Christianity and Critical Realism

Ambiguity, Truth and Theological Literacy

Andrew Wright

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415539579
• eBook ISBN: 9781136196089
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

One of the key achievements of critical realism has been to expose the modernist myth of universal reason, which holds that authentic knowledge claims must be objectively 'pure', uncontaminated by the subjectivity of local place, specific time and particular culture. Wright aims to address the lack of any substantial and sustained engagement between critical realism and theological critical realism with particular regard to: (a) the distinctive ontological claims of Christianity; (b) their epistemic warrant and intellectual legitimacy; and (c) scrutiny of the primary source of the ontological claims of Christianity, namely the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth. As such, it functions as a prolegomena to a much needed wider debate, guided by the under-labouring services of critical realism, between Christianity and various other religious and secular worldviews. This important new text will help stimulate a debate that has yet to get out of first gear.

This book will appeal to academics, graduate and post-graduate students especially, but also Christian clergy, ministers and informed laity, and members of the general public concerned with the nature of religion and its place in contemporary society.

Part I
Critical realism and transcendence

1 Critical realism and dialectical critical realism

Critical realism is primarily associated with the philosophical movement instigated by Roy Bhaskar (Collier 1994; Archer et al. 1998; Lopez and Potter 2001; Hartwig 2007). It seeks to map a path beyond the extremes of modern certainty and postmodern scepticism via a triumvirate of core philosophical principles: ontological realism, epistemic relativism and judgemental rationality. Ontolo­gical realism asserts that reality exists for the most part independently of human perception, epistemic relativism asserts that our knowledge of reality is limited and contingent, and judgemental rationality asserts that it is nevertheless possible to judge between conflicting truth claims while recognising that all such judgements necessarily remain open to further adjudication. Critical realism has had a significant impact across a range of disciplinary fields, from the natural and human sciences through to the arts and humanities. Like any major philo­sophical movement it has its antecedents. Albert Einstein’s observation that ‘the belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science’ reflects the critically realistic assumptions underlying natural science (Torrance 2001, p. 2). Similarly, as Alan Norrie points out, it is difficult to make sense of Karl Marx’s philosophy unless we read him as a proto­-critical realist (Norrie 2010, p. 67). Indeed, insofar as reflective engagement with a world that transcends our ability to fully comprehend it constitutes a near-universal human experience, critical realism may be read as a highly sophisti­cated philosophy of universal ‘common sense’. The term ‘critical realism’ was first used in the 1920s by a group of American scholars opposed to forms of idealism, pragmatism and naïve realism (McGrath 2002, p. 203f.; cf. Drake 1920). A broad tradition of Christian critical realism, concerned with the interface between natural science and theology, theological epistemology and biblical hermeneutics, first emerged in the late 1950s. Until recently this theological tradition developed almost entirely independently of the work of Bhaskar and his colleagues. Bhaskar’s own philosophical development has passed through three phases: (1) critical realism was primarily concerned with the ontology and epis­temology of the natural and social sciences; (2) dialectical critical realism built on critical realism to address issues of human emancipation via a critical conversation with the Western dialectical tradition; and (3) the philosophy of meta-reality, the result of Bhaskar’s so­ called ‘spiritual turn’, addressed issues of the ultimate nature of reality and the meaning and purpose of life. Here we will examine the contours of critical realism and dialectical critical realism, reserving consideration of the philosophy of meta­ reality for the following chapter.

Critical realism

Between 1975 and 1991 Bhaskar published a series of books that established his philosophy of critical realism: A Realist Theory of Science; The Possibility of Naturalism; Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation; Reclaiming Reality; and Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom (Bhaskar 1997 [first published 1975], 1998 [first published 1979], 1986, 1989, 1991). In highlighting the limitations of modern idealism and empiricism, and of postmodern prag­matism and anti­-realism, he sought to provide the natural and human sciences with a sound theoretical and practical basis, and thereby enhance the project of human flourishing and liberation. In insisting that critical realism functions as an under­-labourer to humankind’s intellectual and emancipatory endeav­ours, he shares, albeit with a significantly different set of presuppositions, Wittgenstein’s philosophical aim of showing ‘the fly the way out of the fly-bottle’ (Wittgenstein 1968, §1: 309). The development of Bhaskar’s original vision has become a communal affair, and the following exposition, which makes no claim to be definitive, will seek to map Bhaskar’s work within the broad contours of this shared project.

Since the Enlightenment, Western philosophy has tended to misconstrue the relationship between ontology and epistemology. Modernity tends to restrict reality to our knowledge of reality, founded on either idealised concepts or empirical sense data: we know an object because we have a clear and distinct idea of it, or because we can experience it directly through our five senses. Nothing can be deemed ‘real’ unless it conforms to one or other of these two criteria. Postmodernity, as the flip-side of this modernist coin, tends to deny that our language and sense experiences possess any substantial epistemic purchase on ontological reality: in its soft form it affirms a thoroughgoing scepticism about the possibility of knowledge of external reality, while in its hard form it asserts a systematic anti­ realism that denies the existence of any reality beyond the language employed by individuals’ sceptical and fractured consciousnesses. Despite their differences, modernity and postmodernity both commit the epistemic fallacy of reducing ontology to epistemology and restricting reality to the extent and limits – whether greater or lesser – of human knowledge: modernity by conflating and colonizing ontology within epistemology; postmodernity by cutting ontology adrift from epistemology and then sinking it. Both positions seek to fulfil the Cartesian-driven quest for epistemic closure, which holds that knowledge of reality is either absolutely certain (modernity) or absolutely uncertain (postmodernity). Each affirms the sovereignty of epistemology and promises emancipation from the supposed hegemony of ontology, so that modernists are empowered to assert control over reality and postmodernists are freed to turn their backs on it.

However, the exercise of such freedom generates tyrannous tendencies that undermine human flourishing. The misplaced epistemic confidence of modernity breeds totalitarian regimes such as those overseen by Hitler and Stalin, whilst the similarly misplaced epistemic scepticism of postmodernity refuses the intellectual resources necessary to challenge an unjust status quo, and thereby buttresses by default the oppressive forces of consumer capitalism. According to Bhaskar, ontology and epistemology are neither separate nor inseparable, but rather discrete-yet-­related: contra modernity, because we participate in a reality that is greater than our capacity to fully know it, there can be no epistemic certainty; contra postmodernity, because we nevertheless know a great deal about reality – enough, at least, to perform open heart surgery, recognize genocide as evil and value the music of Mozart – there can be no thoroughgoing epistemic scepticism. This being the case, ontology can neither be colonised by epistemol­ogy nor split from it: ‘human intellectual enterprises are necessarily fallible, but not for that matter, necessarily mistaken’ (Gunton 1983, p. 145). Once we accept the contingency of knowledge and reject the possibility of any premature epistemic closure, we can hold fast to both ontological realism and epistemic relativism without contradiction, and in doing so open up the possibility of a judgemental rationality that promises to provide more powerful, comprehensive and truthful ways of engaging with reality without any descent into positivist, idealist, pragmatic or relativistic forms of totalitarianism.

(1) Ontological Realism. According to ontological realism, objects exist and events occur in reality whether we are aware of them or not. A primary condition for human knowledge is the ontologically grounded distinction between the intransitive realm of real objects and events and the transitive realm of our con­ tingent knowledge of them. If our (epistemic) knowledge of dinosaurs is accu­ rate, then dinosaurs must have existed (ontologically) prior to our establishing knowledge of them. To deny this is to slip into the epistemic fallacy of reducing reality to our knowledge of reality. It is certainly true that we construct accounts of dinosaurs, but palpably untrue that in doing so we construct the dinosaurs themselves. The move to affirm ontological realism and reject the epistemic fallacy is justified because it possesses significantly greater explanatory power than any alternative. The fact that natural scientists are able to construct accounts of the natural order-of-­things that enable us to develop technologies that empower us to walk on the moon demands rational explanation. The anti­-realist claim that such accounts are mere language games that have no substantial pur­ chase on external reality is significantly less powerful than the realist claim that they constitute relatively accurate, though necessarily incomplete and partially fallible, descriptive explanations that enjoy a measure of transitive epistemic purchase on the intransitive ontological order-of-things.

Once the distinction between ontology and epistemology is established, it becomes possible to develop a rich account of the contours of reality. The fact that we are able to provide multiple explanatory accounts of the same object suggests that reality itself is pluriform and stratified. The physicist and chemist, psychologist and sociologist, historian and geographer, artist and poet, philosopher and theologian are able to provide complementary descriptions of a given object or event. This realistic notion of ontological stratification directly challenges the Kantian claim that, rather than being intrinsic to reality itself, our experience of a stratified world is dependent on epistemic categories, embedded in the cogni­tive apparatus of the mind, through which we structure and organise knowledge. It is not merely that we perceive individual persons as biological, social and moral beings; rather they are, in themselves, intrinsically and simultaneously biological, social and moral. On this reading, genocide is evil, not merely because a majority perceive it to be evil (epistemology), but because it is an intrinsic aberration of the moral order­-of-things (ontology). In the same way, the ontological reality of a beautiful sunset imposes itself on human observers, rather than human observers forcing the category ‘beauty’ onto the event in an expression of subjective taste: beauty is not wholly in the eye of the beholder. To suggest otherwise is to invoke a fact–value divide generated not by reality itself (ontology), but by the susceptibility of some strata of reality to more ‘objective’ verification procedures than others (epistemology). On this view the physicality of an object is deemed more ‘real’ than its aesthetic beauty purely on the basis that the measurement of its physicality is more secure than any assess­ ment of its intrinsic beauty – this despite the fact the intrinsic beauty of a newborn child cradled in his mother’s arms is palpably more real, to any but the most crassly insensitive observer, than his atoms, molecules and DNA. Reality, that is to say, is ontologically value­ laden: the fact that we cannot weigh and measure goodness and beauty with scales and stopwatches does not make them any less real. Though each emergent stratum is dependent on the preceding ones (there can be no morality without psychology, and no psychology without biology), they are not reducible to them (morality cannot be reduced to psychol­ ogy, and psychology cannot be reduced to biology). If this were not the case, then the physicist (or, perhaps, the mathematician) would be in a position to pronounce definitively upon every aspect of reality, knowing more about society than the sociologist, more about music than the musician, more about poetry than the poet, more about theology than the theologian. Such a misplaced view is broadly reflected in the logical positivist’s distinction between objective, verifiable scientific knowledge, and subjective, unverifiable aesthetic, moral and spiritual taste.

Reality is open and dynamic. The fact that we are justified in judging that our epistemically contingent expressions of causal laws possess universal status does not imply that reality is a closed system. Thus, for example, identifying the mechanisms that cause matches to light when struck in particular circumstances does not negate either counterfactual or transfactual statements. Counterfactual statements envisage alternative courses of events in order to better understand causal mechanisms: for example, that a match may not light when struck because the matchbox is damp and consequently the necessary causal conditions (the ‘particular circumstances’) are not in place. Transfactual statements draw attention to the fact that causal mechanisms do not always produce expected results even when the necessary conditions are in place: to say that matches tend to light when struck is to accept the reality that matches do not always do so. Counter­factual and transfactual statements are significant because they show that causal mechanisms operate in open systems that are capable of generating a range of different events without undermining any particular universal law. Since causal mechanisms do not invariably generate particular events, causal laws function to identify potential states of affairs that may or may not be realised. Crucially, the failure of a causal mechanism to realise its potential on a particular occasion does not, in itself, undermine the accuracy of our account of that mechanism. The fact that the operations of a range of interactive causal mechanisms are compatible with a high level of contingency in the world supports the conclusion that reality is open and dynamic, generating higher­ order strata of reality whose emergence was not predetermined or necessary, and whose future development is contingent and unpredictable. Thus, for example, discussion of anthropic phe­nomena among natural scientists and theologians proceeds from the counterfac­tual recognition that the fundamental causal mechanisms governing the physical universe do not necessitate the emergence of sentient life, and that consequently the apparent ‘fine-tuning’ of our actual life-bearing universe demands rational explanation (McGrath. 2009a, pp. 86ff., 111ff., 120ff.).

(2) Epistemic relativism. In the wake of the Enlightenment, epistemology became dominated by the binary opposites of the modern pursuit of epistemic certainty and the postmodern insistence on epistemic scepticism. As we noted above, such binary thinking disguises a singular drive to epistemic closure, since both parties claim secure understanding (whether positive or negative) of the extent and limitations of knowledge. Critical realism, in affirming epistemic rel­ativism, seeks a route beyond this impasse.

Epistemic relativism asserts the priority of ontology over epistemology: reality precedes knowledge of reality, so that we cannot know something unless there is first something to know. Epistemic certainty and scepticism constitute forms of the epistemic fallacy, which effectively reverses this order of priority by reducing reality to our ability (or inability) to know it, so that unless we know something with relative certainty it cannot be deemed to exist. In its positive form the epistemic fallacy manifests itself whenever reality is forced into the strait- jacket of fixed epistemic criteria. Thus the logical positivist’s equation of knowledge with verifiable sense data, and attendant reduction of statements of aesthetic, moral and spiritual value to expressions of subjective preference devoid of any purchase on reality, generates a fact–value divide in which reality is limited to facts and stripped of all value. In this situation the principle of veri­fication functions as a means of distinguishing between objective fact and sub­jective value, and thereby of providing the knower with epistemic closure. In its negative form postmodernism embraces the epistemic fallacy in two interrelated ways: (1) epistemic scepticism, in which substantial knowledge of any reality external to the knower is denied on epistemic grounds; and (2) anti-realism, in which the existence of any reality external to the knower is denied. In both cases knowledge is limited to a set of relativistic linguistic constructions that have no purchase on the external world: the soft epistemic assumption that we cannot access any reality beyond our linguistic constructs generates the hard ontological assumption that there is not actually any external reality to access. Claims to the contrary are seen as evidence of the interplay of power structures that have a strong totalitarian tendency, and draw the conclusion that in order to avoid the hegemonic imposition of power­-disguised-­as-knowledge it is necessary to deconstruct all truth claims. This has the supposed effect of emancipating indi­viduals from economies of power and enabling them to live brokerless lives ordered by a pragmatism rooted in personal desire, taste and preference. However, such emancipation is illusory, since reacting against epistemic cer­tainty by embracing epistemic scepticism does nothing to remove the hegemony of the epistemic fallacy itself. Postmodern claims that we have no access to external reality, or that external reality does not actually exist, are themselves truth claims that, insofar as they are deemed to be self­ evident and non-negotiable, take on precisely the same hegemonic and totalitarian features they were designed to avoid.

To commit the epistemic fallacy is to allow epistemic criteria to set the boundaries of reality, despite the fact that the priority of ontology means that it is reality that should progressively shape epistemic criteria. In affirming that knowledge is constituted by the relationship between the knower and the object of knowledge, critical realism rejects the extremes of epistemic certainty and epistemic scepticism, together with the epistemic fallacy that nurtures and supports them. Since we are clearly fallible creatures lacking the omniscient capa­city to know everything infinitely, our knowledge is necessary limited and epistemically relative. However, this rejection of epistemic certainty does not necessitate a move to a thoroughgoing epistemic scepticism. Few, if any, of our beliefs about the world are entirely false: though the child who responds to the question ‘What is 2 + 2?’ with the answer ‘Blue’ makes a fundamental categorical error, she has nevertheless recognised that a question has been asked; sim­ilarly, the psychiatric patient who believes that his doctor is Napoleon Bonaparte is still living in and responding – however inadequately – to the same world inhabited by his doctor. Some beliefs may be profoundly mistaken: the world is not flat, and alchemy and astrology are predicated on erroneous understandings of the natural order­-of-­things. All beliefs fall short of absolute truth: Einsteinian physics constitutes an advance on Newtonian physics, but still falls short of a complete understanding of the natural world.

Since knowledg...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Critical realism and transcendence
• Part II Epistemic relativism The ambiguity of Christianity
• Part III Ontological realism Christianity and truth
• Part IV Judgemental rationality and Christian epistemology
• Part V Judgemental rationality and the historical Jesus
• Bibliography
• Index