Milton and the Post-Secular Present by Mohamed Feisal

Author:Mohamed, Feisal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2011-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

4

Samson, the Peacemaker: Enlightened Slaughter in Samson Agonistes

[T]he relationship of the Biblical narratives to the pagan myths is necessarily asymmetric: the former could not be critically read through the latter because it belongs to the mythic grammar to conceal and not to expose arbitrary and fundamental violence. The latter can be critically read through the former because the Biblical narratives constitute and renew themselves through a breaking with sacrificial violence which exposes its social reality.

—John Milbank, ‘An Essay against Secular Order’1

Milbank’s claim on biblical narratives seems on the surface a partial one. Though Adam and Eve enjoy the unadulterated gift of creation (if under the threat of death), humanity’s full entry into the world in being cast out of Eden carries with it a divinely implanted promise-cum-obligation of violent retribution: ‘I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel’ (Gen 3.15). Abraham must prove himself through his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, making the potential of God’s demand for arbitrary violence fundamental to the foundation of Israel. Even if we see such violence as abrogated by the gospel, we must acknowledge the existence in the Christian Bible of a foreboding divine justice. There are dire consequences to deviating from the rule of charity, as Jesus makes clear in the parable of the unforgiving servant, who is delivered ‘to the tormentors ... So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses’ (Matt 18.34–35). The pronouncement that ‘the last shall be first’ is also a promise to the disciples that those who are marginalized in this world will have the satisfaction of judging their fellow human beings: ‘[Ye] which have followed me ... ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel’ (Matt 19.28). The Bible’s narrative unity demands that we accept Christ as Alpha and as Omega, intertwining the gift of creation with the violence of the world’s dissolution.

To separate the two is to free the promise of an order of peace from the terms of that narrative. That is precisely what Milbank does in a post-modern reading of the Augustinian societas perfecta. Whereas Augustine argues that ‘all earthly cities are built upon the foundation of a primal crime’ and that it is only ‘the Church’s real, historical existence’ that makes possible a ‘social order based on love and forgiveness,’ Milbank rightly claims that we are now less certain that the visible church has a ‘particular history which has constantly run “counter” to the general run of human political life.’2 He concedes that for much of its history Christianity strays from its own principles and becomes a force of exclusion, though its true promise lies in the hope for perfect community. The Christian vision of cosmic order is uniquely poised to embrace difference; it is peculiar in its attempt to make ‘differential additions a harmony “in the body of Christ.

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