Realists Divided by Realism? Wright on Triune Christianity

Abstract

In this review article various aspects of Andrew Wright's Christianity and Critical Realism are explored. Wright claims that Trinitarian theology is essentially realist in its form and that realism can be used to defend or justify Trinitarian Christianity. The nature of the specific case brings to the fore a number of issues regarding the nature of reasoning and judgemental rationality for realists.

Keywords:

• judgemental rationality
• theology
• realism
• Christianity

Notes

1 For previous discussions of realism and religion, spirituality etc. in relation to critical realism see, for example, Archer et al. (2004); Creaven (2010); Hartwig and Morgan eds. (2012).

2 Arrogate is a problematic term here also. I do not mean to suggest that only some have the right to call upon critical realist argument — so arrogate implies lack of right to call upon a form of argument. I mean that some aspects of argument do not seem necessary to the form of argument (for ontology as ontology) drawn on. They are additional in a variety of ways. But the additionality does not seem to be a simple misuse of form, since it flows from some key constituents of the substance expressed as universally core within that form.

3 God is then also the ‘lord of creation' and the primary ‘underlabourer' for that which is created in order to enable God's creations to realize their potentialities (and which then realizes God) in and through Love.

4 One of Wright's colleagues who has also engaged with realism, Alister McGrath, makes more of the ‘imaginative embrace' of the concept of faith; see, for example, McGrath 2013.

5 This problem of time and potential omnipotence and omniscience has created endless theological debate regarding the status of God and free will. Bear in mind that Wright also specifically questions the claim to God as omnipotent-omniscience in his chapter 7 development of the Triune position.

6 Or that the factual nature of history coincides with the claims of facts of a given interpretation; see, for example, Finkel (2014), on the emergence of the biblical flood stories from Sumerian and Babylonian accounts taken up and translated from the cuneiform by Jewish exiles in Babylon in the sixth century bce. Similarly, the evolution of Yahweh from a local pantheistic God (with a wife).

7 And so some of the Christian Bible is made up of the communications between the disparate and emerging parts of the contemporary Jesus sect.

8 See, for example, Loconte 2014.

9 Despite that, he does provide an argument in chapters 13 and 14 regarding history as philosophy.

10 See Burleigh 2008.

11 See Moody 2014.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jamie Morgan

Jamie Morgan is co-editor of Real World Economics Review and co-ordinator of the Association for Heterodox Economics.