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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
The philosopher Michael Dummett has argued that a commitment to realism in a given domain must display the following marks: a conception of reality as determinate and mind-independent, the correspondence theory of truth, and a truth conditions theory of meaning. In his own and others' philosophy we see a series of arguments at work in the theory of meaning, in epistemology and in the philosophy of science which converge upon a common rejection of such realism. It is not surprising that in such an intellectual climate we see a rise in non-realist theories of religion. Religious realities are here recognised as projected; theological truth is fixed by pragmatic criteria; and meaning is handled in terms of assertibility conditions. This rise of regulative religion has met with a variety of reactions ranging from a horror of being imprisoned by an alien philosophy to a delight that the true nature of religion has at last been brought into sharper focus.
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2 An array of such arguments are elegantly expressed in Rorty's, RichardPhilosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, 1980).Google Scholar
3 For formulations along these lines see Cupitt, Don, Taking Leave of God (London: SCM, 1981);Google ScholarKaufman, Gordon, The Theological Imagination (Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1981)Google Scholar and Phillips, D. Z., Religion Without Explanation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976).Google Scholar
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5 E.G. ‘Theology as Science’, in New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings, ed. Ogden, (London: SCM, 1985).Google Scholar It could be argued that this account of science is itself naively realist.
6 ‘What Does It Mean To Speak About God?’ in Faith and Understanding (SCM, London, 1969), p. 53.Google Scholar
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17 ‘The New Testament and Mythology’, in Ogden, (ed.), op. cit. pp. 32 ff.Google Scholar The notion that the Cross is the only necessary historical event for Christian faith is brought out most strikingly in the celebrated commentary on the Fourth Gospel. It is significant that of all the gospels it is the Fourth which is most congenial to Bultmann's theology.
18 Christ Without Myth (London: Collins, 1962), section 8Google Scholar, ‘The Structural Inconsistency of Bultmann's Solution’.
19 Jesus Christ and Mythology (Scribners, 1958), p. 68.Google Scholar Cf. ‘On The Problem of Demythologizing’, in New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings, op. cit. p. 110Google Scholar.
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28 Ibid. p. 35.
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31 The Origins Of Demythologizing (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974).Google Scholar This interpretation is presented more recently in his introduction to Rudolf Bultmann: Interpreting Faith For The Modern Era (London: Collins, 1987).Google Scholar
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40 Ibid. p. 314, ‘Of God we can only say what he does to us.’
41 Cf. Herrmann's description of myth as the depiction of religious realities in pseudo-scientific terms. ‘Die Wirklichkeit Gottes’, op. cit. p. 291.Google Scholar
42 Cf. The Communion Of The Christian With God, op. cit. p. 63.Google Scholar For Bultmann's critique of Herrmann's Christology see ‘The Question of Christology’, in Faith and Understanding, op. cit. pp. 116–44.Google Scholar
43 E.g. ‘What Does It Mean To Speak Of God’, op. cit. p. 63.Google Scholar
44 The Nature Of Doctrine (London: SPCK, 1984), pp. 32 ff.Google Scholar
45 Ibid. p. 64.
46 Ibid. p. 65.
47 Ibid.
48 This is powerfully argued by McGinn, Colin in ‘An A Priori Argument For Realism’. The journal of Philosophy, LXXVI, (1979), 113–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
49 For a similar criticism of Lindbeck but from a non-realist perspective see Phillips, D. Z., ‘Lindbeck's Audience’, Modern Theology, IV, 2 (1988), 146.Google Scholar
50 For a critique of the emotivist theory of ethics see MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1981), pp. 12 ff.Google Scholar
