Despite the theological controversy surrounding ‘Russian sophiology' amongst Orthodox theologians, John Milbank has claimed that it has proven to be one of the most daring theological breakthroughs within twentieth-century theology. He further considers it to be a fecund avenue of theological and philosophical reflection that has the potential to effectively communicate his central theological arguments in a new idiom. However, many of the positions which Milbank adopts within his sophiology prove to be controversial. This article offers a critical appraisal of Milbank's sophiology, drawing particular attention to several theological aporias it appears to generate and leave unresolved.

To combat the charges raised by Radical Orthodoxy and others, which allege that Protestant soteriologies amount to a legal fiction, Bruce McCormack and Michael Horton suggest that Reformed theology embrace a covenantal ontology, which aims to overcome legal fiction objections without sacrificing Reformational insights or making recourse to medieval participatory metaphysics. For both theologians, covenantal history and participatory metaphysics are treated as rival paradigms. I suggest that their proposals display serious weaknesses and propose an alternative approach, inspired by the retrieval of Reformed scholastic insights, which treats covenant and participatory metaphysics as complementary motifs rather than rival paradigms, and is thereby able to overcome the legal fiction objection while maintaining Protestant distinctives.

Theologians interested in postmodernism and contemporary culture have recently turned to liturgy as a resource. However, these scholars often overlook the rich tradition of philosophically and theologically sophisticated reflection on liturgy of the past few decades. The result is that essential features of liturgy are overlooked. These features include the authoritative nature of liturgy for theology, and the impossibility of fully expressing the content of liturgy in propositional theology. By turning to the work of liturgical theologians, including Alexander Schmemann, Aidan Kavanagh, and Geoffrey Wainwright, I suggest that the attempt to grapple with contemporary issues by appealing to liturgy will always be compromised unless liturgy is understood in a modest, not broad, sense. I argue that recent work by Catherine Pickstock and William Cavanaugh, among others, ignores the authoritative nature of liturgy. These recent enthusiasts of liturgy promote a ‘liturgical culture’, but in the process their work takes away what makes liturgy most potent.