the theological hijacking of realism critical realism in ‘science and religion’

[ JCR 11.1 (2012) 40-75] (print) ISSN 1476-7430doi: 10.1558/jcr.v11i1.40 (online) ISSN 1572-5138

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012, Unit S3, Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Shefield, S3 8AF.

The Theological hijacking of Realism

critical Realism in science and Religion

by

FABIO GIRONI1

Cardiff University

[email protected]

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 sci-entiic 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 mid-1960s, has dealt with the theoretical construction of modes of interaction

1 PhD Candidate, School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff Univer-sity, Humanities Building, Colum Drive CF10 3EU. Fabio Gironi received his BA in philoso-phy 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 reli-gion 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, Polking-horne employs the term to describe scientists with a personal commitment to religion and a serious concern with theology (1996, ix).

THE THEOLOGICAL HIJACKING OF REALISM 41

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.

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 mod-elled 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 real-ism 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 ontologi-cal and methodological primacy for theology by reinterpreting the stratii-cation 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 ideologi-cally suspect confusion between the epistemic project of the natural sciences (for which critical realism is meant to be a philosophical grounding) and the

3 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 compen-dium 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 Euro-pean intellectual history.

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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 arbi-trary 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 cor-rigible 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 gener-ally, against the metaphysical assumptions which provide the basis for the theological worldview of the scientist-theologians. Even the nuanced differ-ences 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 philoso-phy 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 neces-sary is an instrumental empirical adequacy a stance that was explicitly read as crippling any attempt by science to interfere with (or undermine) theo-logical 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

8 This famous expression, borrowed by Duhem from Plato, appears in the title of his [1908] 1969 collection of essays. 9 Duhem 1991, 2734.



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 dis-cussions.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 ratio-nality 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-nar-rative that in the face of the secular demise of truth seeks to reconigure theological truth,14 by re-afirming a richer and more coherent Christi-anity 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-Nietz-schean) abandonment of transcendent notions of the Good: social and sci-entiic 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 reli-gion ield as they must continually negotiate an unstable allegiance to both

10 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.

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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 cer-tainly 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 func-tions 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 meta-physical 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 origi-nally defended by Barbour has continued to be defended, deployed and diversiied widely in theology and in science, and it continues to be presup-posed 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/super-natural 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.



and Religion mainly celebrated for presenting the irst elaboration of Bar-bours famous typology of relations between science and religion21 argues that science is a more human enterprise, and that theology is a more self-critical 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 positiv-ism, 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 real-ism] 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

21 This typology assumed the shape of a fourfold categorization Conlict, Indepen-dence, Dialogue, Integration in his Religion in an Age of Science (Barbour 1990). This typol-ogy 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 inter-action between science and religion have proliferated. This passage from Peacocke 1993 illustrates this tendency:

I have delineated at least eight putative relations between science and theol-ogy 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 testi-mony 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.

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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 ten-tative 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 theo-logical 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 oppos-ing 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 dichot-omy 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 Barbour 1990, 43. My additions in square brackets. 28 Barbour 1974, 3. 29 Barbour 1974, 56. My additions in square brackets. 30 Barbour 1974, 37.



ing and suggestive hypothesis31 offers nonetheless a similar, clear deini-tion 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 real-istic 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 provi-sionality 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 theol-ogy 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 Van Huyssten 1989, 155. 32 Van Huyssteen 1989, 142. 33 Peacocke 1984, 23. 34 Peacocke 1984, 25.

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Such a skeptical and qualiied acceptance of the models employed in sci-entiic 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 enter-prises. Even more explicitly, Peacocke goes as far as drawing direct taxonomi-cal 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 real-ity 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 employ-ment 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. Like-wise, 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 trans-lated 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 scientist-theologians:37 from reality to the Reality of God, a Reality at the top (or at

35 Peacocke 1984, 40. 36 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.



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 foundation-alisms 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, proj-ects of epistemic and ontological relativism such as the strong programme, social constructivism or postmodern standpoint epistemologies, would unac-ceptably pluralize knowledge into a multiplicity of incommensurable posi-tions, 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).

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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 rejec-tion 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 demon-strate 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 onto-logical existence of its object, is the most adequate position to defend in any knowledge-seeking enterprise, both in science and in theology. If postmod-ern theology seeks a reconciliation between science and theology by under-mining 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 sci-ence 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 Polkinghorne 1996, 23. 39 Polkinghorne 1996, 3. 40 Polkinghorne 1996, 3. 41 Peacocke 1984, 42. 42 Polkinghorne 1998, 114.



By patronizingly praising science for its verisimilitudinous success, Polk-inghorne 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 actu-ally indexes is exclusively (Christian)43 theology.

Are we to suppose that it is only in our investigations of the objective, imper-sonal 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 inauthen-tic. Indeed, after having observed the remarkable and fortunate fact45 that human rationality is able to explore and understand a rational universe, Pol-kinghorne feels compelled to surmise that

theologically, this is to be understood as due to the universes being a cre-ation and ourselves as creatures made in the image of the Creator. The pos-sibility 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 faithful-ness 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 non-Christian 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 con-cludes 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 Polkinghorne 1998, 110. 45 Polkinghorne 1998, 122. 46 Polkinghorne 1998, 122.

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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 dispo-sition 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 the-ologys 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 con-sonant 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 reali-ties 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 phe-nomena 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 reduction-ism 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 Peacocke 1993, 21. 48 Peacocke 1984, 36.



As God is parenthetically smuggled into the discussion, Peacockes argu-ment 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 imma-nent 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 cor-responds 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 impre-cise metaphors are the crucial cognitive methods for both scientists and theolo-gians, 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, rela-tions, 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 oper-ates at a level in the hierarchy of complexity that is more intricate than any

49 Polkinghorne 1998, 1223. 50 Peacocke 1984, 42. 51 Peacocke 1984, 36.

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of the levels studied by the individual natural, social, and other human sci-ences.52 The theological enterprise, then, is in fact a relection which encom-passes 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 nut-shell, the argument is: the philosophy of science offers a sceptical and quali-ied critical realism which allows for an anti-reductionist understanding of a reality organized in a structure of different strata of complexity, to be consid-ered ontologically equally real. However, the most comprehensive, intri-cate (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 rejec-tion 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 con-cerning 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 achiev-ing 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 Peacocke 1984, 36. 53 Peacocke 1984, 37. 54 Peacocke 1984, 51. 55 Peacocke 1984, 51. 56 Peacocke 1984, 51. 57 Polkinghorne 1996, 4. 58 Polkinghorne 1996, 4.



Realitys hierarchical structure is clear: God, whose existence is presup-posed, 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 sci-ences 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 pre-cedes 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 evi-dence, 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. Pea-cocke 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-theolo-gians presuppose a basic commitment that goes so systematically unexamined

59 Barbour 1966, 173, original emphasis. 60 Most Real Entity. 61 Peacocke 1981, xii.

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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, occasion-ally 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 unrea-sonable, 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 irrel-

62 Polkinghornes 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.



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 apolo-getic 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 theol-ogy. 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 some-what 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 differ-ent 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 backwa-ter and to reconnect theological discussion of critical realism with what is happening within the mainline academic community.67 Bhaskarian critical

65 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 engage-ment with Bhaskars ideas, completely ignoring van Kooten Niekerks objections regarding the necessary theistic commitments which precede any attempt to construct a theological realism.

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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 con-structing 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 there-fore clariies that he uses Roy Bhaskars Critical Realism as a means for clari-fying 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 legitimiza-tion 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 the-ology approaches such questions in the light of what is actually known about God. A scientiic theology conceives itself as an a posteriori disci-pline, responding to and offering an account of what may be known of

68 McGrath 2002, 207. 69 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 McGrath 2004, 140, original emphasis.



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 knowl-edge (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 dog-matic (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 secur-ing his project against the damning arguments against natural theology, phil-osophical 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 achiev-ing 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 under-standing of reason as tradition-mediated borrowed from the philosophy of

74 McGrath 2002, xi. 75 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 the-ology 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 self-justiication, but in divine revelation itself (2001, 281). 76 McGrath 2004, 57. 77 McGrath 2002, 197.

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Alasdair MacIntyre. In McGraths reading, MacIntyres philosophy rehabili-tates the epistemic velleities of theology by recasting epistemological ques-tions 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, allow-ing him to position his own scientiic theology in the space between objec-tivism/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 doc-trine, 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 spe-ciic 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 presup-posed and applied by the classical Christian theological tradition.81 A criti-cal 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 McGrath 2004, 111. 79 McGrath 2002, 101. 80 McGrath 2004, 113. 81 McGrath 2002, 199. 82 McGrath 2002, 315.



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 theol-ogy, 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 ontol-ogy of the natural world is determined by and relects its status as Gods cre-ation, 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 crit-ical 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 in-themselves 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 onto-logical 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 reduction-ist 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 McGrath 2002, 238, original emphasis. 84 McGrath 2002, 245. 85 McGrath 2002: 212, original emphasis.

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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 refut-ing 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 strati-ied, the remaining issue is to determine what mode of inquiry is appropri-ate 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 method-ologies (scientiic or theological) for their enquiry does not hide his clear iden-

86 McGrath 2002, 227, original emphasis. 87 McGrath 2002, 228. 88 McGrath 2002, 227. 89 McGrath 2002, 228, original emphasis. 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 McGrath 2002, 228, original emphasis. 92 McGrath 2002, 229.



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: what-ever 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 transcen-dence). Andrew Collier, commenting on Bhaskars stratiied reality, enumer-ates three kinds of relations94 that can be said to hold between strata:

ontological presupposition: one stratum presupposes another without (i) which it could not exist;vertical explanation: where mechanisms at one stratum explain an-(ii) other;composition: where entities at one stratum are composed by an assem-(iii) bly 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 stratiica-tion of reality has another vital consequence: the hierarchical structuring of

93 Bhaskar [1975] 2008, 113. 94 See Collier 1994, 1312.

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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, includ-ing 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 exer-cise 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 under-mined from the outset by a radical asymmetry between the starting presuppo-sitions 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 theologi-cal 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 invok-ing extra-natural powers. Bhaskars transcendental conditions for experi-ence (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 tran-scendental realism in opposition to both empirical realism (the position of those who reject the reality of stable mechanisms and structures which under-lie empirical perceptions) and Kantian transcendental idealism imposing an experience formally shaped by internal forms of intuition and categories of understanding.

95 McGrath 2002, 227, original emphasis. 96 McGrath 2002, 309.



Transcendental realism differs from empirical realism in interpreting the invariance of an (experimentally produced) result rather than a regular-ity; 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 rational-ity 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 regu-late 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 dif-ferent but equivalent declinations of critical realism as a means to a theo-logical 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

97 Bhaskar [1975] 2008, 15, 17. 98 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

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Let me summarize what I take to be the central arguments presented in the construction of a theological realism by the scientist-theologians:

The employment of critical realism is instrumental to the assertion 1. 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 scientist-theologians 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 theo-logical models try to make sense of in a rational and (critical) realist manner, hence attempting a natural theology redux.The scientist-theologians do not limit themselves to placing theol-2. ogy 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 pres-ents 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.A consequence of the dependence of human rationality upon divine 3. 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) intelligibil-ity of reality. More precisely, theological realism posits God as the only reality-in-itself and the rest of the natural world as a mere cor-relate 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.



All of the above warrants the belief in a human-oriented meaning 4. or teleological organization to be found in nature but outside the purview of science, therefore justifying the cognitive (and soteriolog-ical) 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 scien-tist-theologians (the existence of a foundational stratum of being, of meta-physical 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 scien-tiic 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 physi-cal 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 scien-tists) 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 secu-larized 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.

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needs a metaphysical tidying up (not an erasure but an updating of metaphys-ics), 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 theo-logical 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 irst-order 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 evi-dence 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 com-parisons 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 Queens College, Cambridge CB3 9ET, United Kingdom. 102 Polkinghorne 1998, 93; 2011b, 224. 103 Polkinghorne 2007, 2008.



preposterous, inauthentic, lacking in intellectual honesty or patron-izing 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 sec-ond-order discipline seeking to embed the results of the irst-order investi-gations 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 metaphys-ics 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 theol-ogy assumes the existence of God, which had to be argued for at the irst-order 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 assump-tions. 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.

Describing the efforts of systematic theology, Polkinghorne refers 1. 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-

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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 intel-lectual exercise. What Polkinghorne calls evidence is at best cir-cumstantial 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 conclu-sions. 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 argu-ment applies to a noetic mathematical realm which Polkinghorne elsewhere defends and for which he gives a theological warrant104) unwarranted.Polkinghorne argues that the God hypothesis is accepted due to its 2. 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 explana-tion have? It is often argued that a creative God would be a simpler explanation for, say, the so-called ine-tuning of cosmological con-stants 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 limit-less 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.



cal explanation blatantly breaks with the methodological naturalism that guides successful natural science. To use familiar jargon, Polk-inghorne 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 every-thing 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) guid