Analytic Theology (AT) refers to a growing body of primarily Christian theological literature resulting from the application of the methods and concepts of late-twentieth-century analytic philosophy.
Overview
In the early 21st century various lectures, study centers, conference sections, academic journals, and at least one monographic series have appeared with "Analytic Theology" in their title or description. The movement counts both philosophers and theologians in its ranks, but a growing number of theologians with philosophy training produce AT literature. Analytic theology is strongly related to the philosophy of religion, but it is wider in scope due to its willingness to engage topics not normally addressed in the philosophy of religion (such as the Eucharist, sin, salvation, and eschatology). Given the types of historical philosophy that have funded the analytic philosophy of religion, theologians are frequently involved in retrieval theology as they revisit, re-appropriate, and modify older Christian solutions to theological questions. Analytic theology has strong roots in the Anglo-American analytic philosophy of religion in the last quarter of the twentieth century, as well as similarities at times to scholastic approaches to theology. However, the term analytic theology primarily refers to a resurgence of philosophical-theological work since about 2004 by a community of scholars in the UK and the US.
Defining analytic theology
Historically and methodologically, AT is both a way of approaching theological works as well as a sociological or historical shift in academic theology.
Analytic theology defined as a theological method
Due to its similarities to philosophical theology and philosophy of religion, defining analytic theology remains a challenge. Systematic theologian, William J. Abraham, defined analytic theology as “systematic theology attuned to the deployment of the skills, resources, and virtues of analytic philosophy. It is the articulation of the central themes of Christian teaching illuminated by the best insights of analytic philosophy.”
Philosopher Michael Rea defines analytic theology as “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, employing some of the technical jargon from that tradition, and so on. But, in the end, it is the style and the ambitions that are most central.”
Cambridge theologian Sarah Coakley, by contrast, warns that attempts to set down an essentialist definition for analytic theology (i.e. a category that some are in and some are not in) will distract from the productive work resulting from the recent flourishing of AT.
More specifically, analytic theology can be understood in a narrow and wide sense. When understood more widely, analytic theology is a method to be applied in theological works. Like other methodological approaches to theology (e.g. historical theology, retrieval theology, post-liberal theology), analytic theology, in this view, is a way of doing theological work that is independent of one's theological commitments. In this wider sense, Muslims, Jews, and Christians could all apply the same analytic methods to their theological work. William Wood has called this the “formal model” of analytic theology.
By contrast, some are concerned that those participating in the analytic theology movement are doing more than just applying a particular method to their work. Given that most of its practitioners are Christians, some wonder if analytic theology is also a theological program (i.e. it is committed to forwarding a certain body of theological beliefs). These concerns characterize the narrow sense of AT. In contrast to the formal method, Wood calls this narrow sense the “substantive model” of analytic theology. Wood believes that the substantive model of AT is “theology that draws on the tools and methods of analytic philosophy to advance a specific theological agenda, one that is, broadly speaking, associated with traditional Christian orthodoxy. On this conception, the central task of analytic theology would be to develop philosophically well-grounded accounts of traditional Christian doctrines like the Trinity, Christology, and the atonement.”