In the past, I’ve referenced my interest in Radical Orthodoxy, which developed after I attended an RO-heavy conference at Baylor last fall. I’m working up a proposal for a presentation at next year’s Baylor conference, with the vague thought of how the “ontology of peace” can apply to information law and policy. I stumbled across this nice summary of the Augustine-Aquinas-Milbank trajectory through the “ontology of peace” in a delightful little essay by Joel Garver about “Kenny” from “South Park” as a Christ figure:
An Ontology of Primordial and Final Peace
Let’s begin sketching an alternative by examining some of the suggestions and presuppositions of two Christian philosophers and saints–Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Then we will consider some considerations of a contemporary Christian philosopher–John Milbank.
Augustine
The fundamental presupposition of Augustine is that the material world is a result of free creation by God–as opposed to violence. Since, for Augustine, God is a Trinity of persons in a relation of love, freely shared, God is free to create a reality that may enter into that love. Futhermore, human beings who are in the image of God possess free will by which they do wrong–as opposed to find evil’s source in mere ignorance. Moreover, evil has no ontological purchase on Augustine’s view. It is defined negatively as the choosing of lesser goods over greater goods and so evil is seen as a privation–as opposed to an ontological reality.
In his Confessions Augustine presents the history of his person, lived before the face of God and offered up to God, redeeming his painful memories of the past. Thus, Augustine can be credited with the first deep theorization of psychology and personality as we know it–as opposed to the ultimate impersonalism of the Greeks.
Finally, in his City of God Augustine proposed an alternative city, a re-telling of the pagan myths which unmasks their inherent violence. Moreover, it is the proposal of a new narrative that is plausible by out-narrating the alternatives.
Let us turn then to Thomas.
Thomas Aquinas
For Thomas the fundamental nature of the world is to be understood by means of the analogy of being (analogia entis) in which the relations and reality of creation find an analogy in the very life of God. Thus being and difference must be seen in the final context of relation and love within the Trinity. God is who he is–both in the unity of the Godhead and in the differences between the Persons–only in virtue of his internal relations of love.
By the analogy of being we can then also see that the ultimate nature of things is love. Difference within the creation is established in love. Moreover, being unveils itself to me and so knowledge is a gift of love, but since love is fundamental to knowledge reason and faith are not extrinsically and externally related to one another and to knowledge, but are mutually and intrinsically related. This ontology and epistemology provides an alternative to empirical-positivist model of science by invoking formal and final causality, intrinsic relationality, and gift–as opposed to a privileging of control, atomism, and force.
John Milbank
Augustine and Thomas show us, then, that it is possible to narrate reality in a way that does not presuppose and perpetuate violence either as a primordial condition of ontology or as a sustaining event within the world and human practices and discourse. There is an alternative within the Christian message.
For Milbank, the Christian message is not to out-argue the ontology of violence by an appeal to some supposedly neutral and universal discourse of rationality. Rather, Christian belief claims to out-narrate and out-practice any alternatives. Part of that narrative is the example of Jesus who embodies the ultimate rejection of violence by refusing to play the game and answering conflict with transforming love. In him, the church is to be the space in which the alternative world is manifest with its alternative narrative and counter-history. Thus the ontology of violence is to overcome with a lived narrative and ontology of peace.