John Cottingham's brief defence of religious faith, and especially Christian faith, is honest, clear-headed and occasionally compelling. It is not an account of the traditional arguments for (or against) the existence of God, but rather an attempt to show what religious devotion is, by pointing to the features of our experience that awaken it. In this it is somewhat reminiscent of Peter L. Berger's A Rumour of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (London: Allen Lane, 1970), although Cottingham approaches the issues from a philosophical rather than sociological background.

‘We are dependent and vulnerable creatures’, he says (5), ‘who need, for our fulfilment, to orient ourselves towards certain enduring values’: love, compassion, mercy, truth, justice, endurance, fidelity – values which on later pages are subsumed into the familiar triad of truth, beauty, and goodness. It is of course possible, as Cottingham acknowledges, to offer some sort of naturalistic explanation for our valuing such absolutes, and also to describe much of the world without referring to them, but our initial experience is that ‘reality presents itself to us … as a series of demands’ (19). Beauty, truth, and goodness are both objective and normative (25–31), however ‘queer’ that sounds to those determined to insist that reality is only what can (and must) be recognized by anyone, whatever their character or private feelings.

Many moral philosophers have nowadays returned to the older theory, that such values are indeed objective: as much matters of fact as mathematical truths. But what can their ontological status be? What sort of existents are moral or mathematical truths or values? Traditional theism solved the problem by identifying God, precisely, as the source and consummation of all such values, and though Cottingham acknowledges some of the problems with some versions of that notion, he suggests that it is still the best available option for those who take moral (and mathematical) truth seriously as something more than the contingent habits and impulses of a particular biological and social organism.

Of course, the fact (if it is one) that we can more easily retain a belief in such values (and correspondingly in the wrongness of cruelty, treachery, and deceit) if we persuade ourselves that they are eternally vindicated in the life of an infinite and all-powerful deity does not prove that there is indeed such a deity. But if there isn't, and if there is therefore (?) no objective demand to face up to the truth (for there are no objective demands to do anything at all), why exactly should we not persuade ourselves of whatever it is that makes life easier for us? The very demand that we should ‘face the facts’ (the theory, that is, that the world is an unnecessary and value-neutral guddle, and that there is no objective point in anything) depends on a prior recognition that the truth, and only the truth, is worth believing.

So maybe it is worth acknowledging and cultivating our initial, naïve, respect for beauty, truth, and goodness, and finding in traditional religion an apparatus to help us do so. ‘The religious framework provides a conceptual home for the morally admirable qualities of hope and humility, and for our deep impulse to respond to the gifts of life with thankfulness and awe’ (165). As changeable and easily tempted creatures, we too easily forget even those experiences that matter most to us, and allow them to be submerged by more immediate and tangible concerns. ‘In the absence of morning prayer, one will simply get up in the morning and start the day; in the absence of a habit of saying Grace, one will simply pick up the knife and fork and start eating’ (163). Without such a framework, episodes of deep respect or exultation, heartbroken compassion, or righteous fury (admittedly less common than the self-righteous sort), will be mere episodes, of no more weight than other transient passions.

Must we also adopt an overtly supernaturalist outlook, populating the world with spirits and magical connections of a sort that modern science has ruled out (rather by fiat than experiment, but no less sternly)? Cottingham insists, with good reason, that ‘nothing in science can, or does, rule out the possibility of divine intervention’ (86): that the world is a closed system, inexorably bound by general laws, is a metaphysical rather than a scientific claim. But a belief in ‘miracles’ is rarely now the basis for a robust religious faith: rather the reverse, the miracles seem likely enough from within the religious framework, even if they cannot be proven (cannot be shown to have happened, or cannot be shown to have been miraculous) without the primary premise of religious faith. There is no need for theologians to be so hesitant about affirming the miracles of their tradition (and so gradually surrendering the faith).

On the other hand, Cottingham cogently observes that some ‘fundamentalist’ interpretations of the miraculous depend on assuming that ‘the world’ is what is immediately obvious to every observer, whatever their character or spiritual state: the very same ‘bald theory’ of truth adopted by the more doctrinaire materialists. The story of the post-Resurrection appearance of Jesus on the road to Emmaus (according to Luke, 24.28–35) is a reminder that it is the evidence of the heart which is relevant here. Cottingham draws on an episode in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (128) to give body to the sort of ‘opening of the heart’ that can suddenly reveal a truth that we have earlier hidden from ourselves.

This is a book about religious faith in general, but Abrahamic, and especially Christian, faith in particular. It seems at times that Cottingham's only reason for preferring the Christian framework is that he was brought up in it, and that other frameworks might serve just as well to keep us on the Way. The doctrine of the Incarnation is the principal point at which Christianity differs even from the other Abrahamic faiths, and it is here (perhaps) that he finds his chief reason for abiding by that tradition. Somehow the unknown and unknowable godhead, the focus of our moral, aesthetic, and epistemological admiration, has revealed itself in human life, whereas without that Incarnation, it is difficult to see how we could devote ourselves to something we cannot possibly understand. And just in that the Christian tradition has spoken of the Resurrection to life eternal, it is immune to contemporary challenges from those who reject a dualism of mind and body, on the basis of scientific discovery.

There are of course many omissions in this short, but impressive, volume, many points (half-acknowledged in the text) where followers of some other way would draw back from Cottingham's journey. He does not fully address, for example, the difficulties raised by current evolutionary theory for a fully teleological account of the world, and acknowledges – perhaps too quickly – that there is no intellectual solution to the so-called ‘problem of evil’. There are many points where he misses the chance to spell out what a wholly irreligious life would be like, one with no rumour of any angels – but perhaps plenty of devils. Probably no non-believer will be persuaded by this book – but they may at least get some sense of what it is like to believe, and some respect for at least some believers.