This is an ambitious book, its argument has a complex structure, and the range of contemporary theological and philosophical writing that it draws upon is impressive. Moore first sets his sights on the non-realist Christian theology originating with Don Cupitt, and endorsed by the ‘Sea of Faith’ movement. Moore is unwilling to dismiss this non-realism in the way that Alvin Plantinga does (‘an amiable sort of dottiness’) but he does not invest much time in exploring (or exploding) its intellectual basis. This is because his real target, it rapidly becomes apparent, is the ‘theological realism’ that has been advanced by a number of prominent contemporary theologians in answer to Cupitt and other protagonists of the Sea of Faith. While Moore plainly shares the view that this sort of non-realism needs answering, his contention is that ‘theological realism’ is the wrong sort of answer.

The version to which Moore pays most attention is that which draws a parallel between theology and science. This strategy is motivated by the thought that if theological assertions can be shown to be similar in certain crucial ways to scientific theories that invoke unobservable entities (such as electrons and genes), and if scientific realism can be defended, then the fact that theology employs unobservable entities in its explanations of phenomena ceases to be specially problematic. Such an argument is cogent, of course, only if realism in science can be adequately defended, and Moore rightly points out that there are prominent and influential philosophers of science who think it cannot be. But his main objection lies elsewhere, and runs deeper. It is essentially twofold. How do we know that the ‘God’ of theological realism is the right God? And if God is the ens realissimus, from which everything takes its being and meaning, how can the nature of his existence be something that it needs metaphysics (and especially the metaphysics appropriate to science) to secure?

A lengthy exploration of these issues leads him to reject theological realism, but the need to offer some reply to Cupitt and the non-realists remains. How is such a reply to be constructed? Somewhat surprisingly, Moore turns to an unpromising source – the Wittgensteinian approach to religion elaborated by D. Z. Phillips in a series of books written over thirty years. It is arguable that no one lends this approach much credibility any longer, and Moore does not want to defend it outright. But he does think that there is something right about the fundamental contention that theology is not an independent intellectual discipline that can proceed unchecked and indifferent to actual religious practices. Phillips correctly emphasises this, but by construing theology as simply the ‘grammar’ of the religious ‘games’ that Christians ‘play’, he erroneously assumes that Christian practices are in order as they are, and not in need of theological regulation or correction. The existence of Christian non-realism and its reinterpretation of (for instance) the Eucharist shows the contrary. Christians can make mistakes in their practices, by worshipping false gods and idols of their own construction. Accordingly, we cannot simply rest content with the Wittgensteinian assertions ‘this game is played’ and ‘here my spade is turned’.

The solution, according to Moore, is a ‘dialectical fideism’ that understands God himself to be the regulator of Christian practices, and of theology as one of those practices. This thought lies at the heart of what he claims is a transcendental argument for realism. It has something like the following form: Christian discipleship seeks the unfolding disclosure of God's saving work as revealed in Christ. It is compelled, therefore, to strive to avoid error in thought and practice. But it can only do so if the reality of God perpetually corrects its practices and processes of thought. In this sense, realism is a necessary presupposition of Christianity, and on these grounds we may declare non-realism false. But the focus of this Christian realism is not metaphysical truth, but God in Christ, which is why it is inescapably Christocentric.

This summary shows, I hope, the complexity and sophistication of Moore's argument, and his grasp of important contemporary issues. His strictures on too slavish a view of science as the model which all human thought and reflection must be modelled on, and his insistence that, if we take the idea of God seriously, we must make God foundational in Christian metaphysics and not derivative, are important and convincingly defended. Yet there seem to me to be two great weaknesses in the position he adopts. First, it conflates the theological use of language with every religious use of language. Second, it has the consequence that theology (and Christian thought more broadly) are isolated from the cultural context in which, like it or not, they have to claim a hearing.

One of the proponents of science-orientated theological realism with whom Moore takes most issue is Wentzel van Huyssteen, who declares that theologians ‘are first and last theoreticians’ and they ‘construct theories in order to explain, as fully and successfully as possible, the hidden structures of the studied matter’ (quoted p. 45). Moore contends that this view of their subject will ‘look rather off beam’ to any one who thinks that what matters is ‘theology's faithfulness to God’. But surely it is people, not intellectual disciplines, who are faithful – or faithless. There is a conflation of ideas here that needs to be held separate. Christianity, let us agree, is not a theory, and Christian discipleship is not subscription to a theory. But it does not follow that there are no theological explanations with intrinsic intellectual interest. Furthermore, in so far as there are, we cannot automatically suppose that only Christians can elaborate or defend them.

Moore tells us that van Huyssteen's concern is to avoid theology's becoming ‘a subjective, dogmatic, ghetto activity’ (p. 44). This seems to me not just a laudable but a crucial aim if theology is to contribute to the contemporary academy, and to the wider cultural context of thought. It remains crucial even if (as Moore alleges) van Huyssteen's own conception of theology relies on an ultimately inappropriate parallel with the physical sciences. The difficulty is that Moore's alternative is profoundly confessional, and while his explication of what this means is powerful in places, it leads him to regard any use of language in religion as ‘theology’. The result is that he identifies theology with preaching, and theological inquiry with spiritual journeying. Of course, preaching has its place, and in the life and witness of the church preaching is generally far more important than theology. The life of the spirit, too, is not the life of the mind: the hopes of ‘the humble poor’ may bring them far closer to God than the speculations of sophisticated theologians. But to identify mind and spirit is a little like dismissing the possibility that psychology could ever cast light on human relationships, because psychology never found anyone a friend.

More importantly, perhaps, to preach at other members of the academy – the philosophers, historians and scientists among whom theologians must find a place – is precisely to declare oneself in favour of a ‘dogmatic ghetto activity’, not because this is the intention, but because that is how the rest of the academy will see it. This much seems to me certain. Should they read this book to the end, contemporary philosophers concerned with the issue of realism versus anti-realism – philosophers with whose work Moore is evidently au fait – will conclude that theology as he understands it has nothing to offer them in their metaphysical wrestlings.