Given the incompatibility between scientific naturalism and religious belief, the scope and complexity of the religion-science debate, and the belief that theological discourse should acknowledge the constraining role of science, the ontological inquiry of critical realism is required to clear away obscurity and conflicting warrants to ultimately account for the possibility of a knowledge of transcendent Being—including a Prolegomena to the discontinuity of Christian mystical experience.

Adapting the hypothetico-deductive method of Carl Hempel and the scientific research program of Imre Lakatos to the framework of critical realism, a Theological Critical Realism Research Program is formulated. The depth-ontology and core commitments of this program enhance the data from science and evidence culled from moral, aesthetic, and religious experience, providing justification for claiming that metaphysics—and by extension the possibility of a knowledge of transcendent Being—is possible, offering transcendental beliefs as a way to account for our understanding of Reality and the workings of the world.