An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology

Thomas H. McCall

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780830840953
• eBook ISBN: 9780830899302
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

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.

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 as analytic theology. 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 bene...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• 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