Two opposed camps can only have a fruitful debate if they agree on what it is they disagree about. A militant atheist such as Richard Dawkins is right to call out scientific ignorance in some religious settings. But at a deeper level his argument fails, because the deity he rejects is a blown-up thing, not the Creator conceived in classical tradition.
Similar considerations apply to Slavoj Žižek’s Christian Atheism. When the claim that religion is no more than pious fantasy forms your starting point as well as your conclusion, then reason becomes the first casualty. This approach is as circular as beginning a book on socialism by asserting that all left-wing thought and endeavour are flawed by definition.
If God is the ground of reality rather than the main figure in a field of material agents, how should the divine presence be modelled? A better analogy is supplied by light. The light in which we see is not itself one more element in a list of items on view. Light is ‘seen’ only insofar as it is reflected off opaque objects. From a monotheistic standpoint, the same applies to the divine light. As the philosopher Denys Turner puts it: ‘The light which is God we can only see in the creatures that reflect it.’
This awareness is shared across much of the religious spectrum. Two crucial but overlooked features of Christianity distinguish it from the spiritual mainstream, however. One concerns how believers relate to God. Christians do not (or should not) hold that their earthly lives are an obstacle course set up by a celestial headteacher who will give a progress report at the journey’s end.
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