LAUSR

Analytic theology (AT) is a particular approach to theology and the study of religion that engages with the tools, categories, and methodological concerns of analytic philosophy. As such, it is neutral with respect to particular substantive, denominational, or religious claims. It is a relatively newly-named approach, yet it has specific antecedents in the last century and formal antecedents in much of the history of Christian theological reflection. It is a fast-growing and well-resourced initiative, and—likely in virtue of this—has proven somewhat controversial. This special issue of Open Theology engages AT with a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, essays in this collection bring the analytic slant to bear on perennial topics in theological prolegomena. Yet, on the other hand, some essays offer critical engagements with AT and ways of integrating AT with other well-attested theological methods. Essays of both kinds push AT further into realms of greater rigor and attractiveness. In this introduction, we highlight some of the history and concerns of AT as a means of offering a tentative location for this special issue on the disciplinary map. As a named-entity, AT arrived on the academic scene with the 2009 Oxford University Press publication, Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea. AT was arguably represented, prior to this publication, by the proto-analytic theologian Richard Swinburne in his noteworthy works on Christian doctrine (e.g., Providence and the Problem of Evil, Responsibility and Atonement, The Christian God, Faith and Reason, and The Resurrection of God Incarnate). Since the time of the published collection by Crisp and Rea, AT was quickly followed by a three-continent funding initiative by the John Templeton Foundation for projects housed, in North America, at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Philosophy of Religion; in Europe, at the Munich School of Philosophy and University of Innsbruck; and, in the Middle East, at the Shalem Center and then later the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem. More recent Templeton-funded initiatives include a three-year project at Fuller Theological Seminary in California and the establishment of Logos Institute for Analytic and Exegetical Theology at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. The movement continues with ambitious publication schemes in the journals TheoLogica and the Journal of Analytic Theology, as well the Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology series published by Oxford University Press. However, AT is not just some newcomer on the academic scene. While the fruits of the methodology are presently now ripe, the seeds of AT were sown in the first centuries of the Christian church and heavily fertilized in the last century. One could make the observation that within the Christian tradition, theology has always been done in conversation with philosophy (even if, at times, that conversation were an adversarial one). Whether the conversation partners were Augustine and Neoplatonism, Thomas Aquinas and Aristotelianism, John Calvin and Renaissance Humanism, or Karl Barth and Hegelianism, Christian theology has not operated in a philosophical vacuum. In fact, a theme that has emerged within Christian theology has argued