American Journal of Theology & Philosophy

Although the title Realism in Religion suggests that this collection of essays might be narrowly focused, this work is an ideal entry to Robert Neville's wide-ranging thought as a whole. All but two of the essays were written as lectures, and consequently, Neville states, "the necessity of writing so as to be understood on first reading makes this book more accessible than my more numbingly nuanced monographs" (xiii). Most of the essays date from the past decade, although two were published in 1967. The lectures have quite successfully been rewritten so as to cut down on repetition of content and increase continuity of argumentation. All but two of the fourteen essays are organized to have exactly four subsections, suggesting somewhat surprisingly a subterranean urge to force disparate material into architectonic or at least symmetrical order. Of course, consistent order of chapters need not entail consistency of thought; indeed, as Neville notes, the varying contexts and audiences for the essays bring out different and occasionally conflicting facets of familiar Nevillean themes.

Realism in religion is the book's announced theme, and interestingly Neville affirms both the scholastic variety of realism that asserts the reality of relations and universals in opposition to the nominalistic emphasis on particular objects as alone real, and the modern version that stands in contrast to idealism and the inescapability of language. Neville sees the postliberal thought of Hans Frei and George Lindbeck as contemporary forms of nominalism because the biblically based narratives they honor are complex examples of arbitrary particularity. "For them, the religious realities are not what they seem but rather are the deep structure or grammar of religious communities as cultural/linguistic systems" (2). Neville opts for referential truth discerned through engagement, rather than insular rhetoric. But when some of his examples of religious truth are examined, it appears that also for him "the religious realities are not what they seem." He asks, for instance, whether religious truth is refuted when what is purported to be historical in the Bible is shown to be false. "Not necessarily, because living with that history, identifying with it (even though it is false as history), might engage one truly with ultimate matters" (60). Is this affirmation of truth in fiction really so different than postliberal claims? After all, Lindbeck writes that the truth of religious utterances "is only a function of their role in constituting a form of life, a way of being in the world, which itself corresponds to the Most Important, the Ultimately Real" (The Nature of Doctrine, 65). [End Page 70]

The contrast between what Neville calls "identity theologies" like postliberalism and his own commitment to realism in religion is not just an issue between alternate theological programs. It also marks a fracture in Neville's own thought. For, on the one hand, Neville affirms Peirce's view that subjecting religious claims to dispassionate philosophical analysis is to miss the reality it is attempting to analyze. Philosophical inquiry "should be guided by the image of religion as sets of elementary behaviors and practices, most unreflective, and shaped and guided by beliefs that are more like instincts than objects of consciousness" (110-11). This sounds much like the intuition about religion that generates identity theologies attuned to such emotionally charged issues as feeling at home in the world and receiving guidance about how to live meaningful lives.

On the other hand, Neville's conceptual analysis of religious doctrines and his philosophical sense of what is real tends to be highly abstract and distant from the beliefs and practices of everyday religious adherents. His well-known arguments for creation ex nihilo and eternity as the causal ground of temporal change are vigorously rehearsed in this book. Chapter 9, "Whitehead and Pragmatism," and chapter 12, "Some Contemporary Theories of Divine Creation" are especially provocative and effective in explicating Neville's evolved position in philosophy of religion.

Ordinary religious observances seem structured by notions of religious reality that are quite...