Faith and Unbelief
Stephen Bullivant
Canterbury Press £12.99
(978-1-84825-280-6)
Church Times Bookshop £11.70
STEPHEN BULLIVANT describes atheism today as "a large,
pervasive, growing and - by now - perfectly 'ordinary' feature of a
great many societies". So this book is a timely addition to Andrew
Davison's Faith Going Deeper series. So, what is it about?
Well, it is not about the relative merits of faith and unbelief;
nor is it concerned with doubt and uncertainty as positive aspects
of belief. It is about how theists, and especially Christian
theists, relate to those who have no belief in God and who may
positively argue for God's non-existence.
First of all, we have an intentionally provocative chapter on
Christian atheism, tracing its origins back to the classical
distinction between God and a god. From Paul onwards, there was a
determination to separate the one true God from the gods of Greece
and Rome. This made Christians "atheists" in the sense of denying
what they condemned as idolatrous conceptions of divinity. But
there is also a form of Christian atheism which balks at any
attempt to speak about God in objective terms. As the Marxist
philosopher Ernst Bloch put it: "only an atheist can be a good
Christian."
Among other things, this chapter demonstrates that atheism is a
far subtler and more sophisticated phenomenon than New Atheists
such as Richard Dawkins seem to comprehend.
Subsequent chapters focus on barriers to belief (e.g. the
scandalous nature of the gospel; suffering and evil; the apparent
sufficiency of scientific explanations); the extent to which
Christianity is itself to blame for an increase in unbelief; the
dynamics of dialogue with unbelievers, and, finally, the need for
what Catholics are calling the "New Evangelisation" aimed at those
who have had acquaintance with Christianity, but have subsequently
rejected it.
A key chapter asks "Can atheists be saved?" and provides a
sympathetic treatment of what Bullivant describes as "the
weightiest of all the topics treated in this book". It offers a
classic example of the way faith defines itself on a spectrum of
possibilities without needing to opt for one view to the exclusion
of others. On balance, Bullivant opts for universal salvation as a
plausible belief - but don't count on it!
One striking aspect of this generally measured and helpful book
is just how tribal theological apologetics can be. The author is
Roman Catholic, and so are the majority of authors he cites in
developing his argument. This does not detract from the
plausibility or otherwise of his position, and it is likely that,
if the series editor had opted for a Protestant contributor, there
would have been an equal but opposite bias. The estimable aims of
this series would, however, surely be better served by a rather
more ecumenically eclectic slate of secondary sources.
Bullivant repeatedly acknowledges the extent to which he has had
to skate across the surface of subjects that really require more
extensive treatment. But he does supply helpful suggestions for
further reading, and, anyway, the aim of this series is to provide
"a framework for understanding the subject in hand", so that its
authors need not be too sensitive to charges of superficiality. As
Canon Angela Tilby has put it, here is "real theology aimed at the
non-specialist and written in accessible language which does not
patronise or over simplify" - and we look forward to more from this
particular stable.
The Rt Revd Dr John Saxbee is a former Bishop of
Lincoln.