Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People

In his renowned work Theology and Social Theory, the now famous contemporary theologian John Milbank claimed that there was in fact no purely secular reality. In Beyond Secular Order he extends this claim from the field of social theory to encompass those of philosophy, political theory and political practice. Arguing that a common set of assumptions underpins both modern belief and action, he traces these theories to mutations in medieval thought, especially associated with Franciscan and then Nominalist theology. By doing so, he demonstrates that modern thinking and performance are based upon a buried set of particular theological perspectives and that even the claim to a space of philosophical and secular autonomy paradoxically depends upon them. Revisiting these connections and critiquing our assumptions begins to hold out the genuine possibility of restoring a prevailing Christian world-view and a Christian global order.

Provocative, original, and brilliantly intellectual, Beyond Secular Order shakes the very foundations of how we understand religious and secular thought today.