[1] In this lively and pugnacious book Peter Byrne argues for what he calls a ‘minimal theistic realism’. He thinks that the debate about realism in the philosophy of religion has, until now, been misconceived and in this book he aims to put the debate in order. First of all, he contends, instead of focussing our attention on metaphysical questions about what – if anything – exists independently of our minds, we need to examine the ‘intent’ of theistic discourse. Byrne believes that the central questions need to be understood to be hermeneutical. ‘Can the apparent intent behind talk of God to refer to an entity existing in some sense beyond us and the universe be taken seriously?’ (p. 4). To approach the realism question as primarily an ontological one would require proof (or disproof) that God exists, but Byrne thinks this unlikely to be forthcoming. And in any case, an atheist and a theist can agree over the intent of theistic discourse to refer; what they differ over is whether it should be given a realist or anti-realist interpretation. Moreover, the point at which a Christian non-realist such as Don Cupitt differs with the realist is in denying the realist intent of the discourse: he does not deny that traditional Christianity has been realist but wants to re-interpret it, to give it a non-realist intent.
[2] This is not to deny that there is a metaphysical dimension to the realism question. Byrne’s map of the terrain covered by the debate is adopted from Susan Haack and, following her, he styles his basic position ‘innocent realism’. According to this, ‘for the most part, the world exists independently of us and our representations. It is ontologically independent of human beings’ (p. 7). It follows from his concern with the intent of our discourse that it should also be possible to know and refer to this world, and, in a move typical of metaphysical realism, Byrne accepts that there are verification transcendent truths. (Contra Dummett, against whom, along with Michael Scott and Robin Le Poidevin, he argues in chapter 4.)
[3] Byrne needs innocent realism in order to get the second part of his re-ordering of the realism debate going. One way in which one might be a religious anti-realist is because one is a global anti-realist, so in order to show that religious discourse can have a realist intent, Byrne devotes a good deal of the book to arguing against global anti-realists. In the religious field his main debating partners are Joseph Runzo and Don Cupitt (post circa 1990), in general philosophy, (and in addition to Michael Dummett,) Hilary Putnam. Byrne also argues – with what for me came too close to rhetorical over-kill – against postmodern constructivism. Much of his argument against global anti-realism seemed to me to be beside the point. On the one hand, it is not clear why arguing against global anti-realism should amount to a positive case for taking religious discourse to be realist in intent. Plenty of people are global realists but religious anti-realists, and if they admit that religious people speak with a realist intent it is still open to them to be error theorists about religious language. Nor on the other hand does Byrne show why global anti-realism entails anti-realism about the intent of religious discourse. For example, in a tantalising aside in the Preface to Truth and Other Enigmas Dummett seems to favour a realist interpretation of religious discourse. On the same score, Byrne’s omission of Bishop Berkeley from the discussion seems a serious oversight. Here is a believer who, on one understanding of Byrne’s use of the phrase, is a global anti-realist and yet who is also a realist about God and can plausibly be taken to be a realist concerning the intent of religious discourse.
[4] Another way in which Byrne thinks one might be a theistic anti-realist is owing to the attractions of what he calls contrastive anti-realism. This is the third main aspect of his re-ordering of the field of debate. Contrastive anti-realist are global realists who deny that theistic discourse requires an anti-realist interpretation. Cupitt’s book Taking Leave of God (1980) is taken to exemplify this position, as is the work of DZ Phillips. Byrne makes some good points against these writers – for example, on the arbitrariness of Cupitt’s account of autonomy – but it is a pity that the theological motifs in their work, especially that of Phillips, are not taken more seriously. Phillips’s view that God is ‘divinely real’ (as he puts it in his important paper ‘On Really Believing’) is not intended to be an affirmation of realism or non-realism; it is intended to affirm what any realist about God ought to want to affirm, namely that God’s reality is different in kind from created reality, for example, that of an electron. Byrne’s innocent realism is heavily dependent upon a scientifically realist ontology, but in my view, as I shall suggest a bit later, this distorts his account of theistic realism. Closer attention to Phillips’s position might have helped avoid these difficulties.
[5] So then, what of Byrne’s own minimal theistic realism? The key thing here is Byrne’s understanding of the ‘theos’ (his preferred term for the object of theistic discourse) as ‘a moral and providential causality which transcends both the forces inherent in nature and the power in human action to promote the good and fight against evil’ (p. 18). I found Byrne’s account of the theos somewhat puzzling. Byrne abstracts his theodicy and understanding of God from the much more full-bloodedly realist Christian theological tradition (see, for example, pp. 12ff). Yet, Byrne has very little patience with theology: it ‘cannot be considered to be a realist discipline’, it ‘does not show the accumulation of reliable belief’ and therefore ‘[w]e should be theological agnostics’ (pp. 162, 175). There may be a paradox in the dependence of Byrne’s minimal theistic realism on a discipline that is not realist and about whose deliverances we should be agnostic. If there is not, then Byrne needs to supply another reason for being a realist about his theos, but this I did not discover.
[6] It should be noted how minimal Byrne’s minimal theistic realism is. By construing the problem as a hermeneutical one, he can sidestep the question as to whether a God actually exists. ‘A minimal theistic realism …is any interpretation of theism which holds that the governing intent of core theistic concepts is (or ought to be) to refer to a reality which is epistemically independent of human beings, ontologically distinct from them and transcendent’ (p. 16). On Byrne’s view the realism debate is about how theism is to be interpreted; it is not about whether a God exists independently of us. Nor is it about whether the language of belief successfully refers to a God or whether believers have epistemic access to God. It is about whether believers intend their concepts to refer to a God. I may have misunderstood Byrne, but I find it hard to see what cash value this kind of realism has other than for Kantian philosophers of religion.
[7] A further problem with Byrne’s minimalism is this. In the absence of reasons for thinking that a God actually exists – that is, for adopting a less metaphysically minimalist realism than Byrne’s – why should a believer not deny the realist intent of religious discourse and become a revisionary anti-realist whilst retaining the moral vision that motivated it? On Byrne’s argument, I cannot see any inconsistency in this. Why should one not become a revisionary anti-realist – as RB Braithwaite and RM Hare were? Byrne has argued against Cupitt’s and Phillips’s versions of revisionary anti-realism but I do not see that his arguments against them rule out all such moves.
[8] In the final chapter, Byrne argues a position that seems to be a calculated wind-up for theologians and for philosophers who take theology seriously. In his view, theology cannot be considered a realist discipline because it is not like science. Science is, for him, the paradigm case of a discipline that produces reliable belief. His argument is presented as a syllogism:
[9] It is at this point that more debate with Phillips might have moderated Byrne’s position, for as he himself sees, his argument is in danger of rendering his own position incoherent. On his terms, is philosophy a realist discipline, is the study of literature? Perhaps the grammars of ‘reliable belief’ in these disciplines are different from that which obtains in science. So if they can be counted as realist (as Byrne does), why not theology? But the most damaging point is that for Byrne reliable beliefs are accumulated by disciplines that are ‘controlled by real-world influences’ (p. 175). This raises two questions for Byrne’s theistic realism. First, where are the real-world influences of the theos upon his understanding of philosophy of religion that would warrant our interpreting it realistically? Byrne gives no indication of this. Second, where is the accumulation of reliable belief in his minimal theistic realism. As I indicated earlier, he draws it from…theology! And so, again, granted his view that ‘theology cannot be interpreted realistically’, why should we construe his minimal theistic realism realistically? As the reader of this review will have realized, Byrne’s is a stimulating and provocative account of religious realism.