[IR 13.

2 (2010) 224–229] Implicit Religion (print) ISSN 1463-9955

doi:10.1558/imre.v13i2.224 Implicit Religion (online) ISSN 1743-1697

The Myth of Religious Neutrality: An Essay on the Hidden Role of Reli-

gious Belief in Theories (revised edition), by Roy A. Clouser. Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005. Pp. 416, $28.00. ISBN-13:
9780268023669.
Reviewed by John Badertscher, Department of Religious Studies, Univer-
sity of Winnipeg (retired). Email: noahsark1@shaw.ca
Keywords: Neo-Calvinist, religious belief, divine, theories

This is an unfashionable book. It is written in a pedantic style, as if it were

an edited transcript of many years of lectures. It moves by careful, logical
steps to conclusions that become premises for the next step. Points made
earlier are often repeated when applied in new contexts. The author pays
little attention to issues of translation and the ambiguities of language
about which recent scholarship has taught us so much. Most egregiously,
the author leads us to conclusions that most liberal-minded scholars would
be embarrassed to claim as their own.
I begin my review with these observations precisely because the casual
browser, outside a relatively small circle of neo-Calvinist scholars, is likely
to notice these matters and disregard the book because of them. And that
would be too bad, indeed, because this book deserves the careful attention
of at least two groups of readers. The first group includes all the readers of
this journal: those who are aware of, and seek to describe and understand,
implicit religion. The second group includes all scholars who consider
themselves Christian (or Jewish or Muslim or simply theist), and who
seek a clear understanding of the relationship between their faith and their
scholarly activity. Let us begin by addressing the first of these two groups.
The first section of the book claims to be about religion, but the author
moves quickly to narrow the focus to “one particular use of the term ‘reli-
gion,’ the sense in which it qualifies belief ” (9). Those nurtured by the writ-
ings of W.C. Smith will find themselves squirming here, but it is worth-
while to accept this severe narrowing of focus as necessary to the author’s
purpose. The author does not regard the term “belief ” as problematic, and
therefore in need of definition. He uses it as roughly synonymous with
“assumption.” But he gives considerable attention to the definition of reli-
gious belief, with this conclusion on page 24:
A belief is a religious belief provided that:
1. It is a belief in something as divine per se no matter how that is
further described, or

© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2010, 1 Chelsea Manor Studios, Flood Street, London SW3 5SR
Book Reviews 225
2. it is a belief about how the non-divine depends upon the divine
per se, or
3. it is a belief about how humans come to stand in proper relation
to the divine per se,
4. where the essential core of divinity per se is to have the status of
unconditionally non-dependent reality.
The purpose of the opening section of the book is to establish that all
such beliefs are religious, regardless of whether the term “religion” is used
to describe them, or whether those who hold such beliefs recognize that
the term “religious” applies to them. It is not hard to see that if the author’s
tightly argued case is valid, his understanding will have considerable rel-
evance for the study of implicit religion.
The concluding chapters of this section of the book set out a typology
of religious beliefs, based upon what the author calls “dependency ideas.”
While Clouser is clear that his typology is not exhaustive, he suggests that
three types are prevalent in our world. The first type he calls Pagan. Here
the divine is sought within the world, including the non-visible aspects
of the world. There are non-cultic forms of this belief, including all kinds
of materialism. The second type he calls Pantheistic. Here divine reality is
regarded as infinite and all-encompassing, despite “the illusory appearance
that there are things which are not divine” (48, author’s italics). Clouser calls
the third type Biblical. He is clear that this is the type to which he as a
Christian subscribes, although he recognises that it might include Jews and
Muslims as well. Later in the book we discern that this type is not defined
by the beliefs of people in these traditions as empirically manifest. Indeed,
he regards much of the belief of most Christians as implicitly pagan.
The Biblical type, as Clouser articulates it, is generated by a Calvinist
interpretation of Christian Scripture. He refers to the New Testament as
especially normative. Further, not all beliefs held by people who regard
themselves as Calvinists qualify. (This is the place to note that Clouser
follows the school of thought that arose in the nineteenth century revival
of Calvinism associated with Abraham Kuyper, and developed philosoph-
ically by Herman Dooyeweerd, most notably in his four-volume work,
A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (1955). This tradition has been
developed, not only by Clouser, but by such highly regarded philosophers as
Nicholas Wolterstorff and Alvin Plantinga.) The Biblical type, as Clouser
presents it, holds that only God is divine. The reality of all things “visible
and invisible” depends upon God, who has created them. God is known by
us only through God’s self-revelation. The Bible is the authoritative guide

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226 Book Reviews
to this self-revelation. It “...conveys the contents of God’s covenant(s)...”
(52), and thus enables humans to relate to God properly.
The reader might think that by invoking this standard early in the book,
Clouser is abandoning reasoning for authority, but that would be mistaken.
The defence of the integrity of reasoning is one of his primary aims. The
point is to prepare the reader for the next section, in which theories and
the relationship of religious beliefs to theories are examined, as promised
by the title of the book. The approach in this second section is rigorously
analytical and objective. The author makes it clear that he does not believe
that he can prove the truth of the Biblical type. Indeed, he regards any
attempt to do so as inherently defective. But he is making clear the direc-
tion in which he wants to lead us, and he is preparing us to see the implica-
tions of his (and Dooyeweerd’s) approach.
Clouser defines theories as explanations that offer hypotheses justified
by arguments and evidence (63). While recognizing broader understand-
ings of the term, his scrutiny is directed at the highly abstract, complex and
sophisticated theories that we would call scientific and philosophical. The
scientist examines some aspect of reality, while the philosopher considers
the relation between various aspects and the general theory of reality into
which they fit. In the process of abstraction, theoretical thought focuses
on some particular aspect of experience for the purpose of discerning the
properties that pertain to it, and the laws that regulate it. Theories that pro-
vide an overview of reality or knowledge Clouser calls perspectival theories
(77). These definitions and distinctions prepare us for the central claim of
the author about what he calls the religious control of theories:
...scientific theories necessarily presuppose an overview of reality, while
overviews of reality necessarily presuppose some per se divinity belief.
Religious belief thus regulates overviews of reality directly, and through the
mediation of some overview regulates scientific theories indirectly. (78)
Clouser holds that there are criteria for judging theories and, as he states
them, they are not religious. Logical inconsistency is one, and evidentiary
inadequacy is another, although Clouser notes the ingenuity with which
theories can deal with the latter. Beyond these, he emphasizes three inco-
herencies that provide valid criteria for judgment. The first is self-referen-
tial incoherence, as in “all Canadians are liars, and I am a Canadian.” The
second is self-assumptive incoherence, as in the assertion that all reality is
exclusively physical. The linguistic meaning of the assertion cannot cohere
with the linguistic nature of the assertion. While these two criteria are
generally recognized, Clouser advances a third one as a criterion that is

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Book Reviews 227
generally overlooked. He calls it self-performative incoherence, as in Des-
cartes’ thought experiment, in which he realized that he could not coher-
ently think his present non-existence. This is the criterion, he informs us,
whose employment will later allow him to demonstrate that “any attempt
to justify the claim that an abstracted aspect is self-existent (and thus divine) is
always incompatible with the activity of abstraction required to make the claim”
(86, author’s italics).
After two more chapters, to which I shall return momentarily, there fol-
lows the third section of the book, entitled “A Casebook.” The first three
chapters of the section discuss theories in mathematics, physics and psy-
chology respectively. In each case, Clouser shows that the various and
contrary theories offered by leaders in each discipline are regulated by
competing ideas about the nature of reality, and that each of these are,
in turn, “governed by contrary ideas of what is divine per se” (185). These
chapters will be of great interest to scholars of implicit religion, and those
more familiar than this reviewer with each discipline will want to consider
Clouser’s analyses carefully and critically. At this point, however, he has
not yet made the case promised in the book’s title. That requires another
chapter, Chapter 10, entitled “The Need for a New Beginning.”
Before we see where it leads, we must return to the two chapters we
skipped above, for they prepare us for the theological agenda pursued in
the “new beginning.” The first of these chapters discusses alternative views
of the relationship between theories and religious beliefs. There is religious
irrationalism, which isolates faith from the judgment of reason. There is
religious rationalism, which regards theoretical reason as the final court of
appeal in all matters. Then there is “the radically biblical position,” which
holds that religious belief guides and directs the use of reason in all of
life. Clouser intends to uphold this position, but let me stress that he does
not simply assert this on the basis of some putative authority. In fact, to
do so would be, in his analysis, to opt for one of the other two alterna-
tives. Clouser recognises that his position is one that many of the greatest
Christian thinkers have attempted to avoid. He discusses what he calls
Christian Scholasticism, and concludes that Aquinas and others got it
wrong, while Calvin got it right. Clouser observes that, since:
the scholastics hold a numerical plurality, ...the rationalists are in the driv-
er’s seat,...the irrationalists are coming on as challengers, and...the largest
group to hold the radically biblical position are fundamentalists, what can
possibly be said in defense of this position? (109)
What can be said awaits Chapter 10 and that which follows it. But

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228 Book Reviews
Clouser begins to answer the question in the chapter that follows immedi-
ately. Here he articulates a devastating critique of fundamentalism because
of its misconstrual of how religious belief is to control thinking. Their
“encyclopedic assumption” leads fundamentalists to look to scripture for
answers to all sorts of questions (notably, scientific ones), not just religious
ones. In Clouser’s view, “while God is the creator of the causal order....he
is not himself one of the causes alongside all the other causes—not even its
first cause” (114). By his account, using the Bible as a science text is both
bad science and bad biblical interpretation.
We now turn to Chapter 10, which the author intends to be both the
place where he finishes making his case for the unavoidability of the con-
trol of theory by religious belief, and where he defends a “radically bibli-
cal” approach as the one that puts theoretical thought on its best footing.
Because of his thorough preparation in the preceding chapters, Clouser
is able to move quickly to the first of these. A thought experiment shows
that no abstracted aspect of reality can be thought in total isolation from
some other aspects. As all aspects are thus related in some way to all other
aspects, the issue of inter-aspectual relatedness is unavoidable. Dealing
with it will lead, also unavoidably, to the presupposition of some non-
dependent reality which is per se divine. (191–92).
Clouser tells us that he intends “to show...not that all ascriptions of divin-
ity to any aspect of the world are false, but why they are unjustifiable.” The
connection between the two agendas of the book is that Clouser’s philo-
sophical critique is “evidence that all ascriptions of divinity are brought to
theorizing from pre-theoretical experience, and are in that sense every bit
as much articles of faith as is belief in God” (192). Thus does the author
fulfill the promise of the book’s title. At this point those readers who are
interested in the study of implicit religion, but not in questions about the
truth or adequacy of religious claims, may choose to dismount, because
the author’s larger concern, one that transcends the title of the book, now
moves front and centre.
His critique now focuses on theories that are controlled by “pagan”
beliefs, such as materialism. Because such theories take some aspect of the
world to be unconditioned, they are inevitably reductionistic and are thus,
based on the tests of theories noted above, incoherent. Clouser then moves
to a religious critique of those who, as theists, attempt “to preserve the
reduction strategy in their theoretical work” (197). His critique is directed
at what he calls “AAA theology” (Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas). A theol-
ogy that better supports the sciences because, regarding all the world as

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Book Reviews 229
equally created, ordered and made lawful, by God can be found, Clouser
argues, in the theology of the Cappadocians, the Reformers (most con-
sistently, Calvin) and Karl Barth. Clouser calls it “pancreationism,” and it
avoids reductionism by generating theories, “guided by the belief that God,
and God alone, is self-existent” (233). Everything else, including time and
the laws of logic, is, in some sense, created.
Building on Dooyeweerd’s work, including such concepts as sphere sov-
ereignty, the author attempts in the final section of the book to spell out
in successive chapters non-reductionist theories of reality, society and the
state. As these are already sketchy and condensed, this reviewer will make
no effort to condense them further, but they are, in my judgment, well
worth considering. On offer are ways to get beyond the subjective/objec-
tive split, to deal with the tension between the claims of the individual and
the collective dimensions of society, and some stunning insights on why,
“the Christian view of the state is that the state should not favour Christianity”
(319). (Clouser likes italics.)
There is a lifetime of scholarship in this book. Readers will be rewarded
if they are not put off by unfashionable topics and occasionally infelicitous
language, and wrestle seriously with Clouser’s well-wrought arguments
and careful analyses.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2010