Realism in Theology

Every discipline has its fundamental assertions and assumptions, those principles without which the discipline cannot proceed as the discipline it is. This is true as well for theology. We find, in fact, that particular fundamental assertions demarcate trajectories of the theological tradition. This is clearly true of what I call the realist fundamental: "God exists independent of human awareness, perception, conception and language." Whether or not one accedes to this fundamental determines the meaning of an entire matrix of theological assertions. Theology can proceed whether or not one postulates the realist fundamental. The point is that the ontologies of realist and antirealist theologies are quite different, even if they both proclaim similar religious and theological statments.

Since the time of Kant, the theological penchant has been towards antirealism generally. Kant famously held that God is merely a regulative ideal of human reason. While thinking God is perhaps inescapable, and while God can function as a postulate of pure practical reason (guaranteeing happiness to the one who does his/her duty), God cannot be a substance entering into causal relations with any other objects in the universe. Kant only grants substance status to those objects which have concomittant sense impressions; he only allows causal relations to hold among substances. Because God is not the kind of object having sense impressions, then God is not a substance causally relatable to entities within the universe, or the universe generally.

The problem for theology after Kant was to try to provide a meaningful account of theological assertions when that referred to by 'God' was not a substance, and that referred to by 'creates' was not a causal relation. Although the theological tradition was not always consistent, it basically asserted that talk of God must be parsed in terms of something besides divine objects, properties, events or states of affairs. Schleiermacher, for instance, spoke of God as the whence of the feeling of absolute dependence. Hegel located God in the reflexivity of human thinking. Later liberal Protestantism found God talk most germane to the arena of ethics, of human doing. Even the twentieth-century backlash to liberal theology worked with a basic antirealist notion of God. While theologians talked a great deal about God's "mighty acts in history," God remained unable to causally interact with nature. But how is action in history possible without action in nature?

While neo-reformational theology "preached well," it, and later theological developments, have proved unable to assert robust causal connections between God and the universe. The result has been lamentable for theology, for a causally impotent God is clearly irrelevant for most postmodern men and women. What kind of question is the Christ the answer for when the God, to whom Christ reconciled the world, is causally inert? If God is not connectable to the universe, then Christ becomes merely a symbol for the liberation of human beings from anxiety, despair, and ultimate suffering. Antirealist assumptions lead one into a basic projectionist strategy. The universe is presumably what it is apart from us, but God is "put" into the universe because of human value and interest. Finally, Feurbach is correct at this point: We project God onto the universe. Therefore, God is internally related to us; His being is determined by the relation we assume towards Him. Antirealism is a definite trajectory of theology thinking, a trajectory that has been, in my opinion, the dominant motif in academic theology.

But how different it all becomes if one asserts that there is some being, such that that being has robust divine properties, properties not affected by the relationship humans have towards that God! On the realist assumption, causality is put back on the table. Now one can speak again about God actually creating, actually acting such that something came into being that would not have come into being without that acting. Now one can speak again about real redemption and real sanctification. Now one can speak again about the possibility that God really can act to answer prayer. That the evangelical tradition has tended toward realism, does not mean, of course, that realism entails other evangelical positions. Conversely, while the Lutheran tradition has tended toward antirealism, this does not mean that antirealism entails other Lutheran positions. Of this we shall have much more to say later.

Dennis Bielfeldt