An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology E-Book

Thomas H. McCall

• Herausgeber: IVP Academic
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 326

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

In recent decades a new movement has arisen, bringing the conceptual tools of analytic philosophy to bear on theological reflection. Called analytic theology, it seeks to bring a clarity of thought and a disciplined use of logic to the work of constructive Christian theology. In this introduction to analytic theology for specialists and nonspecialists alike, Thomas McCall lays out what it is and what it isn't. The goal of this growing and energetic field is not the removal of all mystery in theology. At the same time, it insists that mystery must not be confused with logical incoherence.McCall explains the connections of analytic theology to Scripture, Christian tradition and culture, using case studies to illuminate his discussion. Beyond mere description, McCall calls the discipline to a deeper engagement with the traditional resources of the theological task.

Leseprobe

An Invitation to

ANALYTIC CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

Thomas H. McCall

To Bill Ury, my first and finest teacher of theology.

You showed me what it means to do theology to the glory of God and for the sake of the world, and you helped me catch a precious glimpse of “love divine, all loves excelling.” I’ll be forever grateful.

Contents

Introduction

1 What Is Analytic Theology?

2 Analytic Theology and Christian Scripture

3 Analytic Theology and the History of Doctrine

4 Analytic Theology for the Church and the World

5 Analytic Theology to the Glory of God

Notes

Author Index

Subject Index

Praise for An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology

About the Author

More Titles from InterVarsity Press

Copyright

Introduction

THE WIDE RANGE OF EVENTS and publications that are loosely gathered under the label “analytic theology” is both quite broad and very active. Proponents and practitioners range from traditionally minded Orthodox and Roman Catholic philosophers and theologians through Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist and other tradition-sensitive scholars to conservative evangelicals and to revisionist or “progressive” theologians. In some quarters, enthusiasm runs high. In other sectors of the theological (and philosophical) academy, suspicion and even ­hostility run deep. Misunderstanding often accompanies the label, and questions abound. But just what is this thing called “analytic theology”? What are its “accidental” features, and what are its “essential” attributes? And what are we to make of it as theology? Or is it merely a technically precise and agenda-driven subdiscipline of analytic metaphysics? Where is it going? Is there some discernible direction that it will—or should—take?

In this book, I introduce nonspecialists to analytic theology. I try to make clear both what it isn’t and what it is. Accordingly, I discuss what makes analytic theology analytic, and I try to lay out what makes analytic theology really theology. Specifically, I outline analytic theology’s connections to Scripture, Christian tradition and culture (broadly conceived), and I do so by using case studies to illuminate the relationships and the need for further integration. Here I must also confess to an agenda: I am hoping to influence the future of analytic theology by calling the discipline to a deeper engagement with the traditional resources of the theological task.

I come to the work of analytic theology as someone who is, by training and by vocation, a theologian. Thus I am especially grateful for the patience and graciousness of those friends and colleagues who have genuine expertise in epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy of religion (as well as the history of philosophy). I am deeply indebted to you for whatever abilities I have as an analytic theologian, and I am truly grateful for your collegiality and encouragement. I am also thankful for those fellow theologians who have taken up the mantle of analytic theology; and I am grateful as well to those who led the way by actually doing it before it was ever called by that name. Oliver Crisp, Mike Rea and Billy Abraham read the manuscript and offered very helpful critique and encouragement, and the book is much improved as a result. (All remaining faults are, of course, entirely mine.)

In addition, I am grateful for the community of saints and scholars who surround me at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (and especially the members of the Deerfield Dialogue Group who read part of the manuscript), and I am indebted as well to the administration and the board of regents for a sabbatical in the fall of 2014.

1

What Is Analytic Theology?

Fear of scholasticism is the mark of the false prophet.*

KARL BARTH

A Brief History of Analytic Theology

Where we were: The revival of philosophy of religion. For a good deal of the twentieth century, academic philosophy—especially Anglo-American “analytic” philosophy—was often taken to be hostile to traditional theistic belief in general and perhaps especially so to Christian belief.1 Logical positivism insisted that theological claims were not only false but indeed meaningless, and many philosophers found it difficult even to take theology seriously. The conclusions of A. J. Ayer are both representative and influential. He claims that the very “possibility of religious knowledge” has been “ruled out by our treatment of metaphysics.”2 If the “criterion of verifiability” eliminates metaphysics, and if theology is only a subcategory of metaphysics, then theology is obviously eliminated—the very possibility has been ruled out and all God-talk is literally nonsensical.3 Hud Hudson says, “Informed that questions about the existence, nature, and significance of the deity were hereafter to be engaged exclusively under the guidance of linguistic analyses of religious language, and menaced with (inexplicably popular) verificationist theories of meaning, theologians were told by analytic philosophers that they had not even achieved the minimal distinction of saying anything false, for they had not managed to say anything at all.”4

The response of many theologians in the late modern era to the developments in mainstream philosophy in Anglo-American circles was under­standable: they largely ignored the work of these philosophers and looked elsewhere for intellectual resources and conversation partners. Some sought refuge in “Continental” philosophy, while others decried any engagement between philosophy and theology.

But the second half of the twentieth century witnessed some remarkable changes. As Hudson notes, “This most unfortunate moment in the history of analytic philosophy was mercifully temporary, as was its slavish devotion to linguistic analyses, verificationism, and all the unfounded suspicion of metaphysics, ethics, and religion that followed in its wake.”5 Logical positivism couldn’t bear its own weight, and Ayer’s confident pronouncements are now valued more as a quaint museum artifact of philosophical history (“Look, kids, isn’t it amazing that anyone ever said that—and especially that he seemed so cocksure about it?”) than as a helpful repository of philosophical insight. With the collapse of positivism came a rebirth of serious metaphysics—and with that collapse and the rebirth of metaphysics came a revival of philosophy of religion.6 Where philosophical consideration of theological issues had been deemed an utter waste of time, now it was seen as an interesting area of inquiry. Serious and sustained engagement with perennial issues of religious and theological interest was happening again, and many of the philosophers engaged in this work were—and are—committed Christians.

Not all philosophers rejoice at these developments, but it is increasingly hard for them not to notice them. Quentin Smith describes—and decries—this development:

The secularization of mainstream academia began to quickly unravel upon the publication of Plantinga’s influential book on realist theism, God and Other Minds, in 1967. It became apparent to the philosophical profession that this book displayed that realist theists were not outmatched by naturalists in terms of the most valued standards of academic philosophy: conceptual precision, rigor of argumentation, technical erudition, and an in-depth defense of an original worldview. This book, followed seven years later by Plantinga’s even more impressive book, The Nature of Necessity, made it manifest that a realist theist was writing at the highest qualitative level of analytic philosophy, on the same playing field as Carnap, Russell, Grünbaum, and other naturalists.7

Smith, in what basically amounts to something of an alarmist “call to arms” to his fellow atheists, concludes that “God is not ‘dead’ in academia; he returned to life in the late 1960’s and is now alive and well in his last academic stronghold, philosophy departments.”8

While triumphalism on the part of Christian philosophers would be both very premature and unseemly (they remain, by all measures, in the substantial minority within academic philosophy), nonetheless Smith is right that the situation is very different than it was only a few decades ago. The Society of Christian Philosophers, founded in 1978 as a small group of diverse scholars who were more unified by common interests than by shared commitment to a particular creed, now has in the neighborhood of a thousand members. Several journals—notably Faith and Philosophy, Philosophia Christi, Religious Studies, Sophia, Philo and the International Journal of Philosophy of Religion—are devoted to issues broadly related to the study of the philosophy of religion, and Christian philosophers are very active in these and other venues. At the same time, Christian philosophers are very active in other, more “mainstream” areas of contemporary philosophy; important, recent work in metaphysics and epistemology in particular has been influenced by philosophers with religious interests and well-known Christian commitments.

Not surprisingly, the growth of Christian involvement in philosophy has been accompanied by increased interest in issues of perennial concern in philosophy of religion. Work on such issues had never entirely disappeared, of course, for prominent philosophers such as Basil Mitchell, Peter Geach, Austin Farrer and others were making significant contributions well before the current renaissance of Christian philosophy really took off.9 However, engagement has been growing at an astounding rate. Issues surrounding religious pluralism and exclusivism, problems of evil (including not only the “logical” problem of evil but also “evidential” problems), religious epistemology, religious experience, miracles, theistic arguments (particularly various versions of ontological, cosmological, teleological and moral arguments) and science and religion have been explored with impressive vigor and analyzed with formidable rigor.10 Positions have been set out and explained, attacked and defended, modified and surrendered. The work in philosophy of religion has not been cordoned off from other, more “mainstream” philosophical work. To the contrary, in many ways it has remained vitally engaged with cutting-edge work in epistemology, ethics and metaphysics; to use the latter as an example, from Alvin Plantinga’s early work The Nature of Necessity to Brian Leftow’s recent contributions in God and Necessity, important work in the metaphysics of modality has been deeply—and some might say “essentially”—connected to philosophy of religion.11 Judging from the interest and output, analytic philosophy of religion is not only alive and well but indeed healthy and robust.

How we got here: From philosophy of religion to philosophical theology. But for all the vigor and intellectual energy that is captured and reflected in work on general or generic issues in philosophy of religion, the interests of Christian philosophers have not been limited to those issues. Instead, Christian philosophers have been deeply interested in distinctly Christian theological topics, and they have devoted much energy to the analysis and defense of Christian doctrine. The past few decades have witnessed important work on the doctrine of revelation (and divine speech); the inspiration, authority and interpretation of the Christian Scriptures; divine attributes (particularly simplicity, necessity, aseity, omnipotence, omniscience, eternity and freedom); divine action in creation; providence; miraculous intervention; theological anthropology; original sin; incarnation; atonement; resurrection; and eschatology.12

Where we are: Philosophical theology and analytic theology. More recently, the term analytic theology has come into use. There are, of course, important forebears to this work: David Kelsey, Nicholas Wolterstorff and others at Yale; disparate figures such as William P. Alston, Norman Kretzmann, George Mavrodes, Keith Yandell and others elsewhere in the United States; Paul Helm and Richard Swinburne in the United Kingdom; and Vincent Brummer and others of the Utrecht school of philosophical theology in the Netherlands. Following trailblazers such as these, and building on the recent renaissance of metaphysics and philosophy of religion, the analytic theology movement is now growing. The publication of the volume Analytic Theology: Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea, marked an important moment. The Analytic Theology Project (sponsored and promoted by Notre Dame’s Center for Philosophy of Religion as well the University of Innsbruck in Austria and the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, and funded by generous grants from the John Templeton Foundation) with its annual Logos conference and other activities, the launch of the Journal of Analytic Theology, and the inauguration of the book series Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology all lend support to this growing movement.

The meaning of the term analytic theology can vary in common parlance, and it is safe to say that there is no single, decisively settled meaning of the term when it is used as a label. Still, perhaps we can safely say that what is common across the range of uses is this: analytic theology signifies a commitment to employ the conceptual tools of analytic philosophy where those tools might be helpful in the work of constructive Christian theology. Scholars will, naturally enough, disagree among themselves about just which of those tools are most helpful, which projects are best served by their use and other matters, but on the whole such a minimalist characterization seems safe enough. William J. Abraham offers this helpful summary: analytic theology “can be usefully defined as follows: it is systematic theology attuned to the skills, resources, and virtues of analytic philosophy.”13 As such, analytic theology is a growing and energetic field at the intersections of philosophy of religion and systematic theology.

What Analytic Theology Is (or Should Be)

Such minimalist characterization, while fairly safe, does not take us very far. What, more precisely, is one doing when one does analytic theology? Just what is analytic theology? Perhaps it will help first to consider what is so analytic about analytic theology. Following this, we shall think about how it is an exercise in theology.

Analytic theology asanalytictheology. As we have seen, Quentin Smith praises Plantinga’s work for its excellence in “the most valued standards of analytic philosophy: conceptual precision, rigor of argumentation, technical erudition, and an in-depth defense of an original worldview.”14 Oliver D. Crisp echoes this estimation of what counts as good work in analytic philosophy; he observes that analytic philosophy is characterized by “a logical rigour, clarity, and parsimony of expression, coupled with attention to a certain cluster of philosophical problems.”15 Analytic theology is relevantly similar, he says, for it “will prize intellectual virtues like clarity, parsimony of expression, and argumentative rigour.”16 Michael C. Rea’s description of analytic philosophy echoes these accounts in some ways. While recognizing that clear and sharp lines between “analytic” and “nonanalytic” (or “Continental”) philosophical approaches are neither easy to come by nor perhaps really worth all the work, he characterizes analytic approaches to philosophy in terms of style and ambition.17 The ambitions are generally “to identify the scope and limits of our powers to obtain knowledge of the world,” and “to provide such true explanatory theories as we can in areas of inquiry (metaphysics, morals, and the like) that fall outside the scope of the natural sciences.”18 Rea characterizes the style as including the following prescriptions:

P1. Write as if philosophical positions and conclusions can be adequately formulated in sentences that can be formalized and logically manipulated.

P2. Prioritize precision, clarity, and logical coherence.

P3. Avoid substantive (non-decorative) use of metaphor and other tropes whose semantic content outstrips their propositional content.

P4. Work as much as possible with well-understood primitive concepts, and concepts that can be analyzed in terms of those.

P5. Treat conceptual analysis (insofar as possible) as a source of evidence.19

This much, at least, is characteristic of analytic philosophy. So what about analytic theology? As Rea sees things, “analytic theology is just the activity of approaching theological topics with the ambitions of an analytic philosopher and in a style that conforms to the prescriptions that are distinctive of analytic philosophical discourse. It will also involve, more or less, pursuing those topics in a way that engages the literature that is constitutive of the analytic tradition, employing some of the technical jargon from that tradition, and so on. But in the end, it is the style and ambitions that are most central.”20

All this is helpful, but perhaps a bit more explanation would be beneficial. Consider P1. This need not mean that all meaningful statements in theology (or philosophy) need to be expressed formally; it should not be taken to mean that every theological claim should be stated in an apparatus with numbered propositions and a formal structure. What it does mean, however, is that the default setting for theologians should be to communicate propositions that could be expressed this way. For as Rea says, “absent special circumstances,” things have “gone very much amiss” if a view “is expressed in such a way that it has no clear logical outcomes.”21

Consider also P2. This need not—and should not—be taken to mean that logical precision and coherence are the only important criteria for a theologian, and neither should it be taken to imply even that logical precision and coherence are the most important criteria. The theologian who is convinced that her first commitment is fidelity to the priority and ultimacy of divine revelation should have no difficulty in assenting to P2. Neither, further, should P2 be taken to imply that the same levels of logical precision are possible with all theological topics, nor yet that all theological projects require the same levels of precision and argumentative rigor. Consider, by way of example, children’s catechetical literature. Surely this literature is theological, but it neither can nor should attempt to display the same level of logical precision or argumentative rigor as, say, advanced work in scholastic theology. P2 does not clam that such theological literature should do so, or that all work in theology must always do so.

Neither should P2 be misunderstood with respect to claims about the importance of “clarity.” Rea notes that this claim can seem ironic “in light of the fact that quite a lot of analytic philosophy [and, we could add, some analytic theology] is very difficult even for specialists, and totally inaccessible to non-specialists.”22 But “clear” does not mean “easy.” Instead, it expresses a commitment to the work of “spelling out hidden assumptions, scrupulously trying to lay bare whatever evidence one has (or lacks) for the claims that one is making, and on taking care to confine one’s vocabulary to ordinary language, well-understood primitive concepts, and technical jargon definable in terms of these.”23 Finally, we should note that P2 does not imply that everything (or everything worth talking about) in theology will become crystal clear. The goal of analytic theology is not (or at least need not be) the removal of all mystery in theology. To the contrary, analytic philosophers of religion have long been keenly aware of the place of mystery in theology, and it may be that at certain points an important role of the theologian is to clarify just where the mystery really lies. P2 does not suggest that analytic theology will make everything “clear” in the sense that it makes everything “easy and readily accessible to the nonspecialist.” Instead, what it prioritizes is clarity to the appropriate audiences and to the greatest possible degree. And it insists that “mystery” must not be confused with logical incoherence, and it likewise insists that we do not glorify what is clearly incoherent with the shroud of “mystery.” As Alan G. Padgett says, theology should “seek the truth about God” and “therefore must shun incoherence and irrationality.”24 Where “sometimes ‘mystery’ is evoked as an excuse for sloppy thinking, this must be anathema to any academic theology worthy of the name.” For “after all, the mystery of God does not end when theology speaks clearly. The simple phrase, ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so,’ covers vast, deep mysteries that even the angels gaze into with awe and wonder.”25

P3 rules out “substantive (non-decorative) use of metaphor and other tropes whose semantic content outstrips their propositional content.” This does not, or at least need not, mean that there is no valid or valuable place for metaphor in theology. Analytic theologians will disagree among themselves as to how—and how much—metaphor is useful and legitimate.26 But the basic point is fairly plain: on P3, theologians are not at liberty to trade loosely in metaphor without ever being able to specify just what is meant by those metaphors. They are not, then, free to make claims the meaning of which cannot be specified or spelled out. Theologians are not licensed to trade in what Randal Rauser calls “unclarifiable unclarity.”27 P4 calls the analytic theologian to work with “well-understood primitive concepts” that are reasonably taken to be basic, intuitive or (minimally) uncontroversial (and with concepts that can be understood in terms of such primitive concepts). Some theologians will be quick to raise concerns here; they will worry that the very notion of “well-understood primitive concepts” may both conceal blind spots of social location and privilege and be a Procrustean bed that restricts theological concepts to “what we already know to be true” and thus curtails the possibility of engagement with divine revelation. But once again, it is important not to misunderstand P4. The “as much as possible” is key here; if the preunderstood concepts don’t do enough work, then some of them can be adjusted. Others won’t be so easy to adjust or discard, but this category of primitive concepts is both quite small and very basic (e.g., the law of noncontradiction). Simply put, there is no good reason to think that the notion of “well-understood primitive concepts” must function as a Procrustean bed.

Finally, Rea says that P5 calls us to “treat conceptual analysis (insofar as it is possible) as a source of evidence.” It should be obvious that he does not say that conceptual analysis is the only source of evidence, and there is no reason to think that it should be taken this way. Neither does he claim that conceptual analysis is the primary or ultimate source of evidence. P5 makes an important claim, but it is a rather modest one. What it insists on is this: if close conceptual analysis reveals that some theological proposition P is, say, internally inconsistent, then that analysis gives us all the evidence we need to reject P. No matter how grand the claims of P’s supporters in defense of the supporting evidence for it, if P is incoherent (self-referentially or otherwise), then it is not true. Once we have established that P is incoherent (which is a task much harder than is sometimes supposed), we have all the reason we need to conclude that it is wrong. In addition, of course, conceptual analysis might count as evidence in other and more positive ways as well. Consider perfect being theology, for example: here theologians analyze “perfection” and then take deliverances of that analysis as evidence in support of their theological conclusions.

Much more could be said about what makes analytic theology truly analytic, of course. While this could be expanded on and broadened (particularly in directions that put less of a premium on precision), Rea’s P1-P5 give us an initial sense of what it means to say that theology is analytic theology. Generally speaking, analytic theology is theology that is attuned to and committed to the “goals and ambitions” of analytic philosophy: a commitment to truth wherever it may be found, clarity of expression, and rigor of argumentation. Very often it will not hesitate to make appropriate use of the available tools of analytic philosophy, especially as these aid conceptual precision and argumentative rigor.

Analytic theology as analytictheology. But if, echoing Smith, it is the concern with “conceptual precision” and “rigor of argumentation” that makes analytic theology analytic, then what is it that makes analytic theology really theology? This book develops an answer to this question, but an initial summary may help. Recall that Smith talks not only about “conceptual precision” and “rigor of argumentation” but also about “technical erudition” and the “in-depth defense of an original worldview.” For the analytic philosopher, “technical erudition” will naturally involve mastery of the requisite field (metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology, etc.), but it may also include competence in other, related fields (biology for philosophy of biology, neurology for philosophy of mind, etc.). For the analytic theologian, such erudition will include competence in the relevant areas of philosophical study that are necessary for “conceptual precision” and “rigor of argumentation.” But for the analytic theologian qua theologian, it must involve much more than this. For unless analytic theology is merely “armchair theology” (albeit armchair theology done by very bright people), it will be grounded in the Christian Scriptures, it will be informed by the great tradition of doctrinal development, it will be “christologically normed” and it will be culturally engaged. As theology, it will seek to articulate what we may know of God as God has revealed himself to us. As Nicholas Wolterstorff puts it to theologians:

Do not be ersatz philosophers, do not be ersatz cultural theorists, do not be ersatz anything. Be genuine theologians. Be sure-footed in philosophy. . . . But then: be theologians. . . . What we need to hear from you is how things look when seen in light of the triune God—may his name be praised!—who creates and sustains us, who redeems us, and who will bring this frail and fallen, though yet glorious, humanity and cosmos to consummation.28

Accordingly, analytic theology is theology done by theologians who are “sure-footed” in philosophy (many of whom will have extensive training and professional expertise there, and indeed may be leaders within their field), but it is a kind of theology nonetheless.

Such a conception of theology is, of course, not remotely new. What we may usefully refer to as “analytic theology” is very similar in many respects to deeply traditional ways of doing theology. We can see this kind of work exemplified in the theology of the scholastics (both medieval and post-Reformation/early modern). So in some sense, the rebirth of analytic theology may be thought of as scholasticism redivivus. As Richard Swinburne—surely a pioneer of analytic theology—says, “large-scale theology needs clear and rigorous argument,” and it is “high time for theology to return” to the standards set by Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus and others.29 But it is not only the “high scholastics” who worked this way, for we can also witness many of these virtues in theologians from the patristics to the pietists.30 Many theologians in the Christian tradition were concerned with both “conceptual precision” and “argumentative rigor” as well as “technical erudition” and the “in-depth defense of an original worldview.”

Consider what John Wesley—an evangelist hardly known as a “scholastic” or an “analytic theologian”—has to say about the importance of acquiring the tools for “conceptual precision” and “argumentative rigor.” Logic, he says, is “necessary next to, and in order to, the knowledge of Scripture.”31 Despite the fact that it is “now quite unfashionable,” nonetheless logic is invaluable. For with it we have the possibility of “apprehending things clearly, judging truly, and reasoning conclusively.”32 And as with logic, so also with metaphysics. Thus Wesley will ask of clergy:

Am I a tolerable master of the sciences? Have I gone through the very gate of them, logic? If not, I am not likely to go much further, when I stumble at the threshold. Do I understand it so as to be ever the better for it? To have it always ready for use; so as to apply every rule of it, when occasion is, almost as naturally as I turn my hand? Do I understand it at all? . . . Can I reduce an indirect mood to a direct, a hypothetic to a categorical syllogism? Rather, have not my stupid indolence and laziness made me very ready to believe, what the little wits and pretty gentlemen affirm, “that logic is good for nothing”? It is good for this at least (wherever it is understood), to make people talk less; by showing them both what is, and what is not, to the point; and how extremely hard it is to prove anything. Do I understand metaphysics; if not the depths of the Schoolmen, the subtleties of Scotus or Aquinas, yet the first rudiments, the general principles, of that useful science?33

Consider further what Wesley says about the importance of “technical erudition” in theology. Insisting on the importance of knowledge of the scope of Christian Scripture as well as facility in the relevant ancient languages, he asks:

Have I, (1) such a knowledge of Scripture, as becomes him who undertakes so to explain it to others? . . . Have I a full and clear view of the analogy of faith, which is the clue to guide me through the whole? Am I acquainted with the several parts of Scripture, with all parts of the Old Testament and the New? Upon the mention of any text, do I know the context, and the parallel places? . . . Do I know the scope of each book, and how every part tends thereto? Have I the skill to draw the natural inferences deducible from each text? (2) Do I understand Greek and Hebrew? Otherwise . . . am I not at the mercy of everyone who does understand, or pretends to understand, the original? For which way can I confute his pretence? Do I understand the language of the Old Testament? Critically? At all? Can I read into English one of David’s Psalms; or even the first chapter of Genesis? Do I understand the language of the New Testament? Am I a critical master of it? Have I enough of it even to read into English the first chapter of St. Luke? If not, how many years did I spend at school? How many at university? And what was I doing all those years?34

Wesley says similar things about the indispensability of knowledge of the Christian tradition. But the basic point should be clear: important elements of what we now call “analytic theology” have deep roots in the broad Christian theological tradition. Indeed, for an evangelist like John Wesley, this is simply the kind of theology that any Christian minister should be doing.

What Analytic Theology Isn’t: Misunderstandings and Objections

Many systematic theologians are suspicious of analytic theology. Indeed, some are deeply suspicious. The concerns come from several angles. Here are some of the most common.35

“Analytic theology relies on a univocal account of religious language.” Some theologians may worry that the current analytic discussions proceed with an unrealistic and unhealthy naiveté regarding the nature and function of religious language. For instance, Stephen R. Holmes thinks that “analytic discussions of the Trinity seem generally to proceed with a remarkable confidence about the success of language in referring to the divine”; he thinks that the assumption of analytic theology “would always seem to be that language refers univocally to the divine and the created.” Indeed, he thinks that analytic theology would be “impossible” without a commitment to univocity.36 More worrisome, the concern may be that analytic theology’s commitment to univocity implicates it in something that is (at least potentially) idolatrous.37

A general treatment of religious language is beyond the scope of our discussion, but several observations may be helpful. First, it should be noted that the case against univocity should not be merely assumed (as if some particular theological proposal could be damned by nothing more than the charge of univocity). Nor is the case for univocity nearly so weak as is often supposed. To the contrary, univocity has serious and sophisticated defenders today, and a case can be made that “the doctrine of univocity is true and salutary.”38

The second major point is perhaps more important for our purposes. It is this: analytic theology as such requires no commitment to univocity whatsoever. Indeed, many analytic theologians reject univocity in favor of other approaches (the doctrine of analogy being favored by many), and at least one prominent philosopher of religion defends apophaticism.39 Perhaps there is a general sense in which it is true that analytic theologians are naive about religious language. Perhaps they are—although I doubt this very much. But even if it were true, this would not obviously make analytic theology different from or inferior to many other approaches to the theological task. The concern—even if it were substantiated—would give us no reason to avoid or dismiss analytic theology. It might give us reason to want to do it better; it might motivate analytic theologians to pay closer attention to important issues related to theological language. But the concern itself—even if substantiated—would not count against the proper exercise of analytic theology. It is, at best, a red herring.

“Analytic theology is an exercise in natural theology.” Some critics might charge analytic theology with reliance on “natural theology.” This observation will seem benign to other theologians; some analytic theologians might even take this judgment as a badge of honor. But to those theologians of the house and lineage of Karl Barth, this will be the mark of damnation: some may take natural theology to be “the invention of the Antichrist,” as something that can serve only to reinforce idolatry and corrupt the truth.40 Other theologians might not be so hostile, but they still might worry that natural theology distracts us from obedience and fidelity to the reality of divine revelation. So if analytic theology is an exercise in natural theology, or even relies on it, it should be held at arm’s length if not shunned entirely.

Much could be said about this cluster of issues—and indeed more will be said in the next chapter—but at this point a basic confusion needs to be cleared away. Fundamentally, it is simply a misunderstanding of analytic theology to think that it is an exercise in natural theology. Granted, some prolific analytic theologians are heavily invested in the project of natural theology, and we can say with confidence that rumors of the demise of natural theology have been greatly exaggerated.41 But there is nothing about analytic theology as such—as I have described it to this point—that relies on natural theology. The confusion of natural theology with the analytic project is just that—a confusion. Whatever we should think about natural theology philosophically, however we judge the successes (or lack thereof) of the various theistic arguments, natural theology simply cannot be equated with analytic theology. And whatever we should conclude theologically about natural theology, we should not confuse it with the analytic project. Once again, this is a red herring.

“Analytic theology is naive with respect to the history of doctrine.” Another concern expressed by some contemporary systematic theologians is this: analytic theology all too often proceeds with little awareness of the complex but important historical factors associated with the development and formation of Christian doctrine. To understate the point, analytic theologians are sometimes criticized for their ignorance of the history of the development of dogma and for their lack of careful study to understand the particular intellectual (not to mention social) setting of the person(s), controversies or eras under consideration. Instead, so the story goes, it is all too common for analytic theologians to approach an issue by isolating a particular text and then breaking it down to unpack the real “core” of the doctrine in question. And the assumption of the analytic theologians (again, so the story goes) is often enough that this can be safely or appropriately done with little or no reference to the particular context in which the development occurred. As Fred Sanders expresses the concern, “philosophers sometimes seem to think of ancient texts as cumbersome delivery systems containing ideas which it is their job to extract from the delivery system and do something with.”42 Richard A. Muller likewise argues that lack of attention to historical context sometimes results in problematic misunderstandings of the tradition; in his view, for instance, both recent defenders and contemporary detractors of the doctrine of divine simplicity commonly “misinterpret the traditional doctrine.”43 Robert W. Jenson is more scathing: he judges the analytic enterprise to be “somewhat oddly related to the Christian faith it claims to defend,” and he calls the work of Richard Swinburne a “truly bizarre case.”44

At least this is how the story often goes. A major underlying worry seems to be that reading texts without proper attention to their social location and intellectual context can cause us to misread and mis­interpret those texts. This strikes me as a legitimate concern, and it is one that analytic theologians would do well to hear and heed. No one should deny that it is possible to misread and misinterpret important historical texts, and it seems to me that such misreadings are far more likely when particular bits of the text are isolated and scrutinized apart from the broader literary and historical contexts. The temptation to look away from the context as an irrelevant distraction is real. It should also be resisted. So the criticism contains an important caution.

At the same time, however, we should keep several additional points in mind. First, the problem is not restricted to analytic theologians—constructive or systematic theologians of any stripe may be susceptible to this temptation. Indeed, ironies abound on this front. After criticizing analytic philosophers of religion for overlooking “the essentially historical character of trinitarian theology”—and especially for missing the important differences between the “Greek (or ‘Cappadocian’) East” and the “Latin West”—Catherine Mowry LaCugna’s own work has been criticized for exaggerating those differences.45 It is not as if more mainstream, nonanalytic or antianalytic theologians are immune to the temptation; instead, so far as I can see, this is a general concern that should serve as an important reminder that all theologians who engage with the Christian intellectual tradition should do so with appropriate historical sensitivity. Second, there is nothing—at least so far as I can see—that makes this temptation irresistible. The fact that some analytic theologians have been insufficiently attentive to some historical matters does not entail either that all analytic theologians are ignorant of the tradition or that all analytic theologians must proceed in ignorance. I see no reason to conclude that this problem must be either essential or endemic to analytic theology. Surely more progress can be made in this area, but I see no reasons to think that such progress cannot happen. Finally, it is worth noting that such progress in fact is being made. There are many happy exceptions to the common stereotype that analytic theologians are “ahistorical”; in fact, it is safe to say that many excellent analytic thinkers have genuine specialization in historical scholarship. Indeed, many are cutting-edge contributors.46

“Analytic theology is only apologetics for conservative theology.” Alternatively, the suspicion may be that analytic theology is too closely tied to the Christian tradition. The assumption here is that analytic theology is nothing more than the bastion of traditionally minded Roman Catholic (and Orthodox) theologians and philosophers along with their conservative Protestant friends, and the worry is that they are interested in nothing more than finding a safe place to defend what they already know to be true. Consequently, the worry goes, there is next to nothing of real interest here for revisionist theologians of various stripes, and there is little promise for genuinely constructive theology.

Two observations are important here. First, in principle there is nothing about analytic theology that demands either traditional sympathies or conservative conclusions. Neither is there anything about analytic theology (either taken along the lines of Rea’s P1-P5 or in a somewhat more expansive way) that precludes the use of the analytic tools by, say, feminist, womanist or liberationist theologies.

Second, in point of fact many criticisms of traditional doctrines have emerged from within analytic theology. Consider this example. It is hard to think of a doctrine that is more deeply traditional or more deeply woven into the fabric of historic Christian theology than the doctrine of divine simplicity. Yet this venerable doctrine has endured intense criticism from analytic theologians over the past several decades. Alvin Plantinga’s Does God Have a Nature? raised “two difficulties” for the doctrine, “one substantial and the other truly monumental.”47 He argues that if God is identical with each of his properties, then God has but one property. But this “seems flatly incompatible with the obvious fact that God has several properties.”48