^[1] Over the past few years we have witnessed the publication of several major works on religious realism. The question whether theistic discourse should be construed realistically and the question of the manner in which it can be so construed have been approached from various angles. Andrew Moore’s Realism and Christian Faith addresses the latter question. His work is distinctive in attempting to clarify what it is for a Christian to speak about the reality of God by drawing heavily on theological sources.

^[2] Moore’s realism is fideistic: he begins with the reality of the Christian God, denying the use of external criteria to prove and justify his existence and then proceeds to explore the semantic, epistemic and ontological consequences of his commitment. Despite his intentions, his fideism is by no means dialectical: it has little to offer to those who are extra ecclesiam and little of substance to learn from them.

^[3] I am highly sympathetic to Moore’s rejection of natural theology and apologetics. I believe that arguments for the existence of God, which purport to convert the atheist, rest on a misunderstanding of the nature of faith and are, therefore, religiously impotent. Moore’s evaluation of theological realism as having little to offer to those who seek an understanding of what it is to speak about God realistically is, in my opinion, correct. Starting with specific religious utterances to shed light on the reality of God is, in my view, appropriate.

^[4] While the method that Moore employs in the positive part of his book, which consists, primarily, of a theological explication and analysis of beliefs concerning God and God’s reality, is successful in shedding light on the content of those beliefs, it is less successful in providing a philosophical explication of their ‘grammar’. The reasons for this are twofold. The first has to do with the type of fideism that Moore espouses, which has nothing to say about what it would be like for statements, e.g., ‘There is a God’ to be false. The second has to do with the specific details of his proposal. As I have argued elsewhere, there is an irresoluble tension in Moore’s conception of ‘Christian realism’, which on the one hand conceives of God as the ultimate criterion for the meaning and truth (or falsity) of speech about God, or in Moore’s terminology, as ‘grammatically regulating’ his people’s practices, and, on the other hand, as ‘showing his independent reality through his people’. [1]

^[5] Assuming that there is a God, ‘whose rule is not reducible to human rules and practices’, as Moore puts it, who is the criterion of truth and meaning, is it inconceivable that everything that is said about him is, at best, false and, at worst, nonsense? Is it inconceivable that He does not show himself where we (whoever we are: whether Jews, Christians or Muslims) suppose him to show himself?

^[6] One may think that the way out of this tension is for Moore to insist that the God who is the criterion of meaning and truth, and who regulates and judges the church’s practices is not a metaphysical, omnipotent, omniscient construct but the triune God, as he is conceived of within the Christian tradition, and thus, by definition, the God who shows himself in the Christian community.

^[7] Apart from being non-dialectical, such a fideism empties Moore’s ‘regulative realism’ of its regulative component. Particular meanings and truths, namely, the Christian ones rather than God himself become the ultimate criterion for truth and meaning. God ceases to be the starting point, the rule or judge by means of whom the success of discourse about him is measured and becomes the grand pacifier who assures the community that fundamentally, everything is in good order. God’s rule, thereby, becomes reducible to the rules and practices of a specific religious community.

^[8] Moore does not resolve the tension in this manner. On the other hand, he does not take his ‘teleological suspension of full meaning’ to its logical conclusion, and acknowledge the possibility that Christian speech about God may be false or meaningless. Speaking as a believer, he could not do so. Instead, he preserves the tension. In doing so, he obscures the nature of the realism that he attempts to construe. Thus, while his analysis sheds light on the content of the Christian’s commitment to the reality of God, it is less successful as an explication of its ‘grammatical’ nature. What it is to be a Christian realist remains unclear.

^[9] The philosopher or theologian who wishes to shed light on the nature of the believer’s commitment to the reality of God, on what it is for the believer to be a realist about God, must take account of the manner in which God is spoken of and to, within the communities that take Him to be present and active in them. As D.Z. Phillips frequently emphasizes, the philosophical nature of a belief cannot be explicated without a consideration of its object. [2] However, the philosopher or theologian must also maintain a reflective distance from the professing community. Without such a reflective distance, she could not go beyond a confession of faith to a philosophical examination of its nature.

^[10] What I propose to do in the remainder of this paper is to employ such a reflective distance, put aside the question of God’s existence, and consider the question whether theistic discourse should be construed realistically. I shall assume a distinction between first-order theistic discourse and second order theistic discourse, as Peter Byrne and others do, [3] focus on first-order theistic discourse, on utterances, e.g., ‘God has created the heaven and the earth’, ‘God has given the Torah on Mount Sinai’, as they appear in the context of the biblical narrative, rather than on theological reformulations of these utterances in theological treatises, and explore the question whether they have a realist intent by employing the distinction between history and fiction. In other words, employing the distinction between the social practice of reading and engaging with history and reading and engaging with fiction, I shall inquire after the manner in which biblical narratives are used within the life of faith. The question that I pose is, therefore, not the question of whether first-order theistic discourse refers to a transcendental sublime entity but the question whether it is used primarily in order to refer.

^[11] Whether we are post-modernist relativists, or metaphysical realists, we do different things with historical narratives and with fictional ones. We ask different questions of the narratives, make different demands on them, and employ different standards of evaluation. The distinction between fiction and history that we draw has to do, primarily, with ‘the practice rather than the content’ of the narratives. [4]

^[12] A work of history may be seriously inaccurate and remain a work of history; fictional narratives, like historical ones, may be about real people and may say true things about them but remain fictional. Fiction is not constituted by a failure of reference. Questions of reference or literal truth, however, do not play a primary role in our social practice of reading and evaluating fiction. Ordinarily, we do not criticize a work of fiction for representing characters and events that had not taken place. Since we are not concerned with reference, we do not seek evidence to support the work’s seemingly referring expressions. Ancient documents and other pieces of evidence, which render suspect the existence of characters or events represented in a work of fiction, are largely irrelevant to the manners in which we engage with the work. On the other hand, questions concerning the message that is conveyed by the narrative, the manners in which it is developed, whether it succeeds in drawing the reader into the plot and evoke her emotions, the particular prose that is used, and the manner in which the imagination is engaged, do play an important role in how we read and evaluate fiction.

^[13] Fictional works, unlike non-fictional works, prescribe imaginings. In Mimesis as Make Believe, Kendall Walton proposes that we consider them as continuous with children’s games of make-believe. [5] According to Walton, works of fiction serve as props in games of make-believe, generating imaginings similarly to the manner in which dolls and teddy bears generate imaginings in children’s games of make-believe.

^[14] Not only do fictional works prescribe imaginings about their own characters but they also call upon their readers to imagine themselves in relation to the characters and events. When reading Anna Karenina, the reader is invited to imagine Anna as well as herself seeing her, hearing her, feeling for her, advising her, etc. Walton emphasizes that our characteristic relation to fiction is that of participants rather than that of distant onlookers:

^[15] Unlike fictional works, historical works do not serve as props in games of make-believe, nor do they prescribe imaginings. While reading an historical narrative may lead the reader to imagine the characters or events that the narrative represents and to participate in the world of the text, it need not do so. Participation is not an essential component of the reader’s relation to an historical narrative qua an historical narrative. While the narrative may elicit imaginings, it does not prescribe them. What the historical narrative does prescribe is beliefs.

^[16] Since works of history prescribe beliefs, and since beliefs are susceptible to evaluation in accordance with our canons of rationality, be they as they may, the reference of the characters or events represented in the historical narrative to historical facts of the past, (and, arguably, to their causal relations) is of prime importance; where reference fails, the narrative’s value is seriously compromised. Moreover, supporting or non-supporting evidence in the form of ancient documents, evidence from archeology or from other sciences is relevant to the manner in which we evaluate an historical work. The particular type of prose that is used, and whether it succeeds in drawing the reader into the world of the text, the manner in which the imagination is employed and whether it excites certain emotions, on the other hand, play a minor role, if any, in our evaluation of an historical narrative qua history.

^[17] Thus, we can distinguish fiction from history as two different social practices. As Lamarque and Olson point out ‘It is not semantic-referential or truth-based properties that identify literary fictions nor any metaphysically conceived “relations with the world”. Fictive story-telling is distinct from the stories told by historians or scientists but the distinction is rooted in human practices whose institutionally based rules give them their salient features.’ [7] It is now time to examine the manner in which biblical narratives are used within the religious communities that hold them to be authoritative.

^[18] The ‘life of faith’ is not monolithic; different social-religious practices do different things with the biblical narratives. We may distinguish ‘fundamentalist’ uses of the biblical narratives from ‘non-fundamentalist’ uses. I call ‘fundamentalist’ any use of the biblical narratives, which relates to them as to (sacred) historical or scientific narratives and which is, therefore, concerned with the reference of the characters, events or facts that are represented in them. I call ‘non-fundamentalist’ any use of the narratives, which is not concerned with reference, or to be more precise, which is not concerned with reference in the same manner that the ‘fundamentalist’ is.

^[19] The ‘fundamentalist’s’ concern with reference is shown in her quest for empirical evidence to support the biblical narratives’ referring expressions, as well as in her manner of dealing with invalidating empirical evidence. When confronted with empirical evidence that casts doubt on the reliability of the biblical narratives, a ‘fundamentalist’ reacts in one of the following manners: 1) She may reject the bible as an unreliable scientific narrative, whether biological, historical or archeological; 2) she may consider the evidence itself unreliable, and maintain her hold on the biblical narrative as a true science or a faithful history; or, 3) she may re-interpret those biblical statements that seem invalidated by the evidence so that they no longer seem incompatible with it, and continue to insist on the narratives’ validity. [8] Either way, evidence from the sciences is highly relevant to the ‘fundamentalist’.

^[20] No doubt, such responses to biblical narratives are variously attested to, e.g., in debates concerning evolution versus creationism, in debates concerning the age of the universe, the historicity of the kingdom of David, the Israelite liberation from Egypt, etc. [9] If we define theistic realism in terms of a social practice that uses biblical narratives in a manner that focuses on the reference of the narratives’ seemingly referring expressions in the ways that I have pointed to, then first-order theistic discourse has a realist intent in ‘fundamentalist’ communities.

^[21] Unlike ‘fundamentalists’, ‘non-fundamentalists’ do not seek empirical evidence to support the existence of the characters or events that are represented in their canonical narratives, nor do they engage in disputes with archeologists, biologists or historians, who come up with arguments that render them suspect. In this sense, ‘non-fundamentalists’ are not concerned with reference. They engage with the biblical narratives as they do with works of fiction, in the ways that I have gestured at in the previous section: they participate in the world of the biblical narratives, they imagine various characters and events, and they imagine themselves in relation to them. If we define first-order theistic realism in terms of a concern for the narratives’ seemingly referring expressions then first-order theistic discourse does not have a realist intent in ‘non-fundamentalist’ communities.

^[22] Although biblical narratives are used differently in each of these communities, the difference cannot be captured in terms of the narratives’ centrality or lack of centrality in the life of the respective communities. Like ‘fundamentalists’, ‘non-fundamentalists’, too, live in the world of the biblical narratives. While ‘fundamentalists’ do so by means of their beliefs, ‘non-fundamentalists’ do so by means of their imaginings. Before I expand on that, I shall say a few more words about the distinction between ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘non-fundamentalist’ uses of the biblical narratives.

^[23] The distinction between ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘non-fundamentalist’ uses of the biblical narratives may seem crude. After all, we may easily conceive of a more sophisticated attitude to the biblical narratives, which distinguishes core religious statements, which make up a core religious narrative, belief in which is necessary for salvation, regarding which questions of reference and truth are primary, from an historical scientific periphery, which does not prescribe belief, whose truth and whose terms’ reference is less central to the religious community’s engagement with the biblical text. While the community may be permissive toward the periphery, e.g., toward statements having to do with the age of the universe or the manner of the world’s creation, it could not adopt the same leniency to core religious statements; if core religious statements were ‘shown’ to be false, the community could no longer engage with the biblical narratives as sacred canonical narratives. Thus, the distinction between the different constituents of the biblical narratives may be proposed as a way of accounting for the presumed realist intent of some, but not all, of the biblical narratives’ referring expressions in certain communities: one could argue that the complex social practice that distinguishes core from periphery ought to be described as a realist practice, which, as far as its core narrative is concerned, is concerned with reference. A promising candidate for a core religious statement may be the statement ‘God exists’, not per se a first-order theistic statement, but nevertheless one presupposed by various first-order statements. Other core statements may be ‘God created the heavens and the earth’ (Genesis 1:1), ‘The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb’ (Deuteronomy 5:2), and ‘[Jesus] has risen from the dead’ (Matthew 28:7).

^[24] It is not altogether clear how the sifting of core statements from periphery may proceed. I assume that the sifting procedure that proponents of such a model have in mind is one that locates empirical statements that are, in principle, susceptible to invalidating empirical evidence at the periphery, and religious statements that are not susceptible to empirical invalidation at the core. [10] Whether or not such a sifting procedure is viable, it cannot produce the desired results. By definition, the core narrative does not consist of historical scientific statements; it is not used as an historical scientific narrative is used. Thus, the statements that make up the core cannot refer or fail to refer in the same manner that historical scientific statements can, nor can they be supported or invalidated by empirical evidence in the manner that scientific historical statements can. Thus, unlike the ‘fundamentalist’s’ concern for reference, which is shown in the bearing of empirical evidence on the narratives, in this case, we no longer have a grip on the sense in which members of such a community are concerned with the reference of the core narrative, nor have we an understanding of the ‘realist’ intent that, presumably, governs their practice.

^[25] How are we to understand the role of the bible in ‘non-fundamentalist’ communities, which may or may not distinguish a core narrative? How are we to understand the centrality of the biblical narratives in communities, which do not gather historical, archeological or physical evidence to support their authority, which are not threatened by historical critical methods, which do not seek to disprove Darwin, or to re-interpret the Genesis account of creation? What can be said about their concern with truth? In what sense can we attribute a ‘realist’ intent to them, if at all? In what follows, I shall briefly gesture at the manner in which we may begin to respond to such questions by introducing the notion of ‘subversive fiction’.

^[26] I have characterized the ‘non-fundamentalist’s’ use of biblical narratives as analogical to her use of fiction: instead of engaging in disputes with scientists, who conceive of various biblical characters and events as suspect, she lets herself be lured into the world of those characters and events by means of her imagination. Her participation in the world of the biblical narratives, however, may go beyond her participation in ordinary fictional worlds. The biblical narratives may function as ‘subversive fiction’ for her: they may shape or transform her worldview.

^[27] Our relation to ordinary fiction is characterized by a dual response, involving two perspectives: an external perspective that sees the fictional world as artifice, and an internal imaginative perspective that is characterized by participation in the fictional world. On the one hand, we are aware that Anna Karenina is a character in a novel, that in Anna Karenina, Anna has an affair with Vronsky; we are aware that the fictional world that we enter into by means of the imagination is an artifice whose content is under the control of a writer. On the other hand, ‘we don’t just observe fictional worlds from without. We live in them …’ [11] According to Walton, ‘[T]he dual standpoint which appreciators take is … one of the most fundamental and important features of the human institution of fiction.’ [12]

^[28] Our dual response to fictional narratives, however, sometimes collapses. There are two directions of collapse: one involving the collapse of the internal perspective, the other involving the collapse of the external one. When a work of fiction calls us to adopt a moral position that contradicts our own, when a work of fiction calls us to endorse, e.g., slavery, racism or misogynism, we find it hard to participate fully in the game of make-believe, and imaginatively endorse such moral sentiments. The internal perspective thus collapses into the external one by means of an ‘imaginative resistance’. [13]

^[29] Certain works of fiction, however, elicit a different direction of collapse, a collapse of the external perspective into the internal one. In such cases, we are dealing with subversive works of fiction, which engage the imagination in such a manner that the fictional game-world comes to play a focal role in the participant’s life. Instead of placing the fictional narrative within the framework of one’s ordinary life and conception of reality, a subversive fictional narrative leads one to place one’s life within the framework of the narrative. In doing so, it shapes various aspects of one’s worldview and identity.

^[30] Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria tells the story of a naïve Italian prostitute who falls in love with a crook and who ends up losing everything that she has. For the naïve optimist, whose life is arranged within a secure teleological framework, in which things always turn out for the best, Nights of Cabiria may become subversive. It may transform the framework in which she perceives her fortunes and misfortunes and those of others: she may come to live in Cabiria’s world, a capricious world in which things may sometimes turn out for the worst, and people may lose what means most to them due to no fault of their own.

^[31] It is important to realize that subversive fiction is fiction. One need not view Nights of Cabiria as a documentary in order to be utterly changed by the narrative. In other words, a narrative need not command beliefs nor need it employ the standard procedures for knowledge acquisition in order to be subversive. A narrative may become subversive merely by engaging the imagination, by inviting one to imaginatively occupy a particular internal perspective from within which various characters and events are imaginatively experienced. This is the manner in which the biblical narratives may shape the ‘non-fundamentalist’s’ worldview and identity: in participating in them by means of the imagination, the ‘non-fundamentalist’ may come to live in them, and to see herself, the world, life and death within their framework. In living in the biblical narratives, in experiencing her fortunes and misfortunes from within their framework, we may describe the ‘non-fundamentalist’ as finding them true. I shall give an example.

^[32] In celebrating Passover, the ‘non-fundamentalist’ does not use the Exodus narrative to commemorate an event that has taken place in the past, but to participate in it, together with her foremothers and forefathers. She imagines the enslaved Israelites and imagines herself with them, being enslaved with them, being lead out of Egypt, into the covenant, and into the promised-land. In holding up the Matzot during the Passover Seder, she says: ‘This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt’. [14] Shortly after, she says ‘We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord our God, took us out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm.’ [15] Her involvement with the narrative goes beyond participation: she comes to live in the framework of the story, seeing herself as enslaved by Pharaoh, seeing herself as eating the bread of affliction with the Israelites, and as being liberated from slavery with them: ‘In every generation a person is obliged to regard himself as if he had come out of Egypt.’ [16] In reading the Exodus narrative, she comes to live in it, to place her fortunes and misfortunes in the context of the Israelites’ relationship with God, and in the context of the transition from slavery to freedom, which He had affected for them. [17] Although it is by means of imagining rather than by believing, that the ‘non-fundamentalist’ comes to live in the biblical narratives, her attitude to the narratives may be, appropriately, characterized as ‘faith’.

^[33] Unlike the ‘fundamentalist’ whose concern for truth has to do with the relationship between the biblical narratives and other historical or scientific narratives that command belief, the ‘non-fundamentalist’s’ concern for truth has to do with the relationship between the biblical narratives and other fictional narratives, e.g., Cabiria’s narrative, that lure her into their world, and that set alternative frameworks within which her experiences can be placed and understood. The dialectics of the different narratives to which the believer is exposed, whether she is a ‘fundamentalist’ or a ‘non-fundamentalist’, is an internal feature of her faith; it is also an internal feature of the ‘grammar’ of her commitment to its truth. [18] Thus, for the ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘non-fundamentalist’ alike, the question whether one’s relationship to God is, literally, one-sided may arise. For the ‘non-fundamentalist’, however, it does not arise in the same way as the question ‘Does ’Napoleon’ refer?’ may arise for an historian, nor is it dealt with in the same way. When the ‘non-fundamentalist’ finds it increasingly difficult to participate in the biblical narratives, when the narratives lose their appeal, become ‘dead’, or are experienced as ‘deceitful fantasies’, when they are imaginatively resisted or found false by the ‘non-fundamentalist’, a philosophical argument for God’s existence or a piece of ancient archeology is not likely to help. In such cases, one can only wait on the story. [19] While ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’ have an application for the ‘non-fundamentalist’, they clearly have a different one than they do in history or science.

^[34] I have tried to gesture at a conception of realism, which is not construed on an analogy between religious narratives and historical or scientific ones and which is intended to shed light on the nature of the ‘non-fundamentalist’s’ concern for truth. Such a realism differs from Moore’s realism in various respects, the most salient of which is its lack of commitment to the existence of God. Nevertheless, like Moore’s realism, it seeks to capture what is specifically religious about the believer’s commitment to certain narratives, to certain ways of speaking and living. I await Moore’s response