Analytic Theology and the Academic Study of Religion
WILLIAM WOOD
1
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Preface
This book is an exercise in bridge-building. I want to explain analytic theology to other theologians and to scholars of religion, and to explain those other fields to analytic theologians, many of whom remain far more steeped in philosophy than in theology, let alone in the academic study of religion. I am convinced that all sides would benefit if analytic theology were given a seat at the interdisciplinary table where—ideally—theologians, continental philosophers of religion, and scholars of religion sometimes gather. Analytic theology can flourish in the secular academy and, moreover, flourish as theology, rather than as philosophy of religion aimed at solving specifically Christian puzzles.
I have been writing about analytic theology for the better part of a decade, and I have already said some of what I want to say in the best way that I am capable of saying it. So at various points throughout the book, I have drawn freely from the following published articles, though none is reproduced in full: “Modeling Mystery,” Scientia et Fides 4 (2016): 39–59; “Traditions, Trajectories, and Tools in Analytic Theology,” Journal of Analytic Theology 4 (2016): 254–66; “Analytic Theology as a Way of Life,” Journal of Analytic Theology 2 (2014): 43–60; “Philosophical Theology in the Religious Studies Academy: Some Questions for Analytic Theologians,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81 (2013): 592–600; “On Behalf of Traditional Philosophy of Religion. Roundtable on Kevin Schilbrack, Philosophy and the Study of Religions,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 83 (2015): 236–60; “On the New Analytic Theology, or: The Road Less Travelled,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 77 (2009): 941–60.
I am very grateful for the personal and intellectual friendship of Chuck Mathewes. He helped me think about how to bring analytic theology into dialogue with the wider field of religious studies, and he also pushed me to understand the project as one of mutual translation between disciplines. For three years, I have been a Senior Fellow in the University of Virginia’s “Religion and Its Publics” project, co-directed by Chuck Mathews and Paul Dafydd Jones. I have learned so much from the other Fellows, and they will all recognize how much of the book grows directly out of our discussions together. So special thanks to Chuck (again) and Paul, and to Elizabeth Bucar, Shaun Casey, Slavica Jakelic, Thomas A. Lewis, Vincent Lloyd, Tyler Roberts, Ted A. Smith, and Darlene Fozard Weaver. I would also like to thank the postdocs and graduate students involved in the “Religion and Its Publics” project, from whom I have also learned much: Creighton Coleman, Lucila Crena, Brady Daniels, Mae Speight, and Shelly Tilton. Evan Sandsmark deserves special thanks for reading, editing, and
commenting on nearly the whole book. Any remaining faults are his, not mine. (Just kidding.)
Several friends commented at length on various draft chapters. I’d especially like to thank Brian Leftow, Vincent Lloyd, Timothy Pawl, Darren Sarisky, Donovan Schaefer, and Kevin Schilbrack. Many thanks as well to Ed Brooks, Simon Cuff, Sam Filby, Jason Lepojärvi, Ben Page, and Ed Watson.
I have discussed this project with many other colleagues over the years, both informally and in formal seminars or lectures. I cannot begin to remember everyone who has helped me, and so this list is surely incomplete, but thanks to Andrew K. M. Adam, Margaret Adam, Nicholas Adams, Ata Anzali, James M. Arcadi, Max Baker-Hytch, Katie Bastide, Tim Baylor, E. A. Bazzano, Matthew Benton, Brian Black, Joseph Blankholm, Annie Blazer, Deborah Casewell, Sarah Coakley, Aaron Cotnoir, Joseph Cregan, James Crocker, Oliver Crisp, Dafydd Daniel, Sarah Dees, Daniel De Haan, Samuel Dickinson, Trent Dougherty, Alexandria Eikelboom, Peter Gent, Paul Gleason, Amber Leigh Griffioen, Peter Groves, Brendan Harris, Mark Harris, Eric Hoenes, Hud Hudson, Gavin Hyman, Chris Insole, Lorraine Juliano Keller, Emily S. Kempson, Karen Kilby, Hannah Kim, Cameron Kirk-Giannini, Kate Kirkpatrick, Joanna Lawson, Joanna Leidenhag, Joseph Lenow, Todd LeVasseur, Vicki Lorrimar, Read Marlatte, Beatrice Marovich, Luke Martin, T. J. Mawson, Bryan McCarthy, Tom McCall, Christa L. McKirland, Karin Meyers, Andrew Moore, Teresa Morgan, R. T. Mullins, Hindy Najman, Madhavi Nevader, Heather Ohaneson, Simon Oliver, Jotham Parsons, Faith Glavey Pawl, John Perry, Martin Pickup, Gregory Platten, Oliver Pooley, Joel Rasmussen, Michael Rea, Nathan Rein, John Ritzema, Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, Jonathan C. Rutledge, John Saladino, Kurtis Schaeffer, Lydia Schumacher, Alec Siantonas, Wes Skolits, Emily Smith, Martin Smith, Gregory Stacey, Sally Stamper, Charlie Stang, Richard Swinburne, Amy Taylor, Kevin Timpe, Alan Torrance, Andrew Torrance, Audrey Truschke, J. T. Turner, Olli-Pekka Vainio, Aku Visala, Graham Ward, Emma Wasserman, Jordan Wessling, Christopher Willard-Kyle, Scott Williams, Judith Wolfe, Peter Woodford, Christopher Woznicki, Mark Wynn, Sameer Yadav, Jamie Yeo, Johannes Zachhuber, and Simeon Zahl.
The early stages of my research were funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, and I am grateful for their support. I would especially like to thank Alexander Arnold and Michael J. Murray for their personal encouragement.
Finally, I am grateful to Gillian Hamnett. She read many drafts of many chapters, including some of the very early, very crappy drafts, which—believe me—was a real labor of love. In more ways than one, I wrote this book for her.
I. INTRODUCTION
II. FOUNDATIONS
III. THEOLOGICAL ANALYTIC THEOLOGY
The Value and Distinctiveness of Analytic Theology
Several years ago, at an American Academy of Religion job interview, I was asked about the difference between philosophical theology and philosophy of religion.1 The question was tricky. Answering it well would require me to say something about “theology,” on the one hand, versus “religion,” on the other. Additional disciplinary traps loomed. In context, my interviewer clearly meant to use the label “philosophical theology” to refer to analytic philosophy of religion—which he regarded as a kind of theology. Not without reason: despite its name, analytic “philosophy of religion” doesn’t focus much on religion per se, but on a fairly narrow range of questions posed by Western, usually Christian monotheism. And while the theology that is produced in divinity schools may be quite philosophical, it is not often influenced by analytic philosophy. In departments of religion, philosophy of religion is usually not analytic either, and is often called “philosophy of religions,” in the plural, further marking the distance from its analytic cousin.
I cannot say that I answered my interviewer’s question well, but it hardly mattered. Under a barrage of followup queries, it emerged that my answer had missed his real point entirely. I was not being asked a substantive question about different kinds of academic work. I was being asked an ideological question. I was being asked to declare my colors and choose sides: Philosophical theology or philosophy of religion? Analytic or continental? “All of the above” was not an acceptable answer.
Amid this fraught disciplinary context, I seek to carve out a place for the emerging field of “analytic theology.” As a provisional definition, by “analytic theology” I mean theology—typically constructive, systematic, Christian theology— that uses the tools and methods of analytic philosophy.2 By way of ostension, the label “analytic theology” refers to the kind of work commended by the prominent collection Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, edited by Michael Rea of the University of Notre Dame and Oliver Crisp, now of the
1 Chapters 1–3 collectively do the work of a more traditional Introduction. Each chapter can be read alone, but only together do they introduce the book as a whole.
2 This definition presupposes that we know what analytic philosophy is. I return to this question in Chapter 4.
University of St Andrews.3 In addition, there is now a thriving online openaccess Journal of Analytic Theology, as well as the Oxford University Press series of which this book is a part, Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology. 4 For now at least, there can be no question that analytic theology is growing rapidly.
But there is a Templetonsized elephant in the room. The growth of analytic theology has been fueled by a seemingly bottomless well of funding from the John Templeton Foundation and other Templeton Trusts. No one could reasonably doubt this fact; the question is what to make of it. Economic pressures are forcing the humanities to adopt grantbased funding models better suited to the harder sciences, and I worry that real humanistic inquiry will not survive our emerging culture of “grant capture.” But this is where we are, and what really matters is whether analytic theology is valuable, not whether it has been heavily supported by Templeton funding. Because I am convinced that analytic theology is valuable, I am glad that the Templeton Foundation has supported it. As I noted in the Preface, my own work on the early stages of this book was supported by a small Templeton grant. I can report with absolute confidence that no one from Templeton ever tried to influence the work itself. In fact, they have been remarkably restrained, since from their point of view, I basically took their money and then turned in a very different book, several years later than I promised.
I aim to hold together three very different audiences: analytic theologians and philosophers of religion, other academic theologians, and scholars of religion. I want to build bridges across the various intellectual gaps that currently divide them. There has been very little engagement across these gaps, in part because few scholars have the conceptual skills to cross them adroitly. With these audiences in mind, I defend analytic theology along two very different fronts. On the one hand, many contemporary theologians are skeptical of analytic theology. Indeed, they do not regard it as theology at all, but rather as an especially pernicious—perhaps even idolatrous—form of philosophy. I find this disdain quite interesting. After all, by any measure, the contemporary theological scene is remarkably pluralistic, and although theologians do disagree, often sharply, about theological method, for the most part those disagreements take place within a framework of healthy respect for methodological diversity. Yet the same theologians who are prepared to countenance a bewildering array of conceptual tools drawn from deconstruction, hermeneutics, phenomenology, process thought— the list is endless—then go on to treat analytic theology with a suspicion that
3 Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea, eds., Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
4 https://journals.tdl.org/jat/index.php/jat/index; https://global.oup.com/academic/content/series/ o/oxfordstudiesinanalytictheologyosat.
borders on hostility. Against this line of criticism, I defend an account of analytic theology that is robustly theological.
On the other hand, prominent theorists of religion assert that, in principle, theology cannot ever be a genuine academic discipline with a legitimate place in the contemporary academy. Some deny that theology exemplifies the free, openended pursuit of knowledge that characterizes academic research. Others insist, on broadly postmodern grounds, that theology serves oppressive and harmful regimes of power. I argue that analytic theology presents a counterexample to these criticisms, and that it therefore shows one way that theology can flourish in the contemporary university. In fact, much of what I say also applies to nonanalytic forms of theology, and nearly all of it applies to nonChristian analytic theology, but my own focus is squarely on analytic Christian theology. (I will usually drop the qualifier “Christian,” however.)
Defending analytic theology along both fronts will be tricky. The more I insist that analytic theology obviously counts as legitimate academic work because it draws on the norms of inquiry that govern academic philosophy, the more I risk alienating theologians who rightly insist that theology should not be assimilated to philosophy. On the other hand, the more successfully I show that analytic theology really counts as a legitimate form of Christian theology, the more easily I allow it to fall under existing critiques of theology.
My defense of analytic theology is not onesided. Analytic theologians also have much to learn from other theologians and scholars of religion. For example, I agree that analytic theologians should take divine transcendence and the apophatic tradition more seriously than they have. Analytic theologians would also benefit from a sustained dialogue with the traditions of genealogy and critique that are at the heart of the contemporary study of religion. Analytic theologians tend to ignore the myriad ways in which patterns of physical and social power shape our most fundamental concepts, rational norms, and takenforgranted assumptions. No doubt they would also benefit from more exposure to the religious and philosophical thought of nonChristian and nonWestern traditions.
Before continuing, I would like to head off two predictable ways of misunderstanding my argument. First, I do not claim that Christian theology must conform to the intellectual standards of the secular university in order to be viable. That is not at all my view. As far as I am concerned, Christian theology requires no “secular” justification at all. Theology is the queen of the sciences, and if the university now has no place for theology, that reflects badly on the university, not badly on theology. My own claim is rather different: it is good that some forms of theology conform to the intellectual standards of the secular university. Analytic theology is one such form. This claim, though narrow in scope, still requires further justification—indeed, even many Christians would not assent to it. The second way to misunderstand my argument would be to read it as yet another suggestion that there is something wrong with studying religions (including
Christianity) in purely naturalistic, scientific, or social scientific ways. That isn’t my view either. I am not engaged in a protective strategy designed to insulate theology from critique. If anything, as I make clear in Chapter 12, I think scholars of religion should feel free to critique theology much more deeply than they currently do.
From Analytic Philosophy of Religion to Analytic Theology
The descriptor “analytic theology” is becoming steadily more prominent, as is the kind of inquiry it names. Despite this growing prominence, however, one might wonder whether analytic theology is anything new or special, or whether it is just ordinary philosophical theology—or even analytic philosophy of religion—with a new name. This question is made more pressing by the fact that so far at least, the roster of selfidentified analytic theologians is largely coextensive with the roster of analytic philosophers of religion. Accordingly, many theologians worry that “analytic theology” is little more than a brand name, a convenient label adopted by a small group of conservative analytic philosophers of religion as they try to mount a hostile takeover of the theological academy.
For their part, scholars of religion can only be amused by this development, steeped as they are in the highly contentious internal debates that characterize the academic study of religion. By their lights, should they think about it at all, analytic theology presents a rare spectacle: otherwiserespected philosophers who demand that their work also be recognized as theology. To many scholars of religion, “theology” is a label to be shunned, not reclaimed—it often functions as a slur. Theorists of religion are prone to describing theology not as a form of inquiry but as a form of data: theology and theologians are what proper theorists of religion theorize about. Religion is not the study of religion, by definition. The task of this book is to argue that analytic theology is a genuine form of theology, yet a form of theology that confounds the sterile critiques typically offered by exclusivist scholars of religion. (I use the label “exclusivist” to name those scholars of religion who hold that theology is not a legitimate academic discipline, and who therefore would deny it any place in a broader field of religious studies.5)
But in order to understand analytic theology, we must first disambiguate it from other related forms of philosophical and theological inquiry. And in good analytic fashion, the best way to do that is by drawing some distinctions, beginning with
5 Not all scholars of religion are exclusivists in this sense. See the discussion in Chapter 3. I admit that I also like the resonance between this use of “exclusivist” and the position that is called “exclusivism” in philosophical discussions about religious diversity. See https://www.iep.utm.edu/relidiv/, accessed July 4, 2020.
philosophy of religion. On my understanding, the specific task of philosophy of religion—or, at least, analytic philosophy of religion—is to use the tools of philosophy to investigate arguments for and against the existence of God, as well as to investigate the properties or attributes that the major monotheistic traditions would ascribe to God: omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, and so forth. Philosophy of religion, in short, concerns what might be called (nonpejoratively, at least here) “bare theism.”
Analytic philosophy of religion has flourished since the 1970s. Although theists remain a minority in most philosophy departments, it is certainly true that analytic philosophy of religion has become a natural entry point for Christian theists who want their Christian commitments to shape their academic work. Indeed, following the landmark work of Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, and others:
it became apparent to the philosophical profession that realist theists were not outmatched by naturalists in terms of the most valued standards of analytic philosophy: conceptual precision, rigor of argumentation, technical erudition, and an indepth defense of an original worldview . . . In philosophy it became, almost overnight, ‘academically respectable’ to argue for theism, making philosophy a favored field of entry for the most intelligent and talented theists entering academia today.6
Unsurprisingly, Christian philosophers have sometimes turned their attention toward the philosophical problems posed by specifically Christian doctrines. This sort of work has come to be called “philosophical theology.” The line between philosophy of religion and philosophical theology has always been fuzzy. Philosophical theology, as I understand it, uses the tools of philosophy to investigate the theological claims made by a specific religious tradition. Thus, Christian philosophical theology investigates the meaning, coherence, and truth of specifically Christian doctrines like the Trinity, the incarnation, and the atonement.7
6 So says atheist and naturalist Quentin Smith in “The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism,” in Philo 4 (2001): 196.
7 Important collections of philosophical theology that might now be labeled “analytic theology” include Ronald J. Feenstra and Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement: Philosophical and Theological Essays (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), Michael Rea, ed., Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology. Volume 1: Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement; Volume 2: Providence, Scripture, and Resurrection (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), Oliver Crisp, ed., A Reader in Contemporary Philosophical Theology (New York: Continuum, 2009), Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill, eds., The Metaphysics of the Incarnation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
What about “analytic theology?” At the moment there is no sharp distinction between “analytic theology” and “analytic philosophical theology.” To some degree, I hope to change that, by pushing analytic theology to be even more theological. So although this book is primarily a defense of analytic theology, it is also an intervention in some internal debates among analytic theologians about how they should understand their own emerging field. For now, the label “analytic theology” functions as a quick and easy way of letting you know what you are getting when you wade into this particular kind of inquiry: you get certain presuppositions and assumptions and not others, a certain kind of writing, appeals to some intellectual influences and interlocutors but not others, a certain set of intellectual villains, and so forth. In my view, the label “analytic theology” is better as a shorthand description for this kind of inquiry than the more venerable “philosophical theology.” It is better because it is more specific. There are many different kinds of intellectual work that can justifiably be called philosophical theology—Kant uses the term, Schleiermacher uses the term, and there are many contemporary forms of philosophical theology that have nothing to do with analytic philosophy. The label “analytic theology” describes those that do.
In my experience, arguments between analytic theologians and their critics quickly break down in the face of persistent mutual misunderstanding. Critics of analytic theology tend to assume that it is a form of a priori philosophical reasoning that is utterly divorced from the touchstones of Christian scripture and tradition. Frequently, those same critics also have an outdated understanding of analytic philosophy and do not recognize how far analytic philosophy has evolved from its origins in logical positivism and conceptual analysis. From the other direction, analytic philosophers and theologians often do not recognize how opaque their assumptions and methods can be to scholars outside the analytic guild. Too often, they equate the analytic style of arguing with rationality itself, rather than seeing it as a narrow and specialized method that has limitations as well as virtues.
My first task after the threechapter introduction, then, is to try to make analytic philosophy and analytic theology more intelligible to critics. I begin in Chapter 4, with a brief discussion of contemporary analytic philosophy, understood as a distinctive style of writing and thinking. I conclude Chapter 4 with a question that few analytic thinkers consider themselves: Are there limitations, as well as virtues, to the analytic quest for clarity? However analytic philosophers might answer this question, analytic theologians, steeped in the Christian narrative of the Fall, should agree that there are such limitations. Chapter 5 is an extended attempt to address the stillopen question “What is Analytic Theology?” Drawing on several contemporary examples, I argue that analytic theology is best understood as a form of faith seeking understanding and a form of constructive theology. I then point out that analytic theology is evolving in some unexpected— and unexpectedly selfcritical—ways.
Interlude: On the “Narrowness” of
Analytic Philosophy of Religion
Scholars from other disciplines are sometimes surprised at just how Western and Christian analytic philosophy of religion can seem. Indeed, analytic philosophy of religion could probably be renamed “the philosophy of theism” or even “Christian philosophy” without affecting much of the underlying work at all. This point is sometimes presented as a sort of “gotcha,” but most analytic philosophers of religion would happily admit that they have no philosophical stake in defending the current name of their subspecialty. Similarly, most of them have no philosophical interest in “religion” as such. As it turns out, the label “philosophy of religion” is another holdover from the vexed history of modern European thought on “religion.”8 Early modern and Enlightenment thinkers equated “religion” with a denatured, putatively universal, but still implicitly Protestant Christian monotheism. For example, even though Immanuel Kant calls his treatise Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, it is really about Protestant Christianity within the limits of reason alone.9 The same implicit assumption—that something counts as a “religion” to the degree that it approximates Protestant Christianity—has continued to shape the development of Western philosophical reflection on religions. The end result is that much analytic philosophy of religion is implicitly the philosophy of Christianity despite explicitly bearing the moniker “philosophy of religion.”
By and large, analytic philosophers of religion have been content with this state of affairs. Their nonanalytic colleagues find it constricting. They want the field to expand its horizons, become more pluralistic in its methods, and focus more on the heterogeneous phenomena of religion, rather than on Christianity or bare monotheism.10 Depending on how the argument is construed, I have some sympathy for both sides.11 Happily, however, for the purposes of this book, I can
8 Merold Westphal, “The Emergence of Modern Philosophy of Religion,” in Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro, eds., Blackwell Companion to Philosophy of Religion, (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997), 111–20. For a recent history of “religion” in Western thought, see Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015).
9 Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason and Other Writings, trans. and ed. Allen Wood and George di Giovanni (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
10 See, for example, Kevin Schilbrack, Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto (Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell, 2014); Thomas A. Lewis, Why Philosophy Matters to the Study of Religion and Vice Versa (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); J. Aaron Simmons, “Living in the Existential Margins: Reflections on the Relationship between Philosophy and Theology,” Open Theology 5 (2019): 147–57; J. L. Schellenberg, “Is PlantingaStyle Christian Philosophy Really Philosophy?” in J. Aaron Simmons, ed., Christian Philosophy: Conceptions, Continuations, and Challenges (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 229–43.
11 So long as the critique is aimed at the field, rather than at individual philosophers and their work, I am sympathetic. It would indeed be good if the field were more pluralistic. But it is perfectly legitimate for any individual philosopher to follow her own intellectual interests, even if that means she focuses on narrowly theistic or Christian topics. All scholars study what interests them, and ignore things they find less interesting. How could it be otherwise? See William Wood, “On Behalf of
sidestep the issue altogether. This book is explicitly framed as a defense of analytic Christian theology. Whatever we might think about the current state of philosophy of religion, analytic Christian theology cannot become less analytic or less Christian without becoming something else altogether. (Of course, analytic theology so defined can still learn from nonanalytic and nonChristian interlocutors.) One way to understand the charge that analytic philosophy of religion is too narrow is like this: analytic philosophy of religion has always been analytic theology. In that case, my defense of analytic theology would also extend to analytic philosophy of religion. So be it—but I do not need to make (or reject) that case myself. Still, anyone who does affirm this criticism of analytic philosophy of religion should at least be happy that analytic philosophers of religion are starting to own up to the theological character of their work.12
The Value and Distinctiveness of Analytic Theology
Analytic philosophers of religion like to tell a tidy—perhaps too tidy—story to explain their recent turn to theology. In this story, heroic analytic philosophers have leapt in to fill the intellectual vacuum left by neglectful contemporary theologians. Contemporary theologians, so the story runs, no longer even try to elucidate the meaning, coherence, and truth of key Christian doctrines. Lo! Analytic theology to the rescue! Analytic philosophers can now do the intellectual heavy lifting that theologians are unwilling or unable to do themselves.13 Without question, this view reflects a certain disciplinary chauvinism. In fact, a great deal of theology over the past quartercentury has used philosophy to deepen our grasp of the central doctrines of the Christian faith—it just hasn’t used analytic philosophy. Analytic theologians should, therefore, resist the temptation to construe the debate between analytic theology and other forms of academic theology like this: on the one side, there is analytic theology standing together with orthodoxy, tradition, and truth; whereas on the other side, there is mainstream academic theology, stuck in the mire with postmodern heterodoxy, revision, and relativism. Of course, this is not an accurate picture of either side.
At the same time, however, analytic philosophical theology really has focused on fundamental questions about the meaning, logical coherence, and truth of
Traditional Philosophy of Religion.” Roundtable on Kevin Schilbrack, Philosophy and the Study of Religions Journal of the American Academy of Religion 83 (2015): 236–60.
12 Simmons, “Living in the Existential Margins,” 149. J. L. Schellenberg, “Is PlantingaStyle Christian Philosophy Really Philosophy?,” 240–43.
13 Alvin Plantinga, “Christian Philosophy at the End of the Twentieth Century,” in James F. Sennett, ed., The Analytic Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 340–41; Oliver Crisp, in Crisp and Rea, eds., Analytic Theology, 39.
Christian doctrines in a way that other forms of academic theology have not. Analytic theology’s focus on these questions constitutes its most valuable and distinctive contribution to academic theology. And analytic philosophical tools and methods really are very helpful for addressing such questions. For instance, many Christian doctrines involve claims about modality—about what sorts of actions or states of affairs are possible, necessary, or impossible. Analytic philosophers have developed very sophisticated, technically rigorous ways of framing arguments about necessity, possibility, and impossibility. Consider the doctrine of the incarnation. We might wonder how it is possible for a single agent to be both fully human and fully divine. Or, more specifically, we might wonder whether a “kenotic” Christology is the best way to understand the incarnation. (Kenotic Christologies argue that God the Son, the divine Logos, the second person of the Trinity, “emptied himself” of his divinity and voluntarily renounced some of the divine attributes when he became a human man.14) Whether kenotic Christologies are possibly true is a viable research question, one that analytic theology is well positioned to investigate. If kenotic Christologies are not so much as possibly true, then they cannot really help us understand the doctrine of the incarnation.
Many people, including many “ordinary” Christians, really do have questions about the meaning, logical coherence, and truth of Christian doctrines. One does not have to be a Christian to agree that these are important questions and that thinking carefully about them is valuable intellectual work. So it is good that there is a mode of inquiry that explicitly foregrounds such questions. This is one reason why analytic theology is especially well suited for the secular university. Analytic theology draws on the same norms of inquiry and argument found in philosophy and other secular academic disciplines and uses them to address difficult questions about Christian doctrine. Analytic theology can, therefore, teach students— and, frankly, other scholars as well—that tricky theological questions are actually amenable to respectful, rational investigation. In the contemporary climate, that in itself is a valuable contribution.
Analytic theology has other distinctive things to offer theologians and scholars of religion. As Kevin Schilbrack has helpfully reminded us, religious communities make metaphysical claims, claims about the nature of reality as such.15 At the same time, scholars of religion—and, for that matter, most academic theologians—are often quite skeptical about metaphysical claims. From an analytic point of view, this hostility to metaphysics is very strange, more reminiscent of the longgone, bad old days of logical positivism than of the best contemporary philosophy. Analytic theologians, by virtue of their philosophical training, can
14 The scriptural grounding for kenotic Christology is Philippians 2:6–7: “though [Christ] was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” For a classic analytic example, see Peter Forrest, “The Incarnation: A Philosophical Case for Kenosis,” Religious Studies 26 (2000): 127–40.
15 Schilbrack, Philosophy and the Study of Religions, 149–74.
help other theologians and scholars of religion make sense of the metaphysical claims that inevitably arise when we study religious adherence.
Furthermore, analytic theology is typically metaphysically realist, as opposed to antirealist, and methodologically constructive, as opposed to historicalexegetical. Both options are the norm in analytic philosophy, but far less common among other humanistic disciplines. With respect to realism, analytic theologians talk rather easily about the realm of the transcendent—about God rather than about religion, where religion can be understood as a human construction. Moreover, that talk treats its objects of inquiry as things that are really out there, independent of human minds, even when those objects are “things” like God, God’s property of being omniscient, Christ’s divine nature, and so forth. All of this will seem wanton to many practitioners of religious studies (including theologians), who are more likely to be committed to some form of “interpretation universalism.”16 According to interpretation universalism, our cognitive engagement with the world is always already an interpretation of the world, and all such interpretations are mediated by culturallinguistic conceptual schemes that vary across time and across populations. It follows, supposedly, that we never engage with the world as it is in itself—for what would that even be?—but rather with the world as an interpretation that is jointly constructed for us and by us. I am much more sympathetic to metaphysical realism than to interpretation universalism, but for now it suffices to say that both sides would benefit from a more sustained engagement with the alternative point of view. This is another reason to welcome analytic theology into the religious studies academy. At the moment, interpretation universalism is nearly unchallenged among scholars of religion, and metaphysical realism is nearly unchallenged among analytic theologians. This situation is not ideal for either side.
With respect to constructive thought, analytic theologians usually try to offer their own accounts of the meaning or truth of some Christian doctrine or claim, rather than just interpreting or exegeting other historical accounts. That is, analytic arguments feature direct assertions of one’s own views about reality, often in propositional form, and direct contradictions of alternative views. That style of argument often seems arrogant and confrontational to outsiders, even though analytic insiders regard it as the norm. In my view, contemporary academic theologians are far too suspicious of constructive thought. There is a sense in which one has to “earn” the right to be constructive, and that only major scholars, at the height of their careers, have really earned that right.17 But this assumption
16 The phrase “interpretation universalism” comes from Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Between the Pincers of Increased Diversity and Supposed Irrationality,” in William J. Wainwright, ed., God, Philosophy and Academic Culture: A Discussion between Scholars in the AAR and the APA (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996), 18.
17 This claim is not an exceptionless generalization, but I believe that it holds widely. A few quick examples from major contemporary systematicians: Graham Ward’s first book is a study of Derrida
forecloses far too many avenues for interesting and fruitful work. Analytic theology can, therefore, help theologians remember the value of constructive theology.18
Finally—brace yourself—analytic theology is fun. Not for everyone, and maybe not for most people, but for some of us, analytic modes of inquiry yield real intellectual pleasure. Of course, the fact that some of us find analytic theology fun does not automatically mean that it is valuable. But its funness does contribute to its value. We scholars do not talk enough about intellectual pleasure (and I say more in Chapter 14), but academic inquiry, and especially humanistic inquiry, should be pleasurable. Even scholars who do not enjoy analytic modes of inquiry themselves should accept that some of us do enjoy it. That recognition alone ought to lead them to view analytic theology with less suspicion. Analytic theology is a mode of inquiry that focuses on important aspects of important topics—paradigmatically, the meaning, coherence, and truth of Christian doctrines—and for some people, it is also really fun. Frankly, that is as strong an argument as anyone could want for why analytic theology is valuable.
and Barth: Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). His constructive turn came later. David Tracy’s first book is a study of Bernard Lonergan: The Achievement of Bernard Longergan (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), and only later did he turn to constructive topics. Katherine Sonderegger also began her career as a Barth scholar, before turning to constructive topics: That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew: Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Israel (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992). Nor is this a criticism: the same point holds for my own first book, on Pascal: Blaise Pascal on Duplicity Sin and the Fall (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
18 I develop this point more in Chapter 2, and still more in Chapter 5.
2 Three Theological Objections
History, Mystery, Practice
Other than general skepticism about analytic philosophy, theological objections to analytic theology cluster around three major objections. I call them the objection from history, the objection from mystery, and the objection from practice.1 I respond to these objections at greater length in later chapters. But I would like to say a preliminary word about all three objections. My initial response to the objections from history and mystery is the same: when properly understood, these are not global objections—that is, in-principle objections that apply to anything that counts as analytic theology. Rather, they are local objections, objections that at most apply to specific analytic thinkers, not analytic theology as such. In a way this conclusion should be unsurprising. There are better and worse analytic theologians, just as there are better and worse theologians of all kinds. My response to the objection from practice is different. I think there is a sense in which analytic theology can be understood as a spiritual practice. I develop that argument at length in Chapter 10.
The Objection from History
Many academic theologians regard theology primarily as a historical discipline, and they regard analytic theology as perniciously ahistorical. No one can deny that the development of Christian orthodoxy seems messy and historically contingent. More radically still, perhaps all Christian truth claims are unavoidably historically contingent even in their very formulations. Can we really know now what it meant in the fourth century to claim that the Son is homoousios with the Father? And if we cannot, or if it meant something radically different from what we mean today with our Creedal statements that the Father and Son are “of one Being,” or “consubstantial,” then how can we be sure that ancient Christians and modern Christians are even making the same claims? This question is especially pertinent for analytic theologians, since they tend to formulate Christian doctrines as abstract, timelessly true propositions. Further challenges arise. Premodern ways
1 I take it that the main objection to analytic theology from scholars of religion is simply that it is theology. I address this objection throughout the book, but especially in Chapters 3 and 11.
of reading and thinking are often very different from analytic ways of reading and thinking, and premodern argument typically looks very different from analytic argument.2 All too often, analytic theology pays little attention to such complexities. So the objection is that analytic theology does not take history or historical contingency seriously enough. Sometimes, this objection takes an even more direct form: analytic theologians are simply ignorant of the history of doctrine, and of historical sources more generally.
The objection from history makes a very important point. Or rather, it makes several important points that are often conflated. Consider first the suggestion that analytic theologians are ignorant of the history of doctrine, or unable to handle historical sources skillfully. I agree that some analytic theologians and philosophers of religion do not take historical sources seriously enough. I also agree that analytic theologians sometimes misunderstand premodern ways of reading and thinking. But in such cases, the fault lies with the individual thinkers who make these mistakes, not with the analytic method itself. After all, when we turn from analytic theology to analytic philosophy, it is immediately apparent that there are many excellent analytically trained historians of philosophy—think of John Cottingham on René Descartes, or Allen Wood on Immanuel Kant, for example.3 So it is certainly possible for analytic thinkers to treat historical sources with contextual nuance and sensitivity. The fault lies with those who do not, not with the analytic method itself.
Now consider a different version of the objection. Call it the objection from historical contingency or the genealogical objection. Here the suggestion is that analytic theologians ignore the messy history of Christianity, along with the myriad ways that non-rational forces have shaped Christian doctrines. Suppose Constantine had backed Arius, for instance, or suppose Cyril of Alexandria were less politically astute. Christian doctrine might well be very different. Yet no one would argue that every claim formulated under the influence of historically contingent circumstances is in principle unwarranted or false. Such a suggestion would rule out any truth claim whatsoever, not least those of the natural sciences. So someone making the genealogical objection would have to argue that there is something about specifically religious—maybe even specifically Christian— claims such that the sheer fact that they have a messy history somehow vitiates them, with the result that they are not plausible or true. But note that this is not
2 The scholars who emphasize this point tend also to push the objection that analytic theology and philosophy of religion are guilty of ontotheology and idolatry. See the discussion in Part III. For a discussion of the ways that patristic debates differ from modern debates, one that is applicable to, but not aimed specifically at, analytic thought, see Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), esp. 384–435. At least some analytic theologians would concede the point with respect to patristic thought, but not with respect to premodern thought more generally, because they see strong affinities between analytic theology and scholastic theology.
3 As in, e.g., Allen W. Wood, Kant’s Rational Theology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009); John Cottingham, Cartesian Reflections (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
itself a historical claim, and it cannot be adjudicated by further appeals to historical evidence. Rather, it is a disguised philosophical or theological claim that can only be adjudicated by arguments about, for example, the nature of revelation, or the nature of God. After all, who is to say that the Holy Spirit cannot work through Constantine, or through skillful Church politicians? So far from being an objection to analytic theology, this version of the objection from history becomes simply more fodder for argument, more grist for the analytic mill. As an objection to analytic theology as such, this objection does not hold much promise. Indeed, I would even say the opposite: analytic theology can help us uncover hidden philosophical assumptions that sometimes lurk behind historical claims. This in itself is a valuable contribution to theology and the study of religion. Another version of the objection from history holds more promise as a global objection to analytic theology as such. Even so, it does not finally succeed. The objection from history could be understood as an objection to the kind of abstract thinking that is typical in analytic theology. The “objection from abstraction” runs like this: analytic theologians do not focus on the concrete, historical revelation of God in Christ; instead, they theorize about their own constructed abstractions, which are far more tractable. So instead of deepening our understanding of the living God of the Christian faith, analytic theologians do little more than solve their own self-constructed problems, by appealing to their own self-constructed abstract models:
This is a familiar tale: the analytic philosopher of religion does not deal with the God of any tradition or encounter, but with a conceptual construct, a simulacrum or “the God of the philosophers” The philosopher conceptually constructs a being which is labeled “God” and then proceeds to prove or disprove the existence of this being. In other words, the philosopher begins with the possibility that this conceptual construct actually pertains to reality. This is part of a more general tendency in modern philosophy—both continental and analytic— to prioritize the possible over the actual.4
This objection has some purchase. There is indeed a very real and literal sense in which analytic theology is avowedly ahistorical: analytic thinkers typically do try to construct abstract conceptual models, and articulate timelessly true propositions and definitions.5 Yet even though it has real purchase, at bottom, this version of the objection from history misunderstands the character of most contemporary analytic theology and is therefore best regarded as yet another local
4 Simon Oliver, “Analytic Theology,” International Journal for Systematic Theology 12 (2010): 467–68.
5 As did the great medieval theologians, so at a minimum, anyone who faults analytic theology on this score should also fault Anselm, Aquinas, Bonaventure, and the like. In fact, I’m quite confident that this style of abstract reasoning is universal across the Christian tradition, but we certainly see it among the scholastics and proto-scholastics.
objection, properly aimed at specific analytic thinkers, rather than a global objection aimed at analytic theology per se.
The objection seems to assume that analytic theology is an entirely a priori project. That is, it assumes that analytic theology must begin with abstract, a priori reflection about God, the kind of reflection we can do from the proverbial philosopher’s armchair, when it should instead begin with concrete attention to scripture or tradition. But the assumption that analytic theology is entirely a priori is false. It might describe some instances of analytic philosophy of religion— perhaps it describes Richard Swinburne’s work in the 1970s, though I have my doubts even there. But as an objection to contemporary analytic theology, it seriously misses the mark.6 Most contemporary analytic theology does begin with scripture and tradition rather than with armchair a priori theorizing, and is therefore best understood as an example of faith seeking understanding, rather than a priori natural theology. The best way to redeem this claim is by considering some concrete examples of analytic theology. Accordingly, I defer further argument until Chapter 5, where I look at the work of Timothy Pawl and William Hasker. But as a placeholder, consider these statements by Hasker:
Supposing that the events concerning Jesus do constitute some sort of divine revelation, that revelation is available to us only if we have some reasonably reliable information as to what those events actually were. The events, however, are accessible to us only through the writings of the New Testament But if we are not willing to be Trinitarian skeptics, I submit that we will do well to take seriously the consensus of the universal Church, rather than going off in a fundamentally different direction on our own. In the light of these reflections, I propose that the best place to begin in our investigation of the doctrine of the Trinity is with the Church Fathers of the late fourth century.7
Even from these remarks, it should be clear that Hasker is not beginning his study “from the armchair,” as an a priori exercise. Rather, he begins from a position of faith seeking understanding, with attention to scripture and tradition, and in dialogue with the “universal Church.” In this respect, he is entirely typical of recent analytic theology.
6 There is simply an enormous difference in the scholarly aim, target audience, and philosophical methodology of a work like Richard Swinburne’s The Coherence of Theism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977) and the work of contemporary, self-avowed analytic theologians like those discussed in Chapter 5. This is not to denigrate Swinburne—far from it. The Coherence of Theism was written in a very hostile academic climate, well before the contemporary resurgence of philosophy of religion had taken root, in the waning days of ordinary language philosophy, when nearly all respectable philosophers still assumed that religious assertions were meaningless, emotive, or otherwise nonreferential. We should bear that context in mind when assessing whether Swinburne’s style of reasoning now seems unfashionably a priori.
7 William Hasker, Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God (OUP 2013), 7, 9.
I now want to switch from a more defensive mode of argument to a more positive mode. One reason why analytic theology seems ahistorical to other theologians is because it is so constructive. Constructive theologians try to offer their own accounts of the meaning or truth of some doctrine or claim of the Christian tradition, rather than merely interpreting existing historical accounts. Constructive argument is common in philosophy but less common in other humanistic disciplines.
Analytic theology foregrounds explicit truth claims about God, Christ, salvation, or whatever is under discussion. A work of constructive analytic theology is finally about reality itself (including the divine reality) rather than about other texts or other thinkers. It is important not to draw this distinction too sharply. No one can think in an intellectual vacuum. The analytic theologian will, of course, engage with other texts and thinkers, but she will usually engage with them by assessing whether the arguments of those texts or thinkers are cogent or true. The ultimate aim is always to make true statements about God, or whatever aspect of reality is under discussion. Crucially, this means that analytic thinkers sometimes engage with historical sources in an ahistorical way—for example, by using modern modal metaphysics to try to understand the Christological claims of the Council of Chalcedon. This would be an illegitimate move if the goal were to understand Chalcedon on its own terms, or to give an account of what the fifthcentury church thought about Christ. But if the goal is to develop a true or possibly true Christology, then it is perfectly legitimate to draw on contemporary philosophical tools that the fifth-century church fathers lacked.
The Objection from Mystery
According to another set of objections, analytic theology falters because it is not well suited for grappling with the mystery and paradox that lie at the heart of the Christian faith. I take the objection from mystery quite seriously, and I devote the bulk of Part III to defending analytic theology from various related worries about idolatry, ontotheology, univocity, and so-called “theistic personalism.” So here I will be brief. Like the objection from history, the objection from mystery resolves into several more specific objections that are best understood as local, not global. One way to understand the objection from mystery is as a claim that analytic theology is a form of intellectual hubris—smug complacency run amok. I call this the “objection from misplaced certainty.” We might ask: Is it not the case that many analytic theologians believe that they have grasped the truth completely, once and for all, that they know God as he is, that they have dispelled all mysteries, and is this not a form of hubris? Certainly it is possible for an individual analytic theologian to think this way, but I doubt that many of them do. (Thus Brian Leftow: “I give many perfect-being arguments in what follows. As I give them, I have a nagging fear that I am just making stuff up. This is not due to uncertainty
