The chief topic of this book has been the reality of God. My concern has been to argue the case for belief in God in an objective sense, and at the same time to show how such belief belongs to the essence of Christianity. If this is so, it follows that the Church, the community through which the Christian faith is practised and taught, is, for all time, committed to belief in the objective reality of God.

In the final chapter of this book I want to examine this entailment. Is it true that the Christian Church stands or falls by its commitment, for all time, to the objective reality of God? Is it conceivable that a Christianity and a Church without dogma and without metaphysical belief might continue to exist as a merely human vehicle of a particular ‘religious’ form of life?

There are a number of issues at stake here. In the first place there is the question of sociological realism: is it plausible to suppose that Christianity as a world religion and the Church as an institution could survive without its dogma and without its metaphysics? In other words, is it realistic to envisage the whole Church coming to adopt a purely expressivist understanding of its own language and liturgy? In the second place, there is the question of definition: would a Church that cut loose from belief in the objective reality of God count as a Christian Church at all?