Category Archives: Analytical Theology

A Brief Reflection on Analytic Theologians

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Okay, it’s no secret; I am obviously engrossed in this issue right now, simply because I am reading Analytic Theology edited by Oliver Crisp and Michael Rea. I have lot’s of personal history with this tradition of thought (which my last post, and comments make clear). All I want to voice here is two more groups of thoughts on this issue, and then I’ll probably be done with this for awhile.

Another problem I have with Analytic Theology is that I often get the sense that without the Analytic Theologian we couldn’t be sure that God. It is this unstated thing that we ought to be reliant upon the Analytic Theologian to lead us into all truth (since they love knowledge as philosophers). This is an eery thing to me. I feel this angst as I read these folk; it seems to me, that they believe that if they can’t argue a coherent whole or prove that the Bible is Inspired Scripture or something—through their means—that the whole thing (Christianity) could evaporate into thin air. That they give and charge Christianity with its glory and life breath.

Another issue is that I get the sense that Analytic Theologians (and its probably not just them, and not all of them) seem to have a sense of power about them. That they can marshal the semantic and grammatical pieces of the knowledge-warranted-belief puzzle like no one else can. I get this sense that they think that the rest of us “theologians” [I’m just one in training] are at their mercy (or should be).

I am not anti-intellectual, or anti-thinking; I am anti-Analytic (for the most part) though. [That does not mean that I don’t respect many of these so-named Analytic Theologians; I do!]

The “Mad” Theologians, Too Analytic

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I am continuing to read Crisp’s and Rea’s Analytic Theology; should complete it sometime tomorrow. Many of you don’t know, and don’t care to know, that there is a difference between analytic theology and what has been called ‘Continental Theology’ (which is the influence you get here when you read my blog). The foremost example of Continental Theology is Karl Barth. ‘CT’ takes its cues from following the philosophical paths ofΒ European philosophers like: Hiedeggar, Husserl, Hegel, [Einstein, for good measure — even though not a philosopher, per se]Β and Kant; to name a few. Analytic Theologians follow in the footsteps of Hellenistic philosophy, and other European philosophers; like: Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, and a host of others. Ultimately, I really have no empathy for Analytic Theology. When I read it, or try to think it; it actually upsets me! I think it represents an abject loss for providing fruitful and creative ways for thinking about and articulating who God is. I would suggest that the reason this is the case is primarily because of their metaphysics (substance), and their method (mathematical). To this end, let me give you an example of what I mean. The following is from Thomas Crisp’s (an Analytic Theologian-Philosopher who teaches Philosophy at Biola University in La Mirada, CA — very close to where I grew up) chapter in the book ‘Analytic Theology’ (his chapter is entitled: “Believing the Scriptures Divinely Inspired). HereΒ he is doing some preliminary work that I am hoping will set up the rest of his chapter in some comprehendible way; he is sketching Alvin Plantiga’s critique of natural theology’s capacities to provide something helpful for establishing the justification for “Believing the Scriptures Divinely Inspired.”

[P]lantiga has argued that attempts to argue for ‘the great things of the gospel’ (i.e. incarnation, atonement, Jesus’ resurrection) on the basis of natural theology and historical argument suffer from a problem he dubs the ‘Principle of Dwindling Probabilties’.

The Principle of Dwindling Probabilities afflicts arguments with a certain structure. Suppose you want to show some proposition P probable on our background knowledge K. You might do that by producing some other proposition A, showing that P (A/K) and P (P/A&K) are high, and concluding that, by the probability calculus, it follows that P (P/K) is high.

You might however, try to show that P (P/K) is high by iterating the above procedure, arguing that some proposition A is probable on K, that some other proposition B is probable on A&K, and that P is probable on A&B&K, concluding that, therefore, P is probable on K. But such an argument is subject to Plantiga’s Principle. If all you’ve said is that P (A/K), P (B/A&K), and P (P/A&B&K) are high, say around .8 each, then, so far, all that follows from the probability calculus is that P (P/K) is greater than or equal to .8 x .8 x .8, a tad higher than .5. Though the conditional probabilties P (A/K), P (B/A&K), and P (P/A&B&K) are each high, the probabilties ‘dwindle’ when you multiply them through.

This Principle of Dwindling Probabilties (PDP), then, makes trouble for arguments with the foregoing iterative structure, arguments that attempt to motivate the claim that P (P/K) is high for some P by arguing, for some Q1 . .Β . Qn, that P (Q1/K), P (Q2/Q1&K), . . . , P (Qn/Q1& . . . Qn-1&K), and P (P/Q1& . . . &Qn&K) are high. [Thomas Crisp in “Analytic Theology,” eds. Oliver Crisp & Michael Rea, 190-91]

I know that was complex; let me explain for the dense of heart. So if ABCDEFGHIJK then LMNOPQRSTUVWXY&Z. Further there are some who like to use A1 on their KFC; which for others equals a no go in their 300Z.

Just today I made a cryptic comment on my Facebook wall that I was sure that most ‘Analytic Theologians’ must’ve been engineers or something in their former life. Ironically, I checked out Thomas Crisp’s CV; and his undergrad degree is in Civil Engineering from UCLA.

As I have mentioned before, doing theology as math should have no place in the theologian’s mode of operation. In my view, the effect this has when done, supposedly in the service of God, is to depersonalize Him through using cold formulaic apparatus that does not befit the Christian God of love. I would love to see an Analytic Theologian go home to his wife, and describe his love for her through calculus formula, statistics, and mathematical theorems and equations; that probably wouldn’t go over to well. If this is the case, why do said ‘Analytic Theologians’ feel justified when talking about humanties’ relationship to the Greatest Lover of all, God, in this way? No thank you . . .

god of the philosophers

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I am currently reading Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea. I will be writing a review of it for the Pacific Journal of Baptist Research. I am currently reading chapter 2 entitled Systematic Theology as Analytic Theology by William J. Abraham. The whole book is, as it were, making an argument for the place of ‘Analytic Philosophy’ in Systematic Theology. If you are unaware, there is a schism (of sorts) between Analytic Theologians and Systematic Theologians. Ultimately the division between the two has to do with methodological commitments that impact material theological conclusions. The Analytic theologian wants to argue that their craft (Analytic Philosophy) is a necessary tool for the theologian to wield, in order for said theologian to think with rigor and respectability amongst other academic disciplines. At the end of the day, for the two main camps in this discussion—Analytic Theologians V. Continental Theologians—the question comes back to an issue of how the theologian perceives the role of Revelation. In other words, the question that Barth and Brunner debated over; viz. the question of the viability that a so called ‘natural theology’ (analogia entis) has within a prolegomenon for Systematic Theology. Or, do we start with Christ or Nature. Most Western Systematic Theology (in the Evangelical world) has gone the way of Analytic Theology and starting with Nature, methodologically—this move effects everything (all other doctrinal development).

In the following quote, Abraham describes the scorn that comes from non-Analytic theologians towards Analytic Theologians as he perceives it (as an Analytic Theologian).

Consider how analytic theology might proceed in articulating a robust doctrine of God. At present there is stout resistance in some theological circles to deploying philosophical skill in articulating a Christian vision of God that has multiple sources. There is, at the outset, the long-standing contrast that pits the god of the philosophers over against the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. From as far back as Tertullian and at least from Pascal onwards in the modern period we have been told that there is the dead, abstract god of the philosophers and the living God of scripture and faith. Karl Barth’s arguments against natural theology have aided and abetted this contrast sharply and made it the staple diet of three generations of theologians. To read for the god of the philosophers is to seek to justify ourselves by our works; it is to invent an idol rather than turn to the one true God of divine revelation; and it is to make revelation subordinate to human reason. In addition it has been suggested from the side of recent liberation theology that the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent god of the philosophers is the top-down god of the masters, the god of empire. An omnipotent god will end up, like it or not, being brought in to support the unilateral omnipotence of empire. Thus the god of the philosophers is, if only by default, in synch with the new North American, neo-colonial empire. From another angle the god the philosophers is a god one comes to know through cold, clinical logic divorced from genuine spirituality and from the special revelation through whom God is supremely known and loved. So the god of the philosophers is really the god of pagan thinking rather than the God known and worshipped in the faith of the saints and martyrs. [William J. Abraham, chpt. 2, Analytic Theology, 61]

[One caveat, Abraham polarizes the characterization of the ‘Liberation Theologian’s’ disdain for the god of the philosophers. In truth, Abraham’s ‘Liberation Theology’ doesn’t just gripe against the god of the philosophers, but against the God of the Christian Tradition—I am assuming Abraham thinks that the god of the philosophers is univocal with the God of the Christian Tradition. In some quarters this may be the case, but not in all, and not in the best of the Tradition.]

In our forthcoming book, Evangelical Calvinism: Essays Resourcing the Continuing Reformation of the Church. Princeton Theological Monograph Series. Eds. Myk Habets and Bobby Grow. Foreword by Alasdair Heron. Eugene, OR.: Pickwick Publications, my particular chapter is entitled: “Analogia Fidei or Analogia Entis: Either Through Christ or Through Nature.” My area of interest, in my chapter, revolves around the very questions that Abraham is addressing. I follow the ‘Analogy of Faith’ (through Christ) contra what Abraham would follow the ‘Analogy of Being’ (or through ‘Natural’ Theology). Some would say that this presents a false dichotomy, that a chaste approach would understand that we need both working in tandem with each other. But I would suggest that this fails to understand the critique on theological method that this dichotomy reflects. Do we start with God’s ‘Self-revelation’ and ‘Self-interpretation’ in his ‘Self-interpreting-Word’ (cf. Jn. 1.18); or do we start with seeking the glory of man theologia gloriae (cf. Jn. 5.39-47)?

Torrance’s ‘Reality’ and Foundationalism again

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One of Thomas Torrance’s most basic contributions to the Christian theological landscape was to develop an epistemological approach that works from the principle that reality is a unitary whole; terminating on its ultimate source, the Triune God. Part of Torrance’s project was to undo the modern enlightenment epistemology/ontology that operated (and still does) from a dualist perspective; wherein word and concept (reality) had been decoupled one from the other so that the result becomes one where man imposes his categories of thought (abstracted from his experience of reality) upon reality and then calls that reality — this has also been called, foundationalism.

Torrance develops some of his thinking on this in his book Reality and Scientific Theology. I am going to provide a quote from him that I think is cool. The quote is in the context of Torrance talking about the possibility of Natural Theology—which he thinks is possible, but only under the constraints of his qualification that the Medieval kind of Natural Theology (amongst others) disjointed reality from word (or reality from thought) in a way that places man prior to both God and nature is not acceptable, he rejects the idea that man can create a logical bridge between human knowing and the reality that it purports to signify—Torrance, in the following quote, is in the middle of sketching and responding to Heideggar’s emphasis on ‘being and knowing’; and how Torrance believes that Heideggar was onto to something, but then misses his own point when he fails to accept that being presents us with a rational question which presupposes a rational answer. In other words, that God is the ground of all created being in His uncreated being and reality. The basic point that I want to highlight from the quote is the idea that there is an intimate relation between being and word (or knowledge); so that we cannot have one without the other. This is Torrance’s form in being-form in knowing matrix, or his epistemological inversion or tacit inferencing (borrowed from Polyani); the idea that under the weight and compulsory push provided by the reality itself—when we allow ourselves to be pushed by it—we are opened up beyond ourselves and begin to see reality as it is under its own constraints and categories of inquiry (e.g. not ones that “we” have imposed upon it through logico-deductive methods of abstraction and then induction). Enough said, here’s Torrance:

[I]t is a similar approach that is found in the thought of Martin Heideggar, who is concerned to break up the rigid structures of language and existence in order to let being itself show through in its freedom and primordial reality. Heideggar is rather more specific than Hartt [another philosopher Torrance just sketched and addressed] as to the relation between logos and physis. Logos is not itself the locus of truth, but is the manifesting of the reality of things or their “unconcealment” (aletheia). It is significant that here we do not need and do not operate with intermediary representations or sense-data [foundationalism], the sort of thing that seems forced upon us whenever we allow logos to secede from being, for what we are concerned with here is the showing of reality itself through to us. This is why Heideggar has devoted so much effort to analysing “existence” (Dasein) in order to destroy the false ontologies that keep on cropping up through the hardening of substitute-symbolisms, so that the whole focus of attention may be directed upon being in the full and proper sense (Sein). Heideggar’s own movement of thought, however, tends to be stultified and distorted, for he lowers the horizon of inquiry (Fragehorizont) in a strangely arbitrary way, so that in the last resort he is forced to break out by taking a leap into nothing, instead of letting his mind fall under the power of the inherent signification of being and its reference beyond itself. But far from opening up the reality of being, as Heideggar hoped, the leap of thought into nothing can only fall back into the relativities of existentialism.

When reality is allowed to unveil itself, however, in its own inner intelligibility, our thought is thrust up against the truth of being in such a way that it is sustained by an objective signification and does not fall back into the dark whirlpool of man’s self-understanding. Not only do we grasp the truth of intelligible being out of the depth of its own reality, but we respond to that which is not of our own making and which acts with categorical force upon our minds. Here too we find that explaining and understanding do not fall apart, as they do when logos and being become disjoined, for they operate together as we penetrate into the inner relations and significations of things and allow them to set up their own laws and meanings in our grasping of them. To express this the other way round, what we apprehend like this in the truth of its own being proves itself to us by bringing our minds under an imperative obligation which we cannot rationally resist. This is what happened, for example, when St. Anselm, breaking free from the psychologism of St. Augustine, could speak of truth not only as that which is what it is and and as it manifests itself, but as what it had to be in his understanding or conceiving of it, for he found himself together with the truth of created being under compulsion from beyond. It was in this way that the so-called “ontological argument” forced itself upon him from the side of what he had to acknowledge as the Supreme Being or Supreme Truth. That is not to be understood as the force of some logical argument or deductive or inductive train of ideas, but as the force of Reality itself (necessitas, as St. Anselm called it, its impossibility of being otherwise) in which truth and being are indissolubly one. [T. F. Torrance, Reality and Scientific Theology, 47-8]

This quote evinces some of Torrance’s own influences, both philosophical and theological. What do you think? Do you think that Torrance’s way is better than the ‘Analytic’ dualistic mode of thought that abstracts so called ‘indubitable’ principles from their experience of reality, and then seeks to correspond these categories back upon “reality?” Don’t you think it better to think from within the inner structures of reality as it is from within itself? True many would call Torrance’s approach fideistic, and maybe even philosophically naΓ―ve. But of course the ones who might ascribe this to Torrance would be, most likely, imposing their analytical modes of thought upon Torrance’s epistemological project, and thus not really ever able to grasp the reality of Torrance’s point to begin with πŸ˜‰ .

The ‘Fallen-Humanity’ of Christ, again

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My last post I referenced Arjen’s post on the fallen humanity of Christ; well I am going to do so again. In lieu of the great comments provided by the last post, I thought I would continue to engage this topic a little further; at least by providing further explication of what T. F. Torrance thought about this issue (and why). In fact, this post is going to highlight one of the reasons why Torrance held that Christ did indeed assume a “fallen humanity” (whatever that is supposed to mean, pace the comments in the last thread); this touches on Arjen’s point (in his post), on Torrance’s aversion to the idea of ‘external relations’ (as we all know Torrance operated from his onto-relational mode of thought which, at its base, will disallow any kind of being-in-constitution that is not oriented by being-in-relation as constitutional to what it means to be a ‘person’). In this vein, let me quote from Elmer Colyer, as he develops Torrance’s thought, a bit, on these lines:

The Latin heresy: A “gospel” of external relations. Torrance sees a growing tendency in Latin theology from the fifth century to reject the idea that Christ assumed our sinful, alienated and fallen humanity, and to embrace the notion that Christ assumed a neutral or an original and perfect human nature from the Virgin Mary. This understanding of the incarnation, however, conflicts with the soteriological principle of the Nicene theologians that the unassumed is the unhealed, for in the Latin view the Son of God has not assumed our actual fallen humanity, but a perfect and sinless humanity different from our own.

Yet if in incarnation the Son of God did not assume our fallen and sinful human nature, Torrance argues that Christ’s atoning sacrifice can only be understood in terms of external (forensic, for example) relations between Christ and humanity’s sins. The incarnation thus becomes instrumental in relation to the atonement. It is the means of providing the sinless human being capable of living a life in perfect obedience to God’s law, and of taking our place on the cross and enduring the judgment and wrath of God which we deserve because of our sin. In Christ’s suffering and death there is an external judicial transaction in the transference of the penalty for sin and of the judgement and wrath of God from us to Jesus Christ who dies an agonizing death fulfilling the just and inexorable penalty against those who transgress God’s laws.

In this theory of the atonement we are freed from the penalty for sin, Torrance contends, but the actual root of our alienation and sin in the ontological depths of our corrupt and fallen humanity is left untouched by Christ’s atoning sacrifice. Christ’s death on the cross deals only with our actual sins, but not original sin. In conservative Protestant circles this can lead to a reductionist soteriology of forgiveness now and heaven in the hereafter. [Elmer M. Colyer, How To Read T. F. Torrance: Understanding His Trinitarian & Scientific Theology, 86-7]

Really, all this quote does is elaborate further what Arjen alluded to in his post on Torrance, and Torrance’s thinking on ‘external relations’ and how that impacts Torrance’s theory on the Logos’ assumption of a fallen humanity in the incarnation. It is obvious that for Torrance his concern is strictly theological-soteriological in orientation. In regards to Arjen’s modal logic interrogation of Torrance I think it probably better to go the route that Matt suggested in one of his comments on the last thread. That being human should not be a predicate of the 1st Adam, but that predication for being human finds its arche or antecedent in the imago Christi (or the image of Christ). In other words, to be human, for Torrance is shaped eschatologically in Christ. Thus, given the state of things (the ‘Fall’ and thus redemption), it was fitting (thanks, Darren πŸ˜‰ )—given the eschatological shape of humanity in Christ—that Christ would enter into the ontological fabric of our lives to actualise the ultimate purpose for all humanity (cf. Col. 1.15-20).

PS. I think it is good to remember that Torrance follows the Scotist Thesis: i.e. that Christ was going to incarnate with or without the ‘Fall’ of humanity.

The “Fallen Humanity” of Christ

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My friend, Arjen, over at his blog Qualitative Theology has recently posted a provocative post challenging T. F. Torrance’s view that Christ assumed a fallen human nature (a view I follow Torrance on) in the incarnation. The post is entitled: Did Christ Assume a Fallen Human Nature? You can find it by clicking on the title I just provided.

Here is a bit of what Torrance had to say on this:

[N]ow when we listen to the witness of holy scripture here we know we are faced with something we can never fully understand, but it is something that we must seek to understand as far as we can. One thing should be abundantly clear, that if Jesus Christ did not assume our fallen flesh, our fallen humanity, then our fallen humanity is untouched by his work — for ‘the unassumed is the unredeemed’, as Gregory Nazianzen put it. Patristic theology, especially as we see it expounded in the great Athanasius, makes a great deal of the fact that he who knew no sin became sin for us, exchanging his riches for our poverty, his perfection for our imperfection, his incorruption for our corruption, his eternal life for our mortality. Thus Christ took from Mary a corruptible and mortal body in order that he might take our sin, judge and condemn it in the flesh, and so assume our human nature as we have it in the fallen world that he might heal, sanctify and redeem it. In that teaching the Greek fathers were closely following the New Testament. If the Word of God did not really come into our fallen existence, if the Son of God did not actually come where we are, and join himself to us and range himself with us where we are in sin and under judgement, how could it be said that Christ really took our place, took our cause upon himself in order to redeem us? (Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation, 62)

What do you think; do you have problems with this like Arjen, at the moment, does? Or, do you follow what Torrance is articulating? Maybe you have further questions about this; let them fly. If you read Arjen’s post first, I think that Torrance would want to jettison the kind of modal logic that Arjen employs, somewhat, against Torrance’s position (albeit with a sympathetic tone). Torrance was not a fan of the kind of Aristotelian anthropology that thinks of man in terms of essence/accidents; in fact it is this kind of thinking that Torrance is seeking to undercut by providing a theological anthropology that operates from strictly biblical and theological suppositions. It is for this reason that I think Torrance’s point here could successfully stand up under the scrutiny which Arjen subjects Torrance’s view to. In other words, there are two different modes of theological discourse going on here (you will have to read my comment at Arjen’s to see what I am getting at).