Andrew Moore’s Realism and Christian Faith is an attempt to formulate a version of religious realism which is particularly Christian, which is grounded in an ontological commitment to the existence of the Christian God, and which employs Christian sources, particularly the Christian canon, for analyzing what it is for the Christian God to exist. Despite serious reservations that I have concerning the manner in which Moore develops his thesis, it is an interesting one, worthy of consideration.

The book consists of two inter-penetrating components: a negative one, and a positive one. The negative component is a rejection of two broad approaches to the issue of religious realism: ‘theological realism’, which is discussed primarily in chapters 2 and 3, and ‘Wittgensteinianism’, which is discussed primarily in chapters 4 and 5. In the positive component, which is developed primarily in chapters 6–9, Moore sketches his own conception of Christian realism and explores its consequences, while engaging with a great number of philosophers and theologians, including Soskice, Hebblethwaite, Banner, Trigg, Cupitt, Phillips, Lindbeck, Rahner, Tillich, Barth and others. Engagement with Swinburne’s, Plantinga’s and Alston’s apologetic projects, although relevant to various issues that Moore brings up, e.g., the relationship between philosophy and theology and the question of the epistemic status of religious experience, is conspicuously missing. I shall begin with a few comments on some of Moore’s negative conclusions, and then proceed to discuss Moore’s positive thesis.

Moore is highly critical of ‘theological realism’. He particularly criticizes Banner’s and Soskice’s assimilation of Christian faith to theism, as well as their reliance on various analogies between science and theology in their conceptions of realism and reason. Although sympathetic to Moore’s negative conclusions, I find the arguments by means of which he attempts to support these to be unpersuasive. To support his former critique, Moore argues that the assimilation of Christian faith to theism can lead one to idolatry; to support his latter critique, he points to various disanalogies between science and theology. However, if one is worried about idolatry, the anthropomorphism of the bible is as great a liability as philosophy. As to his latter critique, Moore is right to point to various disanalogies between science and theology. Unfortunately, he does not show the bearing of these on the particular analogies that Soskice, for example, uses for developing her conception of theological realism. Soskice does not argue that theology is a type of science. She argues that certain aspects of theology, e.g., the reliance on metaphoric language, resemble those of a science, and that these can be used to develop a conception of religious realism that is able to shed light on the manner in which religious utterances can be true or false.

Moore relies heavily on theological considerations in his critique of a variety of positions. In addition to his concern for the issue of idolatry, he accuses theological realists of putting God to the test, and of making it hard to identify ‘where the authorization of theology lies …whether it originates in human experience…or whether it is derived from God’s unique self-revelation’ (76). He accuses Phillips of a lack of commitment to the existence of the Christian God as the regulator of Christian discourse: ‘Phillips never manages to make clear that Christian practices intend anything other than themselves or their practitioners.’ (91); ‘Phillips sets practices free from …God’s independent reality—which could save them falling into a damaging autonomy.’ (92). He criticizes Phillips’s work for being ‘insufficiently informed by theological considerations.’ (86). However, in the absence of a plausible philosophical argument that supports his commitment to the Christian God as saving Christian practices from error, an atheist philosopher, a struggling Christian, or a non-Christian, e.g., myself, is not likely to appreciate his negative outlook on philosophical conceptions of religious language that leave the question of God’s existence an open one. Moore provides no such argument.

More troubling than the above, however, is the manner in which Moore develops his own conception of Christian realism. For Moore, being a realist about the Christian God amounts to having a commitment to the existence of the Christian God as the sustainer of the Christian faith, or in Moore’s terminology, having a commitment to God as the grammar of the Christian faith. Such a commitment is manifested in one’s life and speech, and it is formulated in a language that is specifically Christian, relying heavily on the Christian canon. He characterizes his conception of realism as a ‘Christocentric narrative realism’.

Moore’s discussion, however, shifts between two different conceptions of ‘Christian realism’: The first is a conception of realism that involves a commitment to God as the condition for the possibility of religious meaning, knowledge and truth, a conception that is compatible with a denial of religious meaning, knowledge and truth, with the possibility of fundamental error in Christians’ conceptions of God’s nature and will (idolatry, blasphemy etc.). Such a realism, in other words, is committed to the proposition that if there is religious meaning, knowledge and truth within the Christian community, it is made possible by means of God. Moore’s second conception of ‘Christian realism’ involves a commitment to God as the realized condition for the possibility of religious meaning, knowledge and truth, within the Christian community, as in fact guaranteeing the meaning, knowledge and truth of various utterances made about God within the Christian community.

This ambiguity in Moore’s conception of ‘Christian realism’ is manifested throughout the whole book. In a characteristic passage, Moore states:

Either practices of faith can ‘turn against their practitioners’, in which case, their being governed or regulated by God simply means that they are susceptible to God’s judgment, whether positive or negative, which entails that God does not necessarily ‘keep our language in good order’ or, God keeps Christian discourse in good order, and it is impossible that ‘practices of faith…can turn against their practitioners’. The former is compatible with the former conception of ‘Christian realism’. The latter, with the latter.

Moore’s latter conception of ‘Christian realism’ is the predominant one. Moore emphasizes that the meaning that certain practices are believed to have is ineradicable since it has been given to them by God himself: ‘The eucharist should …be regarded as ineradicably the sacramental enactment of God’s judgment and grace and as incapable of losing its meaning because God grants it through his gracious presence.’ (117). He criticizes theological realists, Wittgensteinians, and others for not grounding their work on a commitment to the existence of the Christian God.

Moore’s ontological commitment to the existence of the Christian God has far reaching consequences for his conceptions of rationality and reason. He takes the ‘Christ event’ as ‘epistemologically and ontologically prior to all other (secular) determinations of the nature of reality and our cognitive relations with it…’ (129). He defines rationality in relation to the ‘Christ event’. He argues that ‘theology is rational because it follows the rationality of God’s work, not because it conforms to either its own intrinsic, self-subsistent rationality (Wittgensteinian approaches) or an alien extrinsic rationality (as theological realism learns from Enlightenment foundationalism)’ (129). He emphasizes that ‘Christians are enabled and authorized to believe what they do on the warrant of and in conformity to revelation…’ (129). Thus, he argues that ‘as a matter of first principle, a realist ontology appropriate to Christian faith needs to be guided by the conviction that the risen Christ is the one in whom “all things hold together” (Col. 1:17), rather than the secondary and derived conceptions of “history” or “nature.”’ (178).

Moore, nevertheless, refuses to acknowledge that his fideist ‘Christian realism,’ with its ontological commitment to the existence of the Christian God as he is conceived of in the church, and its Christocentric conception of rationality, must be over-confident, conservative and secluded from its surrounding culture. He insists that his fideism is ‘dialectical fideism’, which ‘does not isolate itself from, but engages in and converses with the life and thought of its surrounding culture’ (135). Moore insists that ‘The church needs to be open to the wider world if it is to recognize God’s contemporary work and to learn to be a more effective witness to him’ (135). He calls Christians to look outside of the walls of the church ‘for God is at work there too, witnessing to himself. Sometimes this witness reproaches the church and its theology; at others it confirms and builds them up.’ (134). He emphasizes that ‘a dialectical fideism cannot refuse to “participate in the human conversation.”’ (136).

Moore’s predominant conception of ‘Christian realism’ renders such statements obscure. After all, what truths about God’s nature or will could a non-believer or a non-Christian be able to teach a Christian realist, who believes that the Christian God guarantees the truth of what he or she says about Him? How can a Christian realist who defines rationality in terms of the ‘Christ event’ converse with a non-Christian whose very conceptions of rationality and reason are different?

Thus emerges a different conception of ‘Christian realism’ in Realism and Christian Faith, which construes God as the ultimate judge of Christian practices, and as the condition of their possible, but not necessarily actual, meaning and truth. ‘Dialectical fideism,’ to the extent that it is dialectical, is grounded in this shadow conception of ‘Christian realism.’ Statements, such as, ‘God’s rule is not reducible to human rules and practices’ (118); ‘Theology is a practice as much at risk of falling into disrepair as any other…theology needs to incorporate the concept of realism as a supplementary meta-rule to preserve its distinctive and traditional character’ (111) exemplify such a conception. Moore’s distinction between intended grammar as the meaning that certain practices were intended to have by God, and their apparent grammar, which may ‘mislead as to the nature of the reality’ (119), is another feature of such a conception.

The two conceptions of ‘Christian realism’ that emerge through the book give rise to incompatible statements. Either practices of faith can ‘turn against their practitioners’, or God ‘keeps our language in good order’; either ‘theology is rational because it follows the rationality of God’s work…’ (129) or ‘Theology is a practice as much at risk of falling into disrepair as any other…’ (111). In wishing to have it both ways, Moore’s conception of ‘Christian realism’ dissolves into incoherence. I, nevertheless, have a great deal of respect for the motivations that bring about this dissolution into incoherence.