antithesis, and synthesis), combined with a Lacanian rejection of the Big Other and an Altizerian twist on the death of God is the most cogent way of understanding our radical contingency in the world around us. Milbank, however, believes that there is a Catholic humanist alternative to Hegelian dialectics within the incarnational logic of paradox as expounded by Eckhart, Kierkegaard, Chesterton, and de Lubac, and that such a vision ultimately holds a more coherent vision of Christianity (117). Zizek is advocating for a purely materialist theology, whereas Milbank still holds on to metaphysics and liturgy as emancipatory forces. Or, as I’ve heard it said before: For Milbank, in the Beginning was the Word, and Everything will be fine. For Zizek, in the Beginning was the Void, and Nothing will be fine.

Positives:

First of all, I deeply appreciate and value this work. It is a dynamic, if philosophically dense, dialogue between two highly erudite and intelligent philosophers: one of whom is a Radical Orthodox, Anglican theologian and the other a neo-Marxist atheist who nevertheless hold Christianity in high regard. Unlike most theological debates, neither party resorts to ad hominem or straw man fallacies, and they generally treat each other’s views generously. This demonstrates what debates between theists and atheists should be like: a fruitful exchange of worldviews that are both thoroughly examined and debated. They both show us, from different perspectives, just how radical Christianity (and atheism) can be, and how they can be used for constructive, revolutionary ends.

Zizek does well to intertwine the theological and the political, ultimately connecting the alienation of a late-capitalist society with the Christian Crucifixion. He argues that the “death of God” forces us to confront and accept the radical contingency and freedom of our condition, and therefore open up the possibility for revolutionary freedom. What we find in Zizek is a type of negative theology that is distinct from the weak theology of Caputo (indeed Zizek criticizes much of Caputo, and Caputo, in turn, has also responded. Rather, what we get is a theology of radical nihilism, which finds its home in dialectical materialism. Even if I’m not wholly convinced, this is still a perspective worth considering within the Christian context, and we would do well to consider its potential implications for our own theological project.

Milbank also does well to defend his perspective, arguing that Zizek’s dialectics are nonetheless trapped in the logic of secular reason, and are thus unable to overcome the problems of late capitalism. I appreciate his distinction between modes of language (univocal, equivocal, analogical), as well as his commitment to hold both postmodern continental philosophy and traditional, orthodox Christian doctrine in tension with one another. His appeal to paradox holds a certain appeal to the mystic within me, and his vision for a Trinitarian-centered utopian way of living calls to the orthodox Christian in me, even if my cynicism holds it away from me at an arm’s length.

While I believe that their arguments are sound and worth considering, all is not perfect in this exchange. Despite its value, there are also several glaring issues with this interchange.

Criticism:

First of all, as I’ve alluded before, this is an incredibly dense text. This book took me four years to chew my way through, as I had to stop and restart the book about a half dozen times over. I would pick up the book, struggle to understand for several pages, have a few brief moments of clarity, and then put it down again. This book in no way holds your hand or gently wades into the water with you. Rather, it ties your wrists and throws you into the ocean, demanding that you tread water to keep up. If you have absolutely no prior knowledge of Christian history, political theory, or theology, then this book is going to be even more difficult to comprehend.

On the other hand, if you do have some experience in these fields, you might also find some issues with their arguments. In his final essay, Zizek derides Milbank’s illustration of a misty English countryside, which he uses as a metaphor for the unified multiplicity and harmony that is to be found within a paradox. Yet, like Zizek, I was a bit puzzled at this example, and it seems far too simplistic and idealistic to me, although I must confess I’m still thinking through it. Furthermore, Milbank, for all his brilliance, is often bogged down in abstraction; there are few concrete examples within Milbank’s essays, which, especially when compared to Zizek’s penchant for pop-culture references, seem to leave his argument as more difficult to articulate. I believe that the structure of the book might be partially to blame in this regard, as Milbank never gets a final rebuttal against Zizek’s second essay (where Zizek constantly insists that Milbank misunderstands him). The book could have benefitted from this one additional interchange and could have allowed Milbank to expand upon his argument with less misty, more concrete examples.

Zizek, on the other hand, while giving the reader many examples from which to choose, can occasionally stretch what is reasonable. One example that comes to mind is his distinction between Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant expressions of Christianity, which struck me as a crude generalization and wholly detached from history. Ultimately, Zizek’s depiction of faith seems to be a bit ironic; God might not exist, but we should continue believing in the spectral presence of what Christ, as a mere symbol, represents. This, to me, is rather unconvincing. While I understand that Zizek’s point is to utilize Pauline theology to advocate for nihilistic dialectical materialism, it also seems that Zizek can be guilty of saying provocative things for their own sake, rather than fighting for any lasting, constructive, and truly revolutionary “theological” project.

In the end, Zizek does indeed understand the appeal of Christianity and why it has flourished over the centuries. This much is true. In the same vein, Milbank also understands both the usefulness and limitations of reason, taking his cue from Kierkegaard to take the leap to faith via his “participatory rationality.” Yet, at the end of the day, while I find neither argument wholly convincing, I still believe they are well worth contemplating.

Conclusion:

During my final semester at Harvard, a good friend of mine saw me reading my copy of Monstrosity, noting all of my underlines and badly-scribbled, indecipherable notes in the margin. After a deep sigh, he told me that, ultimately, this book was not worth the return for the amount that you had to invest in it. At the time, about half-way through, I pretty much agreed with him. I didn’t understand much of it and struggled page after page to comprehend the complex style of argumentation, often stopping to google the definitions of several words along the way. Yet, because I am stubborn to a fault, I told him I was committed to seeing this book to the end.

Several months later, I was sitting at a coffee shop in a small town in central North Carolina. All of a sudden, as I reached the end of Milbank’s essay, everything miraculously clicked together. I finally understood what this book was about. It was a marvelous epiphany, one of those rare moments that academics get their kicks off of. A scholar’s high, if you will. Now, going back through the tome, I understand so much more of the book than I did before. This is the rewarding aspect of reading books you don’t understand. They challenge you to think, to exercise that muscle up there in your skull. And at that moment, I realized that I had stretched myself in my own critical thinking ability. I had grown.

All in all, this is an incredibly interesting, if altogether overly dense, conversation between two brilliant, if eccentric, thinkers. This book also marks a type of “theological turn” that continental philosophy has taken over the past decade or so. It gives two perspectives regarding the issues of exploitative late-stage capitalism, as well as how we might address these problems with particular theological rigor.

So, is this book worth reading? Well, not to sound passe, but it depends. If you are comfortable in your particular worldview and don’t want to put in the intellectual effort that this book demands (and if you don’t I totally don’t blame you; this one’s a doozy), then it’s a bit difficult to recommend this one. But if you feel like challenging yourself and are ready for a debate between a theist and atheist that is actually unique and interesting, then this might just be your book.