Essays in Analytic Theology Michael

Rea
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OXFORD STUDIES IN ANALYTIC THEOLOGY

Series Editors
MICHAEL C. REA
and
OLIVER D. CRISP
 OXFORD STUDIES IN ANALYTIC THEOLOGY
Analytic Theology utilizes the tools and methods of contemporary analytic
philosophy for the purposes of constructive Christian theology, paying attention
to the Christian tradition and development of doctrine. This innovative series
of studies showcases high quality, cutting edge research in this area, in monographs
and symposia.

  :

Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God
William Hasker
The Theological Project of Modernism
Faith and the Conditions of Mineness
Kevin W. Hector
The End of the Timeless God
R. T. Mullins
Ritualized Faith
Essays on the Philosophy of Liturgy
Terence Cuneo
In Defense of Conciliar Christology
A Philosophical Essay
Timothy Pawl
Atonement
Eleonore Stump
Humility and Human Flourishing
A Study in Analytic Moral Theology
Michael W. Austin
Humility, Pride, and Christian Virtue Theory
Kent Dunnington
Essays in Analytic
Theology
Volume 1

MICHAEL C. REA

1
 3
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 Acknowledgements

Except for Chapters 4 and 6 and the postscripts to Chapters 5 and 6, all of the
essays in this volume have been previously published in English. Chapter 4 was
previously published (only) in German translation. I have made no changes to the
previously published material except to correct a few minor errors, add an
occasional editor note, and make some formatting changes for the sake of
uniformity. I am grateful to the following publishers for permission to reprint
the material listed here.

‘Realism in Theology and Metaphysics’, pp. 323–44 in Conor Cunningham and

Peter Candler (eds), Belief and Metaphysics (London: SCM Press, 2007). Used by
permission of Hymns Ancient & Modern Ltd.
‘Theology without Idolatry or Violence’, Scottish Journal of Theology 68 (2015):
61–79. Copyright Cambridge University Press. Reprinted with permission.
‘Authority and Truth’, pp. 872–98 in D. A. Carson (ed.), The Enduring Authority
of the Christian Scriptures (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016). Reprinted by
permission of the publisher.
‘Die Eigenschaften Gottes als Thema der analytischen Theologie’ (‘Divine
Attributes as a Topic in Analytic Theology), in German; trans. into German by
Martin Blay, Daniela Kaschke, and Thomas Schärtl), pp. 49–68 in Thomas
Marschler and Thomas Schärtl (eds), Eigenschaften Gottes: Ein Gespräch zwischen
systematischer Theologie und analytischer Philosophie (Münster: Aschendorff
Verlag, 2016).
‘Gender as a Divine Attribute’, Religious Studies 52 (2016): 97–115. Copyright
Cambridge University Press. Reprinted with permission.
‘The Trinity’, pp. 403–29 in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology,
edited by Thomas P. Flint and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009). Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.
‘Polytheism and Christian Belief ’, Journal of Theological Studies 57 (2006):
133–48. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.
‘Relative Identity and the Doctrine of the Trinity’, Philosophia Christi 5 (2003):
431–46. Philosophia Christi is the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society
(http://epsociety.org).
‘Material Constitution and the Trinity’ (with Jeff Brower), Faith and Philosophy 22
(2005): 487–505.
viii 

Thanks are also due to Jeff Brower for his permission to reprint our co-
authored paper, ‘Material Constitution and the Trinity’, to Oliver Crisp, Hud
Hudson, and the anonymous referees for Oxford University Press for very
helpful comments on the introductions and postscripts, and to Callie Phillips
for preparing the index Finally, I would like to thank Oliver Crisp for encour-
aging me to publish these essays here and in the companion volume, for our
ongoing collaboration on all things analytic-theological, and, most of all, for our
many years of friendship. It is in gratitude for all of this that I dedicate the first
volume to him. The second volume I dedicate to my youngest son, Matthias.
 Introduction

The activity of analytic theology—bringing the style, method, and literature of

analytic philosophy to bear on theological topics—has been pursued for quite
some time. One might reasonably see its origins and development in the work of
analytically oriented philosophers like Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne,
Robert Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Eleonore
Stump, and others who, in the latter half of the twentieth century, played a
major role in the revival of philosophy of religion and the growth of philosophical
theology within academic philosophy. But the concept of analytic theology, the
concept of a self-consciously interdisciplinary philosophical-theological activity of
the sort just described that deserves both the label ‘analytic’ and the label ‘the-
ology’, is of more recent origin.
The idea of analytic theology grew out of conversations during the 2004–5
academic year between Oliver Crisp and myself about the puzzling fact that,
despite the recent turn in mainstream philosophy of religion towards traditional
topics in systematic theology (trinity, incarnation, and atonement most notably),
there had been very little by way of genuine and productive interdisciplinary
dialogue between philosophers of religion and their counterparts in theology.
Philosophical theology as practised by analytic philosophers seemed not even to
be recognized as theology; and, with few exceptions, academic theologians and
analytic philosophers of religion seemed generally uninterested in exploring their
intersecting research topics in dialogue with one another. Both states of affairs
seemed problematic and, as we discussed the matter, we thought that perhaps a
volume might be called for—a volume tendentiously entitled Analytic Theology—
that would call attention to and begin some much needed conversation about the
historical, methodological, and epistemological issues lurking in the background
of this disciplinary divide.
Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology was published in
2009. The same year marked the founding of a series of annual conferences in
philosophical theology—the Logos Workshop in Philosophical Theology—held
most years at the University of Notre Dame and dedicated to building bridges
between philosophy and theology. Now, just over a decade later, the field of
analytic theology is in full bloom, with a growing body of literature, a dedicated
journal (The Journal of Analytic Theology), a monograph series with Oxford
University Press (Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology), a research centre at the

Essays in Analytic Theology: Volume I. Michael C. Rea, Oxford University Press (2020). © Michael C. Rea.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198866800.003.0001
2    :  

University of St Andrews (the Logos Institute for Analytic and Exegetical

Theology), and much else in addition.
My own work in analytic theology began in earnest just a few years prior to
those early conversations with Oliver; and over the past fifteen years it has come to
occupy a substantial portion of my research time. This book is the first of two
volumes collecting together the most substantial work in analytic theology that
I have done between 2003 and 2019. Broadly speaking, the chapters in this volume
focus on the nature of God whereas those in the companion volume focus on
humanity and the human condition. More specifically, the chapters in Part I deal
with metatheological issues pertaining to discourse about God and the authority
of scripture; the chapters in Part II focus on divine attributes; and the chapters in
Part III discuss the doctrine of the trinity and related issues. The section headings
of this introduction match the part divisions of the book, but it is not my aim here
to summarize the chapters included in each section’s corresponding part. Instead,
this introduction aims to supplement those papers with a more general discussion
of some of my past and current thinking on the various loci covered by the
chapters in the volume.¹

1. Metatheology

Metatheological questions are questions about theology rather than questions

about first-order theological topics. This is not necessarily to say that metatheol-
ogy is a topic outside the discipline of theology; it is just to say that such questions
are about the discipline itself rather than about the discipline’s primary subject
matter, God. Metatheology includes, but is not limited to, questions about the
nature of theology, about the evidential sources for theological claims, and about
how we should interpret theological doctrines (e.g. as statements aiming to tell us
the literal truth about God, or as mere ‘rules of discourse’, or in some other way).²
Chapters 1, 2, and 3 deal with metatheological issues—theological realism and the
authority and veracity of scripture (which is, in my view, the most important
source of evidence for theological claims). Accordingly, I want to begin here with
some remarks about the nature of analytic theology and its bearing on these
topics.

¹ For some of the content of this introduction I have drawn on parts of two other essays not included
here—one which I characterized at the time I wrote it as ‘a miniature sketch of a partial systematic
theology’ (Rea 2017), and another that was contributed to an American Academy of Religion sympo-
sium on Analytic Theology, the volume that Oliver and I co-edited in 2009 (Rea 2013a). I am grateful to
the publishers—Taylor and Francis, and Oxford University Press, respectively—for permission to reuse
this material.
² On the idea of theological doctrines as rules of discourse, see Lindbeck 1984.
  3

Just as there is no uniform party line on what constitutes theology, philosophy

of religion, or analytic philosophy, so too one shouldn’t expect a uniform party
line on the nature of analytic theology. But here is the line I have taken on that
question. I start with a rough characterization of analytic philosophy. As
I understand it, analytic philosophy is an approach to philosophical problems
that is distinguished from other approaches by a particular rhetorical style, some
common ambitions, an evolving technical vocabulary, and a tendency to pursue
projects in dialogue with a certain evolving body of literature—one typically seen
to trace its roots back to G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell and others in the early
twentieth century who were in philosophical dialogue with them. The ambitions
seem generally to be these: (i) to identify the scope and limits of our powers to
obtain knowledge of the world, and (ii) to provide such true explanatory theories
as we can for non-scientific phenomena. The rhetorical style might roughly be
characterized as paradigmatic, instances of which conform (more or less) to the
following prescriptions:

(1) Write as if philosophical positions and conclusions can be adequately

formulated in sentences that can be formalized and logically manipulated.³
(2) Prioritize precision, clarity, and logical coherence.
(3) Avoid substantive (not merely decorative) use of metaphor and other
tropes whose semantic content outstrips their propositional content.
(4) Work as much as possible with well-understood primitive concepts, and
concepts that can be analysed in terms of those.
(5) Treat conceptual analysis (insofar as it is possible) as a source of evidence.

More might be added, of course. But my ‘official’ list stops at (5) because most
of what else I would add would not really count as prescriptions that divide
analytic from continental philosophers. Prescriptions (1) to (5) do mark a div-
ision, however. They are prescriptions that non-analytic philosophers typically
reject or aim to violate, and for principled reasons.
As I see it, analytic philosophy as such is not wedded to a particular theory of
truth, nor is it committed to any particular epistemological theory. Contrary to
what various critics of analytic philosophy have suggested, there are analytic
philosophers aplenty who reject (for example) the correspondence theory of
truth; there are also analytic philosophers who reject foundationalism. Analytic
philosophers are not, as such, committed to belief in propositions (at least not

³ What exactly is it to write ‘as if ’ positions and conclusions can be formulated in the way described
here? Sometimes writing this way may involve actually trying to produce such formulations; sometimes
it may involve presupposing in what one says about the positions and conclusions one is discussing that
such formulations are possible; and sometimes it may simply be a matter of omitting comments that
suggest that certain views or conclusions cannot be formulated in ways that would allow us to derive
consequences via familiar rules of logic.
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where propositions are considered to be abstract entities that stand in the is

expressed by relation to sentences). Nor are they committed to any brand of
metaphysical realism or moral or metaphysical absolutism.⁴ In fact, so far as
I can tell, there is no philosophical thesis that separates analytic philosophers as
such from their rivals. To be sure, analytic philosophers typically write as if certain
(mostly metaphilosophical) theses are true—in particular, whatever theses under-
lie the prescriptions sketched above. But it is easy enough to imagine an analytic
philosopher objecting to any one of those presuppositions, and doing so more or
less in the analytic style and in the service of what I have called the ambitions of
the analytic philosophical tradition.
Given this characterization of analytic philosophy, I take analytic theology to be,
more or less, theology done with the ambitions of an analytic philosopher, in a
style that conforms to the prescriptions that are distinctive of analytic philosoph-
ical discourse, and in dialogue with the literature of analytic philosophy. I say
‘more or less’ because I am not so much identifying necessary and sufficient
conditions as characteristics that mark a family resemblance; and, to my mind,
it is the ‘in dialogue with the literature of analytic philosophy’ characteristic that is
typically the most salient marker of that resemblance.
How, then, does analytic theology relate to analytic philosophy of religion? The
answer depends on how one draws distinctions between philosophy and theology.
One way of doing so is methodologically. One might say that theology overlaps
philosophy topically in the domain known as ‘philosophy of religion’, but the-
ology is methodologically constrained in a way that philosophy is not. The former,
unlike the latter, is confessional—it is done in a way that is faithful to a particular
tradition, or text, or set of doctrines, or some other authority besides ‘pure reason’.
I do not myself endorse this way of drawing the distinction, but suppose, for the
sake of argument, that one does. Nothing in the characterization thus far pre-
cludes the idea that theology can be done in accord with the style and ambitions of
analytic philosophy and in dialogue with its literature; so the division between
analytic theology and analytic philosophy of religion will simply reduce to the
division between philosophy proper and theology proper. If, on the other hand,
one thinks that philosophy and theology are topically individuated (with a great
deal of overlap between them), then one might say that analytic theology and
analytic philosophy of religion are overlapping subfields of philosophy and the-
ology respectively, but the former includes work on theological topics that would

⁴ Some seem to think that the grand explanatory ambitions of analytic philosophy commit it to a
brand of realism, or at least to ‘absolute metaphysical truth’. But this is manifestly false. If metaphysical
realism is false, then that fact will be part of the grand explanation for which we all are striving. If there
is no absolute truth (whatever exactly that means), then there would not be a unique grand explanatory
theory, but analytic philosophy can proceed from different perspectives and starting points just as it
always has. These two points seem not to be sufficiently appreciated by those who would criticize
analytic philosophy.
  5

typically be seen to fall outside the domain of philosophy (e.g. the development of
a distinctively and self-consciously Reformed ecclesiology) whereas the latter
includes work on religious topics (e.g. the nature of religion itself) that would
typically be seen as having little to do with theology.⁵
As I noted earlier, the decade following the publication of Analytic Theology
witnessed significant growth and activity in the field; but the idea of analytic
theology has also faced both resistance and misunderstanding.⁶ This is not the
place for an exhaustive survey of the objections to and misconceptions about
analytic theology; but three in particular are worth mentioning here. First, analytic
theology has been confused by some critics with what I have called its style.
Second, it has been misunderstood as embodying a commitment to theological
realism—a position I happily endorse, but do not take to be part and parcel of
analytic theology. Third, it has been objected to on the grounds that it is overly
rationalistic, elevating reason over scripture as the primary data source for
scripture. I will discuss each in turn.
In a recent essay, Martin Westerholm (2019) subjects the enterprise of analytic
theology to sustained criticism, arguing ultimately that it ‘may be poorly suited to
functioning as a free-standing enterprise in a way that would warrant the per-
petuation of a distinctively analytic approach to theology as a whole . . . because it
appears to rest on presuppositions that generate a drift into abstraction through
which ideal objects of inquiry are substituted for real’ (232). There is a great deal to
object to in Westerholm’s essay,⁷ but I will leave most of that aside for now and
focus simply on the characterization of analytic theology that he offers en route to
developing his objections.
In laying out his characterization of analytic theology, Westerholm turns to my
own work. He writes:

The point [made in an earlier sentence about potential inconsistency in the

enterprise of analytic theology] might be made by considering the account of
analytic thought that is developed by Michael Rae [sic]. In a widely cited set of
comments, Rae [sic] proposes that analytic theology is best taken to be charac-
terized by its ‘rhetorical style’ because concrete definitions fail. [note omitted] He
goes on to point to five features that mark this style; these features include

⁵ On the distinction between analytic theology and analytic philosophy of religion, see also Baker-
Hytch 2016.
⁶ For recent critical discussion of analytic theology and replies to some of the criticisms, see (as a
starting point) Bitar 2013; Couenhoven 2013; McCall 2015; McCall and Pawl 2018; Macdonald 2014;
Oliver 2010; Rea 2013b; Sarrisky 2018; Vanhoozer 2017a, 2017b; Wessling 2017; Westerholm 2019; and
Wood 2009, 2013a, 2013b, 2014.
⁷ Not least objectionable is the fact that Westerholm draws sweeping conclusions about the entire
enterprise of analytic theology on the basis of features he claims to find in the work of just a couple of
analytic philosophers. To my mind, this approach is a bit like drawing conclusions about the entire field
of systematic theology on the basis of claims about the work of Barth and von Balthasaar. See Panchuk
and Rea (2020) for further critique of Westerholm’s essay.
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emphasis on precision and clarity, on the priority of primitive concepts and of

notions that can be formalized, and rejection of rhetorical and stylistic tropes
whose semantic content outstrips their propositional content. This characteriza-
tion has been formative for other work [note omitted]; but it appears in some
ways to struggle to balance its accounts. It deflates the value of the rhetorical and
presents clear definitions as the currency in which good work trades; but when it
comes to discharge its debts in giving an account of itself, it suggests that is
unable to pay in the currency of clear definition, and proposes instead to settle
accounts in the deflated coin of the rhetorical . . . . We might note for now that
critics have pointed out that inability to define oneself is a philosophical mark of
shame, and the embarrassment would seem particularly acute where insistence
on clear definition is a hallmark of the school in question. (232–3)

I note in passing that it is one thing to say that ‘inability to define oneself is a
philosophical mark of shame’, but quite another thing to show that it is.
Westerholm does not show that it is; and I do not believe that he can. As pretty
much everybody recognizes, not nearly everything admits of precise definition;
and fields and modes of inquiry are notoriously intractable in this regard. (Just
witness the vast and ultimately inconclusive literature aiming to define the nature
of science.) It is no part of analytic theology to suggest otherwise, and so it is no
particular embarrassment for analytic theologians to find themselves in exactly the
same boat as the practitioners of just about every other academic discipline when
it comes to drawing neat boundaries between what they do and what other people
do. Contrary to what Westerholm suggests, I think in fact that we should expect
analytic theology to elude precise characterization; for, as some of my earlier
remarks suggest, I think the most plausible characterizations of it (as with most
fields and modes of inquiry) will deny that there are necessary and sufficient
conditions for being a work of analytic theology and insist rather that something
counts as such simply by virtue of a kind of family resemblance to paradigm cases.
But the more important problem with the passage I have just quoted from
Westerholm is that he gets my characterization of analytic theology absolutely
wrong. Setting aside minor quibbles about his glosses on the five prescriptions
I have used to identify the analytic style, it is incorrect to say, as he does, that my
proposal is that ‘analytic theology is best taken to be characterized by its “rhet-
orical style” because concrete definitions fail’ (232). Of course, style is part of it;
but, as I noted earlier, ambitions and philosophical-theological interlocutors are
also—and equally—part of it. Moreover, I think that careful attention to these
latter aspects of my characterization of analytic theology helps to defuse one of
the key presuppositions that drives Westerholm’s essay—namely, that analytic
theology somehow purports to be a free-standing enterprise that aims to encom-
pass the whole of theology. Analytic theology was not born out of the idea that the
only good theology is analytic in its approach. I cannot speak for others, but for my
  7

own part I reject any such claim. In contrast to what Westerholm seems to assume,
the impetus to do theology in the analytic mode comes (for many of us, anyway)
simply from the idea that the style, methods, and literature of analytic philosophy
offer resources that will help serve important theoretical aims. Not all worthwhile
theoretical aims are best served by these resources (nor, I might add, does all good
theology aim in the first instance to even to serve theoretical aims). Accordingly, it is
no part of analytic theology as such to assume that these resources are exhaustive,
that other ways of doing theology are without merit, that all non-analytic theological
work can profitably be ignored, or anything else of the sort.
Leaving this first misunderstanding of analytic theology aside, then, I now turn
to the question whether analytic theology is committed to theological realism. As
I understand it, theological realism has two components: first, the view that
theological theories and doctrines have objective truth-values, and, second, the
view that theological theories and doctrines are true only if the objects they
apparently refer to genuinely exist, and the apparent kind-terms that they contain
are genuine kinds with genuine instances.⁸ Can one pursue the ambitions of
analytic theology in the style distinctive of that mode of theorizing without
endorsing both components of theological realism? I think that the answer is
clearly ‘yes’; but the reasons I would give for saying so depend to some extent on
whether metatheological questions are properly thought to fall within the scope of
analytic theology.
Suppose they do. This is certainly a plausible supposition. Taking the contents
of standard textbooks and course syllabi as guides, and noticing who mostly tends
to participate in various other metadisciplinary debates, metametaphysics would
seem to be part of the field of metaphysics, metaethics would seem to belong to the
field of ethics, metaepistemology would seem to be part of epistemology, and so
on. So it seems reasonable to think that metatheology belongs to the field of
theology, even though its distinctive questions are about theology rather than
about God. (Chapter 2 in this volume seems to me to illustrate this point: it
strikes me as being a clear instance of analytic theology, despite some discussion
of Levinas and other ‘continental’ and postmodern thinkers, while at the same
time dealing mostly with metatheological issues.) In that case, it is easy to imagine
an analytic theologian providing, in the requisite style, and in accord with
the requisite ambitions, an argument against either component of theological
realism. Thus, analytic theology as such is not committed to either component.
But suppose metatheological questions do not fall within the scope of analytic
theology. In that case, reasons for rejecting the first component of theological
realism would not belong to analytic theology, since that is a purely metatheolo-
gical thesis. Moreover, one who denies across the board the objective truth of

⁸ Cf. Chapter 1 in this volume, pp. 19–20.

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theological theories would be committed to saying that none of the theories that
analytic theology properly aims to produce are objectively true. Still, strictly
speaking, the distinctive ambitions of analytic theology aim only at truth, not
(necessarily) objectivity; and nothing in the distinctive style of analytic theology
commits the analytic theologian to the pursuit of objectivity. More importantly,
however, an analytic theologian might well reject theological realism not by
denying the first component, but rather by denying the second—insisting (for
example) that many of the objects putatively referred to in theological doctrines
do not exist, or that many of the kinds referred to in such doctrines are not
genuine. A theologian with broadly Bultmannian views about miracles, angels,
demons, heaven, hell, and the like, or with John Hick’s views about the incarna-
tion and about God more generally, would hardly count as a theological realist;
but such a person might nonetheless arrive at these views in the course of doing
analytic theology.
So much for the idea that analytic theology is committed to theological realism.
What of the third concern, that it is committed more to the authority of reason
than to the authority of scripture as a source of evidence in theology? In response
to this, I will simply lay out some of my own views about scripture and invite
readers to consider whether these views either prioritize reason over scripture or
put me at odds with the distinctives of analytic theology. My own view is that they
obviously do not.
One of the major distinctives of Protestantism is the ‘sola scriptura’ slogan,
which has implications for how theology is to be done both individually and
corporately. As I understand it, the slogan expresses at least three attributes that
the Reformers held to be true of scripture: authority, clarity, and sufficiency.
Concerning the authority of scripture, I take the traditional position to be that
scripture is what we might call foundationally authoritative—i.e. more authorita-
tive than any other source of information or advice—within the domain of all
topics about which it aims to teach us something.⁹ (For convenience, let us refer to
the topics in question together as matters of faith and practice.¹⁰) The claim that
scripture is clear and sufficient amounts, roughly, to the claim that all doctrines
and prescriptions necessary for salvation can easily be derived from scripture by
persons concerned about the salvation of their souls without the help of the
Church or Church tradition.¹¹ Together, these claims about authority, clarity,

⁹ For discussion of what it means to say that one source is ‘more authoritative’ than another, and
for fuller discussion of what it means to say that scripture is authoritative, see Chapter 3 in this volume.
¹⁰ It is a matter of interpretive dispute—and hardly a trivial one!—exactly what topics fall within this
domain.
¹¹ My gloss closely follows Bavinck 2003: 477, 488. Cf. Berkhof 1992: 167–8. Note that the clarity
doctrine does not imply that it is easy to see that anything in particular is necessary for salvation—as if
adherents of other religions are simply failing to understand scripture if they doubt (say) that faith in
Christ is necessary for their own salvation.
  9

and sufficiency provide what I take to be the core idea underlying the sola
scriptura slogan.
I affirm sola scriptura as I have just glossed it, and I want now to highlight three
points in connection with it that pertain specifically to the question of how
scripture, reason, and tradition ought to interact in our theologizing.
First, sola scriptura carries no substantive interpretive commitments. It is
consistent with the most wooden literalist approach to biblical texts; it is also
consistent with rampant allegorical interpretations, and all manner of others.
To this extent, it permits a great deal of theological diversity. Its import is simply
to provide a loose but significant constraint on the development of theology. It
implies that when we do theology, what we ultimately say must be consistent with
our best judgment about what the text of scripture teaches. Proponents of sola
scriptura cannot sensibly think ‘scripture teaches X, but it is more reasonable for
me to believe not-X’; but they are free to use any and all tools at their disposal to
determine for themselves what exactly it is that scripture teaches.
Second, sola scriptura is plausible only on the assumption that scripture asserts
and advises only what God, as divine author, asserts and advises. Absent that
assumption, it assigns far too much authority to scripture alone. Surely if the
assumption were false there would be no reason to regard scripture as a greater
authority in the domain of faith and practice than every other human experience
or testimonial report. For those who make the assumption, however, it is no light
matter to pronounce either on what scripture teaches or on what topics fall within
the domain of ‘matters of faith and practice’. For the doctrine implies that once we
have reached a settled judgment about what the text of scripture teaches, we have
in the content of that teaching reasons for belief and action that are at least as
authoritative as reasons from any other source.
Third, a consequence of my first two points is that proponents of sola scriptura
have good reason to make careful and judicious use of all available tools for
determining what the text of scripture might be saying. These tools include
science, moral and other rational intuitions, the techniques of historical biblical
criticism and literary analysis, and so on. Moreover, the assumption that scripture
has a divine author licences a particular way of using these tools. We know in
general that it is perfectly legitimate to interpret texts in light of what we
reasonably believe about their authors. Historians of philosophy, for example,
often allow their interpretations of great thinkers to be constrained by assump-
tions about the sorts of errors to which these thinkers may or may not be
susceptible. If interpretation X implies that Aristotle was not very bright or well-
informed with respect to the science of his day, that by itself is a reason not to
favour interpretation X. So likewise, it seems, with a divinely authored text. If our
best science tells us that the sun, moon, and stars existed long before terrestrial
plant life, that fact by itself constitutes good reason—as good as the science itself—
to believe that a divine author would not teach anything to the contrary. If moral
10    :  

intuition tells us that slavery is wrong, or that conquering armies should not seek
to annihilate their enemies, or that men and women are equally suited for
positions of ecclesial authority, these facts by themselves constitute good
reason—as good as the intuitions involved—to believe that a divine author
would not teach anything to the contrary. And these considerations will appro-
priately guide our interpretation of the relevant texts.
Of course, the reasons just mentioned can be defeated. It is possible, for
example, to acquire evidence that scripture really does contradict some of our
moral views or some of our scientific views. But the only condition under which
sola scriptura would bind someone to revise her intuitions or scientific beliefs in
light of scripture (instead of revising her understanding of scripture in light of her
intuitions or scientific beliefs) would be one in which her reasons for believing that
scripture teaches something contrary to reason are evidentially stronger than the
intuitions themselves.

2. The Attributes of God

The following passage from the Belgic Confession, one of the doctrinal standards
of the Christian Reformed Church, provides what I take to be a decent initial list of
the essential attributes of God:

Article 1: We all believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that there is a
single and simple spiritual being, whom we call God—eternal, incomprehensible,
invisible, unchangeable, infinite, almighty; completely wise, just, and good, and
the overflowing source of all good. (Christian Reformed Church 1988: 78)

A decent initial list, but not a perfect or complete one. For example, the attributes
of incomprehensibility, simplicity, unchangeability, and infinity are so difficult to
understand that ascribing them to God is apt to mislead without extended
comment (which I shall not provide here). I think that the attributions express
truths; but I do not, for example, think that divine simplicity implies that there are
no distinctions to be made within the Godhead or that incomprehensibility
implies that God cannot be understood or talked about except via analogy or
metaphor, or that divine unchangeability implies that it is false to say that God
became incarnate, and so on. More importantly, the quoted passage leaves out
some attributions that I would want to include (most of which the Confession
itself includes, at least implicitly, elsewhere in its text). For example, I would say
that God is necessarily existent, essentially triune, and omniscient; God is loving
and merciful, and capable of sorrow and anger; God is a perfect person,¹² and the

¹² The Christian tradition maintains that God exists in or as three persons, but it also resoundingly
affirms that God is personal and that God is perfect as a personal being. Not every way of
  11

creator and sustainer of the concrete contingent universe. None of these add-
itional attributes, however, are mentioned in the quoted passage.
For some of these attributions, there is clear scriptural warrant. For others,
however, there is not. What, then, justifies their presence in standard confes-
sions, creeds, and other formal statements of Christian belief? A traditional but
controversial answer is that the attributions not clearly derivable from other
parts of scripture can nonetheless be derived from the scriptural claim that God
is perfect. This answer has methodological implications that deserve further
comment.
In accord with many others in the Christian tradition, I think that our grasp of
perfection can serve as a reliable guide to fleshing out our understanding of the
divine attributes. (This idea makes substantive appearance in Chapters 4 and 5 of
this volume.) It is not an infallible guide, for there is no good reason to think that
any of us has a perfect grasp of it. Nor is it entirely clear exactly how it is a guide.
Jeff Speaks (2018) has compellingly argued that the idea that substantive divine
attributes are derivable from the claim that God is a perfect being, the greatest
possible being, or something similar is fraught with problems; and I am not sure
how or whether the problems can be overcome. Perhaps instead, then, we should
think that the claim that God is perfect merely imposes constraints on our
theorizing about the divine attributes; or perhaps we should think (as I said at
the beginning of this paragraph) that our grasp of perfection simply helps us to
flesh out our understanding of divine attributes that we arrive at via special
revelation or some other route.¹³ In any case, Speaks’s arguments do not undercut
the view that, to the extent that we have warrant for thinking that a perfect being
would have some property p, we also have warrant for the claim that God has p.
The question is simply how we can get such warrant, and (depending on the
answer to that question) what further use the claim that God is perfect might be
for the task of theology.
In addition to whatever help it might give us in arriving at or understanding the
divine attributes, our grasp of perfection also serves as a defeasible guide to
interpreting scripture. For example, scripture describes God as our heavenly
father, and most of the pronouns and other images used to refer to and charac-
terize God are masculine. Now we face an interpretive choice. Ought we to infer
that God is masculine, and prefers to be characterized as masculine? My own view,
which I defend in Chapter 5, is that the answer is ‘no’: a perfect being would either
transcend gender or belong to all genders equally, and would furthermore have no

understanding the trinity can comfortably accommodate the unqualified claim that God is a person;
but (as we shall see) mine can.

¹³ I am also inclined to think that a full response to Speaks’s worries will require a revisionary
understanding of ‘perfection’—one characterized not in terms of maximal greatness but more in terms
of worship-worthiness. I develop this idea in fuller detail in Rea 2019.
12    :  

preference in favour of a metaphysically misleading mode of characterization.

This is one way, then, in which intuitions about perfection serve as an interpretive
guide.
In saying all of this I presuppose that at least some of our concepts apply
univocally to God, and express truths about what God is like. I take perfection to
be one of these concepts. If that presupposition were false, then the belief that God
is perfect and perfect beings are F would not necessarily support the claim that God
is F. This for the same reason that God is a father, and fathers are male does not
support the thesis that God is male: analogies break down, so one must take
special care in drawing inferences from analogical claims. But, of course, in saying
that perfection is predicated univocally of God, I put myself at odds with views
that motivate extremely apophatic and so-called ‘therapeutic’ approaches to
theology.¹⁴
Chapter 6 represents my best attempt to make sense of and do justice to an
extreme form of apophaticism—one according to which God is in some mean-
ingful sense beyond being. As I explain in the postscript to the chapter,
I ultimately decided that I could not endorse the view that I defended there; but
some of the key ideas made their way into the chapters on divine transcendence in
The Hiddenness of God (Rea 2018). In that book, I endorsed a moderate concep-
tion of divine transcendence according to which predications of intrinsic, sub-
stantive divine attributes involving non-revealed concepts (i.e. concepts whose
content is not fully given in divine revelation¹⁵) are at best analogical.¹⁶ One might
reasonably wonder whether the claim that God is perfect is such a predication and,
if so, what that means for inferences from that claim to other divine attributes.
This is a complicated issue, and my thinking on the topic has shifted in recent
years. The short answer is that I think that the bare claim that God is perfect (as
contrasted, say, with claims like ‘God is perfectly loving’) does not attribute an
intrinsic property to God;¹⁷ so I am under no pressure to give up my view that
perfection is univocally predicated of God. Likewise, then, I do not think that the
doctrine of divine transcendence poses any threat to the kinds of inferences that
are central to perfect being theology.

3. The Trinity

The chapters in Part III of this book focus on the doctrine of the trinity. According
to this doctrine, there is exactly one God, but three divine persons—Father, Son,

¹⁴ Cf. Hector 2011 for discussion.

¹⁵ The content of a concept is ‘fully given in divine revelation’ just if the complete content of that
concept is part of or derivable from the content of divine revelation.
¹⁶ Cf. Rea 2018. ¹⁷ For more detail, see Rea 2019.
  13

and Holy Spirit. A little more precisely, the doctrine includes each of the following
claims:¹⁸

(T1) There is exactly one God, the Father almighty.

(T2) Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not identical.
(T3) Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are consubstantial.

To say that two things are consubstantial is to say that they share a common
nature—i.e. they are members of exactly the same kind. Saying that two or more
divine beings are consubstantial, then, implies that they are identical with respect
to their divinity—they are not divine in different ways, neither is more or less
divine than the other, and if one is a God then the other is a God too.¹⁹
It would be quite an understatement to say that this is a puzzling doctrine. At
first glance (and, many would say, even after a much closer look) it appears to be
incoherent. There are various ways of trying to demonstrate the incoherence. The
one I prefer proceeds as follows: Suppose T1 is true. Then the Father is a God. But,
given what I have just said about consubstantiality, T2 and T3 say that the Son and
the Spirit are distinct from the Father (and from one another) but exactly the same
kind of thing as the Father. So if the Father is a God, then the Son is a God, the
Spirit is a God, and each is distinct from the other two. But then it follows that
there are three Gods, contrary to T1. So the doctrine is incoherent.
Resolving the contradiction means giving up a premise or saying that one of the
inferences is invalid. Chapters 7, 8, 9 and 10 talk at length about what not to say in
response to this problem (if one cares about creedal orthodoxy), about the nature
of monotheism (which is a crucial matter to sort out if one is to understand how
the doctrine of the trinity could be consistent with monotheism), and about the
solution I favour. In short, the solution is to reject the inference from (T4) to (T5):

(T4) The Father is a God, the Son is a God, and the Spirit is a God; and each is
distinct from the other two.
(T5) Therefore: There are three Gods.

The challenge is to explain how this can sensibly be done.

The model I favour begins with the Aristotelian idea that every material object
is a compound of matter and form. The form might be thought of as a complex

¹⁸ This is not the only way of formulating the doctrine. But I choose this formulation because it is
faithful to the creeds, suffices as well as others to raise the problem I wish to discuss, and emphasizes
one central tenet of the doctrine—T3—that is all too often omitted in the contemporary literature. On
the importance of T3, see Rea 2009 or, at length, Ayres 2004.
¹⁹ For purposes here I treat ‘God’ as a kind term rather than a name, obviously in keeping with its
use in T1.
14    :  

organizational property—not a mere shape, but something much richer. For

Aristotle, the form of a thing is its nature. Thus, on this sort of view, St Peter
would be a compound of some matter and the form humanity; St Paul would be a
compound of the same form but different matter. Sharing the same form is what it
means for Peter and Paul to be consubstantial.
Now imagine a case in which some matter has two forms. Suppose, for example,
that being a statue and being a pillar are forms; and suppose an artistic building
contractor fashions a lump of marble that exemplifies both. The contractor has
made a statue. She has also made a pillar. Furthermore, the two compounds are
genuinely distinct: e.g. the pillar could survive erosion that would obliterate the
statue. But surely we don’t want to say that two material objects—a statue and a
pillar—occupy exactly the same place at the same time. What then might we say
about this situation?
What Aristotle would have said is that the statue and the pillar are the same
material object, but not the same thing, or even the same compound. This sounds
odd. How can two things or two compounds count as one material object? Answer:
All there is to being a material object is being some matter that exemplifies at least
one form. So we count one material object wherever we find some matter that
exemplifies at least one form. To say that the statue and the pillar are the same
material object, then, is to say no more or less than that the two things share all of
the same matter in common.
If this view is correct, then the following will be true: The statue is a material
object, the pillar is a material object, the statue is distinct from the pillar but each is
the same material object as the other; so exactly one material object (not two) fills
the region occupied by the statue.
Now let us return to the trinity. God is not material, of course; but we might still
suppose that each divine person has constituents that play the same roles that
matter and form play in material objects.²⁰ If we do, then we can say about the
divine persons something like what we said about the statue and the pillar.
Suppose that the divine nature plays the role of matter in the divine persons;
and suppose that three separate properties (let’s just label them ‘F’, ‘S’, and ‘H’)
play the role of form. Then we can say that all there is to being ‘a God’ is being a
compound of the (one and only) divine nature and some person-making property
(like ‘F’). Furthermore, to say that Father, Son, and Spirit are the same God is just
to say that Father, Son, and Spirit share the same ‘matter’—i.e. the same divine
nature. Father, Son, and Spirit are, on this view, genuinely distinct compounds

²⁰ In fact, I think some of the most important theologians who hammered out the Niceno-
Constantinopolitan formulation of the doctrine of the trinity did think of God in this way. Cf. Rea
2009 for discussion and references.
  15

and genuinely distinct persons; but, precisely by virtue of sharing the same divine
nature, they count as one and the same God.²¹
If all of this is right, then (as in the statue/pillar example) we can say the
following about the divine persons: The Father is a God, the Son is a God, and the
Holy Spirit is a God, but each is the same God as the others; so, since there are no
other Gods, there is exactly one God. The inference from T4 to T5 is therefore
blocked. Furthermore, we can say without qualification that God is a person,
because on any way of resolving the ambiguity of ‘God’, ‘God is a person’ comes
out true. We can even say unqualifiedly that God is triune, so long as we
understand triunity as the attribute (possessed by each divine person) of sharing
one’s ‘matter’ with exactly two other divine persons.

References

Ayres, Lewis. 2004. Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian
Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Baker-Hytch, Max. 2016. ‘Analytic Theology and Analytic Philosophy of Religion’.
Journal of Analytic Theology 4: 347–61.
Bavinck, Hermann. 2003. Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 1: Prolegomena. Grand Rapids,
MI: Baker Academic.
Berkhof, Louis. 1992. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co.
Bitar, Ray Paul. 2013. ‘The Wisdom of Clarity and Coherence in Analytic Theology’.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81: 578–85.
Christian Reformed Church. 1988. Ecumenical Creeds and Reformed Confessions.
Grand Rapids, MI: CRC Publications.
Couenhoven, Jesse. 2013. ‘Fodge-Ogs and HedgeOxes’. Journal of the American
Academy of Religion 81: 586–91.
Hector, Kevin. 2011. Theology without Metaphysics: God, Language and the Spirit of
Recognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lindbeck, George A. 1984. The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a
Postliberal Age. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
McCall, Thomas H. 2015. An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology. Downers
Grove, IL: IVP Academic.
McCall, Thomas H. and Timothy Pawl. 2018. ‘Why a Catholic Theologian Can Be an
Analytic Theologian by Tom McCall and Timothy Pawl’. BLOGOS: http://blogos.

²¹ Why do Peter and Paul not count as two persons but one human being? Because, unlike the divine
nature, human nature does not play the role of matter.
16    :  

wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2018/02/15/why-a-catholic-theologian-can-be-an-analytic-theo
logian/.
Macdonald, Paul A., Jr. 2014. ‘Analytic Theology: A Summary, Evaluation, and
Defense’. Modern Theology 30: 32–65.
Oliver, Simon. 2010. ‘Review of Crisp and Rea, eds., Analytic Theology’. International
Journal of Systematic Theology 12: 464–75.
Rea, Michael. 2009. ‘The Trinity’. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology,
403–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rea, Michael. 2013a. ‘Analytic Theology: Précis’. Journal of the American Academy of
Religion 81: 573–7.
Rea, Michael. 2013b. ‘Analytic Theology Roundtable: Replies to Bitar, Couenhoven,
and Wood’. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81: 614–19. https://doi.
org/10.1093/jaarel/lft044.
Rea, Michael. 2017. ‘(Reformed) Protestantism’. In Inter-Christian Philosophical
Dialogues, edited by Graham Oppy and Nick Trakakis, 4: 67–88. London: Routledge.
Rea, Michael. 2018. The Hiddenness of God. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rea, Michael. 2019. ‘Deflating Perfect Being Theology’. Unpublished ms.
Sarrisky, Darren. 2018. ‘Biblical Interpretation and Analytic Reflection’. Journal of
Analytic Theology 6: 162–82.
Speaks, Jeff. 2018. The Greatest Possible Being. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Vanhoozer, Kevin J. 2017a. ‘Analytic Theology as Sapiential Theology: A Response to
Jordan Wessling’. Open Theology 3 (1): 539–45. https://doi.org/10.1515/opth-2017-
0041.
Vanhoozer, Kevin. 2017b. ‘Analytics, Poetics, and the Mission of Dogmatic Discourse’.
In The Task of Dogmatics: Explorations in Theological Method, edited by Oliver
D. Crisp and Fred Sanders, 23–48. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
Wessling, Jordan. 2017. ‘Analytic Theology as Sapiential Theology: Reflections on a
Concern Raised by Kevin J. Vanhoozer’. Open Theology 3: 380–96. https://doi.org/
10.1515/opth-2017-0030.
Westerholm, Martin. 2019. ‘Analytic Theology and Contemporary Inquiry’.
International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 80: 230–54.
Wood, William. 2009. ‘On the New Analytic Theology: The Road Less Travelled’.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 77: 941–60.
Wood, William. 2013a. ‘Analytic Theology and the Academic Study of Religion’. Paper
presented at the Logos Workshop in Philosophical Theology, University of Notre Dame.
Wood, William. 2013b. ‘Philosophical Theology in the Religious Studies Academy:
Some Questions for Analytic Theologians’. Journal of the American Academy of
Religion 81: 592–600.
Wood, William. 2014. ‘Analytic Theology as a Way of Life’. Journal of Analytic
Theology 2: 43–60.
 1
Realism in Theology and Metaphysics

Since the early 2000s, increasing attention has been paid in two separate
disciplines to questions about realism and ontological commitment. The discip-
lines are analytic metaphysics on the one hand, and theology on the other. In this
chapter, I shall discuss two arguments for the conclusion that realism in theology
and metaphysics—that is, a realist treatment of doctrines in theology and
metaphysics—is untenable.¹
‘Realism’ is variously defined in the literature. For purposes here, I shall adopt
the following characterizations:

• where ‘x’ is a singular term, realism about x is the view that there is a y such
that x = y
• where ‘F’ is a putative kind-term, realism about Fs is the view that there are
Fs and that F is a genuine kind-term
• where ‘T’ refers to the linguistic expression of some claim, theory, or
doctrine, to interpret or treat T realistically is (a) to interpret T as having
an objective truth-value (and so to interpret it as something other than a
mere evocative metaphor or expression of tastes, attitudes, or values); and (b)
to interpret T in such a way that it has realist truth-conditions—ie., it is true
only if realism about the xs and Fs putatively referred to in the theory is true.
• where ‘D’ refers to a discipline (like metaphysics or theology), realism in D is
or involves interpreting the canonical statements of theories or doctrines in
D realistically.

Thus, one way to be an anti-realist about God, say, is to affirm explicitly that
there is no such being as God; but another way to be an anti-realist about God is to
say, for example, that ‘God exists’ expresses a truth, but that the truth it expresses
isn’t that there is an x such that x = God. Likewise, one way to be an anti-realist
about beliefs, say, is to affirm explicitly that there are no such things as beliefs; but
another way to be an anti-realist about beliefs is to offer paraphrases of belief-talk

¹ By ‘theology’ in the present context I have primarily in mind those sub-disciplines of theology that
go by such labels as ‘systematic theology’, ‘dogmatic theology’, ‘philosophical theology’, and the like.
The arguments of this chapter do not (to my mind, anyway) have any obvious bearing on (say)
historical and biblical theology or the various kinds of biblical criticism that are practised in
contemporary theology departments.

Essays in Analytic Theology: Volume I. Michael C. Rea, Oxford University Press (2020). © Michael C. Rea.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198866800.003.0002
20    :  

according to which ‘there are beliefs’ expresses a truth, but the term ‘belief ’ doesn’t
pick out a genuine kind of mental state. Furthermore, in light of the above
characterizations, theists and atheists alike can interpret the same theological claims
realistically. Indeed, their disagreement will most perspicuously be expressed as a
disagreement over the truth value of the claim ‘God exists’ realistically interpreted.
One motivation for doubting that we should interpret doctrines in metaphysics
or theology realistically is the vague worry that practitioners of both disciplines are
spinning out theories with no reliable way of determining which of the competing
theories is true. The worry is that the practitioners of each discipline are simply
talking past one another, that their ‘debates’ lack substance, and that their theories
don’t tell us anything of interest about the world or its inhabitants. In short,
theorizing in both disciplines is but idle word play; and so it is doubtful that the
theories in either discipline have objective truth values or truth values with realist
truth conditions.
Those caught in the grip of this worry then face the question of what to do with
metaphysics and theology. In the case of metaphysics, the verdict is often that we
should simply view it as a game and either stop playing it or else leave it to
weekends and spend our day jobs on more serious activities—like, perhaps,
philosophy of science. Theology is more complicated because many of the object-
ors still want to maintain that there is some value in religion, and they recognize
that the sentences typically taken to express the core doctrines of religions like
Christianity still have some value even if they can’t be taken with literal serious-
ness. Indeed, whereas the objectors to metaphysical realism tend also to be
objectors to metaphysics in general, the objectors to theological realism often
style themselves as people interested in saving religion from the pernicious
influence of modernism, fundamentalism, ontotheology, or other villains. Still,
for many of us, theology is of far lesser interest and import if the anti-realist
verdict is allowed to stand. If, in the end, the theories produced by theology are not
fitting objects for belief, it is hard to see why we should take the discipline very
seriously.
In this chapter, I want to examine two ways of making the vague worry more
precise. In God and Realism, Peter Byrne (2003) offers an argument against
realism in theology that is readily modified to cut against realism in metaphysics
as well. And in The Empirical Stance, Bas van Fraassen (2002) offers an argument
against the very practice of analytic metaphysics that is both readily seen as an
argument against realism in metaphysics and easily adapted into an argument
against realism in theology. In what follows, I will examine these two arguments
and defend four conclusions: first, that Byrne’s argument is answerable; second,
that van Fraassen’s argument is unanswerable if we adopt what he calls the
‘empirical stance’; third, that there is (and can be) absolutely no reason why
metaphysicians or theologians ought to adopt the empirical stance; and, finally,
      21

that for those who don’t adopt the empirical stance, van Fraassen’s objections can
be answered in precisely the same way as we answer Byrne’s.
The chapter has three sections. In the first, I briefly present and respond to
Byrne’s argument against theological realism. In the second, I present van
Fraassen’s argument against analytic metaphysics and I show how, if sound, it
constitutes a reason to reject both metaphysical and theological realism. Finally,
I show how van Fraassen can be answered. Obviously what I am doing here falls
far short of a full-blown defence of realism in either metaphysics or theology. But
the objections raised by van Fraassen and Byrne are tokens of a type of objection
that I think is rather widely endorsed among those who are suspicious of these two
brands of realism. Thus, responding to those objections constitutes an important
first step in the direction of a defence.

1. Byrne’s Argument

Peter Byrne sums up his argument against theological realism as follows:²

(1) All disciplines of thought that can be interpreted realistically show the
accumulation of reliable belief.
(2) Theology does not show the accumulation of reliable belief.
(3) Therefore, theology cannot be interpreted realistically.

Byrne declares that this argument is ‘simple’ (2003: 162) and ‘decisive’ (2003:
161). As a matter of fact, however, it is no simple matter at all to figure out
precisely what Byrne means by terms like ‘interpreted realistically’ or ‘show the
accumulation of reliable belief ’; nor is it a simple matter to figure out why exactly
he thinks that the two premises of the argument are true. Since time will not
permit the sort of detailed exegetical discussion it would take to sort out the
terminological issues, I will simply offer glosses that I think are faithful to what
Byrne was aiming at. I will then try to reconstruct as best I can his defence of the
premises. Readers who think that the resulting product is not something Byrne
would be happy with are welcome to take the argument of the present section as
one of my own invention (albeit inspired by the work of Byrne and others) and
offered primarily as a prelude to the discussion of van Fraassen.
Byrne seems to think that to interpret a discipline of thought realistically is just
to see it as the sort of discipline whose methods of enquiry are successfully aimed
at truth, whose theories are grounded in and responsive to evidence, and whose

² Byrne 2003: 162.

22    :  

conclusions are intended to tell us the literal, objective truth about the world.³
Thus, those disciplines which we can interpret realistically in Byrne’s sense are
presumably just those disciplines whose theories we can sensibly interpret realis-
tically in my sense.
Byrne also seems to think that a discipline shows the accumulation of reliable
belief just in case it generates an increasing number of statements that we can
rationally expect not to be contradicted by future well-established theories in the
discipline.⁴ Reliable beliefs in a discipline D are just those beliefs that can be
expected to remain permanently sanctioned by D’s theoretical apparatus.⁵ To say
that a belief is reliable, then, is not to say that it is likely to be true (though it might
in fact turn out that the reliable beliefs of a discipline are just the ones that are
likely to be true). Rather, it is just to say that it is unlikely to be overturned by
future evidence or theoretical developments.
Given all of this, Byrne’s argument might be restated as follows: Consider some
discipline D. We can take D’s theories as worthy of belief and as aiming to tell us
the literal truth about the world only if the practice of D over time generates an
increasing number of statements that we can rationally expect not to be contra-
dicted by future well-established theories in D. But we don’t find such an increase
of ‘reliable belief ’ in theology. Thus, we should not treat theological theories as
worthy of belief or as aiming to tell us the literal truth about the world. And, we
might add, what goes for theology also goes for metaphysics: we don’t find
the accumulation of reliable belief in that discipline either. Thus, we should not
be realists about theories in metaphysics either.
So much for the argument. Now, what shall we think of the premises? Let us
begin by observing that neither of the premises is obviously true. A relatively
narrow discipline that hits on the truth right at the outset will show no accumu-
lation of belief at all; but that by itself is not obviously a reason to doubt that it is to
be interpreted realistically. Thus, there is prima facie reason to think that premise

³ Cf. Byrne 2003: ch. 1, passim and, especially, pp. 155–9. On p. 159, Byrne offers what might appear
as an outright definition of what it is to interpret a discipline of thought realistically. He says: ‘We have
reached the conclusion that to interpret a discipline of thought realistically is to see its evolving
conclusions as the outcome of real-world influences.’ But, of course, this offers us nothing by way of
precision; for, after all, superstitions, prejudices, fears and ambitions, peer pressure and other socio-
logical influences, and so on are all ‘real-world influences’. Every discipline—from biology and
chemistry on the one hand to astrology and iridology on the other—is such that its ‘evolving
conclusions’ are the outcomes of ‘real-world influences’. But, of course, this can’t be what Byrne has
in mind. To find out what he has in mind, however, we have to look elsewhere and then offer a gloss;
and my own view is that if we do this, and if we do it in the most charitable way possible, we arrive at
something like the gloss that I have just offered.
⁴ Cf., especially, Byrne 2003: 159–61.
⁵ Note, however, that this definition of reliable belief leaves open the possibility that reliable beliefs
in one discipline might be contradicted by reliable beliefs in another discipline. If we were looking for
sufficient conditions for the realistic interpretation of a discipline, we would want to rule this out. But
since Byrne is concerned to show that theology fails to meet a necessary condition for being interpreted
realistically, I doubt that this problem will cause much trouble for present purposes.
      23

(1) is false. Moreover, many branches of theology within Christendom seem

clearly to have shown the accumulation of reliable belief (as defined above) over
the centuries. In the Catholic Church, for example, the Nicene Creed and the
Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent—to name just two of a variety of
doctrinal standards within Catholicism—are not at all likely to be contradicted by
future developments in (official) Catholic theology. The Nicene Creed and the
Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent are explications of and elaborations
on doctrines that the Catholic Church claims to have found in scripture. They
were needed precisely because their contents were not explicitly part of Christian
belief prior to their formulation—so, in other words, they constitute genuine
theoretical developments rather than being, like the scriptures, mere sources for
theological reflection. Though plenty of Roman Catholics, including Roman
Catholic theologians, disagree with them in part or in their entirety, the Catholic
Church is set up in such a way that we can be virtually certain that they will not be
contradicted by future established theories in official Catholic theology. Likewise,
and for similar reasons, it is highly unlikely that either the Nicene Creed or
the Westminster Confession will be contradicted by future developments in
(traditional, orthodox) Presbyterian theology—here not because the Presbyterian
Church is set up so as to guarantee that those doctrinal standards will be preserved,
but rather because theology as it is practised by those with a traditional, orthodox
bent is not at all revisionary in the way that certain other brands of theology might
be.⁶ And, of course, similar things might be said for various other denominational
theologies. Thus, there is prima facie reason to reject premise (2) as well.⁷ What then
are Byrne’s arguments for these premises?
Premise (2), oddly enough, is offered without any argument at all. Byrne simply
declares that it is obviously true, and then follows that declaration with remarks
that effectively just restate and elaborate on it. Thus, he writes:

Consider this question: do we know anything more about God than we did at the
dawn of Christian theology nearly 2,000 years ago? Answer: No. During that

⁶ Moreover, even the revisionists in the Presbyterian camp will likely agree on permanence of
conditional claims to the effect that, given an appropriately strong view of the inspiration and
infallibility of the Bible, the doctrines expressed in the Nicene Creed, the Westminster Confession,
and various other doctrinal standards are true.
⁷ Is it really fair, though, to treat official Catholic theology, or traditional, orthodox Presbyterian
theology as disciplines in their own right, rather than as branches of a single discipline—theology? It is
hard to see why not; but, in the end, nothing hinges on treating them as such. For surely Byrne would
not countenance this sort of reply to his argument: ‘Granted, we cannot interpret theology realistically.
But that doesn’t matter; for all I claim is that we can interpret the distinct theory-building enterprise of
Catholic theology realistically.’ But so far as I can tell, the only argument he has against this reply is an
adapted version of the argument currently under discussion: i.e. a theory-building enterprise can be
interpreted realistically only if it shows the accumulation of reliable belief; but in these various theory-
building enterprises there has been no accumulation of reliable belief. If this is the argument he would
use, then my reply is as above: these theory-building enterprises have shown the accumulation of
reliable belief after all.
24    :  

period many theological theories have come and gone in Christian thought, but
there has been no accumulation of insight and discovery whatsoever. The stock
of reliable beliefs about the Christian God, about its attributes and plans, has not
increased one iota . . . . Theology has not possessed intellectual traditions and
modes of discovery [analogous to those in science] to enable its practitioners to
be open to influences from divine reality and its practitioners have not been put
in cognitive contact with divine reality. The academic discipline of theology is
simply not productive of reliable beliefs about God—or about anything else for
that matter. It cannot be understood realistically. QED. (2003: 162)

But why should we believe any of this? The stock of reliable beliefs about the
Christian God has not increased one iota? Again, it is hard to take this claim at all
seriously in light of what we know of the histories of Catholic theology, traditional
Presbyterian theology, and any of a number of other denominational theologies
within Christendom. The ‘QED’ at the end of the paragraph seems, to put it
mildly, a bit premature.
Premise (2), then, is a natural target for resistance. But for present purposes
I want to waive worries about premise (2) and focus instead on premise (1). Here
Byrne does want to offer argument; though what the argument amounts to,
exactly, is rather hard to tell. What he says explicitly in favour of (1) is just this:
‘Premise (1) has been established through consideration of the example of science’
(162). What we find, however, upon reviewing his consideration of the example of
science is that, really, he has defended not (1) but (1a):

(1a) Disciplines that show the accumulation of reliable belief are to be inter-
preted realistically.

And what he offers in support of (1a) is just a version of the familiar ‘no miracles’
argument for scientific realism. In his words:

The story of science is a human story, but one which is comprehensible only if we
assume that human theory and practice are being in part, at least, shaped by what
the world is really like. If there is a progressive, cumulative structure to the
development of science, this strongly suggests real-world cognitive contact and
influence; otherwise the accumulation of reliable belief would be the merest
accident. (2003: 156)

A generalization on this argument yields (1a); but it yields nothing close to (1).
Nevertheless, there is an argument for (1) lurking in the neighbourhood.
Suppose we endorse the following premises:

(1b) For any discipline D, there is no initial presumption that D is to be

interpreted realistically.
      25

(1c) There can be no evidence supporting a realistic interpretation of a discipline

apart from the accumulation of reliable belief.
(1d) Absent an initial presumption for interpreting a discipline D realistically,
and absent evidence that D is to be interpreted realistically, D cannot rationally be
interpreted realistically.

If we do endorse (1b)–(1d), and if we are persuaded by Byrne’s argument for (1a),

then we have a ready argument for (1).
The idea, then, is something like this: For any discipline D, the practitioners
of D aren’t entitled simply to adopt, without argument, a realist interpretation of
D. Rather, if we want to interpret D realistically, we need to do so on the basis of
evidence—evidence that D is really putting us in touch with the truth about things.
But what evidence could we possibly acquire? In the case of science, we have
(allegedly) the accumulation of reliable belief. And it is, one might think, very hard
to explain how we could have that if science weren’t putting us in touch with the
truth about things. But absent the accumulation of reliable belief, what other
evidence could we have for interpreting science realistically? What other phenom-
enon would be best explained by the supposition that science, or any other
discipline, is putting us in touch with truth? Apparently none. Thus, the only
disciplines that we are entitled to interpret realistically are those that show the
accumulation of reliable belief—which is just to say that premise (1) is true.
The trouble with this line of reasoning is just that, if it were sound, we would
face the threat of global scepticism. Let D be the discipline of Detecting Reliable
Beliefs (DRB). (If you prefer, you could treat it as the discipline for detecting
success, and then fill in your favorite criterion for success. But since we’re talking
about Byrne, we’ll focus on his.) Practitioners of DRB—all of us, I suppose, to
some extent or another—are engaged in the enterprise of trying to find out which,
if any, of their beliefs count as reliable. Moreover, if Byrne is correct about
the criteria for interpreting a discipline realistically, realism about any other
discipline is predicated in part on a realist interpretation of DRB. That is, unless
we assume that the claims of DRB have objective truth values (and, indeed, that
they tell us the objective truth about things), we will not be entitled to believe that
any discipline has shown the accumulation of reliable belief.⁸ And if we are not

⁸ Suppose you think that some claim of DRB has a truth value, but that the truth value is not
objective. Thus, suppose you think something like this: ‘It is true, but only true-for-me, that B1–Bn are
reliable beliefs in discipline D.’ Given our understanding of reliable belief, this would seem to be
equivalent to the view that you, but not necessarily anyone else, can rationally expect that B1–Bn
will be permanently sanctioned parts of D’s theoretical apparatus. But isn’t this claim self-
undermining? Note that the claim isn’t equivalent to the (perhaps perfectly sensible) claim that you
have evidence E that (for all you know) nobody else has, and that given this, it is objectively rational for
you (but not necessarily for anyone lacking E) to believe that B1–Bn will be permanently sanctioned
parts of D’s theoretical apparatus. Rather, if it is really only true-for-you that B1–Bn are reliable beliefs
in D, the idea is that even people in your same epistemic position might not rationally be able to expect
26    :  

entitled to believe that any discipline has shown the accumulation of reliable
belief, then (by Byrne’s lights), we cannot interpret any discipline realistically.
So can we interpret the theories of DRB realistically? Well, following Byrne’s
reasoning, in order to assess this question we should ask: Has DRB itself shown
the accumulation of reliable belief? There are two ways of trying to answer this
question. Practitioners of DRB might assume from the outset (until given reason
to do otherwise) that the methods they employ in practising DRB are successfully
aimed at truth; and, on the basis of this assumption, they will likely say ‘yes, DRB
has shown the accumulation of reliable belief ’. Note, however, that these practi-
tioners of DRB are interpreting DRB realistically, and they are doing so not on the
basis of its success, but rather in advance of any awareness of its success. Indeed,
their assessment of DRB’s success depends on their realist interpretation of
DRB. On the other hand, practitioners of DRB might refrain from interpreting
DRB realistically until they have independent evidence that DRB has shown the
accumulation of reliable belief. But this will be a long wait; for, after all, any mode
of detecting whether DRB has shown the accumulation of reliable belief will itself
fall under the scope of DRB.
The upshot, then, is this: If you can’t interpret a discipline realistically until it
has shown the accumulation of reliable belief, then you won’t ever be able to
interpret DRB realistically. And if you can’t interpret DRB realistically, then you
can’t interpret any discipline realistically. But Byrne acknowledges that some
disciplines can be interpreted realistically. Thus, he must concede that at least
some disciplines can be interpreted realistically even if they haven’t shown the
accumulation of reliable belief. In the case of DRB, it seems, in fact, that there is a
rational initial presumption that DRB is to be interpreted realistically, contrary to
(1b) above. And, for all we know, there might be other disciplines for which there
is evidence, but of an entirely different sort, that supports a realist interpretation of
the discipline—contrary to (1c). Absent (1b) and (1c), however, there is no clear
argument for (1). And so Byrne’s argument fails—even ignoring worries about (2).
One might object that there is no such discipline as DRB; thus, my argument
against Byrne—which apparently rests on the supposition that there is such a
discipline—fails. I admit that it seems odd to characterize DRB as a discipline.
After all, it is hard to imagine awarding university degrees in DRB, or applying for
National Endowment for the Humanities or National Science Foundation funding
to pursue DRB. But, really, the objection does not rest in any important way upon
the supposition that the criteria for discipline-individuation allow us to treat DRB
as a discipline. For whatever else DRB happens to be, it is, at the very least, a

that B1–Bn will be permanently sanctioned by D. But this fact by itself counts as good reason to
question whether practitioners of D will continue to sanction B1–Bn. Thus, in affirming that it is only
true for you that B1–Bn can rationally be expected to be permanently sanctioned by D, you acquire a
defeater for the belief that B1–Bn will always be sanctioned by D; and so it becomes irrational for you to
expect that B1–Bn will be permanently sanctioned by D.
      27

theory-building activity. And what the argument just presented shows is that at
least some theory-building activities must be interpreted realistically in the
absence of the accumulation of reliable belief. But if that is right, then the door
is open for thinking that other theory-building activities—including, for all we
know, full-blown disciplines (whatever exactly a ‘discipline’ amounts to in Byrne’s
usage) can be interpreted realistically in the absence of the accumulation of
reliable belief.
In closing this section, I would like to note a connection between my argument
here and some conclusions that I have defended elsewhere. In World Without
Design: The Ontological Consequences of Naturalism (Rea 2002), I argued that,
assuming we want to form beliefs on the basis of evidence, we cannot avoid
treating at least some sources of evidence as basic sources, where a source is
treated as basic just in case it is trusted as reliable in the absence of evidence for its
reliability. The reason is simple: in order to acquire or appreciate evidence for the
claim that a source S is reliable, one must either invoke evidence from some
distinct source S*, or one must invoke evidence from S itself. Since we do not
have infinitely many sources of evidence, it follows that at least one of our sources
is such that some, if not all, of the evidence we have in support of its reliability
comes from the source itself. But in such a case, our disposition to trust the source
precedes our having evidence for its reliability. Thus, our trust in the source does
not depend on the evidence—even if, in the end, our belief that the source is
reliable does depend (circularly) on the evidence. So, assuming it is rational for us
to trust any of our sources of evidence as reliable, it must be rational to treat at
least one of them as basic.
But if all that is right, then (ceteris paribus) it will be rational to interpret
realistically any discipline that can be practised just by relying on basic sources,
and furthermore, it will be rational to do so in advance of any evidence of success.
Suppose, for example, we (rationally) treat source S as basic. Then, from our point
of view, source S is a reliable source of evidence. Other things being equal, then, it
will be rational for us to form beliefs on the basis of evidence garnered from source
S. In other words, propositions supported by evidence from S will be fitting objects
of belief for us. But then, of course, it follows that (ceteris paribus—i.e., absent
counterevidence from other sources, strange circumstances, and so on) the con-
clusions of any discipline that can be practised just by relying on S will be fitting
objects for belief. In other words, it will be rational for us to believe those
conclusions as expressions of the literal, objective truth about the world. Thus,
by definition, it will be rational for us to interpret the discipline realistically.
Of course, one might try to oppose realism in theology or metaphysics by
arguing that these disciplines inevitably rely on evidence from sources that are not
rationally treated as basic, or by arguing that they are in some other way defective;
but those would be very different arguments, and ones that have yet to appear in
the literature in any sort of developed form.
28    :  

2. Van Fraassen

I now want to turn to a different sort of challenge: an objection to the very

enterprise of metaphysics that, if sound, carries over to theology as well. The
objection is raised by Bas van Fraassen in the opening chapter of The Empirical
Stance.
According to van Fraassen, analytic ontology—which, for purposes here, I am
taking to be identical to the discipline of metaphysics—aims to answer questions
that science doesn’t ask, and to do so in the same way that science answers
its questions. What does this mean exactly? Primarily, it means that metaphys-
icians posit things to do explanatory work, and then they try to justify the
acceptance of their explanatory posits by appeal to the sorts of virtues that justify
the acceptance of scientific explanations—not virtues like predictive success and
increased ability to control nature, however; rather, virtues like explanatory
power, simplicity, elegance, conservatism, and the like. (For convenience, I shall
refer to the latter sorts of virtues as ‘explanatory virtues’. In doing so, however, I do
not mean to make any presuppositions about whether or to what extent the virtues
that I am calling ‘explanatory’ can be distinguished from putatively non-
explanatory virtues like empirical adequacy; nor do I mean to make any presup-
positions about whether the allegedly different explanatory virtues can be distin-
guished from one another.)
Thus construed, analytic ontology is open to two objections.
The first objection is that relevant differences between science and ontology
cast doubt on the justification for accepting the ontologist’s explanatory posits.
Van Fraassen lays out the objection as follows:

You will have understood me correctly if you now see science and analytic
ontology caught in a Pascalian wager . . . . If the wager is on a choice of theories
or hypotheses, then from a God’s-eye view, success consists in selecting the true
and failure in choosing the false . . . . As in all success and failure, however,
although there is value in winning as such, there are also collateral value and
damage that win and loss bring along with them . . . . In science, the stakes are
great for all of us: safety, food, shelter, communication, all the preconditions for
life in peace and justice that a successful science can enhance. The risk of
acquiring some false beliefs matters little in comparison. Most important for us,
here, the acquisition of false beliefs by itself, apart from their practical empirical
consequences, is no great matter in its contrast class of practical risk and gain.
That is very far from how it is in metaphysics. There the gains to be contemplated
are those of having true beliefs . . . and of being in a position to explain . . . . The
risk is precisely that of acquiring false beliefs . . . . Where is the metaphysician
who shows us how likely it is that inference to the best explanation in ontology
      29

will lead to true conclusions? Why is he or she missing? Where is the metaphys-
ician who makes the case that the gain of explanatory power outweighs the risk of
ending up with a tissue of falsehoods? (2002: 15–16; emphasis mine)

The argument, in sum, seems just to be this: False belief, as such, is to be avoided;
and there is no evidence that explanatory virtues lead us to true belief. Thus, we are
justified (if at all, one might add) in forming beliefs on the basis of best-
explanation arguments only if the gain from doing so outweighs the risk. In
science, we might have a case for the conclusion that gain outweighs risk; but
not in metaphysics.⁹ Thus, absent some argument for the conclusion that infer-
ence to the best explanation in metaphysics is likely to lead us to the truth (and
given that there is something rather absurd about constructing metaphysical
theories while at the same time withholding belief in them and suspending
judgment about their explanatory status), one ought not to engage in metaphysics
at all.
Of course, one might note that there are arguments in the literature for the
conclusion that explanatory virtues are truth-indicative. But such arguments
typically focus on the status of explanatory virtues as criteria for theory choice
in science rather than metaphysics; and, more importantly, they typically reason
from the premise that this or that feature of science is hard to explain apart from
the assumption that choosing theories on the basis of certain explanatory virtues is
a reliable way of reaching the truth to the conclusion that, therefore, the assump-
tion in question is true. But according to van Fraassen, the demand for explan-
ations is precisely what good empiricists aim to resist.¹⁰ In other words: If one is
already committed to the metaphysical enterprise, one will take seriously the
demand for explanation, and, in doing so, one may well be led to the conclusion
that choosing theories on the basis of their explanatory power (among other
virtues) is a reliable way of getting to the truth. But if the question is why we
should be committed to the metaphysical enterprise in the first place, then argu-
ments that presuppose a need for explaining things will be impotent. Thus, the
empiricist will be completely unmoved by the usual arguments for the claim that
explanatory virtues are truth-indicative.
But, one might wonder, why should metaphysicians care whether empiricists
are moved by replies to their objections? As it turns out, I think that they should
not care; and I think that, in the end, van Fraassen’s objections against metaphys-
ics are, at best, grumblings that express the empiricist distaste for metaphysics but
that will not and should not convince the unconvinced that the distaste ought to

⁹ Here I take it that van Fraassen is suspending, for the sake of argument, his view—defended at
length in The Scientific Image (van Fraassen 1980)—that explanation is not the aim of science, and that
believing that scientific theories provide true explanations is to take an objectionably metaphysical view
of science.
¹⁰ On this, see (for example) van Fraassen’s reply to Richard Boyd in van Fraassen 1985.
30    :  

be shared. Showing this, however, will take a bit of argument—argument that is

best left until after van Fraassen’s second objection has been presented.
The second objection is that the procedure of explanation via theoretical posit
results in the creation of ‘simulacra’ which then replace the real things that we aim
to be theorizing about and thereby make our theoretical activity into an idle
exercise in wordplay. So, for example, van Fraassen argues that when philosophers
ask the question ‘Does the world exist’, what they inevitably do is to make the
question rigorous with technical definitions of ‘world’ and related terms that map
on to some but not nearly all uses of the term ‘world’ and then stipulate that the
world exists if, and only if, the world as they have defined it exists. He notes that
one might just as well introduce a new technical term—‘Sworld’, for example—
and then ask whether the Sworld exists. The trouble, of course, is that we wouldn’t
really care about the answer—unless we had reason to think that ‘the world exists’
means the same thing as ‘the Sworld exists’. But therein lies the rub; for, after all, it
doesn’t, exactly. As van Fraassen puts it:

“Sworld” is intelligibly related to “world,” taking over a carefully selected family

of uses, regimenting them, and is then used to make new, logically contingent,
fully intelligible assertions. If we are careful not to let other usages of “world”
creep back into our professional discourse, then “the world exists” is a perfectly
good way of saying “the Sworld exists.”
The unfortunate negative verdict forced on us by this . . . line of reasoning, which
grants sufficiency to such lenient standards [of meaningfulness], is that it is very
easy, all too easy, to make sense. We can sit in our closets and in a perfectly
meaningful way, kneading and manipulating the language, create new theories of
everything and thereby important contributions to ontology. In other words, to
put it a little more bluntly, this “word play” we [are engaged in] is merely idle
world play; although shown to be meaningful, it is merely idle world play
nevertheless. (2002: 27)

In sum, then, ontologists who try to answer the question ‘Does the world exist?’ in
the way just described inevitably replace talk of the world with talk of a
simulacrum—the Sworld. But the simulacrum isn’t what we care about when we
ask the question the ontologist is trying to answer; and so the ontologist is engaged
in a project that is somewhat removed from our real interests and concerns.
So go van Fraassen’s objections against metaphysics. I’ll consider responses in a
moment; but first I want to comment briefly on how these objections might carry
over to theology. It is clear that van Fraassen thinks that they do—or, at any rate,
that they carry over to some kinds of theology—for some of the examples he uses
are examples drawn from the philosophy of religion. I take it that, as applied to
theology, the objections are just these: (a) there are no empirically detectable
      31

payoffs for the procedure of explanation by theoretical posit in theology, and (b)
the God that is talked about in that part of theology that resembles or overlaps
with analytic philosophy of religion is a simulacrum—either different from the
real God, or else simply stipulated to be identical to the real God. Obviously not all
of theology is indicted by these objections. But at least two kinds probably will be:
so-called perfect being theology, an approach adopted by many medieval and
contemporary analytic philosophers that attributes properties to God (such as
simplicity and changelessness) on the basis of intuitions about perfection; and
systematic and philosophical theology, at least insofar as these activities involve a
certain amount of explanatory postulation in the effort to build detailed theories
out of the data provided by divine revelation and religious experience. And, again,
the objection will be that perfect being theology results in the creation of a
simulacrum (one which privileges for theological purposes the characterization
of God as perfect over characterizations of God as our parent, our employer, our
shepherd, and so on), and that the explanations offered by systematic and
philosophical theology have no payoffs that outweigh the risks associated with
treating explanatory power as a theoretical virtue.
But now what shall we think of these objections? Let us begin with the
‘simulacrum’ objection. And here, I think, it will be helpful to begin by consid-
ering a rather simple-minded response to van Fraassen. The objection, again, is
that metaphysicians aren’t talking about things that we care about: they talk
about the Sworld rather than the world; they talk about the God of the philo-
sophers rather than about God; and so on. But, one might wonder, how do we
know that the Sworld isn’t the world? How do we know that the God of the
philosophers isn’t God? How, in other words, do we know that these things are
just simulacra? It seems, in fact, that we can’t know unless we already have a
metaphysical story to tell about the nature of the world or about the nature of
God. But, of course, to have a metaphysical story to tell, we’d have to do some
metaphysics.
But the response isn’t quite right. It’s not true that the only way to know that
you’ve constructed a simulacrum is by comparing the object of your discourse
with the real thing. The other way to know that you’ve constructed a simulacrum
is by knowing that constructing simulacra is pretty much all you can do. And here,
I think, we start to get at the real objection in van Fraassen’s text. As I see it, the
concern is just this: Metaphysicians are in the business of offering explanations by
postulate. We postulate definitions, entities, properties, and the like; and we use
our postulates to build theories that explain the world to us. Our postulates are by
their very nature props and models—‘simulacra’, if you will, that may or may not
manage to represent the things they are about in a full and accurate way. And—
this is the concern—precisely because we have no evidence that explanation by
postulate is a reliable way of reaching the truth, we have no way of knowing the
extent to which simulacra represent the things that they are about. To the extent,
32    :  

then, that we try to force our talk about (say) God or the world to conform to our
idea of the God of the philosophers or of the Sworld, we change the subject from
something we know and recognize to something that, for all we know, may be
(and probably is) at best a shadow of the thing we actually care about.

3. Two Stances

Suppose we grant that the, or a, defining characteristic of analytic metaphysics

(and of certain theological enterprises as well) is a willingness to engage in
explanation by theoretical postulate. How shall we address the sceptical worry
raised at the end of the previous section—the worry, in short, that we have no
evidence that the methods of metaphysics are reliable and therefore we have no
reason to think that the simulacra we construct bear any important relation to the
things we care about? The answer, so I shall argue, just depends on which of two
‘stances’ we adopt: the empirical stance or the metaphysical stance.
According to van Fraassen, empiricism is a philosophical position that involves,
in addition to a familiar sort of respect for science, empirical investigation,
undogmatic theorizing, and the like, the following two values, tendencies, or
attitudes:

(a) a rejection of demands for explanation at certain crucial points, and

(b) a strong dissatisfaction with explanations (even if called for) that proceed
by postulation.

It is (a) and (b), he thinks, that separates empiricists from metaphysicians.

Moreover, empiricism, on his view, is not a belief or a philosophical thesis. Rather,
it is a stance: an ‘attitude, commitment, approach, a cluster of such—possibly
including some propositional attitudes such as beliefs as well’ (2002: 48–9). To
adopt empiricism, or the empirical stance, then, is to adopt the characteristic
attitudes, commitments, and so on of the empiricist tradition—including (a) and
(b). And we might go on to say that, in contrast with the empirical stance there is
also a metaphysical stance—a stance characterized in part by a willingness to
embrace demands for explanation and to be satisfied with explanations that
proceed by postulation.
So far as I can tell, those who adopt the empirical stance can have no answer to
van Fraassen’s objections against metaphysics. We have already conceded for the
sake of argument that metaphysics involves offering explanations by postulation;
and, so far as I can tell, apart from the sorts of explanatory arguments already in
the literature, there is no argument forthcoming for the conclusion that selecting
theories on the basis of explanatory virtues is, in general, a reliable way of reaching
      33

the truth. And, of course, explanatory arguments will be of no use in persuading

an empiricist to take metaphysics seriously; for those are precisely the sorts
of arguments of which empiricists are most suspicious. From within the empirical
stance, then, it is hard to find any resources for answering van Fraassen’s
objections.
On the other hand, the objections are readily answerable from within the
metaphysical stance. Indeed, those who adopt the metaphysical stance may simply
adapt the reply I offered to Byrne. We know that some sources of evidence have to
be taken as basic. Even the empiricist must acknowledge as much for, lest she fall
into global scepticism, she will be forced to take at least sense perception and
logical reasoning as basic sources. But then why not take the methods and sources
of evidence employed by metaphysicians as basic sources as well? There are, to be
sure, arguments in the literature for the conclusion that some of these sources—
intuition, for example—are unreliable or unworthy of being treated as basic
sources. But, notoriously, these arguments are not decisive—in no small part
because (as is often pointed out) it seems impossible to run the arguments without
presupposing the reliability of intuition. In any case, however, they are not the
arguments that van Fraassen has offered; and to the extent that his objections
depend on them, they are all the weaker for that dependency. My suggestion, then,
is that van Fraassen’s scepticism about metaphysics ought to be treated in pre-
cisely the way that Byrne’s theological scepticism ought to be treated: both are
rightly ignored.
Matters would be different, of course, if there could be some argument for the
conclusion that it is more rational to adopt the empirical stance than to adopt the
metaphysical stance. Is there such an argument? More pertinently, is there any
such argument that those who have already adopted the metaphysical stance will
be rationally bound to accept? It is hard to see how there could be. For, after all,
the two stances are distinguished in part by different views about what constitutes
good argument and rational theorizing; and, unless the standards and sources
characteristic of the metaphysical stance are self-defeating, there is no reason to
think that those adopting the metaphysical stance ought to be persuaded by
empiricist arguments for the conclusion that it is irrational to adopt the meta-
physical stance. And, so far as I am aware, there is no argument forthcoming for
the conclusion that the standards and sources characteristic of the metaphysical
stance are self-defeating. At any rate, no such argument has been offered by Byrne
or van Fraassen.
Interestingly, van Fraassen does seem to have a pragmatic argument for adopt-
ing the empirical stance. The pragmatic argument is just his first objection against
metaphysics: namely, that the payoff we gain from believing the theories we
choose on the basis of explanatory virtues is too small to offset the risk of false
belief. In fact, however, the pragmatic argument seems unsound. Granted, food,
34    :  

shelter, and safety are not at stake in metaphysics. But other things are.¹¹
Metaphysics impinges on morality; it also impinges on our very conception of
ourselves. Are we free? If not, does it follow that we are not morally responsible?
Can a person existing now be the same person as one existing a thousand years
from now? If not, as Derek Parfit seems to suppose, is there any point in taking
steps—as both scientists and religious believers do in various different ways—to
try to significantly prolong our lives? The list of questions might well go on; and to
the extent that our metaphysical views do impinge upon our moral lives and upon
our self-conception, they will impact our intellectual and emotional lives, our
social interactions, and a variety of other aspects of life. Indeed, many religious
believers have thought that one’s metaphysical beliefs—particularly one’s theo-
logical beliefs—make the difference between eternity in heaven and eternity in
hell. For those who think this, the risk of false belief and reward of true belief rise
exponentially. So, contrary to what van Fraassen argues, false belief in metaphysics
can be a serious risk; true belief can be an important reward. And the reward of
getting it right might well justify taking the risk.
Van Fraassen will almost certainly be unmoved by the response just offered on
behalf of metaphysics. But really that doesn’t matter. For plenty of people will be
moved. That is, plenty of people will agree that the potential reward of true belief
in metaphysics does outweigh the risk. And for those people, there will be ample
pragmatic justification for adopting the metaphysical stance.

4. Conclusion

In this chapter, I have examined two objections against realism in theology and
metaphysics, and I have concluded that practitioners of metaphysics and theology
ought simply to ignore these objections. In a very important sense, both objections
are simply instances of ‘preaching to the choir’. Those who are already sceptical of
theology or metaphysics or both will find in the objections plenty to agree with.
But they should not convince the unconvinced.¹²

¹¹ Some of the points here, particularly the point about free will, are borrowed from Alicia Finch’s
discussion of van Fraassen’s objection in her review of The Empirical Stance (Finch 2003).
¹² Versions of this chapter were read at the 2006 ‘Belief and Metaphysics’ Conference, sponsored by
the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Theology and Philosophy, the 2007 Pacific Regional Meeting
of the Society of Christian Philosophers, and the 2007 Midwest Regional Meeting of the Evangelical
Philosophical Society. I am grateful to audiences on those occasions for helpful discussion. I would also
like to thank the participants in my ‘Metaphysics and Christian Theology’ seminar (especially Alex
Arnold, Andrew Bailey, Adam Green, Nate King, Jenny Martin, Luke Potter, and Chris Tucker) and
participants in the University of Notre Dame Center for Philosophy of Religion reading group (in
particular, Robert Audi, Alicia Finch, Tom Flint, Don Howard, Alan Padgett, J. Brian Pitts, Kevin
Sharpe, and Nick Trakakis) for very helpful discussion of the ideas in this chapter and for comments on
an earlier draft.
      35

References

Byrne, Peter. 2003. God and Realism. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Finch, Alicia. 2003. ‘Review of The Empirical Stance’. American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly 77 (2): 302–7.
Fraassen, Bas van. 1980. The Scientific Image. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Fraassen, Bas van. 1985. ‘Empiricism in the Philosophy of Science’. In Images of
Science: Essays on Realism and Empiricism, with a Reply from Bas C. van Fraassen,
edited by Paul M. Churchland and Clifford A. Hooker, 245–308. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Fraassen, Bas van. 2002. The Empirical Stance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Rea, Michael. 2002. World without Design: The Ontological Consequences of
Naturalism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
 2
Theology without Idolatry or Violence

Since the 1960s, metaphysics has flourished in Anglo-American philosophy. Far

from wanting to avoid metaphysics, philosophers have embraced it in droves.
There have been critics, to be sure; but the criticisms have received answers and
the enterprise has carried on.
Matters have been different outside the so-called ‘analytic’ philosophical trad-
ition, and particularly so in theology throughout the past century. Witness, for
example, Kevin Hector’s recent book, Theology without Metaphysics (Hector
2011), which takes as a starting point the idea that metaphysics is a thing to be
avoided, a succubus from whose embrace we must struggle to extricate ourselves.
In the opening chapter, Hector writes:

Modern thought has engaged in a recurrent rebellion against metaphysics . . . .

This recurrent rebellion against metaphysics indicates that although we moderns
may want to avoid metaphysics, we have a hard time doing so. It would appear,
in other words, that metaphysics is a kind of temptation: we want to resist it, but
find it difficult to do so. (2011: 2; emphasis in original)

As it arises in theology, the temptation towards metaphysics is supposed to have

its origin in our natural propensity to speak positively and substantively about
God. Cataphatic theology, so the reasoning goes, is inherently metaphysical. So
our propensity to engage in it constitutes a temptation towards metaphysics. In
turn, the concern about metaphysics is that it results in both idolatry and
violence—idolatry because it shifts our attention away from God and onto a
simulacrum of our own creation, and violence because it denies the otherness of
God and forces God into creaturely categories. Would-be theologians are thus
offered a dilemma: apophatic theology on the one hand, idolatrous and violent
theology on the other.
In Theology without Metaphysics, however, Hector seeks a middle ground. He
offers a broadly Wittgensteinian theory about the nature and deployment of
human concepts and predicates with the goal of showing how both can be applied
to God in a non-metaphysical way. In this way, he hopes to show that cataphatic
theology is not inherently metaphysical, and that one can therefore engage in it
without falling into idolatry or violence.
In what follows, I will argue that Hector has not succeeded in forging a path
between the horns of the aforementioned dilemma. I shall begin by attempting to

Essays in Analytic Theology: Volume I. Michael C. Rea, Oxford University Press (2020). © Michael C. Rea.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198866800.003.0003
      37

identify the proper target of the ‘idolatry’ and ‘violence’ objections and to provide
a clear statement of each. I will then explain Hector’s proposal and show how it is
supposed to provide a non-metaphysical way of doing substantive, cataphatic
theology. In the third section, I will highlight five difficulties that beset
Hector’s view.

1. Objectionable Metaphysics

Despite his provocative title, Hector is explicit about the fact that he does not
mean to argue that theology can or should be done without metaphysics of any
sort. Rather, his aim is simply show how theology can be done without falling into
metaphysics of a particular objectionable sort. Just what sort is that?
There are several ways in which one might distinguish metaphysics from other
forms of theorising. One might characterise it by its subject matter, its methods, its
presuppositions, or some combination of these. Hector and his interlocutors (to
some extent following Heidegger) seem to treat objectionable metaphysics as a
mode of inquiry defined primarily by its guiding assumptions.
Hector identifies objectionable metaphysics with what he calls essentialist-
correspondentist metaphysics (ECM for short). ECM, according to Hector, is

. . . the attempt to secure human knowledge by identifying the fundamental

reality of objects—their being as such—with our ideas about them . . . . [W]hat
sets [it] apart [from other forms of metaphysics] is precisely an understanding of
the being of beings—their essence—as that which must correspond to the ideas
of a human knower. (2011: 8)

Note that it is one thing to say that the essences of material objects do or must
correspond to the ideas of human knowers, and quite another to identify those
essences with human ideas. Since the ‘correspondence’ requirement is plausibly
entailed by the ‘identity’ requirement, it is perhaps best to suppose that it is the
correspondence requirement at which he intends to take aim. Doing so provides
Hector with a more expansive target. Thus, we might say that objectionable
metaphysics is just ECM, construed as the view that the being, or essence, of
any object that falls within the purview of our theorising corresponds (in some
sense) to human ideas.
I am not convinced, however, that ECM is the proper target of the idolatry and
violence objections as Hector characterises them; nor am I convinced that it is the
characterisation of metaphysics that those who raise such objections themselves
have in mind. So I would like to suggest an alternative characterisation.
For Marion and Heidegger, both of whom loom large in Hector’s text, meta-
physics involves putting the ‘being of beings’—i.e. the being of things in the world,
38    :  

as opposed to God, or the ultimate ground of being—on a par with Being itself,
and assuming that the latter grounds but can be accounted for or explained in
terms of the former.¹ The idea that Being itself can be explained in terms of the
‘being of beings’ amounts, in practice, to the supposition that human concepts—
concepts shaped by the experience of beings in the empirical world—can be used
to characterise God.²
In a similar vein, Levinas, who does not feature prominently in Hector’s
discussion, but who is nevertheless strongly associated with the idea that meta-
physics is violent,³ takes metaphysics to be the ‘promotion of the Same before the
other, the reduction of the other to the Same’.⁴ The Same, for Levinas, is the
thinking subject; so the idea here is that metaphysics presumes (objectionably)
that the objects of our study are relevantly just like us—that they can be classified
according to our own category system, understood in terms of our own familiar
concepts acquired by way of our own perspectivally conditioned experience of the
world.
My own inclination, then, would be to characterise ‘objectionable metaphysics’
as follows. To engage in objectionable metaphysics is to conduct inquiry in a kind
of ‘self-centred’ mode, one which tacitly privileges one’s own conceptual scheme
and cognitive capacities as the standard by which the world is to be understood. It
is, in particular, to approach a phenomenon that we wish to study or understand
as if the following three claims are true of it. First, it is a being or object like me and
like other things with which I am acquainted. Second, it is similar enough to me
and these other things to be understood in terms of the same fundamental
categories (univocally applied). Third, to whatever extent I fail to understand it,
the failure is not due to defects or limitations in such concepts as I have or could
acquire by further experience but rather to my failure to have a sufficiently wide
range of experiences to have the concepts I need in order adequately to grasp the
phenomenon I am studying. (I will generally speak of these three claims as

¹ There are various technical senses of ‘world’ in Heidegger, but I do not mean to invoke any of those
here (cf. Heidegger 1999, part 2). As to why metaphysics involves putting the being of beings on a par
with Being and assuming that the latter can be explained in terms of the former, the reason in short is as
follows: Metaphysics is concerned both with the ‘being of beings’, but also with their ground—the
highest being, Being, which Heidegger identifies with the ‘god of philosophy’ (Heidegger 2002: 70–2).
But insofar as metaphysics seeks to ‘represent beings as such’, it does so ‘with an eye to their most
universal traits’ and ‘only with an eye to that aspect of them that has already manifested itself in being’
(Heidegger 1998: 287, 288). Here, then, we may identify a guiding assumption: to investigate something
in metaphysical mode is to do so under the supposition that its very essence can be understood in terms
of universal characteristics that have been made manifest in beings—i.e. mundane things. But the
ultimate ground, Being, is not a mundane thing; and so the supposition that it can be understood via
concepts and categories crafted for understanding beings is suspect. Thus one finds Heidegger speaking
of overcoming metaphysics, a goal that is accomplished just when one manages to ‘think the truth of
Being’ (1998: 279). Cf. also Marion 1994.
² On the relation between Being and God, see (e.g.) Heidegger 2002, 70–2; Heidegger 1998; and
Marion 1994. For both, Being understood metaphysically—the god of philosophy, or of ontotheology—
is but an idol. But it is an idol often enough confused with God.
³ But see note 5 below. ⁴ Kosky 2001: 9; cf. also Levinas 2005: 43, 45–6.
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‘presuppositions’ involved in objectionable metaphysics, though I do not really

mean to suggest that they are always or even typically explicitly or self-consciously
assumed.) The violence and idolatry objections, as I understand them, apply most
saliently to an approach towards God which treats God as just another object of
inquiry to which human concepts can univocally be applied.
Let us begin with the idolatry objection. Idolatry for Marion is not the creation
or worship of religious idols. It is a broader concept. To fall into idolatry is to direct
one’s thought towards a simulacrum of the phenomenon about which one aims to
think or theorise rather than towards the phenomenon itself. This happens when
one fails to allow things to ‘give themselves’ in their own way, or to appear on their
own terms, presuming (tacitly, via our intention to locate them within our own
conceptual schemes) that they will appear only in ways that conform to our
concepts. Hence Tamsin Jones’s characterisation of idolatry in Marion:

[Idolatry] is the constraining of any phenomenon within limits alien to the way it
gives itself or shows itself. Defining the phenomenon according to one’s own
subjective conceptual limitations is . . . idolatrous. (2011: 9)

Accordingly, Hector construes idolatry (of the relevant sort) to involve the
subjection of God to human conditions for the experience of the divine; and he
takes Marion to think that concepts are themselves a kind of ‘human condition’
(2011: 16). But if that is right, then it looks as if idolatry will be a danger anytime
we take it for granted that God can be understood within the confines of human
conceptual schemes. The proper target of the idolatry objection, then, is not ECM,
but rather objectionable metaphysics as I have construed it—most saliently
(though not exclusively), the view that concepts apply to God.
Now to the violence objection. Hector characterises it in two separate places:
once in discussing the work of Heidegger, and again in discussing the work of
Caputo. As Hector understands Heidegger, the concern is that metaphysics (ECM
in particular)

ends up equating an object’s fundamental reality with that which fits within the
bounds of [human] categories. The danger is obvious: if one thinks that one’s
preconceived ideas correspond to an object’s fundamental reality, one may be
tempted to force the object to fit one’s conception of it, whether because one fails
to see anything beyond one’s conception or, worse, because one tries to make it
conform to that conception. (2011: 11)

Later, characterising Caputo, he writes:

Language is violent, according to Caputo, in as much as it seeks to fit objects

within its horizon, to pin them down, and to hold them within its grasp. This
40    :  

being the case, Caputo reasons that ‘there really is nothing we can say about God
that is not violent in the sense that it does not cast God in certain terms, that it
does not subject God to a certain horizontality, and so set up something anterior
to God, with a kind of ontological violence.’ (2011: 20–1)

(The notion of ‘ontological violence’ in play is left unexplained in both Hector’s

text and Caputo’s, but traces to Levinas. More on this below.) Thus, the core of the
violence objection, as Hector sees it, is this: applying concepts to God is violent
because it ‘cuts God down’ to creaturely size, force-fitting God into ‘antecedently
defined’ human categories (2011: 49).
The objection thus construed seems to depend on an understanding of concepts
according to which nothing can strictly and literally satisfy a concept F unless it
exactly resembles, with respect to its F-ness, some other creature that strictly and
literally satisfies F (cf. Hector 2011: 49–50). One way, but not the only way, of
motivating this idea is to suppose that concepts are just human ideas which arise
out of experience, and that the extensions of concepts are classes of objects which
exactly resemble in some particular respect other objects which lie within our
experience. If this sort of view is right, then to say (for example) that God is wise is
to say that God is at best paradigmatically wise in the creaturely way. It is surely
hyperbolic to say that this violently ‘cuts God down’ to creaturely size; but it is easy
enough to see that it would at least result in a distorted vision of God.
Thus far the violence objection, as Hector characterises it. But I am not sure
that this fully captures the fundamental worry that the objectors have in mind.
Here I think it is illuminating to consider the way in which Levinas (who is not
among Hector’s primary interlocutors) associates metaphysics with violence. For
Levinas, as we have seen, metaphysics is ‘the promotion of the Same before the
other, the reduction of the other to the Same’.⁵ It is, in other words, a tacit denial of
the otherness of the other, a failure to allow the other to ‘appear’ on his/her/its own
terms. In less colourful and evocative language: one is engaged in metaphysics to
the extent that one takes as a methodological starting point the idea that the others
one encounters are similar enough to oneself that they can be accurately under-
stood and characterised in terms of one’s own concepts and categories, without
regard for the possibility that they might in fact transcend those categories or
somehow otherwise elude characterisation within one’s own familiar conceptual
scheme. In doing this, one (conceptually speaking) forces the other into a pre-cut
mould; and this is where the association with violence comes in.
Violence, for Levinas, ‘does not consist so much in injuring and annihilating
persons as in interrupting their continuity, making them play roles in which they

⁵ For purposes here, I conflate metaphysics and ontology. The distinction matters to Levinas (2005:
42ff.); but what I am calling objectionable metaphysics is appropriately assimilated to what Levinas calls
ontology (and to what I think even he would describe as objectionable metaphysics).
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no longer recognize themselves, making them betray not only commitments but
their own substance, making them carry out actions that will destroy every
possibility for action’ (2005: 21). One might, of course, challenge this character-
isation of violence; but, taking it as read, it becomes easy to see what the
connection between violence and metaphysics is supposed to be. In metaphysics,
one denies the alterity of the other; one ‘tries to integrate the other into [one’s]
project of existing as a function, means, or meaning’ (Burggraeve 1999: 30). In so
doing, one thereby risks ‘reduc[ing] the other to his countenance’, which, in turn,
risks making the other play a role in which she no longer recognises herself. In this
way, the ‘reduction of the other to the Same’ amounts to an exercise of power over
the other. As Burggraeve puts it:

In [reducing the other to myself] I approach the other not according to his
otherness itself, but from a horizon or another totality . . . I look the individuality
of the other, so to speak, up and down, forming a conception of him not as this-
individual-here-and-now but only according to the generality of a type, an a
priori idea, or an essence . . . . The ‘comprehending’ I, or ego, negates the irredu-
cible uniqueness of the other and tries to conceive of him in the same way as he
does the world. Comprehensive knowledge is thus also no innocent phenomenon
but a violent phenomenon of power. By my ‘penetrating insight’ I gain not only
access to the other, but also power over him. (1999: 36)

These remarks apply all the more strongly when the relevant other is God, who is
supposed to be radically other.
Caputo seems to have something quite similar in mind. Consider, for example,
the following excerpt from the same essay from which Hector draws:

You see the idolatrous functioning of the metaphysical concept: the concept
seizes God round about, measures the divine by humanly comprehensible stand-
ards, holds the look of the mind’s eye captive, and cuts off the infinite incom-
prehensible depths of God. Lacking infinite depths, the metaphysical look is
accordingly not sent off into the distance but is reflected back onto itself.
A metaphysical concept of God, let us say that of the causa sui, is an image of
the metaphysician. It is not inspired but constructed, not infinite but finite, not
an excess but an incision into the divine. (Caputo 1992:132)

The concern about idolatry is in the foreground; but Caputo’s broader concern is
violence, and the key ideas in this passage resonate strongly with those in the
quotations from Levinas and Burggraeve in the previous paragraph.
Note, however, that the differences between these various ways of casting the
objection pertain not to the target (which is, again, simply the presupposition that
God can be understood in terms of human concepts) but rather to the reasons for
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