How can an atheist develop a reconstructed notion of God that has any serious affinity with the God of traditional theism? That is the question posed by Rethinking Religion: Beyond Scientism, Theism and Philosophic Doubt.
The answer lies in the book’s respect for the theism’s quest, for theism’s rightful concern with transcendence, miracle, and guidance from without. Rethinking aligns with traditional theism in two other respects. It rejects the increasingly popular notion that all we think and do can be explained scientifically and it affirms the possibility of moral knowledge against the philosophic doubt of it.

How, then, does it differ from traditional theology? It differs in denying the supernatural aspect of theism’s claims. But, unlike similar critiques, Rethinking finds essential religious insights at the core of theism’s visions—insights that early cultures were not positioned to clarify. This left no option for religious institutions but to frame theology in popularly accessible but false narratives whose support could rest only on faith.

Rethinking Religion attempts to uncover and make use of these insights. It recognizes miracle as religion’s defining fact and shows in what way miracles such as creation, transcendence, incarnation, transubstantiation, and God can exist without being supernatural—a conclusion distasteful to scientistic and skeptical philosophies yet essential for religion if religion is not simply a moral code, a psychological aid, an instrument of social control or a genetically programmed delusion. If there exists no uniquely religious type of fact (such as the miraculous) there can be no specifically religious truths (just as if there were no type of fact as past happenings there could be no historical truths).

However, Rethinking Religion, like any theology, is speculative. Its claims cannot be physically tested. Adding to its dubious status is religion’s defining question: “what is the meaning of life?”—for then the temptation is great to offer solace or thrills or both. Hence, there must be a source of discipline. Otherwise unbridled speculation, like unhindered power will “corrupt absolutely.”

In the view of Rethinking Religion, discipline must be sought in our existential practices. It is not enough for an argument to be “logical.” Civilized life is Rethinking’s sacred text. At bottom, theology has no “foundation” beyond what the reader (what people by and large) respect as real in situations of moral or physical consequence—as when we level with our children, testify in court or speak to a physician. Its ideas derive their authority and cogency from what we are committed to “when the chips are down.” True, this formulation yields no immediately applicable rule. Nothing does; not even faith.

At the same time, the book understands that religion has to do with things ultimate, transcendent, spiritual, miraculous—awesome beyond even the most amazing workings of nature. Its task is to seek a truth that unites the ultimate with the temporal, the miraculous with the quotidian and uncovers an ultimate context wherein selflessness, goodness, and familial-feeling are expressions of what may, with reason, be called, “God.”

But the ultimate, guiding necessity called “God” cannot be newly understood through familiar arguments and without philosophic reflection. It is not obvious how knowledge may be said to create us human, how God is necessity or how feelings are incarnation. Hard issues (faith and reason, science and religion, free will) block an easy march from supernatural to natural miracles. Rethinking calls not for “reading” but for study. As Paul Tillich said: “Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence.” No lesser emotion could meet the challenge.