Abstract
Here are two very short books both attempting to commend a broadly ‘reasonable’ view of the Christian faith. Although they share an aim, they are very different from one another both in content and in spirit. Sceptical Christianity is an attempt to revive the theological debates of the 1960s and 1970s about the fundamentals of the creed. Robert Reiss believes that these debates were never properly concluded and that the Church should rise to the challenge and endorse a bracingly sceptical account of the faith based on what he considers to be the bedrock of historical and scientific evidence. Rupert Shortt is not interested in picking away at Scripture and doctrine. His concern is the challenge of the ‘new atheists’ to religious faith, and how belief and unbelief must engage with basic and recurring philosophical issues about the nature of reality.
Robert Reiss’s book comes from the heart of an Anglican world in which theology was once secure in the academy and its main conversation partners were other disciplines represented by academics on high table, most of whom had no great interest in religion but knew what they did not believe. He does not reflect on why the sceptical movement failed (he does not mention Don Cupitt), nor does he seem to recognize that the cultural focus of what was then called the ‘new’ theology was so narrow that in spite of the media excitement it produced it did not win hearts and minds. Instead, it created its own backlash, which is still with us in the rather bland, theologically vacuous position that the Church of England has embraced today. There may be virtues in the robust dismissal of the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection and the believer’s hope of life after death, but ‘sensible’ truncated non-creed must face the criticism that it represents little more than sanctified stoicism. It may be true that such stoicism was once the real creed of the Church of England, a Church to which Robert Reiss has given 50 years of ministry, a Church he has served as a parish priest, an archdeacon and a canon of Westminster Abbey. But that Church is now passing away. This is a lament for its passing.
Rupert Shortt has no such nostalgia. His canvas is broader. He does not carry the denominational and establishment baggage of Sceptical Christianity. His book is good evidence that Christian apologetic is often best attempted by lay people who are not bound by salary or status to the institutional Church. God is No Thing consists of five essays, all arguing that Christianity is more coherent, rational and appealing than is often supposed by its critics. Faith is not dying out because of secularism as many predicted that it would. In fact, it is reviving in surprising ways, both positive and dangerous. It is of real importance for the future of our world and our societies that religious faith has space to flourish, because not all secular perspectives are capable of preserving the human freedoms which faith endorses. The author is not crudely dismissive of secularism, but realistically aware of its limitations. His approach takes critical and sceptical theology in its stride without either buying in to its negativity or getting over-excited about its potential. He can live with problematic accounts of the miraculous in the Bible; he endorses Jeffrey John’s The Meaning in the Miracles as a useful theological introduction to reading these stories. While defending the rationality of belief, he points out the irrationality of the way in which contemporary sceptics dismiss centuries of sophisticated discussion about the nature of reality, much of which, he argues, can support a nuanced theistic worldview. He is dismissive of fundamentalisms of all kinds (including that of the scientists and cultural critics to whom Robert Reiss’s questioning theologians were trying to appeal). Short books are often welcome, but I found there were times when Rupert Shortt’s attempts to expound a point of philosophy in favour of his central argument just needed more space than he was able to give. But it is a thoughtful and welcome attempt to defend Christianity as a faith that is both credible and attractive.