Nihilistic pathos of liberal, progressive, and identity theologies.
Radical political theology stands with Radical Orthodoxy in the assertion that the theological capitulation to modernity, which originated most clearly in liberal Protestantism, has hollowed out the Church’s capacity to speak prophetically to culture. John Milbank captures this diagnosis with stark clarity: “Secular modernity is the creation of a perverse theology.”[1] In his reading, liberal theology did not merely accommodate modernity’s categories; it provided the theological scaffolding upon which secular culture was constructed. Rather than challenging the epistemological and moral assumptions of the Enlightenment, liberal theology baptized them, thereby facilitating the displacement of divine revelation with human-centered reason and sentiment.