Clarity with Respect to Realism

The issue of realism seems to me to be at the center of the entire question of theology. Traditionally, of course, realism was unproblematically presupposed in theology - - just as it was rather unproblematically presupposed in philosophy generally. But this is no longer the case.

In getting at the issue of realism we need, of course, to clear up a possible confusion. Theology students are often introduced to the medieval question of realism and nominalism as it developed out of the options on universals put forward by Boethius. To be a realist was to assert that universals like 'whiteness' had being either apart from their instantiations in white things (the platonic view), or had being not fully accounted for by their instantiation in white things, but not yet having being apart from their instantiations (the Aristotelian view). To be an extreme realist like William of Chaupeaux was to hold a robust Platonic view; to be a moderate realist like Thomas was to hold an Aristotelian view. To be an extreme nominalist like Roscelin was to hold that general terms did not refer to universals, but simply were different names for the particulars of which they might be predicated. For a nominalist like Ockham, all that exists are particular entities having particular qualities. Realism was thought very important by many because if 'sin' and 'human nature' referred to universals, then Christ's assumption of human nature and his conquering of sin was an assumption of the same human nature that medieval man and women possessed and a conquering of the same sinful nature that they inherited. These issues are still potentially interesting in theology, but few talk of them today. There are, after all, more fundamental issues at state for contemporary man and woman. In an age where the existence of God is problematic at best, more of the hard theology work must be directed to that problematic.

In our age the conflict is not between realism and nominalism, but rather between realism and nonrealism and/or antirealism. I take the thesis of realism to be the assertion that for some putative class of entities T, all x in T exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. Nonrealism with respect to T would claim that it is not the case that for all x in T, x exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. Antirealism with respect to T declares that for all x in T, x does not exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. The question then is this: Can we be realists with regard to class T, the set of putative theological entities and their qualities? Or perhaps more to the point, can we be a realist with respect to the putative entity God? Is God real in that God has existence apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language? Would God exist having basically the properties he is said to have apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language?

But now the question pertains to the locution 'what He is said to have'. What could we even mean by the divine predicates? To say that God is omnibenevolent is one thing, but to try to specify that set of properties necessary and sufficient for omnibenevolence is quite another. Accordingly, one could be a theological realist without being a metaphysical realist. One could deny that there is some set of self-identifying properties comprising God that exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, and still hold that there is some being to God that in confrontation with human cognitive equipment makes it be the case that God has the property of omnibenevolence, or omnipotence, or any other of the divine properties. Hilary Putnam's internal realism is still a realism, but we are now moving more towards nonrealism: While God would still exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, God only has those properties that identify Him in all possible worlds if there is human awareness, perception, conception and language. Though God exists, what God is in God's own self cannot be known or even thought.

I believe that the question of theological realism is very important because I think that if there is no being to God apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, then clearly to the degree that we talk about God we are talking about a projection of the self. Just as there is no beauty in itself apart from human sentiment, so there is no God in Himself apart from human sentiment. While we might talk about the quasi-reality of God - - the "as if" character of God's existence - - clearly there is no divine realm if there are no human beings. Just as human consciousness is the necessary condition for beauty, so too is it the necessary condition for the divine. In my opinion, unless we can finally claim the reality of God, there is no reason to continue to talk about God in more than a historical way. Clearly, the God-thought has been a productive and heady thought to think, but at the end of the day, a thought is not a thing. Laypeople know implicitly that a God that has only ideal reality is not a God that shall have much staying power. There simply is no need to go to church and do the kinds of sacrificial things Christians used to do if it is the case that God does not exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.

This brings us to another kind of realism, that which concerns our language about God. The problem with the contemporary scene is not just that we are confused about whether or not God has been apart from us, the problem runs much deeper and concerns whether or not language about God has any truth-conditions whatsoever anymore. Are our statements about God capable of really being true or false? Now we are dealing with the distinction between semantic realism and irrealism, a distinction nicely given in the following passage from Michael Dummett, himself no friend of realism:

“Realism I characterize as the belief that the statements of the disputed class possess an objective truth-value, independently of our means of knowing it: they are true or false in virtue of a reality existing independently of us. The anti-realist opposes to this the view that statements of the disputed class are to be understood only by reference to the sort of thing which we count as evidence for a statement of that class . . . The dispute thus concerns the notion of truth appropriate for statements of the disputed class; and this means that it is a dispute concerning the kind of meaning which these statements have” (Dummett, “Realism,” p. 146, reprinted in TRUTH AND OTHER ENIGMAS).

The class of theological statements is, of course, “the disputed class” in question. Of concern for any realist is how to answer the objections put forward in the “acquisition argument” and the “manifestation argument.” The first asks how we can know that a statement is true or false if truth or falsity is contingent upon states of affairs obtaining that are in principle undetectable. The second concerns the question of meaning. If a statements meaning is tied to the possession of states of affairs that we cannot detect, then how can we really ever know what a statement means? How can we know what ‘God the Father has begotten the Son eternally” means when we have no access even in principle to what those states of affairs which would make the statement true?

For theological language particularly the question of the possibility of evidence-transcendent truth conditions arises very acutely. Much theological language deals directly with the question of putative states of affairs that are incapable of detection by human perceptual equipment. Because of the challenge of making sense of evidence-transcendent truth conditions, much theology has simply given up the assertion of these putative states of affairs and have accepted either projectivist or quasi-realist solutions to the problem. Accordingly, theological language is either a projection of human emotion, wish, or hope upon the universe, or that the class of theological statements behaves like realist statements because of some consistent method by which human projections are made. The point is this: Without human beings there would be no states of affairs about God and thus no truth.

Semantic realism must deny all of these facile solutions to the thorny problem of theological language. Whether the semantic realist theory can be satisfactorily worked out is really secondary at this point to seeing deeply the problem. There is, however, much in the literature that would give semantic realists courage in the face of the acquisition and manifestation challenges.