The Theological Hijacking of Realism Critical Realism in Science and Religion'

[ JCR 11.
1 (2012) 40-75]
doi: 10.1558/jcr.v11i1.40
(print) ISSN 1476-7430

(online) ISSN 1572-5138
The Theological hijacking of Realism

critical Realism in science and Religion
by
FABIO GIRONI1
Cardiff University
GironiF@cardiff.ac.uk
Abstract. This paper questions and criticizes the employment of critical

realism in the ield of science and religion. Referring to the texts of
four main actors in this ield, I demonstrate how the choice of critical
realism is justiied by a (disguised) apologetic interest in defending
the epistemic privilege of the theological enterprise against that of the
natural sciences. I argue that this is possible thanks to the reactivation of
theological potential latent in some under-examined assumptions and
conceptual structures still at work within philosophy of science and scientiic epistemology.
Key words: critical realism; philosophy of science; realism; science and
religion
Introduction
The aim of this paper is to examine the employment of critical realism by
scientist-theologians2 within the discourse of science and religion: this can
roughly be identiied with that academic community which, since the mid1960s, has dealt with the theoretical construction of modes of interaction
1
PhD Candidate, School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University, Humanities Building, Colum Drive CF10 3EU. Fabio Gironi received his BA in philosophy from La Sapienza University in Rome, and his MA in the study of religions from the
School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He is currently working towards his PhD
at the School of English Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University.
2
I borrow this cumbersome terminology to describe the actors in the science and religion debate from one such actor, John Polkinghorne. In his Scientists as Theologians (1996),
a comparative analysis of the work of Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke and himself, Polkinghorne employs the term to describe scientists with a personal commitment to religion and
a serious concern with theology (1996, ix).
Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012, Unit S3, Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Shefield, S3 8AF.
THE THEOLOGICAL HIJACKING OF REALISM
41
between the two ields.3 My analysis will concentrate irst on the critical realist
attitude espoused in the work of four central igures: Ian Barbour, Arthur
Peacocke, John Polkinghorne and the early work of Wentzel van Huyssteen4
the irst three deined by the fourth as towering igures and still shaping
much of the current dialogue in our ield.5 Subsequently, I will linger in
more detail on the thoroughly structural role that a more qualiied form of
critical realism directly inspired by the philosophy of Roy Bhaskar plays in
Alister McGraths recent project of producing a scientiic theology.6
All these authors agree that the best construction of theories in theology
is to be shaped by epistemological standards borrowed from (or at least modelled upon) contemporary philosophy of science, and that theology shares
with science the same form of rationality. Hence criteria for good theology
are sought by examining the criteria for good science, since these authors
argue the epistemic project of the two disciplines is one and the same: the
exploration of reality. On a most general level, the intention of these authors
is to ind compatibility between science and (Christian) religion through the
mutual adoption of realism.
My contention is that this theology-oriented appropriation of critical realism produces a stance that betrays the aims of scientiic critical realism by
hijacking some core commitments of the latter (in particular its epistemic
fallibilism and its conception of a stratiied reality). These are turned into
the central planks of an argument aimed at (re)asserting a form of ontological and methodological primacy for theology by reinterpreting the stratiication of reality in hierarchical terms, in implicit accord with the trope of a
scala naturae7 taking as an a priori assumption the existence of a God as the
reality which is the object of theological enquiry. The result is an ideologically suspect confusion between the epistemic project of the natural sciences
(for which critical realism is meant to be a philosophical grounding) and the
A more thorough introduction to the science and religion ield, and a critique of it
from a different angle from the one offered here, can be found in Gironi 2010.
4
Van Huyssteen defended critical realism in his early work, in particular in his Theology
and the Justiication of Faith: Constructing Theories in Systematic Theology (1989). In later years
(from the mid-nineties onwards), van Huyssteen moved towards a non-foundationalist and
context-dependent account of rationality and rejected the possibility of universal claims for
realism.
5
Gregersen and van Huyssteen 1998, 2.
6
McGrath published his A Scientiic Theology in three volumes: Nature (2001), Reality
(2002) and Theory (2003). In 2004 he published The Science of God, a single-volume compendium of his project.
7
Natures Ladder. Arthur Lovejoys The Great Chain of Being (2001) remains the most
thorough exposition of the history of this idea, and of its inluence on the whole of European intellectual history.
3
Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
42
FABIO GIRONI
discipline of theology. The aim is to argue for their compatibility or parity, if

not (more implicitly) for a downright primacy of theology when it comes to
any human encounter with reality.
This position is motivated by the apologetic necessity (not the self-evident
possibility) of positioning the theological enterprise on the same epistemic
footing as the natural sciences. The placement of critical realism between
full-blown antirealism and strong realism allows the scientist-theologians
to (i) defend their a priori belief in an unobservable but real divine being,
while (ii) claiming that the ontological reality of such a being cannot but
be expressed in provisional terms (hence accounting for the seemingly arbitrary divergences in the history of theological descriptions of God) and (iii)
indirectly undermining the objective import of knowledge which the natural
sciences can deliver, given their being constrained to reliable yet always corrigible verisimilitude, not ultimate truth.
In particular, I will argue against the surreptitious reintroduction of an
ontological hierarchy in the stratiication of nature the privileging of the
divine stratum engendered by the doctrine of creation and, more generally, against the metaphysical assumptions which provide the basis for the
theological worldview of the scientist-theologians. Even the nuanced differences in the theological commitments of these authors still uniformly lead to
the same set of apologetic conclusions: that there must be a dialogue between
theology and science and that indeed a comparison between science and
theology on the ground of realism demonstrates theologys independence
(or even epistemic supremacy), predicated upon its reference to the most
universal and ontologically primary level of reality.
It is instructive to note how the scientist-theologians project is the polar
opposite of those attempts to defend faith via an anti-realist stance in philosophy of science. The work of (Catholic) philosopher of science Pierre Duhem
could serve as an example. For Duhem, the only purpose of science was to
save the phenomena8 by avoiding metaphysical commitments regarding the
ontological status of the entities described by science, so that all that is necessary is an instrumental empirical adequacy a stance that was explicitly read
as crippling any attempt by science to interfere with (or undermine) theological discourse. In his Physics of a Believer, Duhem states that I believe with
all my soul in the truths that God has revealed to us and that He has taught
us through His Church but warns against a conception of physics in which
religious faith is implicitly and almost clandestinely postulated.9 At the same
This famous expression, borrowed by Duhem from Plato, appears in the title of his
[1908] 1969 collection of essays.
9
Duhem 1991, 2734.
8
43
time, though, Duhem claims that in itself and by its essence, any principle
of theoretical physics has no part to play in metaphysical or theological discussions.10 The project of the scientist-theologians which I consider in this
paper follows precisely opposite methodological commitments.
On the other hand, the scientist-theologians reliance on scientiic rationality is the point over which their theological project is at odds with that
of the radical orthodoxy group, an inluential contemporary theological
trend developed around the work of John Milbank,11 guided by a wholesale
rejection of secular reason. Milbanks project is presented as an attempt
to restore theology as a meta-discourse, redeeming it from its current
pathos of false humility.12 Diagnosing contemporary social theory as
infected by postmodern nihilism and theology as submitted to secular
reason, Milbank argues that, while theology accepts secularization and the
autonomy of secular reason, social theory increasingly inds secularization
paradoxical, and implies that the mythic-religious can never be left behind.
Political theology is intellectually atheistic; post-Nietzschean social theory
suggests the practical inescapability of worship.13 For Milbank, the way out
of this impasse is to recognize the inherently (heretical) theological nature
of all social and scientiic theories and therefore reclaim for (orthodox)
theology the jurisdiction over all human discourse, a post-secular meta-narrative that in the face of the secular demise of truth seeks to reconigure
theological truth,14 by re-afirming a richer and more coherent Christianity which was gradually lost sight of after the late Middle Ages.15 Only
Christian (Augustinian) theology offers the ontology of peace16 necessary
to defuse the violence engendered by the nihilist, postmodern (post-Nietzschean) abandonment of transcendent notions of the Good: social and scientiic theories have to be re-grounded in theology proper in order to avoid
nihilism.
It could be argued that the unashamedly revisionist project of the radical
orthodoxy group, while ideologically debatable, at least presents (in their
rejection of any natural knowledge of God) a degree of intellectual honesty
which is lacking amongst the scientist-theologians in the science and religion ield as they must continually negotiate an unstable allegiance to both
Duhem 1991, 285. For a more sympathetic account of Duhems work and Christian
commitments in historico-political context, see Martin 1991.
11
See, in particular, his inluential Theology and Social Theory (2006).
12
Milbank 2006, 1.
13
Milbank 2006, 3.
14
Milbank, Pickstock and Ward, eds, 1999, 1.
15
Milbank, Pickstock and Ward, eds, 1999, 2.
16
Milbank 2006, xvii.
10
44
FABIO GIRONI
scientiic rationality and theological belief.17 Theologian Creston Davis

outlines well the basic law of McGraths theology from a radical orthodox
standpoint:
[T]he theistic God of McGrath et al. is not so much a being as a
dematerialized logic that never touches, much less changes, the world
[A]lthough [the] Dawkins/McGrath debate looks genuine, and is certainly successful in terms of selling a great many books, it nevertheless is
only a limited and not very intellectually signiicant debate. It is more an
exercise in ideological (mis)interpretation of the same premises than a
real debate, because it fails to risk forgoing the very existence of what both
sides presuppose. For is it not the case that modernitys mode of reason
for all its worth cannot bring reason under its own critique? In the
end, the atheists and the secular theists views of reason and how it functions remain more or less identical, and far from organizing a theology of
resistance that overthrows the established order, this false debate only ever
manages to perpetuate and reproduce it.18
I agree with Daviss diagnosis regarding the uncritical acceptance of metaphysical assumptions by both parties, but while Davis and Milbank want to
discard these assumptions in order to make theology more theological (that
is, less metaphysical), I intend to do so in order to make scientiic atheism
more scientiic.
Critical Realism: From Science to Theology

The term critical realism has been circulating in the science and religion
arena since its beginning, appearing in the very irst recognized publication
on the topic, Issues in Science and Religion, by Ian Barbour.19 According to
Robert John Russell, editor of the volume celebrating Barbours legacy in
science and religion since the 1960s, the critical realist approach as originally defended by Barbour has continued to be defended, deployed and
diversiied widely in theology and in science, and it continues to be presupposed by most working scientists, by many theologians, and in much of the
public discourse about both science and religion.20 Barbours Issues in Science
17
Conor Cunningham is the member of the Radical Orthodoxy group whose work is
most directly related to the science and religion debate. In a recent paper Cunningham
(2010) argued against the catastrophe that is ontological naturalism, a naturalism that is
itself the product of bad theology (p. 246) and in particular against any natural/supernatural conceptual (and ontological) divide, deined as a temptation dangerous for most
discourse, but terminal for theology (p. 244).
18
Davis in iek and Milbank 2009, 10.
19
Barbour 1966.
20
Russell 2004, 54.
45
and Religion mainly celebrated for presenting the irst elaboration of Barbours famous typology of relations between science and religion21 argues
that science is a more human enterprise, and that theology is a more selfcritical undertaking than is indicated in most of the recent discussions,22
via an employment of critical realism. In this book, and indeed in many of
his numerous subsequent publications,23 Barbour introduces critical realism
in the context of a summary of the basic options concerning realism in the
philosophy of science and, concluding his survey, endorses it as the best
epistemic stance for scientists to uphold, given the shortcomings of positivism, instrumentalism, idealism and nave realism. Barbours critical realism
holds that the goal of science is to understand nature, not simply to control
it or make predictions,24 acknowledges both the creativity of mans mind,
and the existence of patterns in events that are not created by mans mind,25
and ultimately recognizes that
no theory is an exact description of the world, and that the world is such
as to bear interpretation in some ways and not in others. [Critical realism] afirms the role of mental construction and imaginative activity in
the formation of theories, and it asserts that some constructs agree with
observations better than others only because events have an objective
pattern.26
This typology assumed the shape of a fourfold categorization Conlict, Independence, Dialogue, Integration in his Religion in an Age of Science (Barbour 1990). This typology is still widely considered to be a crucial building block for the science and religion ield,
and is arguably the most recognizable legacy of Barbours work. Indeed, since Barbours
inaugural classiication, the entire ield of science and religion seems to suffer from a form
of taxonomical anxiety, as the types of classiications, typologies and taxonomies of interaction between science and religion have proliferated. This passage from Peacocke 1993
illustrates this tendency:
21
I have delineated at least eight putative relations between science and theology As R. J. Russell has pointed out, these positions may be differentiated
with respect to four dimensions of the science-theology relationship In each
of these four dimensions, the relation between science and theology can be
construed as either positive and reconciling and so as mutually interacting, or
as negative and non-interacting. This makes a total of eight (= 42) different,
conceivable relationships (Peacocke 1993, 20).
Peacocke goes on to endorse Russells idea of envisaging a continuum of possibilities
in each dimension, now conceived more like axes in a four-dimensional plane (1993,
2021). The conceptual effort in constructing byzantine structures of relationship is a testimony to the anxiety with which these authors attempt to reconcile science and theology.
22
Barbour 1966, 4.
23
Most notably Barbour 1974 and 1990.
24
Barbour 1966, 138.
25
Barbour 1966, 172.
26
Barbour 1966, 172.
46
FABIO GIRONI
In a later, oft-quoted formulation Barbour summarizes his critical realist

approach as one which holds that
models and theories are abstract symbol systems which inadequately and
selectively represent particular aspects of the world for speciic purposes.
This view preserves the scientists realistic intent while recognizing that
models and theories are imaginative human constructs. Models, on this
reading, are to be taken seriously but not literally; they are neither literal
pictures [nave realism] nor useful ictions [instrumentalism] but limited
and inadequate ways of imagining what is not observable. They make tentative ontological claims that there are entities in the world something like
those postulated in the models.27
Having established this, however, Barbour moves from his endorsement of

critical realism as a philosophy of science, to a possible employment of such
realism in theological matters. Indeed, one of the core commitments of his
dialogical approach is that recent work in the philosophy of science has
important implications for the philosophy of religion and for theology28 and
therefore discussions regarding scientiic method can be fruitfully translated
to disputes regarding theological method. In particular, Barbour intends to
demonstrate how a certain metaphorical use of language, the employment of
revisable models and the cognitive orientation of the discipline according to
mutable (Kuhnian) paradigms are all to be found in both scientiic and theological practices. The aim of such a comparison is clearly stated, for Barbour
is interested in showing that
science is not as objective, nor religion as subjective, as these two opposing schools of thought [positivism and existentialism] both assumed.
Despite the presence of distinctive functions and attitudes in religion
which have no parallels in science, there are also functions and attitudes
in common wherein I see differences of degree rather than absolute
dichotomy. 29
In other words, the adoption of a critical realism able to acknowledge both

the creativity of mans mind, and the existence of patterns in events that are
not created by mans mind30 allows Barbour to reject an absolute dichotomy between subjective and objective knowledge and therefore to argue for
a deep similarity between science and theology.
Wentzel van Huyssten even though acknowledging that critical realism is
not yet quite an established theory of explanation but rather a very promis-
27
28
29
30
Barbour 1990, 43. My additions in square brackets.

Barbour 1974, 3.
Barbour 1974, 56. My additions in square brackets.
Barbour 1974, 37.
47
ing and suggestive hypothesis31 offers nonetheless a similar, clear deinition of how the critical realist stance can be adopted in both science and
theology.
For this approach, in which the scientist and therefore also the theologian
attempts to say something about a reality beyond our language by means
of provisional, tentative models in terms of human constructs, the term
critical realism might be fruitful. A critical-realist approach to theology now
becomes feasible because metaphors and models play such a decisive role
in all cognitive development also in theology. A critical-realist stand is realistic because in the process of theological theorizing this concept enables
us to recognize the cognitive and referential nature of analogical language
as a form of indirect speech. It is also critical, however, because the role of
metaphoric language in theology would teach us that models should never
be absolutized or ideologized, but should retain their openness and provisionality throughout the process of theorizing.32
Van Huyssteens stress on the provisionality of models mirrors Barbours

own, but even more transparently than Barbour he vouches for a critical
realist approach by explicitly constructing a similarity in scope between theology and theologians on the one hand and science and scientists on the other:
the scientist is attempting to describe an external reality independent of
thought (God is such a reality), and therefore the theologian is also engaged
in the same kind of epistemic enterprise.
Like van Huyssteen and Barbour, Arthur Peacocke employs the same
modus operandi: after having briely surveyed the most inluential positions
in the philosophy of science regarding the problem of realism, he asserts
critical realism as the most reasonable epistemological choice, between the
excesses of social constructionism and nave realism, which responds to the
need for a defensible, nonnaive [sic] scientiic realism33 capable of being
adequately informed by contemporary discoveries in physics. He then argues
that:
in practice, working scientists adopt a skeptical and qualiied realism,
according to which their theories and models are proposed and regarded
as candidates for reality. Scientists aim to depict previously hidden or
unknown structures and processes of the real world, and the terms in their
theories and the features of their models are intended genuinely to refer
to a real world. They have no illusions, however, about the permanence of
their proposals and the massive qualiications required of any attribution
of truth to them.34
31
32
33
34
Van Huyssten 1989, 155.

Van Huyssteen 1989, 142.
Peacocke 1984, 23.
Peacocke 1984, 25.
48
FABIO GIRONI
Such a skeptical and qualiied acceptance of the models employed in scientiic practice echoes Barbours advocacy for models to be taken seriously
but not literally, and, like Barbour and van Huyssteen, Peacocke identiies
this kind of critical realism as the ideal philosophical attitude to be fruitfully
applied to theology, in light of alleged similarities between the two enterprises. Even more explicitly, Peacocke goes as far as drawing direct taxonomical comparisons between stances in philosophy of science and theological
methods, starting with the assumption that scientiic theory is the scientiic
correlative of theological doctrine. He thus classiies
nave realism as theological fundamentalism about received doctrines;
positivism as biblical literalism (reliance on biblical texts as empirical data
and disregard for interpretative categories); instrumentalism, whereby
religious myths and stories are either simple aids to the pursuit of policies
of life by capturing the imagination and strengthening the mind and
critical realism whereby theological concepts and models are partial and
inadequate but necessary and, indeed, the only ways of referring to the reality that is God and Gods relation to humanity.35
This is an instructive passage: the odd (if not preposterous) comparisons

that Peacocke establishes, and his general recasting of critical realism onto
theology, is possible only thanks to a stipulation that is taken for granted, but
that in this passage stands out due to an unashamedly apologetic employment of italics. Just as the natural universe is the reality studied by a scientiic
critical realism, God is the reality which is the object of study of theological
critical realism. The a priori commitment to (belief in) the existence of a
divine being is thus passed over in silence and is retroactively justiied by the
alleged adaptability of a science-sanctioned critical realism to theology. Likewise, van Huyssteen can proclaim that
from a realist commitment it appears that the hypothetical statements of
scientiic realism, as deined in philosophy of science terms, may be translated in systematic theology into the eschatological nature and structure of
our theological language. It now becomes clear not only theologically
but also in philosophy of science terms that our theological theories do
indeed refer to a Reality beyond and greater than ours.36
More than simply afirming and justifying the ontological reality of God, here
van Huyssteen performs a crucial leap, one shared by most fellow scientisttheologians:37 from reality to the Reality of God, a Reality at the top (or at
Peacocke 1984, 40.

Van Huyssteen 1989, 163.
37
Ian Barbour could be considered singularly as a special case, given his characteristic
adoption of Whiteheadian process philosophy (Whitehead 1978) to articulate his theology.
35
36
49
the base) of the order of being, well beyond both the human and the natural
ontological stratum.
The Hierarchy of (Created) Reality

The careful construction of an epistemology situated between foundationalisms and relativisms is of crucial importance for the scientist-theologians
plan to harmonize science and theology. An ontological foundationalism
such as scientiic physicalism would disqualify the possibility of a theology
concerning a God transcending the created world. On the other hand, projects of epistemic and ontological relativism such as the strong programme,
social constructivism or postmodern standpoint epistemologies, would unacceptably pluralize knowledge into a multiplicity of incommensurable positions, vanquish the unity of knowledge and the concept of grounded truth
and thereby undermine the singular universality of the one True God of
Christianity which they intend to defend. John Polkinghorne is particularly
preoccupied by the so-called postmodern dissemination of meaning and
explains that
According to Barbour, when talking about God the process model seems to have fewer
weaknesses than the other models (1990, 270). However, Barbour does preserve a form of
hierarchy in his appropriation of Whitehead since for him the process model implies that
God is a creative participant in the cosmic community. God is like a teacher, leader, or
parent. But God also provides the basic structures and the novel possibilities for all other
members of the community. God alone is omniscient and everlasting, perfect in wisdom
and love, and thus very different from all other participants (Barbour 1990, 269). It seems
that here (and indeed in most of the lamentable attempts to build a process theology)
Whiteheads God is presented against Whiteheads own intentions, since he very clearly
rejects any schema (with reference to both Leibniz and Spinoza) where the ultimate is
illegitimately allowed a inal, eminent reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents
(Whitehead 1978, 7). Whiteheads delationary conception of God and his lat ontology,
then, are directly at odds with Barbours own interest in preserving God at the top of the
processual hierarchy:
Actual entities also termed actual occasions are the inal real things of
which the world is made up. There is no going behind actual entities to ind
anything more real. They differ among themselves: God is an actual entity, and so
is the most trivial puff of existence in far-off empty space. But, though there are
gradations of importance, and diversities of function, yet in the principles which
actuality exempliies all are on the same level (Whitehead 1978, 18).
For a comprehensive non-religious, or atheological, understanding of Whiteheads God
see Shaviro (2009, 99). In Barbours hands process metaphysics becomes a tool to construct
an almost Hegelian overarching story that includes within it the story of the creation of the
cosmos, from elementary particles to the evolution of life and human beings, continuing in
the stories of covenant and Christ (Barbour 1990, 26970).
50
FABIO GIRONI
if all meaning is a personal human construct, then God can be no more
than a self-selected symbol for our individual highest ideals. Religion might
be true for me or true for you, as a technique for living, but it could not be
just true, pure and simple.38
With an eye to the dialogue with science, however, he employs this rejection of relativism in a strategic manner, claiming that in rejecting relativism,
science and religion can make common cause.39 At the same time though,
Polkinghorne warns against going to the opposite extreme, a stance even
more lethal for theology than postmodern sophistry. In an instructive
paragraph (featuring the uninformed usage of deconstructive as a term
employed to gesture allusively towards some sort of postmodern relativist
practice) he writes that
many who wish to rescue science from its postmodernist detractors have
often felt willing to leave religion behind in their deconstructive clutches.
This can lead to scientism: the belief that science is the only worthwhile
source of knowledge and that it is of itself enough. It is hard to exaggerate
the implausible poverty of a scientistic view of reality.40
The delicate strategy of the scientist-theologians, once again, is to demonstrate how a critical realist stance which rejects certain epistemic knowledge
relying as it does on models and metaphors which are not literal pictures
but more than useful ictions41 while preserving the independent ontological existence of its object, is the most adequate position to defend in any
knowledge-seeking enterprise, both in science and in theology. If postmodern theology seeks a reconciliation between science and theology by undermining both disciplines pretension to knowledge (proclaiming the death
of both God and Reason), critical realist theology seeks to reconcile them by
putting the emphasis on different yet connatural rational abilities to know
the world. How so? Polkinghorne writes that
the difference between science and its cousinly disciplines in the search for
motivated belief is not of a fundamental kind but it lies in the degree of the
power of empirical interrogation which these various investigations enjoy.
The philosophical acknowledgement that there is no foundationally certain
guarantee of scientiic knowledge serves not to diminish the claims of science to verisimilitudinous success, but to encourage other modes of enquiry
to comparable acts of intellectual daring in trusting the understandings that
they attain by making sense of their experience.42
38
39
40
41
42
Polkinghorne 1996, 23.

Peacocke 1984, 42.
51
By patronizingly praising science for its verisimilitudinous success, Polkinghorne is actually carving open a space for cousinly disciplines legitimately
to share sciences ambitions of truth. Yet the term other modes of enquiry,
referring to non-scientiic knowledge-seeking practices, sounds misleadingly
like a pluralistic recommendation for alternative epistemologies: what it actually indexes is exclusively (Christian)43 theology.
Are we to suppose that it is only in our investigations of the objective, impersonal physical world that we ind ourselves endowed with these powers of
apprehension, or may we be encouraged to trust our cognitive abilities
across a much broader spectrum of human encounter with reality? As a
passionate believer in the ultimate integrity and unity of all knowledge,
I wish to extend my realist stance beyond science to encompass, among
many other ields of enquiry[,] theological relection on our encounter
with the divine The search for truth through and through is ultimately
the search for God.44
This last sentence should clarify that the apparent modesty with which
Polkinghorne introduced theology as cousin of science is wholly inauthentic. Indeed, after having observed the remarkable and fortunate fact45 that
human rationality is able to explore and understand a rational universe, Polkinghorne feels compelled to surmise that
theologically, this is to be understood as due to the universes being a creation and ourselves as creatures made in the image of the Creator. The possibility of science is then the consequence of the deposit of the imago dei
within humanity. The critical realism which I have been seeking to defend
is thus found to be undergirded by a theological belief in the faithfulness of God, who has not created a world whose appearances will mislead
the honest enquirer. The unity of knowledge is underwritten by the unity
of the one true God; the veracity of well-motivated belief is underwritten
by the reliability of God.46
43
Polkinghornes position, like the other scientist-theologians, leaves little space for nonChristian traditions. When these are mentioned, they are mostly subsumed under the more
universal scope of Christian theology. Polkinghorne explains that The Abrahamic religions
Judaism, Christianity, Islam share a number of common features stemming from their
interlaced histories. They are surely seeking to speak of the same God, even though they
make many different assertions about the divine nature (1998, 111). In order to deal with
the less adaptable nature of non-western traditions, Polkinghorne somewhat grudgingly
refers to Keith Wards deinition of them as complementary to Semitic religions but concludes that I am not so easily persuaded that a deep-lying compatibility can be discerned in
this way or a synthesis achieved (1998, 112).
44
45
46
52
FABIO GIRONI
Not only is theology warranted by the pre-assumed existence of a God, a

primary absolute which, much like that of Descartes, has the benevolent disposition of not deceiving human reason, but science itself as a human practice
which takes as an object of inquiry the natural world is possible only thanks
both to God-given intellectual reason and to the reason which is inscribed in
creation itself, making it intelligible and meaning-laden. Peacocke also seeks
a link between theology and science in the doctrine of creation, which, by
ontologically subordinating the created world to a creator, epistemologically
subordinates science to theology. Like Polkinghornes, his argument for the
pre-eminence of (natural) theology is preceded by an ostensibly lattering
recognition of sciences authority.
Since the aim of a critical-realist theology is to articulate intellectually and
to formulate, by means of metaphor and model, experiences of God, then
it behoves such a theology to take seriously the critical-realist perspective of
the sciences on the natural, including the human, world. For on that theologys own presuppositions, God himself has given the world the kind of
being it has and it must be in some respects, to be ascertained, revelatory
of Gods nature and purposes. So theology should seek to be at least consonant with scientiic perspectives on the natural world. Correspondingly,
the sciences should not be surprised if their perspectives are seen to be
partial and incomplete and to raise questions not answerable from within
their own purview and by their own methods, since there are other realities there is a Reality to be taken into account which is not discernible
by the sciences as such.47
Peacocke follows the usual apologetic schema, starting by claiming that

the useful employment of methodological reductionism should not lead to
the pitfall of ontological reductionism. Reductionism, Peacocke explains,
cannot do justice to the emergent phenomena and properties which manifest
at different levels of complexity, making it impossible to describe such phenomena adequately within a reductionist framework. Moreover and more
importantly, as the theological preoccupations which drive the argument
begin to emerge Peacocke argues that to discard reductionism authorizes
us to attribute reality to a wider range of entities than a physicalist reductionism allows for.
There is no sense in which subatomic particles are to be graded as more
real than, say, a bacterial cell or a human person or, even, social facts (or
God?). Each level has to be regarded as real, as a cut through the totality
of reality, if you like, in the sense that we have to take account of its mode
of operation at that level.48
47
48
Peacocke 1993, 21.

Peacocke 1984, 36.
53
As God is parenthetically smuggled into the discussion, Peacockes argument becomes more explicit. Critical realism allows us to make sense of
unobservables in a way which is fertile for the scientist-theologian: contra
positivism and instrumentalism, it allows us to grant reality to unobservables
entities, but contra nave (scientiic) realism, it imposes limits on what we
can actually say about them, for our models are to be considered provisional
and mediated by an epistemic community of enquirers. The unobservable
entity God can therefore be known in its existence whilst the vagueness of
theological speculations regarding its nature is justiied by the employment
of revisable models and metaphors. After all, science proceeds in the same
way. Polkinghorne unequivocally spells out this very argument:
I believe that nuclear matter is made up of quarks which are not only unseen
but which are also invisible in principle (because they are permanently
conined within the protons and neutrons they constitute). The effects of
these quarks can be perceived, but not the entities themselves. To borrow
language from theology, we know the economic quark but not the immanent quark. Yet, on the basis of intelligibility as providing the grounds for
ontological belief, a view which has already been defended in the scientiic
context, I am fully persuaded of the reality of the quark structure of matter.
I believe that it makes sense of physical experience precisely because it corresponds to what is the case. A similar conviction grounds my belief in the
invisible reality of God.49
Once again, critical realism is here adopted in virtue of being equally opposed
to the postmodern or social constructionist relinquishment of a direct contact
with reality in-itself, and to a scientistic reduction of the world to what is
described by our best current physical theories. Temporary models and imprecise metaphors are the crucial cognitive methods for both scientists and theologians, referring to a human-independent reality which cannot be mapped with
absolute precision. Peacocke insists that models in both science and theology
are concerned less with picturing objects than with depicting processes, relations, and structures What matter is in itself, and what God is in himself
are left unknown and unknowable.50 This theological critical-realist approach
thus successfully secures the meaningfulness of statements regarding a divine
reality, while salvaging the orthodoxy of a divine nature necessarily unknown
and unknowable to the inite intellect of human beings.
Theology, Peacocke argues, is the intellectual analysis of the characteristic
human activity which is the exercise of religion.51 And this exercise operates at a level in the hierarchy of complexity that is more intricate than any
49
50
51

Peacocke 1984, 42.
Peacocke 1984, 36.
54
FABIO GIRONI
of the levels studied by the individual natural, social, and other human sciences.52 The theological enterprise, then, is in fact a relection which encompasses humans, the world and God by standing at the summit of conceivable
complexity and wholeness, and theologians are allowed to ask (rhetorically)
whether perhaps theology, if no longer medieval queen of the sciences,
may at least be accorded the honors of a constitutional monarch.53 In a nutshell, the argument is: the philosophy of science offers a sceptical and qualiied critical realism which allows for an anti-reductionist understanding of a
reality organized in a structure of different strata of complexity, to be considered ontologically equally real. However, the most comprehensive, intricate (and speciically accessible to humans) of these levels is the religious/
revelatory one, and therefore theology the discipline studying this level
should be regarded as the constitutional monarch of all the sciences.
It is easy to see how the ontological democracy reached through the rejection of reductionism and the advocacy of a critical realist stratiied reality is,
in fact, undermined in Peacockes reference to a hierarchy of order54 which
justiies theologys prominence over and above the other sciences. The object
of theology is at the top of such a hierarchy, a theology that will therefore
have to listen and adapt to, but not be subservient to new discoveries concerning the realities of the natural world.55 These realities are discovered by
the natural sciences which, as human and fallible activities,
have to be more willing than in the past to see their models of reality as
partial and applicable at restricted levels only in the multiform intricacies
of the real and always to be related to the wider intimations of reality that
are vouchsafed to mankind.56
Similarly, Polkinghorne explains how both scientists and theologians have

adopted critical realism in a common struggle against a twentieth-century
despair of any knowledge of reality57 and claims, with an almost Baconian
insistence on our mastery of nature, that
its adherents explain the differences between the two disciplines in achieving agreed conclusions, with reference to sciences being able to deal with
a physical world that we transcend and that we can put to experimental
test, while theology is concerned with God, who transcends us and veils his
ininite reality from direct contact with our inite being.58
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
Peacocke 1984, 36.

Peacocke 1984, 37.
Peacocke 1984, 51.
Peacocke 1984, 51.
Peacocke 1984, 51.
55
Realitys hierarchical structure is clear: God, whose existence is presupposed, transcends both the world and humans, while humans transcend
the non-human world which sits at the bottom of the ladder of ontological
dignity. As a consequence of this hierarchical understanding the natural sciences are represented as imperfectly mapping a mind-independent universe
which is in turn but a trace of God, creator in time and sustainer through
time of the natural world. This means that, methodologically, theology precedes science simply because, ontologically, the God-reality is the cause of the
world-reality.
This strict ontological dependency of the world upon Gods intellectual
act of creation is at the base of Barbours claim that the real is the intelligible,
not the observable59 since, he argues, mere empirical observation would lead
to an empiricist rejection of unobservables and overemphasis on rationalism
would lead to idealism. The intelligible, for Barbour, is that which we can
understand on the basis of observation but which transcends empirical evidence, and our movement from the empirical to the transcendent is justiied
by divine creation: the world was created by a rational God and thus displays
an intrinsically intelligible structure. Ultimately, God is the ens realissimum,60
and the intelligibility of the universe is testimony to the supremely real being
who has produced it the hierarchy of being is topped by the divine reality
(the only reality-in-itself, necessarily existent) and the natural world is only
insofar as it is the object of divine, Berkeleyan productive perception. Peacocke stresses how the intelligibility of nature is the guiding criterion of (and
indeed the necessary condition for) both science and theology. The two
enterprises share
their search for intelligibility, for what makes the most coherent sense of the
experimental data with which they are respectively concerned. What proves
to be intelligible is applied, in science, to prediction and control and, in
theology, to provide moral purpose and personal meaning and to enable
human beings to steer their path from birth to death.61
If what God creates is intelligible, intelligibility is the perfect criterion

for discerning the real from the false. The uncovering of the intelligibility
of reality, therefore, can re-address human reason from the creature to the
creator, colouring an otherwise factical external reality with the certainty of
meaning.
My critique is rather straightforward: the arguments of the scientist-theologians presuppose a basic commitment that goes so systematically unexamined
59
60
61
Barbour 1966, 173, original emphasis.

Most Real Entity.
Peacocke 1981, xii.
56
FABIO GIRONI
as to become buried under the theoretical manoeuvres which follow from

it. The critical realism advocated by the scientist-theologians is able, when
applied to science, to explain how we get to know external reality it is an
epistemological doctrine which derives the existence of an external reality which
we come to know from empirical data. When this critical realist position gets
forcefully adapted to theology, its epistemological value is warranted only by
an a priori, ontological belief in the existence of a personal deity which can
be the object of rational, albeit imprecise, knowledge. The ontological reality
of God is therefore the starting point of such a theological realism, occasionally defended by reference to either Scriptural evidence or the data that
is revelation.62 In other words, the thesis which the scientist-theologians are
at pains to uphold, that theological language makes cognitive claims about
reality,63 can be valid only if we pre-emptively assume the existence of a divine
(necessary and omnicreative) reality that is the referent of those claims. This
rather crucial point has been, (perhaps not so) surprisingly, largely ignored
by the scientist-theologians. One of the very few scholars in the ield with the
intellectual honesty to attend to the problem is Kees van Kooten Niekerk who,
in an exposition and comment on the employment of critical realism, notes
that
propositions about God constitute the core of theological propositions, to
which all other theological propositions are more or less directly related.
Therefore, the question of the application of critical realism to theology
must be asked primarily with regard to theological propositions about God
Whereas it is assumed by almost all people (including scientists and
philosophers) that the subject matter of science, the natural world, really
exists, the existence of God is far from generally accepted [Theological
critical realism] presupposes a positive attitude to Christian belief. In a
fundamental way it is a question of ides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking
understanding), which remains in the context of faith [I]n my opinion,
critical realism with regard to theological propositions, though not unreasonable, remains fundamentally tied to Christian belief.64
However, even when acknowledging this, Niekerk (a theologian) continues

to defend a reinement of the critical realist approach, an endeavour certainly
useful if considered from within the community of believers, but utterly irrelPolkinghornes highly problematic conlation of empirical data with the contents of
revelation is particularly explicit and, to the non-theologically oriented reader, bizarrely
ironic: revelation is understood in terms of the human encounter with divine grace, and
not as the uncritical acceptance of some unquestionable propositional knowledge made
known by infallible decree. It is data, not divinely dictated theory (Polkinghorne 1996, 13,
original emphasis).
63
Barbour 1966, 4.
64
Niekerk in van Huyssteen and Gregersen 1998, 73, 76, 78.
62
57
evant for those non-believers who reject the very a priori belief in a Christian
deity which Niekerk recognizes as necessary once again reminding us how
the science and religion ield is really the site of the intra-theological apologetic theorization of intellectual strategies for confronting the prestige and
explanatory power of the natural sciences.
McGraths Scientiic Theology

Like the previous authors, theologian Alister McGrath is a major and respected
igure in the science and religion ield, and an especially interesting igure
to examine in this context due to his development of critical realist themes
as central planks of his recent ambitious construction of a scientiic theology. This project has concretized into the publication, between 2001 and
2003, of three volumes dedicated, respectively, to Nature, Reality and Theory.
In the second of these McGraths strategy has been to formalize the somewhat ill-deined usage of critical realism by his colleagues in the science and
religion ield by referring directly to and borrowing conceptual resources
from the critical realism elaborated in the philosophy of Roy Bhaskar.65
According to McGrath the neglect of Bhaskars ideas by science and religion
protagonists is to be corrected, since
it reinforces the widespread perception that theology has developed an
intellectual insularity, in that at least a signiicant section of the science and
religion community has become detached from the debates and resources
of the mainline academic community.66
I agree with McGraths evaluation, but from here we move in very different directions, for while he thinks that these resources can play into (his)
theological hands, I think that such a theological appropriation is misguided
(and in fact plain wrong) and that an informed encounter with different
forms of contemporary realism undermines the possibility of a theological
realism. For McGrath, however, to employ Bhaskars philosophy is a way to
rescue science and religion from that unfashionable intellectual backwater and to reconnect theological discussion of critical realism with what is
happening within the mainline academic community.67 Bhaskarian critical
In the interest of balance, a more positive assessment of McGraths theological use of
critical realism than the one I will offer here can be found in Shipway 2004.
66
McGrath 2002, 208.
67
McGrath 2002, 208. Interestingly, McGrath (2002, 207) acknowledges van Kooten
Niekerks rather signiicant essay on critical realism, but only to criticize the lack of engagement with Bhaskars ideas, completely ignoring van Kooten Niekerks objections regarding
the necessary theistic commitments which precede any attempt to construct a theological
realism.
65
58
FABIO GIRONI
realism is thus immediately presented as a conciliatory choice maintaining

accordance with the tradition of scientist-theologians but paying lip service
to philosophical relevance capable of embracing all that has been afirmed
within the professional community of science and religion writers, while at
the same time offering a new stimulus to positive yet critical thinking on the
issue.68
Proclaimed differences notwithstanding, McGraths scientiic theology
very much like the projects of other scientist-theologians is aimed at constructing an integrationist worldview69 by conceiving theology as a discipline
that can beneit (gain in epistemic authority and public recognition) from
the encounter with the methodologies of the natural sciences and by freeing
theology from intellectual isolationism. Ultimately then, as McGrath himself
candidly admits, his three volumes can be read as an apologia for the
entire theological enterprise itself.70 The crucial nodes of his argument
mirror the apologetic concerns which I have identiied in Barbour, Peacocke,
Polkinghorne and van Huyssteen.
McGraths predilection for critical realism does not entail the adoption
of philosophical worldviews in order to support theology in its confrontation
with science. He argues that the position adopted in this project is to foster
and sustain a direct rather than mediated dialogue.71 Theologys isolationism
must not be broken at the price of its loss of independence: McGrath therefore clariies that he uses Roy Bhaskars Critical Realism as a means for clarifying how the natural sciences may be deployed as ancillae theologiae72 and
how critical realism itself is used in an ancillary, not a foundational role.73
A peculiar claim of McGraths a central one to construct the legitimization of a critical realist approach is his insistence on the a posteriori nature
of a scientiic theology. This claim is expressed in such formulations as:
a scientiic theology conceives the theological enterprise as a principled
attempt to give an account of the reality of God Declining to make a
priori prejudgements concerning what might be known of God, and the
manner by which that knowledge should be established, a scientiic theology approaches such questions in the light of what is actually known
about God. A scientiic theology conceives itself as an a posteriori discipline, responding to and offering an account of what may be known of
McGrath 2002, 207.
McGrath 2004, 15.
70
McGrath 2004, 13.
71
McGrath 2001, 41, original emphasis.
72
McGrath 2002, 200. This appears as a rather puzzling statement when compared to
Bhaskars own claim ([1975] 2008, 10) that it is part of the business of philosophy to act as
the under-labourer, and occasionally the mid-wife, of science.
73
68
69
59
God through revelation, taking full account of the stratiied nature of that
knowledge of God.74
The term a posteriori is here employed in an at best idiosyncratic way.

In line with the critical realist attitude, McGrath wants the object of knowledge (ontology) to determine the conditions under which we can come to
know it (epistemology). But (like the other scientist-theologians before him)
what McGraths emphasis on the a posteriori character of divine knowledge
means is that, taking for granted the existence of a God out there, what can be then
known about this God depends only on a process of empirical knowledge
which he compares to the method of the natural sciences and not on dogmatic (metaphysical) assumptions regarding God itself. McGrath attempts to
occupy an ambiguous position: essentially vouching for a reformed natural
theology (informed by the work of theologian Thomas Forsyth Torrance,
one of the main sources of inspiration for McGraths whole enterprise),75 he
wants to present it as fully committed to the notion of a divine revelation76
(in order to avoid the pitfall of Deism). Presumably, this has the aim of securing his project against the damning arguments against natural theology, philosophical common-sense from at least Humes Dialogue Concerning Natural
Religion, the Kantian refutation of transcendental illusions, and in general
the Kantian bounds imposed on any form of theology which aims at achieving knowledge of an object outside empirical experience. For McGrath, then,
God is epistemically known a posteriori but is still ontologically existent a
priori.
The second crucial step in McGraths argument is his resolute insistence
(repeated at various points throughout his volumes) on the failure of the
Enlightenment project. The rejection of goals of objectivism and rationality,
however, should not lead towards the adoption of cultural relativism or of
the theories of some French and Belgian postmodern writers77 for which
McGrath has nothing but contempt, but rather leads him towards an understanding of reason as tradition-mediated borrowed from the philosophy of
McGrath 2002, xi.
McGrath follows Torrance, who, in an engagement with the theology of Karl Barth,
argued for the viability of natural theology and its compatibility with an orthodox emphasis
on revelation. McGrath writes that Torrance believes that this danger [to see natural
theology as an independent and valid route to knowledge of God] is averted if natural theology is itself seen as a subordinate aspect of revealed theology, legitimated by that revealed
theology rather than by natural presuppositions or insights The legitimation of natural
theology lies not in its own intrinsic structure, not in an autonomous act of human selfjustiication, but in divine revelation itself (2001, 281).
76
McGrath 2004, 57.
77
McGrath 2002, 197.
74
75
60
FABIO GIRONI
Alasdair MacIntyre. In McGraths reading, MacIntyres philosophy rehabilitates the epistemic velleities of theology by recasting epistemological questions in the sphere of competence of a reason valid within the limits of a
certain tradition: Christianity itself.
MacIntyres greatest achievement is to rehabilitate the notion that
Christianity possesses a distinct yet rational understanding of reality a
coupling which the Enlightenment regarded as impossible. Christianity is
once more free to assert its distinctiveness, instead of submitting itself to the
Enlightenment insistence on a universal human reason which determined
all things, seeing divergence from its judgements as irrationality.78
MacIntyre and Bhaskar are two instrumental choices for McGrath, allowing him to position his own scientiic theology in the space between objectivism/nave realism and relativism/antirealism. MacIntyres philosophy is
employed to reduce the scientiic tradition to just another tradition on the
same rational/epistemic footing as the Christian one, since the best that
we can hope for after the demise of foundationalism is a tradition-speciic
rationality which reaches beyond that tradition in its explanatory potency.79
For McGrath, the key to extending this trans-traditional explanatory power
resides in the universal scope of the Christian doctrine of creation. This doctrine, considered by McGrath (and by the other scientist-theologians) as the
core tenet of the Christian tradition, can
be said to be of meta-traditional signiicance in other words, although speciic to the Christian tradition, the doctrine is also able to explain aspects
of other traditions. The scientiic tradition, for example, inds itself having
to presuppose the uniformity and ordering of creation; Christian theology
offers an account of this.80
Realism, preferably in its critical declination, is elected by McGrath for its

trans-traditional nature, and for offering an epistemic stance which, other
than accounting for the success of the natural sciences, is also clearly presupposed and applied by the classical Christian theological tradition.81 A critical realist approach, then, is both intellectually habitable and theologically
responsible.82
In sum, for McGrath the realist stance is not primarily justiied by any
argument grounded upon empirical observation of the predictive success of
science, but by a rather tortuous line of reasoning. This proceeds from (i) the
78
79
80
81
82
McGrath 2004, 111.

McGrath 2002, 101.
McGrath 2004, 113.
McGrath 2002, 199.
McGrath 2002, 315.
61
acknowledgment of the failure of the Enlightenment project, which compels

the abandonment of nave objectivism and of the ambition for the human
observer to reach reality unhindered and (ii) the simultaneous rejection of
all varieties of relativistic perspectivism which would enclose us in a world of
arbitrarily socially constructed realities. These two premises lead McGrath
to (iii) the adoption of a MacIntyrian/Bhaskarian hybrid framework which
allows for an authentic encounter with reality-in-itself but on the condition of
recognizing it as dependent on a tradition-constituted rationality. Finally, this
warrants (iv) the legitimacy of conceiving realism as a form of natural theology, since we see nature as creation, in that the Christian tradition authorizes
and conditions us to do so.83 Our tradition describes the world as created
by a divine reason, therefore this (created) reality must be considered in its
full ontological independence from us (but, crucially, not from God). Thus,
in a passage which condenses his entire project, McGrath explains:
a fundamental assumption of a scientiic theology is that, since the ontology of the natural world is determined by and relects its status as Gods creation, the working methods and assumptions of those natural sciences which
engage most directly with that natural world are of direct relevance to the
working methods and assumptions of a responsible Christian theology.84
In his reading of Bhaskar, McGrath speciically insists on two tenets of critical realism: the idea of an epistemic fallacy and that of a stratiied reality.
McGrath summarizes the thesis which those falling into the epistemic fallacy
fail to acknowledge in the statement that the world is not limited to what can be
observed.85 In subscribing to this thesis, McGrath exploits Bhaskars project
by capitalizing upon the lack of an accurate description of how things are inthemselves while stating that things are in-themselves (Bhaskars intransitive
dimension). For the theologian, Bhaskars condemnation of the epistemic
fallacy can be turned into an argument proscribing empirical observations
abilities to decide upon ontological (divine) reality. The general realist ontological commitment that existence is not dependent upon observation is
turned into the theological claim that Gods existence is not dependent upon
(scientiic) observation. Having thus established that the ontological reality
of God cannot be submitted to empirical scrutiny, McGrath turns to the idea
of a stratiied reality. Indeed, the stratiication of reality refuting reductionist projects and arguing for the independent existence of discrete strata of
reality, from the natural to the social world proves itself even more useful to
McGraths project than the epistemic fallacy. As he explains,
83
84
85

McGrath 2002, 245.
McGrath 2002: 212, original emphasis.
62
FABIO GIRONI
the stratiied understanding of reality afirmed by critical realism allows
us to argue that the natural sciences investigate the stratiied structures of
contingent existence at every level open to human inquiry while a theological
science addresses itself to God their creator who is revealed through them.86
McGrath approvingly presents Bhaskars theorization of strata of reality as

hierarchically organized and non-reducible to one another, ostensibly refuting the understanding of theology as queen of sciences, a position favoured
by most theologians but which McGrath does not believe to be correct.87
A few lines on, however, he proceeds to contradict his own claims, or he
attempts the legerdemain necessary to subliminally claim the pre-eminence of
theology. There are certainly strata or levels of reality, McGrath argues, but
from a Christian standpoint, the existence (existentia) of the creation is
dependent upon the prior existence (essentia) of God. As reality is stratiied, the remaining issue is to determine what mode of inquiry is appropriate to each level.88
It then follows that the proper role of theology is to posit that the creative
and redemptive being of God is the most fundamental of all strata of reality.89 Hence,
theology is not the queen of the sciences, but is the discourse which posits the
ontological priority of the God-stratum, predicated on the crucial role that
the doctrine of creation plays in Christian theology.90 It is hard to understand
how different strata might remain irreducible as long as nature is seen from
a speciically Christian perspective as creation:91 such a perspective insists on
seeing natural phenomena as dependent upon a postulated divine reality, and
such a dependency is not a weak emergence, but a strong creation ex nihilo.
Allegedly, McGrath can stand by his belief that the label queen of the sciences
is not suitable for theology by stating the specious thesis that theology is to
be regarded as lying at the base, not the apex, of the sciences.92 Theology is
ostentatiously demoted from its throne at the top of the disciplinary tree only
to be then referred to as dealing with the ontological basis of reality as a whole.
McGraths claims that different strata merely impose a different set of methodologies (scientiic or theological) for their enquiry does not hide his clear idenMcGrath 2002, 227, original emphasis.
McGrath 2002, 228.
88
McGrath 2002, 227.
89
90
McGrath previously claimed that Roy Bhaskars critical realism [is used] as a means
of clarifying how the natural sciences may be deployed as ancillae theologiae (2002, 200). It
seems then that while theology has been stripped of the title of queen, it is still entitled to
retain ancillae (handmaids).
91
92
McGrath 2002, 229.
86
87
63
tiication of the divine stratum with the foundational (i.e. creative of all the
others) stratum. As noted above, the claims of the other scientist-theologians to
modesty regarding theology are in fact routinely employed to reintroduce its
pre-eminence surreptitiously, as the discipline which has as its object the most
basic and foundational ontological level, i.e. God.
The rejection of this thesis goes to the heart of my own commitments: if in
a stratiied-reality worldview physics can indeed be identiied as that science
which deals with the most fundamental level of reality this does not imply that
basic physical reality is responsible for the creation of higher levels, which are
emergent from it. Bhaskar wants to reject a reductionism which privileges a
basic level of reality, and he also allows for an explanatory hierarchy the
lower strata explain the higher ones. He does not, however, want to claim
that the higher strata are therefore less real than the lower ones: whatever is capable of producing a physical effect is real and a proper object of
scientiic study.93 Nor does Bhaskar imply that the lower stratum creates (in
the Christian meaning of the term) the higher ones: a higher level of reality
has an emergent ontological dependency upon its lower level, not a creative
ontological dependency (this seemingly minor difference in fact indexes
the yawning gap between a metaphysics of immanence and one of transcendence). Andrew Collier, commenting on Bhaskars stratiied reality, enumerates three kinds of relations94 that can be said to hold between strata:
(i) ontological presupposition: one stratum presupposes another without
which it could not exist;
(ii) vertical explanation: where mechanisms at one stratum explain another;
(iii) composition: where entities at one stratum are composed by an assembly of entities from a lower one.
What kind of relation would the object of theology hold with the rest of
reality? The best candidate would seem to be ontological presupposition,
but it is easy to see how even this is far too weak a dependency compared
to McGraths doctrinal insistence on a creator-creature relation. McGraths
theism requires a creator, not a simple cause. Moreover, McGraths divine
stratum must most emphatically be a singular and uniied reality, while any
higher stratum is best understood as the assemblage of elements belonging
to a lower one.
McGraths apologetically warped endorsement of a Bhaskarian stratiication of reality has another vital consequence: the hierarchical structuring of
93
94
Bhaskar [1975] 2008, 113.

See Collier 1994, 1312.
64
FABIO GIRONI
reality, based upon the logical and ontological priority of a creator over its
creation, always includes a special placement for humanity and for human
rationality, since there is a created correspondence between creation and creator
that is to say, that the reality of God is rendered in the created order, including humanity at its apex.95 Human beings, then, are irmly placed at the
peak of created order, endowed with a gift of rationality with which to exercise power over creation. However, the hierarchy must be respected, and
McGrath is quick to remind humanity of its initude, since while God has
indeed endowed the creation with the possibility of disclosing knowledge
of the divine nature, human sin obscures that knowledge.96 Even in their a
posteriori knowledge of nature, human beings are really submitted to a set
of transcendental conditions imposed by God: the crippled intelligibility of
reality and the ixed horizon of reason are punishments for original sin. In
sum then, McGrath is arguing that the external world is independent from
human subjective access, but is still correlated to Gods atemporal, noetic
act of creation: both natures independent being and its intelligibility for us
depend on the action of a divine subject. It is precisely this dependence upon
God that ultimately secures the epistemic reliability of our observations
observations which, at the same time, are limited by our attenuated cognitive
abilities, tarnished by our fallen nature.
Ultimately then, McGraths employment of Bhaskars philosophy is undermined from the outset by a radical asymmetry between the starting presuppositions of the two authors. McGrath fails to appreciate that Bhaskars motive
for creating a new kind of realism is to construct a realist theory of science.
The apparent isomorphism between scientiic critical realism and theological critical realism can be argued therefore, only at the price of overlooking
Bhaskars most fundamental commitment to a realism capable of making
sense of everyday perception and scientiic experimentation without invoking extra-natural powers. Bhaskars transcendental conditions for experience (as in his original formula transcendental realism) are not sought,
as in Kant, in the active production of a cognizing rational agent, but are
those mechanisms and structures which lie in the external world and which
science discovers. Bhaskar writes that his position is characterized as transcendental realism in opposition to both empirical realism (the position of
those who reject the reality of stable mechanisms and structures which underlie empirical perceptions) and Kantian transcendental idealism imposing an
experience formally shaped by internal forms of intuition and categories of
understanding.
95
96

McGrath 2002, 309.
65
Transcendental realism differs from empirical realism in interpreting the

invariance of an (experimentally produced) result rather than a regularity; and from transcendental idealism in allowing the possibility that what
is imagined need not be imaginary but may be (and come to be known
as) real. Without such interpretation it is impossible to sustain the rationality of scientiic growth and change The aim of science is the production
of the knowledge of the mechanisms of the production of phenomena in
nature that combine to generate the actual lux of phenomena of the world.
These mechanisms, which are the intransitive object of scientiic enquiry,
endure and act quite independently of men.97
It is quite clear, then, that all that Bhaskar needs is the existence of some
enduring and transfactually active mechanisms,98 capable of explaining (as
a condition of possibility for) the experimental successes of science. McGrath
ignores this metaphysical parsimony, and instead postulates a divine intellect
as a transcendental condition for both our subjective experience and the
objective existence of things-in-themselves with the mechanisms that regulate their causal interactions. McGrath doesnt ask, as Bhaskar does, given
these empirical results, what must the underlying reality be like? but rather
proceeds under the assumption that there is an entity God the Creator
whose existence, precisely due to its creative powers, can be conirmed by
pretty much any kind of empirical observation. In Bhaskars terms, whatever
we observe depends on a reality which is intransitive for us, but transitive for
the productive thought of God.
Conclusion
I have presented the work of a number of scholars operating in the science
and religion ield, outlining their employment of realism indeed their different but equivalent declinations of critical realism as a means to a theological end. Far from being the scene for a neutral (or explicitly hostile)
confrontation or comparison between science and religion, the disciplinary
matrix in which the scientist-theologians operate has the covert apologetic
purpose of representing theology as a peer of, and indeed as a monarch over,
the natural sciences. Its allure for the non-confessional scholar remains thus
(at best) questionable.99
Bhaskar [1975] 2008, 15, 17.
Bhaskar [1975] 2008, 20.
99
I am not claiming that it is in principle impossible to produce interesting scholarship on
the interface between science and Christianity, as indeed many non-confessional, socio-historical
analyses of this interaction can demonstrate (especially when such analyses are focused on
speciic historical igures and events, avoiding generalized claims the so-called complexity
97
98
66
FABIO GIRONI
Let me summarize what I take to be the central arguments presented in

the construction of a theological realism by the scientist-theologians:
1. The employment of critical realism is instrumental to the assertion
of epistemic parity between theology and science, and is predicated
on the argument that both disciplines are interested in gathering
rational knowledge about some non-human reality. The scientisttheologians in fact start from the unwarranted a priori assumption
that there is something like a divine reality to be examined, and
base this assertion on the specious equation of religious experiences
with scientiic data, proposing the former as the data which theological models try to make sense of in a rational and (critical) realist
manner, hence attempting a natural theology redux.
2. The scientist-theologians do not limit themselves to placing theology on the same epistemic footing as science but in fact argue, both
implicitly and explicitly, for the privilege of theology. They do so by
espousing a hierarchical structure of reality justiied by the doctrine
of creation: not only are divine realities the layer of reality that presents the highest degree of ontological dignity, but indeed the whole
universe is causally subordinated to a divine creator, functioning as
its ultimate creative substrate and/or as a universal perceiver.
3. A consequence of the dependence of human rationality upon divine
reason is that humans are presented as the only beings capable of
superior theological knowledge and hence possessing a privileged
access to reality, thanks to the inherent (and necessary) intelligibility of reality. More precisely, theological realism posits God as the
only reality-in-itself and the rest of the natural world as a mere correlate of divine thought. Human rationality is allowed knowledge of
the ontologically independent phenomena studied by the natural
sciences only with a dual provision: irst, that epistemologically
such knowledge is possible only because of the homology between
the divine and the human structure of thought and, second, that
ontologically the universe as a whole is dependent in its being on
an original act of creation (via an act of thought hence its ordered,
intelligible organization) and on an ininite action of ontological
sustenance and eventful revelation (a necessary clause for those who
want to avoid the impersonal God of deism).
approach). The classic starting point remains Brooke 1991, recently improved by Dixon,
Cantor and Pumfrey 2010, and a most useful anthology of essays on speciic historical debates
and igures is Lindberg and Numbers 2003. An outstanding monograph on the philosophical
links between early modern science and Christian (protestant) theology is Harrison 2007.
67
4. All of the above warrants the belief in a human-oriented meaning

or teleological organization to be found in nature but outside the
purview of science, therefore justifying the cognitive (and soteriological) value of theology. If there is necessary order in nature, a Great
Chain of Being,100 the discernment of this order, to be systematized
via an indexing of the laws which enforce such order, is not only
epistemically advantageous (for, for example, the manipulation of
nature) but provides an overarching structure which can offer or
prescribe ethical bearings.
In response to this, I want to suggest that, once we disinter and reject the
founding metaphysical presuppositions at work in the discourse of the scientist-theologians (the existence of a foundational stratum of being, of metaphysical necessity and of an equation between meaning and intelligibility),
the whole project of science and religion ostensibly based upon some kind
of realism, and aimed at defending theology against the prestige of science
becomes vacuous.
This doesnt mean, however, that I desire to join the chorus of the new
atheists in denouncing religion and uncritically exalting the virtues of scientiic rationality: a careful revision of our conceptual baggage must begin with
a self-examination, starting with the removal both of vestigial remains of the
theological worldview of early modern scientists in the shape of a reliance
on substance and necessary lawfulness and of that post-Enlightenment,
secularized anthropocentrism suggesting that accessibility to human reason
could function as an ontological yardstick. We should aim for a realism
informed by and consistent with the most recent theories from the physical sciences, able to feed back into scientiic practice an ontological outlook
free from the constraints imposed by these out-dated, ideological conceptual
schemes.
The inluence of Christian theology on early modern science (and scientists) is of course a well-studied historical phenomenon, but the relevance
and impact of such historical scholarship is often considered irrelevant
to contemporary debates in philosophy of science: the origin of a certain
concept might be traced to theological metaphysics, but its employment
today is justiied by its experimental adequacy. In this view, terms are secularized via empirical veriication, and those that fail such a test are erased
from the scientiic discourse. I dont think that conceptual policing based on
empirical veriication is enough to disabuse our scientiic understanding of
the universe from (onto-)theological origins. To this extent, scientiic realism
100
Lovejoy [1936] 2001, passim.
68
FABIO GIRONI
needs a metaphysical tidying up (not an erasure but an updating of metaphysics), informed by both historical genealogy and scientiic accuracy, in order
to be immunized from those assumptions which allow interested parties to
reactivate their dormant theological power.
John Polkinghorne101 comments:
I am grateful for the opportunity to make a short response to the paper by

Fabio Gironi.
An important point, apparently not recognized by Gironi, is that theological thinking has two distinct roles to play in its contribution to the
human quest for truthful understanding.102 The irst role, traditionally
called systematic theology, is that of engagement in a quest for motivated
belief about the nature of human encounter with that dimension of reality
which may be called the spiritual. In this task, theology operates as a irstorder discipline, seeking understanding through careful assessment of the
evidence offered about this encounter. (Of course, some may claim that
there is no such dimension of reality, but that is an issue to be considered in
the light of the evidence offered.) It is in this intellectual mode that many
scientist-theologians consider that there are signiicant analogies between
theological thinking and the scientiic assessment of human encounter
with physical and biological reality. Of course, there is no identity between
these two quests for truthful understanding, because the motivating evidence differs in its character between the two disciplines, but I believe
that both are engaged in what I have called bottom-up thinking, that is
seeking to move from evaluated experience to interpreted understanding.
It is this cousinly similarity that persuades many scientist-theologians that
the concept of critical realism is applicable in both spheres of enquiry. This
claim of an analogical relationship is not simply asserted but argued for.
For example, I have sought to support it through a number of careful comparisons of the rational strategies employed in the two disciplines,103 an
analysis to which no attention is paid in Gironis paper. I deny that the
invocation of critical realism is an attempt to gain illegitimate authority for
theology and I reject the accusation of an intellectual hijack of scientiic
prestige and a covert assertion of the primacy of theology over science. The
scientist-theologians seek a consonant relationship between the insights of
science and of systematic theology of a kind that fully respects the integrity
and authority of both disciplines in their proper domains. There is nothing
101
102
103
Queens College, Cambridge CB3 9ET, United Kingdom.

Polkinghorne 1998, 93; 2011b, 224.
69
preposterous, inauthentic, lacking in intellectual honesty or patronizing in this work. In systematic theology, the existence of God is not taken
as an indisputable fact, but as a belief to be argued for by its explanatory
power in illuminating experience, including, for example, the fact of the
deep intelligibility of the universe, which science is happy to exploit but
unable of itself to explain.
The second role of theology, often called philosophical theology, is a second-order discipline seeking to embed the results of the irst-order investigations in a comprehensive and deep metaphysical understanding of the
nature of reality, taken as a whole. Any such metaphysical scheme must have
its fundamental basis taken as given and then made the foundation of the
ediice of understanding to be erected upon it. For example, the metaphysics of reductive physicalism takes the given laws of nature as its unexplained
brute fact. The metaphysics of theism takes the existence of a divine Creator
as its basic brute fact. It is at this second-order level that philosophical theology assumes the existence of God, which had to be argued for at the irstorder level of systematic theology.
Any metaphysical scheme has to be defended in terms of such criteria
as scope of explanation, naturalness of argument and economy of assumptions. For example, philosophical theology can argue that belief in the divine
Creator offers intellectually satisfying understanding of the source of the
deep and marvelous order of the physical world and its inherent fruitfulness
which has, over 13.7 billion years, turned an initial ball of energy into the
home of self-conscious beings. These properties of the laws of nature seem to
point beyond the appropriateness of merely treating them as brute facts and
so make the stance of physicalism unsatisfying.
Of course, these are dificult issues on which all will not agree, but their
signiicance surely calls for a discussion that is temperate and untainted by
polemic.
Fabio Gironi comments:
I thank John Polkinghorne for his response to my paper, and the JCR team
for enabling this exchange to take place.
As might be expected, I dont think Polkinghornes objections inlict great
damage on my arguments. In order to keep my response as brief as possible,
I enumerate a number of counter-objections.
1. Describing the efforts of systematic theology, Polkinghorne refers
to a spiritual reality, arguing that its existence can be inferred by
careful observation of motivating evidence. He thus compares the
scientists and the theologians inquiries as both instances of bot Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
70
FABIO GIRONI
tom-up thinking, i.e. both proceeding from experiential evidence in
order to draw general conclusions the rational strategy employed
by both inductive science and natural theology. However, no amount
of similarities in methodology can justify the conclusion that the
objects (the realities) examined by these two groups are equally
real. The real-life detective and the reader of a crime novel both
follow the same rational strategy of inferring to the best explanation
(that which its the evidence) but in the former case there are real
smoking guns and real perpetrators; in the latter its a mere intellectual exercise. What Polkinghorne calls evidence is at best circumstantial and unable, for the methodological naturalist (a stance
justiied by centuries of predictive successes of the natural sciences),
to prove the existence of an ultra-natural realm. What seems to us
as human inquirers cannot be the criterion for ontological conclusions. Not agreeing that there can be any motivating evidence for it,
I consider the belief in a spiritual reality (or indeed in any realm
causally disconnected from the physical universe the same argument applies to a noetic mathematical realm which Polkinghorne
elsewhere defends and for which he gives a theological warrant104)
unwarranted.
2. Polkinghorne argues that the God hypothesis is accepted due to its
explanatory power, since it would explain the deep intelligibility of
the universe. In his view, a divine being is not just the best answer to a
universal why question, but it also plays the (meta-)explanatory role
of accounting for sciences ability to explain the natural world: since
the universe was created by God to be rationally transparent, it is no
surprise that our epistemic gaze inds it so (and thus that our science
works). There are two problems here. First, what does best mean
here? Which theoretical virtues does the theological-realist explanation have? It is often argued that a creative God would be a simpler
explanation for, say, the so-called ine-tuning of cosmological constants than an explanation relying on chance. But how simple would
this entity really be? Surely the simpliication is in terms of the sheer
number of entities, but the price to pay is the attribution of limitless powers to this one entity. More to the point, we are just pushing
the explanation back, unless we adopt the theological dogma of a
self-positing being. The ultimate explanation remains unexplained
(whence this omnipotent being?). What about consonance with other,
accredited and tested, scientiic theories? Not really, for this theologi-
104
Polkinghorne 2011a.
71
cal explanation blatantly breaks with the methodological naturalism

that guides successful natural science. To use familiar jargon, Polkinghorne trades all (naturalistic) likeliness of an explanation for its
(theological) loveliness. Predictive power? Not unless we consider the
statement whatever phenomenon will be discovered to be the case,
it will have been so because of the creative will of God as offering
any. I can concede to the God hypothesis a wide-ranging explanatory
power, but thats trivially true: given the theological axiom that everything was created by God it follows that everything can be explained by
this hypothesis (or, counterfactually, had God not decided to create
the world, nothing would be). But again, this breaks radically with
that naturalism, which (successfully) guides natural science, by invoking an extra-natural being as an explanation for (the existence and
intelligibility of) natural phenomena. Second, is it really the case that
from the success of science (the epistemic enterprise) we can derive
the universes (the ontological reality) property of being rationally
transparent qua ontologically unitary? I of course agree that scientists
are happy to exploit some forms of intelligible (lawlike) behaviour of
phenomena, but as a philosopher I question the assumption that
all such behaviours can be uniied (the project of unity of science
inherited from the positivists agenda) precisely as a theological hangover. Explanation does not require uniication. I am much more
inclined to work under the (metaphysical, but empirically derived,
not dogmatically pre-assumed) assumption that reality is a stratiied,
dappled universe (to riff on both Bhaskars and Nancy Cartwrights
formulations) and that the best explanation for natural phenomena
is a causal, ontic one, accounting for the full physical causal net of
independent mechanisms that brought about a phenomenon at the
level under examination (and indeed that we should avoid nomological explanations, for they leave the explanans the law itself unexplained, an omission which opens the door to the kind of theological
intervention I am criticizing). As I observed in my paper when commenting on Alister McGraths employment of the stratiication of
nature, the problem hinges on the ontological monism engendered
by the doctrine of divine creation (doctrine, not empirically discovered fact, for even an a posteriori argument from design does not
imply it). Once we do away with the idea of divinely-imposed unity,
we can clearly see that the theological inference from intelligibility
to meaningfulness is unwarranted, since no grand scheme is to be
found. One could invoke the Kantian argument and claim that meaningful, goal-directed behaviour is merely a necessary feature of our
72
FABIO GIRONI
way of experiencing nature, remaining agnostic about the ontological truth of the matter, but I believe that the realist can afford to drop
this Kantian metaphysical reticence and argue for a universe as an
open system without any unity and (intrinsic) meaning.
3. How can Polkinghorne claim that science and theology have proper
domains when (in his own view) the best explanation for the success
of the former happens to be the central object of concern of the
latter? Whether explicitly stated or not, any creationist position
like Polkinghornes implies a heavy ontological dependence, and
thus places the theologians God in a position of metaphysical preeminence over the scientists natural world. The theologians insight
into the nature of the Creator of All is evidently more valuable (both
epistemically and morally) than scientiic knowledge since the scientists understanding of the universes causal mechanisms depends on
the latters created nature and on his or her own rational mind having
been tuned for the recognition of the divine marks impressed upon
creation. And a legitimate worry here is thus: how could this scientiic knowledge be truly a posteriori?
4. Polkinghorne seems to suggest that any metaphysical scheme is ultimately an arbitrary choice: a theological-creationist metaphysics
has the same a priori validity as a (say) physicalist one, since both
require a fundamental basis (be it God or physical stuff) as foundationally given, a brute fact. I have more sympathy than the average
scientiic realist with historicist concerns and attempts to explain
the intellectual evolution of our metaphysical schemes, and I have
clearly expressed my scepticism towards forms of anti-theological
thinking that fail to question sciences own metaphysical baggage.
However, this is a far cry from the metaphysical relativism hedging
Polkinghornes Christian beliefs from atheist critiques. It is evident
that, throughout the history of science, our metaphysical commitments regarding the deep nature of reality have been (and certainly
will be) revised, but this revision has been/will be directed by our
best system of scientiic explanation grounded in empirical observation. Between the two disciplines there must be an historical dialectic aimed at producing an increasingly satisfactory understanding of
the universe. A supernatural, personal and omnipotent divine being
does not igure in the list of metaphysical assumptions buttressing
our best theories, and its introduction creates more questions than
it would explain.
5. Polkinghorne calls the theological solution an intellectually satisfying explanation. We reach here a radical diffrend, for I fail to see
73
how such an explanation can satisfy the scientiic realist (or indeed
any curious mind). To attribute ininite explanatory prowess to God
is not the humble and pious move which theologians often make
it out to be, but an arbitrary decision which stiles the epistemic
audacity which drives scientiic research research which at every
step along the way must question its own results and presuppositions
and expects (and desires) novel, unexpected truths about the world
which will force a rearrangement of our knowledge.
6. So far Ive mostly played Hume to Polkinghornes Paley, but as a
matter of purely metaphysical taste, I radically disagree with Polkinghornes vision of a universe in which, ultimately, knowledge and
truth are one because God is one,105 a vision that looms in the background of his response to me and of his whole natural theology. I
think that the theological/monistic reduction of truth to knowledge
is most perilous for realists of all stripes. In my view, the realist seeks a
reality that cannot be reinscribed into an eternal knowledge and that
indeed has the power to force a continuous rearrangement of knowledge. I take this to be an epistemological and an ontological point:
the theologians belief in a static universe dependent upon the mind
of God attempts to tame the power both of our understanding and
of being itself always to immanently transcend limits and boundaries.
There is no One God and thus truth is to be sought as that which
always exceeds knowledge.
Considering all of the above, I stand by my initial thesis that theological (critical) realism is more in the business of self-legitimization than it is in the business of substantive explanation. And I believe that a discussion can be both
polemical and temperate.
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[ JCR 11.

(print) ISSN 1476-7430

The Theological hijacking of Realism

Abstract. This paper questions and criticizes the employment of critical

THE THEOLOGICAL HIJACKING OF REALISM

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

discipline of theology. The aim is to argue for their compatibility or parity, if

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

THE THEOLOGICAL HIJACKING OF REALISM

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

scientiic rationality and theological belief.17 Theologian Creston Davis

Critical Realism: From Science to Theology

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

THE THEOLOGICAL HIJACKING OF REALISM

In a later, oft-quoted formulation Barbour summarizes his critical realist

Having established this, however, Barbour moves from his endorsement of

In other words, the adoption of a critical realism able to acknowledge both

Barbour 1990, 43. My additions in square brackets.

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

THE THEOLOGICAL HIJACKING OF REALISM

Van Huyssteens stress on the provisionality of models mirrors Barbours

Van Huyssten 1989, 155.

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

This is an instructive passage: the odd (if not preposterous) comparisons

Peacocke 1984, 40.

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

THE THEOLOGICAL HIJACKING OF REALISM

The Hierarchy of (Created) Reality

Polkinghorne 1996, 23.

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

THE THEOLOGICAL HIJACKING OF REALISM

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

Not only is theology warranted by the pre-assumed existence of a God, a

Peacocke follows the usual apologetic schema, starting by claiming that

Peacocke 1993, 21.

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

THE THEOLOGICAL HIJACKING OF REALISM

Polkinghorne 1998, 1223.

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

Similarly, Polkinghorne explains how both scientists and theologians have

Peacocke 1984, 36.

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

THE THEOLOGICAL HIJACKING OF REALISM

If what God creates is intelligible, intelligibility is the perfect criterion

Barbour 1966, 173, original emphasis.

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

as to become buried under the theoretical manoeuvres which follow from

However, even when acknowledging this, Niekerk (a theologian) continues

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

THE THEOLOGICAL HIJACKING OF REALISM

McGraths Scientiic Theology

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

realism is thus immediately presented as a conciliatory choice maintaining

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

THE THEOLOGICAL HIJACKING OF REALISM

The term a posteriori is here employed in an at best idiosyncratic way.

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

Realism, preferably in its critical declination, is elected by McGrath for its

McGrath 2004, 111.

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THE THEOLOGICAL HIJACKING OF REALISM

acknowledgment of the failure of the Enlightenment project, which compels

McGrath 2002, 238, original emphasis.