Ignored Analytic Theology

Over at Aporetic Christianity Paul has had a worthy post on a major new tome of systematic theology, which he says whiffs it on the contributions of analytic philosophers of the last 40 years or so.

I agree with all the examples Paul gives of philosophers / analytic theologians whose work should not be ignored by any serious investigator – not because they’re my peeps – but because their work is disciplined, insightful, well motivated, clearly argued. In short, it has things you want if you’re serious about getting to the truth of the matter.

Why do systematic theologians do this?

Maybe there’s no deep answer. Maybe: (1) they’re not familiar with this large genre, (2) philosophy is hard, (3) they can ignore it – a portion of the intended audience won’t notice. They won’t get any letters protesting the ignoring of Plantinga, Craig, van Inwagen, or Leftow.

To those of us who are philosophically literate, in most cases philosophy-ignoring work just isn’t going to answer our questions. It’s not a matter of style, taste, or preference – but of substance. This is hard to convey to people who aren’t so trained. Here’s an analogy. Imagine you’re a
public policy wonk – you have highly developed views on things like zoning laws, taxation, trade, and such. You want to know who to vote for, so you go to a speech by a politician, who breaks out his well-worn lines about Freedom, the American Way, Baseball, and Apple Pie. Or maybe he gets more specific – he gives you his Republican riffs about smaller government, lower taxes, and Reaganesque optimism. This is closer, but you really wanted to know whether he thought the payoff of a certain environmental protection ordinance was worth the economic costs of implementation – and you leave the speech disappointed. You assume that surely he must address this pressing issue, so you buy his book, search his website, scour his public statements. No, nothing there. Move along.

Now settle down – no, I’m not comparing theologians to politicians. I’m comparing the imaginary wonk’s experience to my disappointment after sitting down with some expensive new book by a theologian to see what he says about, say, the Trinity.

As more people learn to think about theology in ways disciplined by analytic philosophy, theology which ignores it will be less relevant. If you’re going into theology, my advice is to get a BA and/or an MA in philosophy in a solid, analytic or mostly analytic department which employs at least one specialist in philosophy of religion, and at least one specialist in the history of philosophy and at least one in contemporary metaphysics. Get some good advice on departments, or if you can’t do that – read their stuff, and see if it is serious, helpful, and comprehensible (vs. trivial, obscure, jargon-ridden. Unless you do this at a religious school, the department will be 50-80% atheists and agnostics, but don’t worry, you’ll probably learn a lot from them. A portion, maybe 50% of such will actually be very interested in arguments about God, evil, divine providence, human nature, free will – things you care about. Such a degree will teach you to navigate the vast and challenging literature of philosophy, and will enable to recognize well crafted arguments. It will give you some skills it would be fairly hard to get by just reading some books on the side.

I do buy and profit from theological books which ignore analytic theology. But on many topics, like the Trinity and Incarnation, time, divine providence, certain divine attributes, free will, I go in knowing that they’ll be too unclear to be helpful – in delineating their preferred theory, in taking on the best objections to it, and in arguing for their preferred theory. Their statements will suggest more than one incompatible precise theory – some theory fairly well worked out, usually,  by someone trained in philosophy (though their terminal degree may be in another field).