This paper looks critically at the nature of nursing theory from three perspectives. Firstly, it examines the current state of nursing theory with a particular focus on Patricia Benner's work. This examination concludes that nursing theory is currently beset by the problems of scientific and moral relativism and philosophical incoherence because it has abandoned a traditional realist approach to the care of patients. Secondly, the roots of this contemporary nursing position are analysed and the conclusion is reached that nursing theorists are implicitly presuming this traditional 'common sense' view of nursing, although their own philosophical assumptions do not support it and indeed are removing the ground from beneath it. The traditional theory underpinning the quality of the nurse's care, and hence the ethos of nursing, is rearticulated. In conclusion it is suggested that nursing needs to debate the modernist views that are now holding sway in nursing and rediscover a theory for the care of patients that holds together the personal, the pastoral, the scientific and the technological aspects of patient care.