This is going to be short, but I wanted to briefly follow up on my last post. I offered an engagement with an analytic theological thinker named Ryan Wellington. In my engagement I hadn’t fully finished reading his essay; I have since. I am not fully persuaded of his argument in regard to the propositional nature of revelation; even though I think Revelation entails propositions. But beyond that, and more generally, I want to register my thoughts on Analytic Theology as a project and intellectual program. I had a significant exchange with my friend, Andrew Torrance, on Twitter, in regard to the value of Analytic Theology (or not). Torrance is right in the hub of a significant movement of what has come to be known as Analytic Theology; he works among others like his father, Alan, and then his colleague, Oliver Crisp. Torrance helped me to see his vision of what analytic theology entails, particularly for him. Indeed, Andrew has recently published an essay on that vision which you read here. Andrew’s theological dispositions are in alignment with mine, in many ways. He is a Kierkegaard scholar, and could broadly be pin-pointed as ‘Barthian’ in orientation (if not Torrancean 😉 ). His desire, as I can tell, is to make use of the tradition of rigor that analytic Philosophy has worked with traditionally. And beyond that he seeks to foster a relationship between systematic theologians and analytic philosophers that can be seen as an interdisciplinarian endeavor with the hopes of mutually enriching both sides of that equation. The “enrichment” could be known as ‘Analytic Theology.’

With the above noted, I want to register that I remain skeptical of the analytic theology project. I remain skeptical because I believe that the form of theologizing the Christian theologian engages in impacts the material messaging that is produced by deploying whatever form. In the case of analytic theology the sought after form is to deploy the rigor and insights of analytic philosophers in order to explicate the Christian Dogma for the Church. But in my view analytic philosophy is not simply a formal project, but as apiece, it entails material ideation that is not neutral vis-à-vis Sacra Doctrina (as Thomas might say it). I think in contrast to analytic philosophy the kerygma or Gospel itself comes with its own sort of rigor and definitional elegance, such that if the theologian sits immersed under its pressure that they will arrive at a sui generis style of communication that is correlative to the Gospel itself. When the theologian sits under the pressurized weight of God’s glory revealed in the Gospel, ever afresh and anew, what they come to produce is a ratio that can be just as precise as the analytic theologian purports to be, but precise in such a way that the form itself is deeply doxological and dialogical, even devotional in orientation. I think the literature of the Church is rife with examples of the sort of kerygmatic rigor I am referring to.

Since I am out of time I will have to leave it here. Don’t get me wrong, I fully respect many in the analytic theology movement, but I remain skeptical because I think there are better ways and a better form towards being Christianly rigorous in the theological endeavor. And at a personal level: when I read analytic theology I don’t walk away from that experience feeling ‘edified,’ instead I walk away with this sort of sense that the form of the theology I just read coopted the message it is supposedly seeking to explicate with rigor. And this is why I see form and material as mutually implicating in the theological task. I know Andrew T disagrees with me on this, but this is where I currently stand.