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Critical Thinking: The Secret Weapon of Confident Christians

By Jason Jiminez
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by Jason Jiminez | Apr 10, 2024 | Theology and Christian Apologetics

As Christians, developing critical thinking skills and maintaining an informed understanding of our faith is crucial. The world is full of misinformation and uncertainty, making it difficult to distinguish truth from falsehood. It is not enough for Christians to blindly adhere to whatever traditions or practices they have inherited from the past. They should critically evaluate and discern the relevance and validity of these traditions in their present context.

With so many different worldviews competing for our attention, staying engaged and equipped with our beliefs is essential. Without the intellectual stamina to navigate these opposing views, we risk becoming uninformed and ill-prepared to face the challenges of contemporary society.

The Age of Competing Ideas

In a recent interview with John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center, I asked him why so many Christians lack the ability to think critically. His initial response was that many Christians lack the proper training in biblical doctrine and have not been catechized in the basic categories of reality. John added,

“We live in a world where we are bombarded with a lot of information, most of which is not objective or neutral. This makes it difficult to determine what to believe and whom to trust. Therefore, this era is better called ‘The Age of Competing Ideas,’ which leads to ‘The Age of Competing Authority.’”

I have seen firsthand how a lack of critical thinking about one’s faith can leave a Christian susceptible to false teachings or worldly philosophies. Paul warned in Colossians 2:8 , “Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ” (NLT).

We are exhorted by the apostle Paul to “Test everything; hold fast what is good” ( 1 Thessalonians 5:21 ). Christianity is not about unquestioningly accepting things without using reasoning and intellect. Instead, it is about having faith while also engaging your mind.

Not Just Belief, but Informed Belief

Therefore, we must recognize the role of informed beliefs in Christianity and draw on the biblical foundations of critical thinking to equip ourselves with the knowledge necessary to distinguish truth from falsehood.

Critical thinking is a systematic skill that involves analyzing and assessing a particular belief, idea, argument, or issue in an unbiased manner. After thoroughly examining the subject matter, the individual arrives at a conclusion that makes the most sense of and aligns with reality. In Christianity, possessing a biblical worldview means approaching life matters with an understanding of the Word of God and proper discernment that aligns with biblical doctrine.

I like what David Dockery says about the quality of Christians possessing a robust worldview in his book What Does It Mean to Be a Thoughtful Christian? . Dockery writes,

“A Christian worldview is not escapism but an energizing motivation for godly and faithful thinking and living in the here-and-now. In the midst of life’s challenges and struggles, a Christian worldview provides confidence and hope for the future while helping to stabilize life, serving as an anchor to link us to God’s faithfulness and steadfastness.”

Three Critical Thinking Skills

Applying these three foundational tips in your daily life is an excellent start for developing the art and skill of critical thinking.

Know and pursue truth wisely: Truth is an objective reality that corresponds with, rather than contradicts, the actual state of things. By analyzing, observing, and submitting to objective truth, you will become more aware of the facts that support your Christian beliefs. Proverbs 4:7 advises, “The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.” Solomon emphasizes the importance of pursuing wisdom as you acquire knowledge and understanding to overcome life’s challenges as a Christian.
Stay grounded in God’s Word: Sadly, less than 20% of self-proclaimed Christians read the Bible daily. Of those who do, the majority only read one verse a day. Reading portions of the Bible daily will enhance your knowledge of Scripture, provide moral fortitude, give insight into wise decision-making, and help you resist temptations.
Embrace questions and objections: Christians should be the last to shy away from people who object to or challenge their faith. Peter directly speaks to this when he affirms, “But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). Don’t be afraid when someone asks you tough questions about your beliefs. Be prepared to explain why you believe in what you do. If you don’t know the answer to a question, make an effort to research and understand the material. Studying and understanding the material thoroughly will enable you to communicate effectively with others. Lastly, remember always to be respectful towards others, even if their beliefs differ from yours.

I hope you have been challenged to continue developing your critical thinking skills. This will not only keep you informed and prevent you from being deceived, but it will also increase your passion for God’s truth and enable you to become a great defender of the Christian faith. We need more defenders of the faith, and I believe you have the potential to become one!

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Michael Milton

Michael Milton and Faith for Living, Inc.

October 30, 2017

What is Theological Reflection and Critical Thinking and How do I Use it in a Graduate-level Research Paper?

“How do I write a research paper for seminary? And just what exactly is ‘theological reflection’ and ‘critical thinking?'”

Good questions. Necessary answers.

In response, I am humbly providing the following guide to my students in graduate theological and religious studies (seminary). This guide may, however, be of help to others (of other disciplines) in graduate school, particularly as the student seeks to incorporate critical thinking into the paper. And, yes, I do believe that we can define both critical thinking and theological reflection.

Writing a Research Paper in Theology and Religious Studies

A brief guide, michael a. milton, phd, mdiv., mpa, the james ragsdale chair of missions and evangelism; president, the d. james kennedy institute for reformed leadership.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Psalm 19:14

Graduate-level research and writing can be a mystery of sorts. It doesn’t have to be. Let me give you some concrete steps that I trust will be of some assistance.

Definitions:

Theological reflection:.

The ability of a student to isolate a presenting issue and place it within the larger framework of systematic or Biblical theology; moving from the immediate context to a practical application.

Critical Thinking:

The demonstrated ability of a student to review a presenting issue, literature and experiences that can speak to the presenting issue, and the demonstration of tools (i.e., theological reflection) to come to terms with the implications of the presenting matter. Coming to terms may include practical application to a pressing real-world problem, or being able to merely state the problem in the simplest terms for further study.

A Suggested Framework of a Research Paper in Theology and Religious Studies Incorporating Theological Reflection and Critical Thinking

State the question of your papers.

E.g., “Holiness is ordinarily associated with sanctification. Yet, the question of this week is ‘What is the meaning of vocational holiness?’ The question, thus, links sanctification with one’s call to and, possibly, to the faithful practice of that vocation.”

Isolate the theological issue at hand.

The theological issue that is surrounding the larger question has presenting issues that if not grasped or followed can have negative consequences. The theological issue can, also, hopefully, have constructive or spiritually healthy results. Speak to these. Explore these within the instructor’s stated limits of words or pages.

Thus, a student might respond to the question of the week supposed in the previous paragraph:

“The Bible states that shepherds must be faithful to ‘know well the condition of your flocks and give attention to your herds’ (Proverbs 27:23). This command calls us to reflect upon the matter of faithful pastoral ministry. It, also, becomes, in a sense, “The Imitation of Christ” (De Imitatione Christi by Thomas a’ Kempis). For the Lord Jesus Christ identified Himself as a “Good Shepherd” in the Gospel of John (10:11-18).

Thus, the student might postulate from this Biblical survey, “The real matter at hand may be characterized as faithfulness: faithfulness in the God-ordained calling and in a greater understanding of what that vocation entails.”

Integrate your readings, research, and, not always necessary, your experience, but, certainly, always, your critical thinking.

Use scholarly indexes (e.g., ATLA, JSTOR, etc.) to research peer-reviewed journal articles on “Jesus as Good Shepherd,” or “vocational holiness,” or “Faithful Gospel Ministry,” or “Shepherd as a metaphor for pastors in the Old Testament.” Be creative in the way you use key words and phrases for your search.
What is most relevant in citations? Some “authorities” are not allowed (e.g., Wikipedia), but even such cites can be helpful in “following the footnote trail.”
The taxonomy of citation authorities might be listed as:
Other peer-reviewed articles (if not in Theology and Religious Studies, then, perhaps, is a social science, or archeology, etc.);
A volume by an SME (an SME by acclamation of the Academy or by peers in the profession, not by his or her own self-identification);
Popular SME publications (e.g., “Christianity Today”);
Interviews with SMEs, documented and articulated in correct Turabian layout;
Other books (e.g., “East of Eden” by John Steinbeck might provide insight into the human condition).
“Our assigned text also says …”
“In my own life, I have seen how this has worked both positively and negatively. Once, when I was in school . . .”
See the Turabian Guide here.

Conclusions

Restate the question.
Summarize the research.
Make your concluding statement.

Other Resources

Writing the Weekly Research Paper: https://michaelmilton.org/2016/07/24/writing-the-weekly-research-paper/
A Brief Guide for Writing Theological Reflection Papers:
https://michaelmilton.org/2014/08/13/a-brief-guide-for-writing-theological-reflection-papers/
A good source for research (in addition to the Library database, always your first destination): “Annotated Links to Websites on Religion and Theology:” https://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/resources/website-on-religion/

Navigate to any page of this site.

In the menu, scroll to Add to Home Screen and tap it.

In the menu, scroll past any icons and tap Add to Home Screen .

Religious Educator Vol. 18 No. 3 · 2017

Critical thinking in religious education, shayne anderson.

Shayne Anderson, "Critical Thinking in Religious Education," Religious Educator 18, no. 3 (2018): 69–81.

Shayne Anderson ( [email protected] ) was an instructor at South Ogden Junior Seminary when this article was published.

A common argument in an increasingly secular world today is that religion poses a threat to world peace and human well-being. Concerning the field of religious education, Andrew Davis, an honorary research fellow at Durham University, argues that religious adherents tend to treat others who do not agree with them with disrespect and hostility and states that efforts to persuade them to behave otherwise would be “profoundly difficult to realize.” [1] Consequently, he believes that religious education should consist only of a moderate form of pluralism. Religious education classes, in his view, should not make claims of one religion having exclusive access to the truth.

Others argue that religious education should consist only of teaching about religion in order to promote more democratic ways of being. [2] Their perception is that religion is yet another distinguishing and divisive tool used by those who seek to discriminate against others, thus impeding the progress of pluralistic democracies. Further, those perceived as religious zealots, so the argument goes, are the least apt to give critical thought to either their own beliefs or the beliefs of others. [3] This reasoning, in which religion and critical thinking are viewed as antithetical, is especially prevalent in popular culture, outside the measured confines of peer-reviewed publishing.

Reasons for why religion and critical thinking might be viewed as incompatible are as varied as the authors who generate the theories. They include the following: religions often claim to contain some amount of absolute truth, an idea in itself that critical theorists oppose; individual religions generally do not teach alternate views, a requisite for critical thinking; and, in critical theory, truth is comprised of “premises all parties accept.” [4] Theorist Oduntan Jawoniyi reduces the argument down to the fact that religious claims of truth “are empirically unverified, unverifiable, and unfalsifiable metaphysical truths.” [5]

One explanation for variations in opinions concerning the place of critical thinking in religious education may be that no consistent definition exists for critical thinking, a concept that stretches across several fields of study. For instance, the field of philosophy has its own nuanced definition of critical thinking, as does the field of psychology. My first aim in this article is to survey a range of definitions in order to settle upon a functional definition that will allow for faith while still fulfilling the objectives of critical thinking, and my second aim is to explore how this definition can apply to religious education in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Defining Critical Thinking

The first definition under consideration comes from a frequently cited website within the domain of critical thinking. Here critical theorists Michael Scriven and Richard Paul endeavor to encapsulate in one definition the wide expanse of critical thinking’s many definitions: “Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/ or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.” [6]

Assessing the definition in parts will allow for a thorough examination, beginning with a look at critical thinking as being active and intellectually disciplined. Such admonitions are repeated often in the scriptures. The thirteenth article of faith teaches that members of the Church “seek after” anything that is “virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy.” The Prophet Joseph Smith borrows terminology here from what he calls the “admonition of Paul”—from the book of Philippians, where Paul lists many of the same qualities and then suggests, “Think on these things” (Philippians 4:8).

Common scriptural words that suggest active, skillful, and disciplined thinking include inquiring , pondering , reasoning , and asking . Additional scriptures suggest such things as “study it out in your mind” (D&C 9:8) or “seek learning, even by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118). Assuredly, the portion of the definition of critical thinking pertaining to intellectual discipline fits well within the objectives of the Church’s education program.

The next part of the definition given by Scriven and Paul includes “conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/ or evaluating information.” The Gospel Teaching and Learning handbook, used by teachers and leaders in the Seminaries and Institutes of Religion program of the Church, sets forth the “fundamentals of gospel teaching and learning.” [7] Included in these fundamentals are (a) identifying doctrines and principles, (b) understanding the meaning of those doctrines and principles, (c) feeling the truth and importance of those doctrines and principles, and (d) applying doctrines and principles. Comparing the definition for critical thinking to the fundamentals of gospel teaching and learning, one can argue that conceptualizing is akin to identifying and analyzing, both of which require the understanding sought for by the previously mentioned fundamentals. Synthesizing and evaluating can be a part of understanding and feeling the importance of a concept. Also, application is found in both the definition and the fundamentals of gospel teaching and learning. It is an integral part of critical thinking and effective religious education within the Church.

Finally, according to this definition, critical thinking assesses “information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.” This portion of the definition seems equally suited for religious education. So much of religion is based on personal experience and reflection on those experiences. Owing to the personal nature of religious observations, experiences, reflections, and reasoning, adherents often find them difficult to fully explain. This personal experience may be compared to a baseball player who has mastered the art of batting. Intellectually, the player may understand perfectly what must be done, as he or she may have practiced it innumerable times, but when asked to explain it to someone else the player is unable to do so. Such a situation does not detract from the fact that the batter has mastered the art, yet the explanation remains difficult. Additionally, religious experiences are often very personal in nature. Due to the value attributed to those experiences, a person may not choose to share them frequently because of a fear that others will not understand or may even attempt to degrade and minimize those experiences and the feelings associated with them. Thus, even on the occasion when someone attempts to articulate such experiences, they remain unexplained.

In a religious setting, information derived from observation, experience, and communication may come from meeting with others who share religious beliefs. Moroni 6:5 touches on this idea. “And the church [members] did meet together oft, to fast and to pray, and to speak with one another concerning the welfare of their souls.” Congregating has long been a cornerstone of religious experience. Doing so provides members opportunities for observation, experience, reflection, and communication, all of which make up the delicate tapestry of religious belief and behavior.

Adding to the definition given by Scriven and Paul, college professor and author Tim John Moore asserts that another quality important in critical thought is skepticism, verging on agnosticism, toward knowledge—calling into question whether reality can be known for certain. [8] This skepticism carries with it immediate doubt prior to being presented with knowledge. Others have termed it as a “doubtful mentality.” [9] This definition does not seem able to coexist with faith-motivated critical thinking. Many scriptures teach about the importance of faith trumping doubt, the most recognizable among them likely being James 1:5–6: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.”

Concerning the type of doubt that arises even before learning facts, Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the Church’s First Presidency said, “Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.” [10] This admonition indicates that there is an ultimate source of truth, and when our doubts loom large it is better to doubt those doubts instead of doubting God. The Doctrinal Mastery: Core Document , a part of the S&I curriculum introduced in the summer of 2016, states that “God . . . is the source of all truth. . . . He has not yet revealed all truth.” [11] Thus, doubt should be curbed at the point when we do not have all the evidence or answers we seek. Such is the case in the scientific method: a tested hypothesis leads to a theory, and confirmed theories lead to laws. Fortunately, neither hypotheses nor theories are abandoned for lack of proof or the existence of doubt concerning them.

Some within a religious community may be hesitant to apply critical thinking to their own religious beliefs, believing that doing so could weaken their faith. Psychologist Diane Halpern, however, suggests that critical thinking need not carry with it such negative connotations. “In critical thinking , the word critical is not meant to imply ‘finding fault,’ as it might be used in a pejorative way to describe someone who is always making negative comments. It is used instead in the sense of ‘critical’ that involves evaluation or judgement, ideally with the goal of providing useful and accurate feedback that serves to improve the thinking process.” [12] Applying critical thinking need not indicate a lack of faith by a believer—an important point to consider when applying critical thinking to religious education. Critically thinking Christian believers are adhering to the Savior’s commandment to “ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7).

Religious believers may be concerned that other critical thinkers have reached an opinion different than theirs. This concern can be addressed by the way critical thinking is defined. Professor of philosophy Jennifer Mulnix writes that “critical thinking, as an intellectual virtue, is not directed at any specific moral ends.” [13] She further explains that critical thinkers do not have a set of beliefs that invariably lead to specific ends, suggesting that two critical thinkers who correctly apply the skills and attitudes of critical thinking to the same subject could hold opposing beliefs. Such critical thinking requires a sort of mental flexibility, a willingness to acknowledge that a person may not be in possession of all the facts. Including such flexibility when defining critical thinking does not disqualify its application to religious education. A religious person can hold beliefs and knowledge while remaining flexible, just as a mathematician holds firm beliefs and knowledge but is willing to accept more and consider alternatives in the light of additional information. In other words, being in possession of facts that a person is unwilling to relinquish does not mean that he or she is unwilling to accept additional facts.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks spoke about the idea of differing conclusions when addressing religious educators. “Because of our knowledge of [the] Plan and other truths that God has revealed, we start with different assumptions than those who do not share our knowledge. As a result, we reach different conclusions on many important subjects that others judge only in terms of their opinions about mortal life.” [14] Each person brings different life experience and knowledge, which they call upon to engage in critical thinking. While both are employing critical-thinking skills, they may be doing so with different facts and differing amounts of facts. All of the facts in consideration may be true, but because of the way those facts are understood, different conclusions are reached. Still, the thinking taking place can be correctly defined as critical.

Another belief included by some in a definition of critical thinking, though at odds with the edifying instruction presented in LDS religious education, is addressed by Rajeswari Mohan, who suggests that to teach using critical thinking would require “a re-understanding of the classroom.” [15] Generally, the understanding that currently exists of the classroom, both inside and outside of religious education, consists of creating an atmosphere of respect and trust, a safe place to learn and grow—something that Mohan calls “cosmopolitan instruction.” [16] In its place Mohan advocates that the classroom become “a site of contestation,” [17] which connotes controversy, argument, and divisiveness. Of course, it is possible to contest a belief, debate, and even disagree while still maintaining trust and respect, but such a teaching atmosphere is what Mohan considers cosmopolitan and, as such, it would require no re-understanding to accomplish it.

Elizabeth Ellsworth described her experience when attempting to employ the type of approach Mohan suggests in her own classroom. [18] In reflecting on the experience, she noted that it exacerbated disagreements between students rather than resolving or solving anything. She summarized what took place by saying, “Rational argument has operated in ways that set up as its opposite an irrational Other.” [19] Rather than having her class engage in discussion and learning, Ellsworth witnessed students who refused to talk because of the fear of retaliation or fear of embarrassment.

Such a situation does not align with D&C 42:14, “If ye receive not the Spirit ye shall not teach.” Additionally, this confrontational atmosphere in the learning environment seems to run counter to the doctrines taught by the Savior. Consider the words of Christ in 3 Nephi 11:29: “I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another.”

Many authors who offer definitions of critical thinking discuss how critical thinking leads to action; one author states, “Criticality requires that one be moved to do something.” [20] President Thomas S. Monson, while a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said, “The goal of gospel teaching . . . is not to ‘pour information’ into the minds of class members . . . . The aim is to inspire the individual to think about, feel about, and then do something about living gospel principles.” [21] This application is the foundation of the teachings of Jesus Christ, the very purpose of his Atonement, to allow for individuals to change. This change does not solely consist of stopping some behavior but also includes starting new behaviors. Elder Neal A. Maxwell, for example, suggested that many of us could make more spiritual progress “in the realm of the sins of omission . . . than in any other place.” [22]

Critical Thinking Exaggerated

President Boyd K. Packer taught that “tolerance is a virtue, but like all virtues, when exaggerated, it transforms itself into a vice.” [23] This facet of critical thinking whereby critical thinking prompts action must be explained carefully, as it can be exaggerated and transformed into a vice. Mohan described this aspect of critical thinking that moves individuals to action outside of the classroom as having a “goal of transformative political action” aimed at challenging, interrupting, and undercutting “regimes of knowledge.” [24] Pedagogy of the Oppressed author and political activist Paulo Freire taught that this action brought about the “conquest” [25] of an oppressed class in a society over its oppressors. Some would argue that if it does not lead to this kind of contending, transformative action, critical thinking is incomplete. [26]

Transformative action taken by individuals to change themselves is necessary. Yet the idea that one can effect change within the Church, for individuals or the organization itself, by compulsion or coercion in a spirit of conquest can lead to “the heavens [withdrawing] themselves; the Spirit of the Lord [being] grieved” (D&C 121:37). Critical thinking defined to include this contention does not have a place in religious education within the Church.

A balanced definition of critical thinking that allows for faith in things which are hoped for and yet unseen (see Alma 32:21) may look something like this: Critical thinking consists of persistent, effortful, ponderous, and reflective thought devoted to concepts held and introduced through various ways, including experience, inquiry, and reflection. That person then analyzes, evaluates, and attempts to understand how those concepts coincide and interact with existing knowledge, ready to abandon or employ ideas based upon their truthfulness. This contemplation then leads the person to consistent and appropriate actions.

Because of the benefits of critical thinking, some have taken its application to an extreme, allowing it to undermine faith. Addressing a group of college students in 1996, President Gordon B. Hinckley said, “This is such a marvelous season of your lives. It is a time not only of positive thinking but sometimes of critical thinking. Let me urge you to not let your critical thinking override your faith.” [27]

Examples in Doctrine

Despite a potential to undermine faith when applied incorrectly, critical thinking holds too much promise to be abandoned. This is particularly the case for religious education in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Not only do questions and critical thought have an appropriate place in the Church, but as President Dieter F. Uchtdorf has pointed out, the Church would not exist without it. [28] He explains that the doctrinally loaded and foundational experience of the First Vision came as the result of Joseph Smith’s critical thought toward existing churches and a desire to know which he should join. Knowing for ourselves if the church that was restored through Joseph Smith’s efforts is truly the “only true and living church” (D&C 1:30) can be done only by following his lead and “ask[ing] of God” (James 1:5). “Asking questions,” President Uchtdorf said, “isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a precursor of growth.” [29]

This concept of critically thinking while still acting in faith is illustrated in Alma 32:27–43, when Alma teaches a group of nonbelievers who nonetheless want to know the truth. Table 1 compares Alma’s words with concepts of critical thinking.

Figure 1. Alma and Critical Thinking.

The necessity of exercising faith is a major component of all religion. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8–9). “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). “I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do” (1 Nephi 4:6). “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not” (D&C 6:36). The skeptical critic of religion could assert that these statements amount to blind faith or towing the line without a rational or logical reason to do so. Applying critical thinking to such assertions may disclose, ironically, that such approaches are no different than using rational thought.

In Educating Reason , author Harvey Siegel responds to a criticism sometimes waged against critical thinking called the indoctrination objection. His argument provides a means for reconciling faith with logic. In short he observed that critical thinkers have traditionally been opposed to indoctrination of any kind. Over time much has been applied to the perception of, and even the definition of, indoctrination, which now carries with it highly negative connotations of teaching content that is either not true or is taught in such a way that the learner is not provided a way to measure the truthfulness of what is being taught. Yet the fundamental definition of indoctrination is simply to teach.

The indoctrination objection is based on the idea that critical thinkers want to reject all indoctrination, but they cannot do so because critical thinking itself must be taught (indoctrinated). The definition he gives to indoctrination is when students “are led to hold beliefs in such a way that they are prevented from critically inquiring into their legitimacy and the power of the evidence offered in their support; if they hold beliefs in such a way that the beliefs are not open to rational evaluation or assessment.” [32] Siegel delicately defines an indoctrinated belief as “a belief [that] is held non-evidentially.” [33]

It must be acknowledged that children are not born valuing rational thought and evidence; those values must be taught, or indoctrinated. According to Siegel, “If an educational process enhances rationality, on this view, that process is justified.” [34] He later adds that such teaching is not only defensible, but necessary. “We are agreed that such belief-inculcation is desirable and justifiable, and that some of it might have the effect of enhancing the child’s rationality. Should we call it indoctrination? This seems partly, at least, a verbal quibble.” [35]

A teacher is justified in teaching students and a learner is justified in studying if doing so will eventually enhance rationality and if students are allowed to evaluate for themselves what is being taught.

There may even be a period when rationality is put on hold, or the lack of rationality perpetuated, temporarily for the sake of increasing critical thought in the end. This concept of proceeding with learning without first having an established rationale for doing so is the very concept of faith. Just as “faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things” (Alma 32:21), reasons may not always be understood at first, just as a rational understanding for accepting a teaching is not always given at first. The moment when a learner must accept a teaching without first having a sufficient reason for doing so is faith. Students who continue to engage in the learning process are acting in faith. If the things being taught are true, those things will eventually lead those students to increased rationality and expanded intellect. Such teaching should not detour the student from seeking his or her own personal confirmation. Teaching in a manner that discourages students from establishing their own roots deep into the ground is antithetical to both critical thinking and the purposes of LDS religious education.

Teaching in a way that encourages and invites students to think critically about doctrines reflects not only teaching practices encouraged in today’s religious education within the Church but also doctrines of the Church. The culture and doctrine of the Church seeks to avoid indoctrinating members in the negative or pejorative sense. On the Church’s official Newsroom website is an article explaining what constitutes the doctrines of the Church. Included in that list is this statement: “Individual members are encouraged to independently strive to receive their own spiritual confirmation of the truthfulness of Church doctrine. Moreover, the Church exhorts all people to approach the gospel not only intellectually but with the intellect and the spirit, a process in which reason and faith work together.” [36] More than solely a statement of doctrine on a newsroom website, this concept is bolstered by the words of canonized scripture: “Seek learning, even by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118). “You have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me. But you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me” (D&C 9:7–8). And finally, from the admonition of Paul, who, after speaking of doctrines, counseled believers to “think on these things” (Philippians 4:8).

The Prophet Joseph Smith addressed the relationship between faith and intellect. “We consider,” he said, “that God has created man with a mind capable of instruction, and a faculty which may be enlarged in proportion to the heed and diligence given to the light communicated from heaven to the intellect; and that the nearer man approaches perfection, the clearer are his views.” [37] In other words, acting in faith, or giving heed and diligence to light communicated from heaven, can enlarge the intellectual faculty and clarify views. Diligence and heed are required in religious education, in which the content being taught is considered irrational by secular society. Amid ridicule by the irreligious, when the intellect is enlarged, the faithful recognize enhanced rationality and clearer views that are never realized by those who are ridiculing. This process continues until full rationality is achieved and the promise of God is fulfilled: “Nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known” (Luke 8:17). What a promise for a critical thinker!

Critical thinking has the potential to be a powerful tool for educators; that potential does not exclude its use by teachers within the Church. When used appropriately, critical thinking can help students more deeply understand and rely upon the teachings and Atonement of Jesus Christ. The testimony that comes as a result of critical thought can carry students through difficult times and serve as an anchor through crises of faith. As Elder M. Russell Ballard teaches,

Gone are the days when a student asked an honest question and a teacher responded, “Don’t worry about it!” Gone are the days when a student raised a sincere concern and a teacher bore his or her testimony as a response intended to avoid the issue. Gone are the days when students were protected from people who attacked the Church. Fortunately, the Lord provided this timely and timeless counsel to you teachers: “And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.” [38]

Critical thought does not consist of setting aside faith, but rather faith is using critical thought to come to know truth for oneself.

[1] Andrew Davis, “Defending Religious Pluralism for Religious Education,” Ethics and Education 3, no. 5 (November 2010): 190.

[2] Oduntan Jawoniyi, “Religious Education, Critical Thinking, Rational Autonomy, and the Child’s Right to an Open Future,” Religion and Education 39, no. 1 (January 2015): 34–53; and Michael D. Waggoner, “Religion, Education, and Critical Thinking,” Religion and Education 39, no. 3 (September 2012): 233–34.

[3] Waggoner, “Religion, Education, and Critical Thinking,” 233–34.

[4] Duck-Joo Kwak, “Re‐Conceptualizing Critical Thinking for Moral Education in Culturally Plural Societies,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 39, no. 4 (August 2007): 464.

[5] Jawoniyi, “Religious Education,” 46.

[6] Michael Scriven and Richard Paul, quoted in “Defining Critical Thinking,” Foundation for Critical Thinking, http:// www.criticalthinking.org/ pages/ defining-critical-thinking/ 766.

[7] Gospel Teaching and Learning Handbook: A Handbook for Teachers and Leaders in Seminaries and Institutes of Religion (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2012), 39.

[8] Tim John Moore, “Critical Thinking and Disciplinary Thinking: A Continuing Debate,” Higher Education Research & Development 30, no. 3 (June 2011): 261–74.

[9] Ali Mohammad Siahi Atabaki, Narges Keshtiaray, Mohammad Yarmohammadian, “Scrutiny of Critical Thinking Concept,” International Education Studies 8, no. 3 (February 2015): 100.

[10] Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “The Reflection in the Water” (CES fireside for young adults at Brigham Young University, 1 November 2009), https:// www.lds.org/ media-library/ video/ 2009-11-0050-the-reflection-in-the-water?lang=eng#d.

[11] Seminaries and Institutes of Religion, Doctrinal Mastery: Core Document (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2016), 2.

[12] Diane F. Halpern, “Teaching Critical Thinking for Transfer across Domains,” The American Psychologist 53, no. 4 (April 1998): 451.

[13] Jennifer Wilson Mulnix, “Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 44, no. 5 (July 2012): 466.

[14] Dallin H. Oaks, “As He Thinketh in His Heart” (evening with a General Authority, 8 February 2013), https:// www.lds.org/ prophets-and-apostles/ unto-all-the-world/ as-he-thinketh-in-his-heart-?lang=eng.

[15] Rajeswari Mohan, “Dodging the Crossfire: Questions for Postcolonial Pedagogy,” College Literature 19/ 20, vol. 3/ 1 (October 1992–February 1993): 30.

[16] Mohan, “Dodging the Crossfire,” 30.

[17] Mohan, “Dodging the Crossfire,” 30.

[18] Elizabeth Ellsworth, “Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering? Working through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy,” Harvard Educational Review 59, no. 3 (September 1989): 297–325.

[19] Ellsworth, “Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering?,” 301.

[20] Nicholas C. Burbules and Rupert Berk, “Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy: Relations, Differences, and Limits,” in Critical Theories in Education , ed. Thomas S. Popkewitz and Lynn Fendler (New York: Routledge, 1999), 45–66.

[21] Thomas S. Monson, in Conference Report, October 1970, 107.

[22] Neal A. Maxwell, “The Precious Promise,” Ensign , April 2004, 45, https:// www.lds.org/ ensign/ 2004/ 04/ the-precious-promise?lang=eng.

[23] Boyd K. Packer, “These Things I Know,” Ensign , May 2013, 8, https:// www.lds.org/ ensign/ 2013/ 05/ these-things-i-know?lang=eng.

[24] Mohan, “Dodging the Crossfire,” 30.

[25] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed , trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum International, 1970).

[26] Donaldo Macedo, introduction to Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed , 11–26.

[27] Gordon B. Hinckley, “Excerpts from Recent Addresses of President Gordon B. Hinckley,” Ensign , October 1996, https:// www.lds.org/ ensign/ 1996/ 10/ excerpts-from-recent-addresses-of-president-gordon-b-hinckley?lang=eng.

[28] Uchtdorf, “The Reflection in the Water.”

[29] Uchtdorf, “The Reflection in the Water.”

[30] Harvey Siegel, “Indoctrination Objection,” in Educating Reason: Rationality, Critical Thinking, and Education (New York: Routledge, 1988), 78–90.

[31] Halpern, “Teaching Critical Thinking for Transfer across Domains,” 451.

[32] Siegel, Educating Reason , 80.

[33] Siegel, Educating Reason , 80.

[34] Siegel, Educating Reason , 81.

[35] Siegel, Educating Reason , 82.

[36] “Approaching Mormon Doctrine,” 4 May 2007, http:// www.mormonnewsroom.org/ article/ approaching-mormon-doctrine.

[37] B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), 2:8.

[38] M. Russell Ballard, “The Opportunities and Responsibilities of CES Teachers in the 21st Century” (address to CES religious educators, 26 February 2016), https:// www.lds.org/ broadcasts/ article/ evening-with-a-general-authority/ 2016/ 02/ the-opportunities-and-responsibilities-of-ces-teachers-in-the-21st-century?lang=eng&_r=1.

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Volume 48 - Issue 3

Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture

The summer of 2020 is memorable for many things, none of them particularly positive: Covid, the death of George Floyd, and social turmoil across many western countries, focused particularly on the colonial past of Europe and the United States. And, in the midst of all the chaos, the term ‘Critical Theory’ (CT)—specifically in the form of ‘Critical Race Theory’—entered common parlance. Once a highly specialized phenomenon of little current interest outside postgraduate seminars in the humanities, suddenly everyone—especially those with Twitter accounts and personal blogs—was an expert in the field. Most surprising of all was how many Christians seemed eager to be in on the action. And so, CT moved into the mainstream, becoming a point of conflict at school boards, institutions of higher education, and churches, both locally and at the denominational level. Indeed, it became a shibboleth, a tribal marker with the simple question, ‘Are you for it or against it?’, requiring a simple yes or no answer as a test of orthodoxy on both sides in the discussion.

Yet the problem with such an approach is obvious: CT is not a unified phenomenon, nor is its literature easy to understand. With one stream of CT finding its roots in Hegel and the other in French post-structuralism, the field is rife with rebarbative prose, opaque arguments, and slippery conclusions. And the highly politicized role CT has come to play in current cultural discussions makes it hard to find a reliable guide to the issue and, even more importantly, a sound proposal for a Christian response and alternative. Christopher Watkin seeks to address this lacuna in his major book, Biblical Critical Theory .

CT seeks to do two basic things. It strives to expose the contingent nature of the reality we as human subjects experience and in which we participate; and it aims by so doing to alter the way we think and relate to the world around us. Further, at the core of CT, whether of the Marxist variety associated with the Frankfurt School or the post-structuralist variety connected to Michel Foucault, is the notion that power and manipulation lie behind the apparently natural but in reality socially constructed world we inhabit. So understood, CT has clear affinities with Christianity. Christianity claims that the world and our perception of it are distorted by sin, that we live according to lies, and that all human relationships are marked to some degree by selfishness. What Watkin does is build on these and other affinities in order to move beyond knee-jerk and simplistic ‘Boo!’ or ‘Hooray!’ alternatives and to mark a path forward.

The guiding light of Watkin’s project is Augustine, whose City of God is arguably the first and greatest example of what a Christian CT might look like. In the course of that work, Augustine debunks the myths Rome told about itself, often by way of what later critical theorists would dub immanent critique , exposing the contradictions of Rome’s own narrative as a means of clearing the ground. Augustine also uses the biblical plotline to provide a grand explanatory scheme for his relativization of Rome and his assertion of the superiority of the gospel, something the contemporary theologian John Milbank refers to as ‘out-narrating’.

Watkin deploys all of these elements in his own development of Biblical Critical Theory. Using the overarching biblical metanarrative to frame his analysis, he moves deftly from Christian doctrine to critique of some of the most pressing issues of our day. Much of what the book contains will be familiar to Themelios readers as it is solid biblical theology. The discussions of creation, fall, redemption and consummation follow familiar lines, along with those of key biblical genres, such as prophecy and wisdom. Indeed, it is in his discussion of the prophets—the great exemplars of Biblical Critical Theory—that Watkin excels. If, as Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach state, the point is not to describe the world but to change it, then the prophetic imagination is surely critical.

So, what is it about Watkin’s work that makes it critical and not simply a re-presentation of standard biblical theology? The answer lies above all in his deployment of what he calls diagonalization . If a broadly covenantal scheme shapes the narrative, it is diagonalization that drives the analysis. This is the idea that many of the things human beings tend to conceptualize as opposites can be overcome when viewed from a biblical perspective that refuses to accept the (humanly constructed) opposition.

In one sense, this is a repackaging of a perennial kind of problem: How does one reconcile the one and the many, being and becoming, freedom and determinism, autonomy and dependence? These questions have preoccupied philosophy since the era of the pre-Socratics. Watkin’s approach is to begin with God, in whom things dwell in perfect harmony—despite the fact that we sometimes place these things in opposition to each other (his love and his justice, for example). He then demonstrates how modern culture either demands that we affirm one or the other or adopt a synthesis of the two that produces an unsatisfying compromise—a tertium quid , or ‘third thing’, to use the technical theological term (‘neither fish nor fowl’, to use the untechnical non-theological expression). Finally, he moves to showing how the truths that exist harmoniously in God are manifested in the gospel, albeit in a way that is unexpected.

The obvious example is, of course, the cross: fallen human beings often place mercy in opposition to justice or develop a synthesis that is neither just nor merciful. The cross binds both together but, as the reactions of Greeks and Jews show, does so in a way that is unexpected and incomprehensible outside of the context of faith. There are, of course, many other places where this can be seen throughout Scripture. Indeed, Watkin ends his book with a discussion of attitudes to culture, noting that the West tends to see itself as normative and superior while others make all cultures equal. The gospel refuses this dichotomy, however, proposing a transcultural message that places all human efforts to make God in man’s image under judgment.

This is a rich volume on a complex subject and any complaint that ‘the author missed this topic’ risks sounding gratuitous. Nevertheless, the book provoked several thoughts in me that the reader might wish to reflect on further. First, it is odd that little to no attention is paid to the Frankfurt School. This is no doubt a function of Watkin’s work in French studies and his familiarity with and skill in expounding French critical thought. Further, as there are a number of affinities between the two streams, this is in no way a serious flaw. Yet the Hegelian Marxist stream has much to offer any discussion of CT, and its commitment to the dialectical movement of history is helpful in understanding why, for example, culture changes over time and the oppositions Watkin identifies shift and morph. Redemptive history has clearly differentiated epochs, each with its own theological logic. But profane history is messier, and analyzing how concepts such as love and justice are understood in different times and places is a historical task. Watkin does cite Terry Eagleton numerous times, and he has certainly drawn positively from the early critical theorists and Frankfurt School associates, particularly Walter Benjamin, but it is odd that there is not more interaction with this stream.

This raises a second area of interest. Diagonalization seems to work best where the categories being ‘diagonalized’ are both morally equivalent and stable. Yet often neither of these applies. As to equivalence, I wonder, for example, if ‘Conservative/Evolutionary Progress’ and ‘Progressive/Revolutionary Transformation’ are really parallel (p. 554), given that the latter has accounted for incalculable suffering and bloodshed compared to the former? Watkin may not intend to indicate moral equivalence, but the reader could be forgiven for drawing that conclusion. As to stability, given that there is often no agreement (and sometimes fierce debate) about how terms such as ‘justice’ and ‘racism’ should be understood, the possibility of diagonalization seems to be put into serious question as a practical strategy.

Further, human beings are complicated, inconsistent creatures. Nobody is a pure individual or completely subsumed by the community. All of us live in different realms—family, workplace, geographical location, online. Life does not consist of polarized opposites but often of overlapping identities that sometimes reinforce each other, sometimes contradict each other. Life, in short, is complicated. And that means there is always a danger that a theoretical model can become not merely a helpful heuristic device but a tool for eliminating necessary complexity. For instance, Watkin’s reference to Brexit, dividing the sides into those who prioritized the local and the particular over those who prioritized the universal, is far too simplistic (pp. 363–64). Issues of geography (London versus the rest), economy (those who do well out of globalization versus those whose jobs have been eliminated or jeopardized by it), workplace (the so-called ‘laptop’ class who can work anywhere versus the worker who has to be in a certain location), and those who prize technocracy versus those who value democracy, were all part of the Brexit phenomenon. To simplify it into local versus universal is simply naïve and misleading and not actually very ‘critical’ at all. The analytical model seems to function here not to illuminate the issue but to demand that a very complicated issue be forced to conform to a Procrustean bed predicated on not very complicated categories. It also left me wondering if a critical theorist of a different stripe might not accuse Watkin’s diagonalization of being exactly what he insists it is not: a kind of inoffensive ‘third way’ that serves primarily to bolster his own kind of evangelicalism (see pp. 19–21).

But none of this is meant to detract from Watkin’s remarkable achievement. This is a very learned book, replete with stimulating arguments and ideas. These criticisms are thus intended not to highlight fatal flaws but to indicate, as Watkin himself urges, that the conversation about CT in Christian circles should continue. Indeed, his hope in writing Biblical Critical Theory is to make it ‘just a little easier for others to come after [him] and do the real labor of deploying a range of biblical figures as they carefully and painstakingly work through complex social questions’ (p. 605). And so, as that important task proceeds, we can be grateful that it will now do so enriched by Watkin’s graceful volume.

Carl Trueman

Carl Trueman is Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania.

The Lamblike Servant: The Function of John’s Use of the OT for Understanding Jesus’s Death

In this article, I argue that John provides a window into the mechanics of how Jesus’s death saves, and this window is his use of the OT...

Geerhardus Vos: His Biblical-Theological Method and a Biblical Theology of Gender

This article seeks to construct a biblical theology of gender based on Geerhardus Vos’s magisterial Biblical Theology...

Is the One God of the Old Testament and Judaism Exactly the Same God as the Trinitarian God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—of the New Testament and Christian Creeds?

This article argues that the One God of the Old Testament and Judaism is exactly the same God as the Trinitarian God of the New Testament and Christian creeds...

A Biblical Framework for Deciding Workplace Moments of Conscience

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Other Reviews in this Issue

Theology That Sticks: The Life-Changing Power of Exceptional Hymns

Reading the Book of the Twelve Minor Prophets

Benjamin Colman’s Epistolary World, 1688–1755: Networking in the Dissenting Atlantic

Engaging the Old Testament: How to Read Biblical Narrative, Poetry, and Prophecy Well

Missionary Motivations: Challenges from the Early Church

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Philosophy and Christian Theology

Many Christian doctrines raise difficult philosophical questions. For example, Christians have traditionally insisted that they worship a single God, while simultaneously identifying that God with a trinity comprised of three numerically distinct, fully divine persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is not easy to see how three divine persons add up to one God. Similarly, Christians have also asserted that a human man, Jesus of Nazareth, is also God-the-Son, the second person of the divine trinity. It is not easy to see how a human man, who is born, lives, and dies, could also be a fully divine being. Consider also the relationship between divine providence and human freedom. Are human beings free to accept or reject God, or does God alone decide who will accept or reject God? Any answer to this theological question will also assume some specific philosophical account of human freedom and moral responsibility.

Christian thinkers have always drawn on philosophy to help answer these kinds of questions. In the earliest years of Christianity, running roughly from the second to the seventh centuries CE, and often called the “Patristic” period, the emerging Christian Church faced the daunting task of defining doctrinal orthodoxy in the face of internal and external challenges. In pursuing this task, Patristic thinkers typically did not understand themselves as “theologians” in contrast to “philosophers”. Indeed, they may not have endorsed any sharp distinction between philosophy and theology at all. But they still reasoned about their Christian commitments in the intellectual idiom of the ancient Mediterranean world, which was the idiom of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic philosophy.

Over the course of the Patristic period, as the early Church successfully established its own intellectual framework, it formally defined the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy through a series of ecumenical councils. These councils—including the Councils of Nicaea (325 CE), Constantinople (381), and Chalcedon (451)—established the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and its corollary, the doctrine of the Incarnation (see Kelly 1978).

Yet even after the parameters of orthodoxy were established, Christian thinkers continued to face difficult philosophical questions about the meaning, coherence, and plausibility of settled Christian doctrines. They continued to try to answer those questions using the best philosophy of their day—from Scholastic Aristotelianism in the Medieval period to analytic metaphysics today. For Christian thinkers, the already settled doctrines of Christian orthodoxy provide a normative framework within which this philosophical reflection occurs, by demarcating the logical space that constrains the field of acceptable solutions. For example, it is not open to an orthodox Christian thinker to dispel the logical problem of the Trinity (the problem of how God can be both three and one) by arguing that there is in fact no God, or that God is not triune, or that the Father and the Son are two stages in the temporal life of the one God. These theoretical options are ruled out by virtue of the philosopher’s own orthodox Christian commitments.

As a general, formal matter, this point holds even though different Christian groups disagree about what the constraints of orthodoxy actually are. So Roman Catholic Christians and Protestant Christians will accept different constraints about, say, the nature of the Eucharist, and rival Protestant Christian groups will differ with each other in a similar way. But as a formal matter, Christian thinkers who think philosophically about Christian doctrines typically do so inside the intellectual framework provided by what they regard as authoritative Christian orthodoxy. Obviously, it is not the case that everyone who wants to think philosophically about Christianity must accept the constraints of Christian orthodoxy, even in this more relativistic sense of “orthodoxy”. Some modern and contemporary thinkers still identify as Christians even though they reject the very idea of normative orthodoxy, for example. And, of course, non-Christian thinkers, including non-theists, will reject any notion of Christian orthodoxy in its entirety. Yet they can still think philosophically about Christian doctrines.

Because its twin foci are so broad, an encyclopedia entry on “Philosophy and Christian Theology” could legitimately go in many different directions. This entry has two related aims. First, the entry discusses methodological questions about how philosophy and theology should be related. Accordingly, it surveys some of the most important ways they have been related in the history of the Christian tradition ( Section 1 ), before turning to contemporary debates about the way Anglo-American analytic philosophy of religion interacts with theology ( Section 3 ). Second, in between these two methodological sections, the entry also discusses recent work in analytic philosophical theology ( Section 2 ). Note that the previous version of this entry (Murray and Rea 2008 [2021]) focused on topics in contemporary philosophical theology. That version is archived and available via the Other Internet Resources but see, also, the topic-focused entries linked in the Related Entries for additional coverage.

Philosophical critics of contemporary analytic philosophy of religion (APR) are often struck by just how Christian and theological much of it seems. This criticism expresses the worry that APR as such looks too much like Christian philosophical theology. At the same time, theological critics often fault APR for lacking theological sophistication ( Section 3 ). In order to understand both poles of criticism, it is useful to have a better sense of the relevant historical background ( Section 1 ). But it is also important to appreciate what the best contemporary work in analytic philosophical theology actually looks like ( Section 2 ).

1.1 Integration

1.2.1 cooperation, 1.2.2 disjunction, 1.2.3 conflict, 1.3 from historical models to contemporary philosophical theology, 2.1 trinity, 2.2 incarnation and christology, 2.3 atonement and salvation, 2.4.1 the first sin, 2.4.2 the fall of adam and eve, 2.4.3 original sin, 2.4.4 personal sin, 2.5 other topics, 2.6 the rise of “analytic theology”, 3.1.1 narrowness of scope, 3.1.2 inappropriate methods, 3.1.3 responses to the worry that apr is “too theological”, 3.2 or not theological enough theological critiques of analytic philosophy of religion, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the relationship between philosophy and theology in the christian tradition.

Although modern thought tends to assume a sharp disjunction between philosophy and theology, it is not at all obvious how to distinguish them in a principled way. Suppose that we take philosophy in the broadest sense to be the systematic use of human reason in an effort to understand the most fundamental features of reality, and suppose that we take theology in the broadest sense to be the study of God and all things in relation to God. Then we should expect to see considerable overlap between the two: after all, God, if there is a God, is surely one of the fundamental features of reality, and one to which all the other features presumably relate.

In practice, when we survey the history of Christian thought, we do see considerable overlap between philosophy and theology. With respect to their topics of inquiry, philosophers and theologians alike ask questions about epistemology, axiology, and political theory, as well as about metaphysics and fundamental ontology. Similarly, with respect to their methods of inquiry, philosophers and theologians alike interpret authoritative texts, deploy arguments, and marshal evidence to support their conclusions. Here one might insist that Christian theological claims are grounded by appeals to “faith” or “authority”, whereas philosophical claims are grounded by appeals to “reason”. This contrast is promising when suitably developed, but it is not as sharp as one might initially suppose. Theology also makes appeals to common sense and ordinary human reason, and philosophy also has its versions of faith and authority.

Of the making of typologies there is no end, but it is still worth examining some of the most common ways that Christian thinkers throughout the centuries have understood the relationship between philosophy and theology. Without this historical background, it becomes all-too-easy to draw the relationship in naïve, anachronistic, and overly simplistic ways. In fact, no single interpretation of the relationship between philosophy and theology can claim overwhelming support from the Christian tradition. From outside the Christian tradition, while many non-Christian thinkers see philosophy and theology as quite distinct, others deliberately blur the distinction between them—because they think that theology is actually just misguided philosophy.

At the top-level of the proposed typology, we can distinguish between “Integration” and “Contrast” views. Integration views do not distinguish philosophy and theology at all, whereas Contrast views do. We can disambiguate the “Contrast” category into “Cooperation” views, “Disjunction” views, and “Conflict” views. The most prominent Cooperation views treat philosophy as a valuable, perhaps even necessary, tool for theological inquiry, and still allow some degree of overlap between the two. Disjunction views, by contrast, regard philosophy and theology as non-overlapping forms of inquiry, which feature distinct and ultimately unrelated goals and methods. “Conflict” views treat philosophy and theology as not only distinct but mutually antagonistic. In fact, however, few Christian thinkers have endorsed outright conflict between philosophy and theology. But it is still worth discussing the Conflict view explicitly, because some prominent Christian theologians throughout history—for example, Tertullian, Martin Luther, or Karl Barth—initially seem to advocate Conflict. Upon closer inspection, however, their views are closer to those in the Disjunction category.

These categories are crude. They could each be further divided, and subdivided again. They focus mainly on different Christian attitudes toward the interaction of philosophy and theology, rather than on the attitudes of non-Christian philosophers. Some non-empty categories are omitted altogether. But these categories do capture much of the landscape, and at least show that there are more options available than a naïve conflict between faith and reason.

The Integration model treats philosophy and Christian theology as continuous, integrated activities. On this model, rational inquiry about God does not sharply divide into discrete activities called “philosophy” and “theology”. Instead, there is simply the single, continuous intellectual task of trying to understand God, and all things in relation to God, using all of one’s intellectual resources. This account does not deny the importance of faith or revelation to the Christian intellectual life; rather, it denies that faith and revelation properly belong to a separate activity called “theology” in distinction from another activity called “philosophy”. According to this view, when we engage in rational inquiry of any sort, we should draw on every available source of knowledge that is relevant to that inquiry. So when we engage in rational inquiry about Christian topics, we should draw on scripture, Church tradition, and other such sources of knowledge, whether we call the resulting inquiry “theology”, “philosophy”, or something else. To do anything else would be to hobble our inquiry from the outset, according to the Integration view.

This account of the relationship between philosophy and theology has deep roots in the Christian tradition. Before the rise of the medieval university, it was the dominant view, and it still has contemporary defenders (discussed below). Patristic thinkers did not typically describe their own intellectual work as “theology”. The term “theology” already had a fixed meaning in late antiquity. It meant “poetic speech about the gods”, and was in general associated with pagan story-telling and myth-making: the great “theologians”, were Homer and Hesiod. Even though Christian thinkers like Gregory of Nazianzus sometimes acquired the honorific title “Theologian”, they did so because of the lyrical and poetic quality of their writing, not because they wrote about Christian doctrinal topics (Zachhuber 2020; McGinn 2008).

The general term that early Christian thinkers used to describe their intellectual work was, more often than not, simply “philosophy” or “Christian philosophy”. Christianity was regarded as the “true philosophy” over against the false philosophical schools associated with pagan thought. (See Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 8.1; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 1.28.3, 1.28.4 1.80.5,6; Augustine of Hippo, Against Julian , 4.14.72.) This usage is consistent with Pierre Hadot’s (1995) claim that in Greco-Roman antiquity philosophy was understood as a comprehensive way of life. Christianity, on this model, is analogous to a philosophical school, in Hadot’s sense (see also Zachhuber 2020).

The Integration account continued to be the default account of the relationship between philosophy and theology into the early Medieval period. Before the rise of scholasticism in the great Western universities, there was no sharp distinction between philosophy and theology. Anselm of Canterbury, for example, certainly has the concept of a line of inquiry that proceeds using reason alone, without appealing to revelation, but he does not label that inquiry “philosophy” in distinction from “theology”. Moreover, in his own writings, he frequently blurs any such distinction, as he seamlessly moves between rational reflection and argument, on the one hand, to prayers, meditations, and exclamations of thanksgiving, on the other (e.g., Proslogion 1–4). Like many premodern Christian thinkers, Anselm also held that intellectual inquiry and personal holiness are linked, so that the more one grows in Christian virtue, the more rationally one is able to think about God (Adams 2004; Sweeney, 2011). This understanding of inquiry and virtue is also a hallmark of the Integration account.

1.2 Contrast

Unlike the Integration model, the Contrast model insists that philosophy and theology are fundamentally different forms of inquiry. Strictly speaking, there can be many different Contrast models, because the relevant sense of “contrast” comes in degrees. I focus on three: Cooperation, Disjunction, and Conflict. On the Cooperation account, philosophy and theology remain close cousins. When rightly pursued, they cannot really conflict, and they can even overlap in their respective topics of inquiry, sources, and methods. Nevertheless, the Cooperation account holds that the overlap between philosophy and theology is only partial, because they each begin from different intellectual starting points and appeal to different sources of evidence (Baker-Hytch 2016; Chignell 2009: 117; Simmons 2019). On another version of the Contrast model, Disjunction, philosophy and theology are even further apart: although they still do not conflict, and may even consider the same topics in an attenuated sense, their starting assumptions and methods of investigation are different enough that they share no significant conclusions. Finally, Conflict accounts assert that the conclusions of Christian theology are positively irrational from the point of view of philosophy. Although some historically important Christian thinkers might seem to endorse Conflict, closer inspection shows that they do not. Nevertheless, in the popular imagination, a persistent assumption holds that Christianity requires a sharp conflict between theology and philosophy—or at least faith and reason—and so it is worth briefly discussing why Conflict has had few traditional defenders.

On the Cooperation account, philosophy and theology are understood to be different, but mutually supporting, intellectual activities. For Christian thinkers who advocate Cooperation, philosophy and theology form a coherent, mutually supportive whole. They are not in conflict with respect to their conclusions, since truth cannot contradict truth, but they differ with respect to their foundational axioms, goals, and sources of evidence. Philosophy is understood as a preamble to theology, while theology completes and fulfills philosophy. Thomas Aquinas is a foundational advocate of the Cooperation account ( Summa Theologiae 1.1.1–8, Summa Contra Gentiles 1.1.1–9, Hankey 2001). Often the relationship between philosophy and theology is described in hierarchical and instrumental terms: theology draws on philosophy as needed, because philosophy is instrumentally useful to theology. According to a traditional metaphor, philosophy is the servant of theology ( ancilla theologiae , literally “handmaid” of theology; see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae , 1.1.5). In a more contemporary idiom, theology uses conceptual tools provided by philosophy in the pursuit of its own distinctive intellectual task: elucidating the meaning and truth of revealed Christian doctrines.

On the Cooperation account, theology differs from philosophy chiefly because theology assumes the truth of divine revelation, whereas philosophy does not. Philosophy takes its foundational axioms and assumptions from generally available truths of human reason and sensory experience. Philosophy and theology also differ in the way they argue and in the kinds of intellectual appeals that are proper to each. Theologians can appeal to revelation—scripture and authoritative Church tradition—in order to generate new lines of inquiry, and can treat revealed truths as evidence in their investigations. For their part, philosophers must appeal only to premises and evidence that are in principle available to any rational inquirer.

This distinction between “revealed truths” and “truths of reason” implies that at least some revealed truths are not also truths of reason. By hypothesis, such truths would have remained unknown and unknowable had they not been revealed by God. (It therefore follows that without revelation, Christian theology could not exist, on the Cooperation account.) Paradigmatic instances of revealed truths are the doctrine of the Trinity, and the doctrine of the Incarnation. Throughout the centuries, most, though not all, broadly orthodox Christian thinkers have held that human beings could not reason their way to the truth of these doctrines without the aid of divine revelation.

According to Aquinas, theologians use the conceptual tools furnished by philosophy to elucidate the contents of revelation. Just like philosophers, theologians make arguments, and their arguments appeal to common standards of logic and rigor, even though they also draw on theology’s own unique (revealed) axioms and sources of evidence ( Summa Theologiae 1.1.1). Philosophical arguments cannot prove the foundational truths of revelation, according to Aquinas, but at the same time, revelation and reason cannot conflict. (That God exists is a truth of reason, not revelation, for Aquinas—see Summa Theologiae 1.2.2, reply to obj. 1.) Theologians can therefore use common standards of philosophical reasoning to answer any putative objections to their theological claims, by showing that any alleged conflict is only apparent. So, for example, even though it is not possible to establish that God is triune by means of philosophical arguments, it is possible to use philosophical arguments in a defensive mode, to answer objections alleging that the doctrine of the trinity is logically incoherent. When arguing with other Christians, theologians can appeal to revelation to support their claims. When arguing with opponents who do not accept revelation, they cannot ( Summa Theologiae 1.1.8). Yet this restriction is not really a disciplinary maxim designed to oppose philosophy to theology, but a pragmatic admission that one cannot successfully persuade opponents by appealing to premises they deny.

Like Cooperation, the Disjunction view holds that philosophy and theology are different forms of inquiry. Similarly, like Cooperation, the Disjunction view also that agrees that there can be no real conflict between the conclusions of philosophy (when true) and those of theology. But the Disjunction view goes further: Disjunction advocates deny that there is any significant overlap between philosophy and theology at all.

Disjunction does not subordinate philosophy to theology or treat philosophy as an essential tool for theology. Instead, to borrow a term from contemporary science and religion debates, philosophy and theology are “non-overlapping magisteria” (Gould 1997). In particular, Cooperation’s appeal to the distinction between truths of reason and truths of revelation does not suffice to distinguish philosophy from theology, according to Disjunction advocates, who instead appeal to various more fundamental distinctions of method or approach (see discussion below). Of course, even those who explicitly advocate Disjunction will occasionally deploy some methods associated with philosophy: carefully defining terms, making formally valid arguments, uncovering contradictions in opposing views, etc. Yet these methods are found in any form of rational inquiry, and so (presumably) they do not belong to philosophy alone.

Any given thinker’s view of Disjunction will of course depend on their underlying construal of philosophy and theology. Some thinkers—even some Christian thinkers—endorse the Disjunction view because they deny that theology is really a propositional, truth-apt discourse that proceeds by way of arguments and evidence. Instead, theology is something else entirely—poetry, perhaps; or a form of worship, praise, or prayer (Caputo 2015). This view of theology implies a sharp contrast with Aristotelian and scholastic philosophy, modern philosophy, and contemporary Anglo-American Analytic philosophy, though perhaps not with philosophy tout court . Philosophers might associate this view with the “expressivist” or “emotivist” critiques of theology that were common in the heyday of logical positivism. But in fact, versions of the “theology as poetry” view are found throughout the history of Christian thought (Beggiani 2014).

Other versions of the Disjunction view figure even more prominently in the Christian tradition. The foundational Protestant reformers, Martin Luther and John Calvin, both advocate Disjunction, in part because they both reject the synthesis of philosophy and theology that characterized late medieval scholasticism. According to Luther, philosophy and theology proceed from entirely different perspectives, with different starting points and different goals (1539 [1966: 244]; Grosshans 2017). Philosophy considers its objects of inquiry from the perspective of common human reason and sense experience, with the goal of trying to understand things as they actually are in the real world. Theology considers its objects of inquiry from a creational and eschatological perspective, with the goal of trying to understand them in relation to God as their creator and final end. Furthermore, for Luther, “creation” and its cognates are properly theological terms whose meaning derives from scripture and revelation, and which should not be identified with any philosophical notion of a first cause or prime mover; mutatis mutandis , the same point hold for creation’s final end in God (1539 [1966: 245, 248]).

Even when philosophy and theology do consider the same object of inquiry—for example, the human being—this difference in perspective ensures that the lines of inquiry remain completely separate. Luther’s 1536 “Disputation Concerning Man”, for example opens with the thesis that “Philosophy or human wisdom defines man as an animal having reason, sensation, and body” and then goes on to explore this definition. But his exploration only serves to contrast this philosophical view of the human being with the perspective of theology. Theology,

from the fulness of its wisdom, defines man as whole and perfect… made in the beginning after the image of God… subject to the power of the devil, sin and death…freed and given eternal life only through the Son of God, Jesus Christ. (1536 [1966: 137–138])

Luther’s theological account of the human being does not contradict the philosophical account, but it also does not complete or augment that account, because (according to Luther) properly theological claims are simply unintelligible to philosophy (1536 [1966: 137–140]; 1539 [1966: 240–241, 242]). They do not belong to the same universe of discourse.

Calvin shares Luther’s basic understanding of the disjunction between philosophy and theology. Like Luther, Calvin holds that the Fall has corrupted the power of human reason, but has not destroyed it altogether ( Institutes 2.2.12–17). When restricted to its proper sphere—matters pertaining to the natural world—philosophy remains valuable. But as a result of the Fall, “heavenly things” are inaccessible to unaided human reason ( Institutes 2.2.13). By “heavenly things”, Calvin means the saving truths of the Gospel.

So far, Calvin’s understanding might seem quite similar to the Cooperation view, which also denies that revealed truths are accessible to human reason. But Calvin further distinguishes philosophy from theology at the level of method, by denying that true theology engages in abstract, speculative reasoning, which he associates with philosophy, and insisting that any legitimate knowledge of God must be practical and affective ( Institutes 1.12.1, 1.5.10). For example, according to Calvin, it would be impious and dangerous to speculate on all the actions that God could possibly do—God’s absolute power. Instead, we should focus our loving attention on what God has actually done, paradigmatically in the person and work of Christ ( Institutes 3.24.2; Helm 2004: 24–26). Theology presupposes Christian faith, which is an affective response to Christ, and which requires “confidence and assurance of heart” ( Institutes 3.2.33). Yet scholastic philosophy, with its “endless labyrinths” and “obscure definitions”, has “drawn a veil over Christ to hide him” ( Institutes 3.2.2).

For Luther and Calvin, then, there can be no genuinely philosophical theology. Even though both agree that philosophical speculation can arrive at some limited truths about, e.g., a first cause, or about the nature of human beings, those truths are of no theological interest; even as bare propositional claims, they are already better and more fully known in theological inquiry. From the other direction, the properly Christian notions of God as creator and of the human being as imago dei , e.g., resist all philosophical speculation. Of course, Luther and Calvin can only hold these views because of the way they understand philosophy and theology. They both identify philosophy with late medieval scholasticism, and they both understand theology as a kind of existential encounter with God and Christ, as revealed in the scriptures. Different accounts of philosophy and theology would yield different construals of the underlying disjunction, or no disjunction at all.

None of the three views considered so far—Integration, Cooperation, and Disjunction—assume any real, essential conflict between philosophy and theology. All three views allow for apparent conflict, due to errors of reasoning or interpretation, or when either discipline departs from its own proper sphere, but they do not assert that Christian theology or Christian faith is irrational from the point of view of philosophy, nor do they hold that any significant Christian doctrinal claims can be falsified by sound philosophical reasoning. Throughout the history of Christian thought, many prominent Christian philosophers and theologians have criticized philosophy, or fulminated against what they regard as philosophical overreach, but few if any have regarded philosophy and theology as essentially incompatible, in the sense just outlined. Popular understandings of “faith” and “reason” often posit a deep and abiding conflict between the two, and so it is important to emphasize just how rare that position has actually been among major Christian philosophers and theologians. Key figures who are often regarded as Conflict advocates, turn out, upon closer inspection, to hold a different view.

For example, the Patristic theologian Tertullian famously asks “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” but he never actually asserted the irrationalist credo “I believe because it is absurd” ( De praescriptione haereticorum 7; De carne Christi 5.4; see also Harrison 2017). Instead, like all the Patristic fathers, Tertullian regarded human reason as one of God’s greatest gifts; ratio (reason) is one of his most frequently used nouns, and his own writing draws heavily on the stoic philosophy of his day (Osborn 1997).

Turning to a putative modern irrationalist, Søren Kierkegaard presents the incarnation as a paradox that offends human reason in his (pseudonymous) 1844 Philosophical Fragments , but close reading shows that “paradox” and “offence” do not equate to “formal contradiction” (1844 [1985: 53, 101]; Evans 1989). Rather, the incarnation seems paradoxical only to fallen, sinful human reason (1844, [1985: 46–47]). So the “offence” of the incarnation resolves into the claim that the doctrine of the incarnation had to be revealed, because its truth exceeds the limits of fallen reason. But, as discussed above, accepting this claim about the incarnation has been the norm throughout the Christian tradition. Moreover, according to Kierkegaard, even though the truth of the incarnation exceeds the limits of human reason, the claim that reason has limits is itself one that can be assessed by human reason (1846 [1992: 580]; Evans 1989: 355).

Finally, the twentieth century theologian Karl Barth’s famous “No!” to philosophical reasoning about God is also best understood as a rejection of philosophical overreach rather than a rejection of philosophy per se (Brunner & Barth 1946). According to Barth, we cannot establish the truth of theological claims using generally persuasive arguments available to any rational enquirer. But Barth had no quarrel with using philosophy in an Anselmian mode, to elucidate and clarify the implications of divine revelation, and in principle he even allows that there could be a genuinely Christian philosophy (1932 [1975: 6]; Diller 2010).

These prominent Christian thinkers all criticize what they see as philosophical hubris, but they do not set philosophy and theology as such in essential opposition, and they do not agree that any belief-worthy Christian doctrines actually are irrational—still less that they can be falsified by sound philosophical reasoning. In a way, this conclusion should be unsurprising. It is a basic claim of Christian orthodoxy that God is the very summit and source of rationality, and that human reason is one of God’s greatest gifts (Turner 2004; A. N. Williams 2007; Crisp et al. 2012). Christian thinkers have differed about the degree to which sin and the Fall have caused human reason to malfunction, but the suggestion that theological truths conflict with properly functioning human reason is alien to the orthodox Christian tradition, and so it is unsurprising that few major Christian thinkers have endorsed it. Far more common is the claim that some theological truths are inaccessible to philosophy because they somehow surpass human reason. On this line, when there is an apparent conflict between a philosophical conclusion and some Christian truth, the conflict is treated as a sign that philosophy has overstepped its own proper boundaries, not a sign that Christian truth actually conflicts with human reason. By and large, even the sharpest Christian critics of philosophy have held this view.

This historical survey has focused on prominent models of the relationship between philosophy and theology in the history of Christian thought. The survey also illuminates some contemporary philosophical and theological debates about how to understand this relationship.

Notwithstanding its Patristic origins, the Integrationist view has been especially prominent in recent philosophy of religion. For example, Alvin Plantinga’s (1984) programmatic essay “Advice to Christian Philosophers” intentionally blurs the distinction between philosophy and theology. Plantinga argues that Christian philosophers qua philosophers are entitled to base their arguments on revealed truths, and urges them to investigate distinctively Christian questions that may be of no interest to the wider philosophical community. More recent defenders of “analytic theology” have also taken an integrationist line. According to Nicholas Wolterstorff, the demise of Enlightenment-style foundationalism has thoroughly blurred the distinction between philosophy and theology:

What difference does [this distinction] make, now that analytic philosophers no longer believe that for some piece of discourse to be a specimen of philosophy, the writer must base all his arguments on public philosophical reason? Call it what you will. (Wolterstorff 2009: 168; see also Stump 2013: 48–49; Timpe 2015: 13)

Yet this prominent Integrationist line has been strongly criticized by other philosophers of religion, who implicitly endorse some version of the Contrast view, on which philosophy cannot legitimately appeal to theological sources of evidence like revelation and Church authority (Simmons 2019; Schellenberg 2018; Oppy 2018; Draper 2019: 2–4). At the same time, according to many Christian theologians, analytic philosophy as such is almost uniquely unsuitable for investigating properly theological questions (Milbank 2009; Hart 2013: 123–134). On the view of these critics, analytic philosophical theology does not revive the Patristic integration of philosophy and theology at all; rather, it remains a distinctly anti-theological form of modern philosophy.

Contemporary philosophers and theologians continue to debate the proper relationship between philosophy and theology. Before considering these debates in further detail (in Section 3 ), however, it is useful to briefly survey recent work in analytic philosophical theology. The fact that the Integrationist view has been so prominent among contemporary analytic philosophers of religion has helped shape a philosophical climate in which self-identified philosophers, working in departments of philosophy, find it completely natural to investigate explicitly Christian theological questions, from within the framework of normative Christian orthodoxy, in the course of their academic work.

2. Recent Work in Analytic Philosophical Theology

Recent work in analytic philosophical theology has engaged with nearly every major Christian doctrine. But work has focused on the most central doctrines: Trinity, Incarnation and Christology, Salvation and Atonement, and Sin and Original Sin. This section lays out the most significant philosophical problems associated with each doctrine and identifies some of the foundational philosophical responses from contemporary thinkers.

Analytic philosophical theology on the Trinity has focused primarily on the “logical” problem of the Trinity, the problem of how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—construed as three really existing, really distinct divine entities—can also be exactly one God (Cartwright 1987). The Church’s first two ecumenical councils defined the orthodox terminology now used to state the doctrine, but the councils did not attempt a philosophical solution to the logical problem. In the traditional terminology, the Father, Son, and Spirit are three distinct divine persons ( personae in Latin; hypostases in Greek) who share a single divine nature ( substantia in Latin; ousia in Greek; see Tanner 1990: 5, 24, 28). The logical problem then becomes the problem of how three divine persons (whatever we mean by “persons”) can instantiate a single divine nature (whatever we mean by “nature”) while remaining numerically distinct.

Responses to the logical problem can be grouped into several families, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. “Social” trinitarians defend an account of the Trinity on which the Father, Son, and Spirit are three distinct centers of consciousness, with three distinct centers of knowledge, will, and action, who nevertheless count as a single God. Social trinitarians attempt to secure the divine unity by arguing that a single divine nature can support three separate consciousnesses. They may also claim that the three persons necessarily love each other so perfectly and act in such harmony that they are properly regarded as a single God. Prominent social trinitarians include Richard Swinburne (1994), William Lane Craig (2006), Keith Yandell (2009), and William Hasker (2013).

By contrast, “Latin” trinitarians deny that the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct centers of consciousness. On Latin trinitarianism, even though the Father, Son, and Spirit are numerically distinct persons , they are not numerically distinct divine agents . When they act, they do not merely act in perfect harmony (as on social trinitarianism). Rather they are (somehow) a single actor, with a single will, carrying out a single action. The special challenge for Latin trinitarianism is to explain how it can be the case that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so construed, really do exist as concrete, distinct entities, and are not just different names for the same entity, or different phases in the life of a not-essentially triune God. Brian Leftow offers the most well-developed Latin model, which appeals to an extended analogy to a time-travelling chorus-line dancer (2004).

Unsurprisingly, the sharpest critics of Latin trinitarianism are those who advocate a social trinity, and vice-versa: each side insists that the theoretical costs of the opposing view are too great. So Latin trinitarians charge that social trinitarians do not escape tri-theism (Leftow 1999; see also Merricks 2006); social trinitarians argue that their Latin counterparts cannot explain how the Father and Son could have a genuine, “I–you”, personal relationship, as the Biblical account seems to suggest (e.g., Matt 3:17, Mark 14:36; Hasker 2013: 114–118; McCall 2010: 87–88).

Philosophical responses to the logical problem of the Trinity do not divide exhaustively into social models and Latin models. “Relative identity” theorists argue that identity is kind-relative, so the Father can be the same God as the Son without being the same person as the son (van Inwagen 1995). “Constitution” theorists make a similar claim by drawing on the metaphysics of constitution. According to constitution theorists, a lump of bronze can constitute a statue without being identical to it, since we can destroy the statue (by melting it down) without destroying the bronze. So too, they argue, the divine nature can constitute the three divine persons without being identical to them, or without entailing that they are identical to each other (Brower & Rea 2005). The metaphysics of constitution requires a coherent notion of “numerical sameness without identity”. The sharpest criticism of relative identity accounts of the Trinity takes aim at the underlying notion that identity is kind-relative in the relevant sense. Similarly, the sharpest criticism of constitution views expresses doubts about the cogency and usefulness of the metaphysics of constitution (Merricks 2006).

Scott Williams defends a hybrid “Latin social” model of the Trinity on which the Father, Son, and Spirit are each constituted by the single divine nature, without being numerically identical to the divine nature or to any other person (2013, 2017). Unlike other Latin models, on Williams’s account each of the persons is a distinct agent; unlike other social models, they share numerically one set of powers, including one will (2017). Even so, according to Williams, the persons can each token the indexical “I” with different senses. Critics argue that Williams’s model falters at precisely this point (Hasker 2018b; see also S. Williams 2020).

For an extended discussion, see the entry, Trinity .

By the close of the fourth century, the early Church had agreed that God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, is no less divine than God the Father. But this Trinitarian settlement led directly to another, equally vexing question: how could Jesus of Nazareth, a human man, also be identical to God the Son? After another period of intense debate, the Church defined the doctrine of the Incarnation, which asserts that Christ is one person (or one hypostasis ) who exists in two natures, one fully human, the other fully divine (Tanner 1990: 83; Kelly 1978: 338–343). Yet, as with the doctrine of the Trinity, on its own, this conciliar terminology does not attempt to solve the underlying philosophical problem.

In contemporary philosophy, this problem has been called the “fundamental philosophical problem of Christology”. As Richard Cross puts it:

how is it that one and the same thing could be both divine (and thus, on the face of it, necessary, and necessarily omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, immutable, impassible, and impeccable) and human (and thus, on the face of it, have the complements of all these properties)? (Cross 2009: 453)

In other words, the fundamental philosophical problem of Christology is the problem that arises when a single subject bears incompatible properties. Christ seems to be both necessarily omniscient, as the divine Son, the second person of the Trinity, and yet also limited in knowledge, as the human man, Jesus of Nazareth—and so on for other divine and human attributes. Yet Christ is one person, not two: he just is the divine Son and he just is Jesus of Nazareth. On standard interpretations of logical consistency, nothing can have logically incompatible properties at the same time and in the same respect—hence the problem.

A venerable attempted solution to the problem of incompatible properties makes use of grammatical modifiers to index Christological predications to their respective natures: Christ is limited in knowledge qua his human nature, and omniscient qua his divine nature, where “qua” means “with respect to” or “in virtue of”. More simply: Christ qua human is limited in knowledge; Christ qua divine is omniscient. The thought of Thomas Aquinas furnishes a foundational source for this solution ( Summa Theologiae 3.16.1–12; for broader discussion of patristic and medieval uses, see Cross 2002: 192–205). Thomas Senor forcefully argues that this grammatical solution does not work, for it cannot block the relevant entailment: since the one Christ really is human and really is divine, it follows that the one Christ is also limited in knowledge ( qua human) and omniscient ( qua divine), and so the contradiction remains (Senor 2002; see also Morris 1986).

Kenotic Christologies hold that at the point of incarnation, in order to become a human being, God the Son relinquished the divine attributes (Forrest 2000; Evans 2002, 2006). In a way, the kenotic option neatly solves the problem of incompatible properties, since Christ is not omnipotent and omniscient (etc.) at the same time as he is limited in power and knowledge. Kenotic Christologies have a venerable pedigree, as well as some clear Biblical warrant (Philippians 2; for discussion see Evans 2006; McGuckin 1994 [2004: 189]. But if omnipotence and omniscience are essential divine attributes, then it is not possible for God the Son to relinquish them during the incarnation and regain them after the incarnation while remaining self-identical.

Compositional Christologies try to solve the problem of incompatible properties by appealing to the various “parts” that together compose the whole Christ. According to Thomas V. Morris, Christ is composed of the divine mind of God the Son, a human mind, and a human body. On his telling, Christ counts as fully divine, because he has a divine mind, which is the seat of his omnipotence and omniscience; he also counts as fully human because he has a human mind and a human body (Morris 1986). Morris seeks to dispel the contradiction between divine and human attributes by revising our understanding of Christ’s human attributes. Morris denies that human beings as such are essentially limited in power and knowledge (etc.). This move clears the way for attributing omnipotence and omniscience (etc.) even to the human, incarnate Christ, while also denying that the human, incarnate Christ is limited in power and knowledge. Richard Swinburne (1994) defends a similar Christology, but according to Swinburne, Christ is composed only of God the Son and a human body, which together constitute both a human way of thinking and acting and also a divine way of thinking and acting.

Other compositional Christologies appeal to supposed mereological facts about the incarnation to ground a more sophisticated version of the “qua move” (discussed above). If God the Son has human parts and divine parts, then perhaps the whole mereological composite can borrow properties from its constituent parts without violating the law of non-contradiction. Analogously, we might say that an apple is both colored and not colored, since it is red (colored) with respect to its skin, but white (not colored) with respect to its flesh. There is a sense in which the apple as a whole is both colored and not colored because it borrows properties from its parts. Perhaps something similar can be said about Christ, understood as a mereological composite of God the Son, a human body, and a human soul. Leading advocates of this sort of view include Brian Leftow (1992, 2011) and Eleonore Stump (2002).

Timothy Pawl (2014, 2016) seeks to dispel the fundamental problem by revising the truth conditions of Christological predications like “Christ is omniscient” and “Christ is limited in knowledge”. According to Pawl, it is incorrect that “being omniscient” and “being limited in knowledge” are logically contradictory properties at all. In fact, according to Pawl, once we correctly understand their truth conditions, we can see that they can both be true of the same subject after all. On Pawl’s account, “Christ is omniscient” is true just in case Christ has a nature that is omniscient and “Christ is limited in knowledge” is true just in case Christ has a nature that is limited in knowledge. Because Christ, and only Christ (so far as we know) has two natures, only Christ can be both omniscient and limited in knowledge. At first glance, Pawl’s proposed solution might seem to be the “qua move” once again, in different dress. But it is importantly different: Pawl is content to affirm the very entailments (e.g., “Christ is omniscient and limited in knowledge”) that the qua move seeks to block; he simply denies that this entailment is logically contradictory.

Jc Beall goes a step further and argues that some predicates really are both true and false of Christ, because Christ really is a contradictory being (2019, 2021). Beall defends a contradictory Christology because he accepts a non-standard model of logic, one on which some predicates can be neither true nor false of a subject, and other predicates can be both true and false of a subject. According to Beall, logic as such—that is, his favored account of logic—is neutral about whether any given substantive theory contains true contradictions. To determine whether it does, we must examine the theory’s axiomatic statements. When we examine the axioms of orthodox Christology, according to Beall, we find that they include authoritative conciliar statements that are most naturally read as contradictory—e.g., “Christ is passible and impassible” (2019: 415). Rather than revise or reinterpret such statements so that they are not contradictory, we should accept that they are.

Arguably, the deepest and most fundamental Christian affirmation is that Christ saves. In traditional terminology, another way to express the same affirmation is that Christ “atones” for the sins of human beings. Unlike the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, however, the early Church never formally defined a single orthodox account of exactly how Christ saves or what it is about his life, death, and resurrection that accomplishes that saving work. As a result, a variety of theories or models of atonement have proliferated throughout the centuries. Contemporary work in analytic philosophical theology typically builds on these models, reformulates them in contemporary language, and seeks to defend them from criticism.

Satisfaction models argue that as a result of their sinfulness, human beings have a debt or obligation to God that they cannot possibly repay. By becoming incarnate, living a sinless life, and voluntarily dying for the sake of humanity, Christ successfully discharges the debts and obligations that human beings owe to God. Anselm’s “Why God Became Human” ( Cur deus homo ) is the locus classicus for the satisfaction theory, which has more recently been defended by Swinburne (1988). Closely related to satisfaction models, penal substitution models claim that human beings deserve punishment from God as a result of their sinfulness. Christ saves by freely agreeing to be punished in their place. Mark Murphy (2009) proposes a similar model of “vicarious punishment”, on which Christ’s suffering actually counts as the required punishment for guilty human beings, since knowing that a loved one suffers in one’s place is itself a form of punishment.

Satisfaction and penal substitution theorists must explain why a perfectly merciful God would require satisfaction or punishment from human beings at all, and why a perfectly just God would allow an innocent person to play the required role (Porter 2004). Accordingly, satisfaction and penal substitution views have been heavily criticized by modern and contemporary theologians for depicting God as a petty, wrathful tyrant. Adolph von Harnack’s nineteenth-century criticism of Anselm remains representative. According to Harnack, Anselm’s account depends on a

mythological conception of God as the mighty private man, who is incensed at the injury done to His honor and does not forego His wrath till He has received an at least adequately great equivalent. (1899: 77)

More recently, feminist theologians and philosophers have criticized satisfaction and penal substitution views for valorizing suffering (Brown and Parker 1989).

Eleonore Stump (2018) argues that typical satisfaction and penal substitution accounts cannot address the sinner’s persistent dispositions toward wrongdoing and concomitant feelings of shame. She dubs her positive proposal the “Marian” interpretation of atonement, and argues that it can explain how sinners are freed from shame and restored to fellowship with God. The proposal defies easy summary but it advances an account of atonement as union with God that is further explained using second-personal, psychological notions like “mind-reading” and empathy (2018: 138–139). Christ on the cross mind-reads—that is, psychically experiences—the mental states of every human sinner. Sinful human beings are thereby united to Christ, and so to God. When the indwelling Holy Spirit leads sinners to respond to Christ with love, they also will what God wills. The resulting state of union with God also heals the stain on the soul that is the sinner’s shame.

Several other models, also prominent in the Patristic and medieval tradition, have so far received little attention from analytic philosophers of religion. These include “ransom” theories on which human beings are freed from Satan’s grasp, and especially “theosis” or “divinization” accounts of atonement and salvation, on which Christ’s saving work consists in perfecting human beings so that they become as divine as a creature can be. (Jacobs 2009 and Mosser 2021 are important exceptions). Similarly, few contemporary philosophers defend the modern “moral exemplar” model, on which Christ saves by being a perfect moral example for other human beings to imitate. (Quinn 1993 offers a highly qualified defense, but holds that Christ is more than just a moral exemplar).

2.4 Sin, Original Sin, and the Fall

The doctrine of sin and the doctrine of atonement are correlative in the same way that a disease and its remedy are correlative. If sin is that from which Christ saves us, then the strength of the remedy (atonement) must vary according the severity of the disease (sin). As a first approximation, a sinful act can be thought of as a morally bad act for which the sinner is responsible. But the language of “sin” adds something to the language of moral wrongdoing: a sin is a failure or fault with respect to God. Like other Christian doctrines, the doctrine of sin poses tricky philosophical problems. To see those problems more clearly, it is useful to disambiguate the doctrine of sin into several distinct components: the first sin, the Fall, original sin, and personal sin.

For extended discussion, see the entry sin in Christian thought .

The problem of the first sin is the problem of how the very first sinful act is even possible, given various Christian axioms about the goodness and creative power of God, and various philosophical assumptions about the nature of freedom and moral responsibility. The problem of the first sin is sometimes treated as a question about the fall of Satan. It turns out to be surprisingly difficult to explain how Satan—by hypothesis, an angel created by God with a rational intellect, an upright will, and wholly good desires and dispositions—could ever make the sinful choice to reject God. Augustine ( City of God , Book 12), Anselm (“On the Fall of the Devil” De casu diaboli ), and Duns Scotus ( Ordinatio 2, dist. 6, q. 2 ) all wrestle with this problem. Contemporary philosophers who try to improve on their efforts include Barnwell (2009, 2017), MacDonald (1999), Rogers (2008), and Timpe (2012). Their responses all seek to explain how Satan’s choice is metaphysically possible, by appealing to their own favored accounts of human freedom and conscious attention. Wood (2016) further distinguishes between the “hard problem” of how Satan’s sinful choice is metaphysically possible, and the “harder problem” of how it can be subjectively rational—rational from the point of view of Satan himself.

The biblical story of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3) recounts the story of the first human sin and its consequences. The traditional story of the fall of Adam and Eve does not seem consistent with either an evolutionary account of human origins or what we know about human history more generally. On some understandings, questions about the historicity of the Fall are not properly philosophical questions at all. Yet it does seem like a properly philosophical task to articulate a doctrine of the fall that is both internally consistent and consistent with other things we know to be true. Moreover, the doctrine of the Fall is conceptually connected to other aspects of the doctrine of sin as well as to the doctrine of salvation.

Peter van Inwagen presents an account of the Fall that maintains many of its most important elements and, he claims, is consistent with evolutionary theory. Importantly, van Inwagen does not assert that this account is true, but only “true for all we know” (2004). In a similar vein, Hud Hudson (2014) offers an ingenious defense of a literal reading of the Genesis account that appeals to contemporary “growing block” theories of time. Despite initial impressions, neither van Inwagen nor Hudson are really concerned with defending quasi-literal readings of Genesis. Instead, they want to show that objections to those readings presuppose highly contestable philosophical—rather than empirical or scientific—assumptions.

In Christian theology, “original sin” in the strictest sense refers to the human condition after the Fall and not to the first human sin itself. The fall is the cause of the condition of original sin: because of Adam and Eve’s sin, subsequent human beings somehow “inherit” a disposition toward sin and an attraction toward evil that makes it inevitable that they will sin. On some stronger interpretations, all subsequent human beings are also justly regarded as guilty by God from birth, even before they have sinned themselves. Even apart from worries about the historicity of the fall, the philosophical challenges posed by this doctrine are obvious. How can people living now be morally responsible for the sins of the first human beings? What is the mechanism by which sin and guilt are “inherited” from past generations? If it is inevitable that all human beings will sin, can God justly punish them?

Some Christian philosophers have simply rejected the stronger versions of the doctrine of original sin as incoherent. Swinburne, for instance, denies that all human beings are born guilty as a result of the sin of their first parents and argues that the condition of original sin only makes it very likely, rather than inevitable, that they will sin themselves (1989: 141–43). Other philosophers have attempted to show that even a strong doctrine of original sin can be philosophically coherent, given the right metaphysical framework. Michael Rea, for instance, draws on fission theory and the metaphysics of temporal parts to suggest a way that contemporary humans might bear responsibility for the sin of Adam by virtue of being counterparts or stages of Adam himself (2007). He also argues that a Molinist-inspired doctrine of “transworld depravity” might accomplish much of what Christians want from the traditional doctrine of original sin (2007). John Mullen (2007) also constructs a Molinist account of original sin and inherited guilt. On Molinism, God knows all the true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, which means that God knows every free choice that every human being would make in every possible situation. According to Mullen, if it were true that every free creature would sin in an ideal, garden of Eden situation, then God could justly punish them in the actual world for what they would have done in that counterfactual world.

“Personal sin” refers to individual sinful acts. Because the philosophical problems associated with personal sin initially seem very similar to the problems associated with moral wrongdoing, there has been comparatively little philosophical work on personal sin. Still, important definitional questions remain about exactly how, if at all, sin should be distinguished from moral wrongdoing, whether there are sinful actions that are not immoral actions, and, conversely, whether there are immoral actions that are not sinful (Mitchell 1984; Dalferth 1984; Adams 1991; Couenhoven 2009).

There are philosophical questions raised by nearly all Christian doctrines and practices, and so there are many fertile areas of inquiry that still remain comparatively underexplored. This brief survey has focused on the most widely treated areas of analytic philosophical theology. But some of the most creative work has branched out into other domains including the Eucharist (Arcadi 2018; Pickup 2015); liturgy, ritual, and worship (Cuneo 2016); bodily resurrection and personal identity (van Inwagen 1978; Merricks 1999; Zimmerman 1999; Rudder Baker 2001); heaven (Walls 2002; Ribeiro 2011), hell (Walls 1992; Adams 1993; Kvanvig 1993; Sider 2002; Buckareff & Plug 2005) and purgatory (Walls 2011; Dumsday 2014).

In 2009 Oliver Crisp and Michael Rea published their edited volume Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology . The volume’s contributors collectively try to make the case that analytic philosophy offers a valuable and neglected resource for Christian theologians. A new research program developed in its wake, and the ensuing years have seen the rise of a self-identified school of “analytic theologians”, who use the tools and methods of analytic philosophy to address Christian theological topics.

At present, it is not clear whether there is any meaningful difference between Christian “analytic theology” and Christian “philosophical theology”, which has been treated as a kind of philosophy. As the discussion above indicates, analytic philosophical theology has been produced largely by Christian philosophers working in philosophy departments, rather than by theologians in departments of theology or divinity schools. Classic works of philosophical theology like Swinburne (1994) and Adams (2000) seem like analytic theology avant la lettre , for example, and much recent work called “analytic theology” seems quite similar to previous work called “philosophical theology” or even “philosophy of religion” (e.g., Mullins 2016). Yet some self-described analytic theologians have also insisted that Christian analytic theology is really a form of theology (Torrance [Alan] 2013; Torrance [Andrew] 2019; Crisp, Arcadi, & Wessling 2019). They emphasize that Christian analytic theology is an internal project of faith seeking understanding that, as theology, holds itself accountable to scripture and Church tradition. Yet whether Christian analytic theology is properly regarded as a kind of philosophy or a kind of theology depends on how we draw the underlying distinction between philosophy and theology—if indeed we draw such a distinction at all.

3. Philosophy of Religion, Philosophical Theology, Christian Theology: Is There A Difference and Does it Matter?

It might seem odd that analytic philosophy of religion (APR) includes explicitly Christian philosophical theology of the sort discussed in Section 2 . Yet most philosophers of religion working in the analytic tradition are Christian theists (Bourget & Chalmers 2014; De Cruz 2017). They avowedly want to explore their faith using analytic philosophical tools, and see no problem in calling their work Christian philosophy, philosophical theology , or more recently, “analytic theology”. Of course, philosophy of religion as such is broader than APR, and APR is broader than Christian APR. There are philosophers of religion whose work is analytic but not Christian (e.g., Lebens 2020; Mizrahi 2020; Steinhart 2020; Oppy 2018; Schellenberg 2018; Draper 2019), Christian but not analytic (e.g., Westphal 2001; Pattison 2011), and neither analytic nor Christian (e.g., Hammerschlag 2016; Burley 2016). Even so, the predominance of Christian philosophical theology—or “Plantinga-style Christian philosophy” (Schellenberg 2018)—within APR has recently reopened some contentious debates about the proper relationship between philosophy and Christian theology.

These debates can be grouped around two different—and opposing—lines of criticism. According to the first line, much APR is too Christian and too theological: not really philosophy at all, but a thinly-disguised form of Christian theology—perhaps even a form of apologetics (Levine 2000; Knepper 2013: 9; Draper 2019: 2). Conversely, according to the second line, advanced by prominent theologians, APR is neither fully Christian nor fully theological. On this line of criticism, APR does not really wrestle with the transcendent God of Christian faith, but tends to construct and examine its own false “God of the philosophers” (Milbank 2009; Hart 2013; Oliver 2010; see also Harris & Insole 2005, 17). Although mutually opposing, both lines of criticism raise an important methodological question: how—if at all—should we distinguish philosophy about Christian topics from Christian theology? Section 1 (above) surveyed important responses to this question in the history of Christian thought. This section addresses the question in the context of contemporary challenges to analytic philosophy of religion.

3.1 Analytic Philosophy of Religion: Too Theological?

The charge that APR is “too theological” can be disambiguated into two distinct worries. The first worry concerns the scope of APR when considered as a whole: APR is too narrow, because it focuses excessively on Christian theological topics, to the exclusion of other equally important matters. The second worry concerns the sources and methods of Christian APR specifically: the sources and methods of Christian APR belong more properly to theology than to philosophy.

The charge that APR as a discipline is “too Christian” or “too theological” could be understood as a worry about its scope: perhaps APR focuses too much on Christian theological topics, or at least on versions of monotheism that are compatible with Christianity, and is therefore too narrow in scope. Critics who advance the narrowness worry include Trakakis 2008, Wildman 2010, Knepper 2013, Schilbrack 2014, Lewis 2015, Jones 2019, Draper 2019, Timpe & Hereth 2019, Mizrahi 2020. Although the narrowness worry has wide currency, it is not always clear how to understand it as a properly philosophical criticism. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the narrowness worry is more often aimed at the field of APR as a whole, rather than at individual instances of APR. After all, the general claim that APR is “too Christian” does not entail that any specific argument of any specific philosopher is unsound. Similarly, even if it is true that APR as a whole should be “less Christian”, it is hard to see why that fact would require any individual philosopher to change her research and teaching focus (Schilbrack 2014: 12).

Still, some versions of the narrowness worry are more philosophical than others. According to more philosophical versions, Christian APR frequently fails as philosophy: as a result of their Christian-theological biases, analytic philosophers of religion inadvertently make bad arguments. On this line, Christian analytic philosophers are especially likely to engage in motivated reasoning and ignore counter-arguments or alternative points of view drawn from other religious traditions. Because APR is so narrow, Christian philosophers unwittingly work in an echo-chamber or an epistemic bubble (Schilbrack 2014: 14; Draper 2019: 5; De Cruz 2020). As a result, according to critics, the conclusions of their putatively philosophical arguments are often unwarranted for anyone outside the Christian community, even when they purport to be generally probative.

Less philosophical versions of the narrowness worry assert the general principle that APR should be more capacious, and should include more non-Christian voices, without explicitly challenging the soundness of specific analytic arguments (Knepper 2013; Carroll 2016; Mizrahi 2020). Here the worry is simply that APR does not—but should—reflect the diversity of religious and non-religious viewpoints that actually obtain in the world. Phrased differently, APR as a field wrongly excludes too much good philosophical work that just happens not to fit into the dominant Christian, monotheistic paradigm. Yet one can hold this view without also agreeing that existing APR fails on its own terms or that any specific philosophers should alter their practices.

The charge that APR is too theological could also be understood as a question about philosophical methodology. On this version of the charge, Christian APR does not begin from generally accessible assumptions and argue toward generally acceptable conclusions, as good philosophy should. Instead, it typically begins from Christian assumptions and argues toward Christian conclusions, like theology.

J.L. Schellenberg, for example, argues that philosophy must seek solutions to philosophical problems that are in principle “shareable” by any member of the philosophical community. Because much Christian APR assumes the truth of Christianity, its solutions cannot satisfy this condition, and should properly count as theology rather than philosophy (Schellenberg 2018). J. Aaron Simmons agrees: even though theology “can and should” appeal to evidence restricted to “determinate communities defined by revelational authorities”, philosophy should appeal to “evidence that is, in principle, accessible by all members of the philosophical community” (2019: 147). According to Simmons, the dominant strand of APR has ignored this criterion, and threatens to “become simply a subset of Christian theological practice” (2019: 149; see also Oppy 2018; Draper 2019: 2).

Analytic philosophers of religion have a variety of ways to respond to the charge that APR is too theological. First, with respect to the narrowness charge, they can accuse critics of mistaking the part for the whole, by denying that the charge applies to APR as such, and by pointing to those analytic philosophers of religion who neither assume nor defend the truth of Christianity. Yet this response is undercut by the fact that non-Christian practitioners of APR often make the narrowness themselves (Schellenberg 2018; Oppy 2018; Draper 2019). Second, its defenders also emphasize that much Christian APR does not actually assume the truth of Christianity at all, but instead argues for that truth. (Hasker 2018a: 90; citing Swinburne is a paradigmatic example). This kind of philosophy would clear even Schellenberg’s “shareable in principle” bar. Similarly, even those philosophical projects that eschew Swinburne-style natural theology might still clear the “sharable in principle” bar so long as they engage only in defensive maneuvers—for example, by answering philosophical objections to the plausibility of Christian claims (e.g., van Inwagen 1995; Pawl 2014).

Others argue that even explicit appeals to Christian revelation could in principle still count as philosophical appeals, albeit indirectly. Suppose we agree that theology can appeal to revelation, while philosophy trades only in “generally accessible” arguments. We still must distinguish between direct, first-order appeals to revelation, and indirect, second-order arguments that it is sometimes permissible to appeal to revelation (Wood 2021: 213–215). The second-order arguments could still be generally accessible philosophical arguments, even though the first-order appeals are not. For example, a first-order “theological” appeal might be: “The New Testament asserts p ; therefore p ”. But a philosopher might offer a general epistemological argument, accessible to anyone in the philosophical community, to defend the rationality of that same first-order appeal. (For example, she might offer a general argument that it is rational to form beliefs based on testimony, and the same general argument might establish that it is rational to treat the New Testament as testimonial evidence.) In a similar vein, Plantinga’s claim that belief in God may be “properly basic” is not itself presented as a Christian assumption or a revealed truth, but as a specific application of his general philosophical theory of warrant, which he has defended at length (1983, 1993a, 1993b).

Finally, because there is no single uncontested way to understand the boundaries between philosophy and theology, it is open to Christian philosophers of religion simply to deny the sharp distinction presupposed by critics like Schellenberg and Simmons (see, for example, Plantinga 1984, Wolterstorff 2009). In so doing, they would implicitly endorse a more Patristic “Integration” model instead of either the Medieval “Cooperation” model or the modern “Disjunction” model (see Section 2 above).

While one set of critics accuse APR of becoming too theological, another set takes the opposite line. According to several prominent theologians and philosophers, something about the analytic style of philosophizing makes APR particularly unsuitable for investigating Christian doctrines. On this line of criticism, far from becoming a species of Christian theology, APR is constitutively opposed to Christian theology, and the problem with analytic philosophical theology is not that it is too theological but that it is too analytic. This criticism takes several forms.

Sometimes, theological objections to APR simply reiterate Barthian objections to natural theology, presumably on the assumption that most APR is really a form of natural theology (Moore 2007). Other critics charge analytic philosophers of religion with historical anachronism and ignorance of the Christian tradition. Perhaps “a-historical” analytic philosophers of religion do not understand pre-modern ways of thinking and reading (so runs the charge), and so they wrongly believe that their own constructive work is congruent with the historic Christian tradition, when it in fact depends modern assumptions that are inimical to the Christian tradition (Hart 2013: 123, 129; Milbank 2009: 320). Other critics press the related worry that APR ignores the real Christian tradition altogether in favor of theorizing its own abstract, self-constructed version of the Christian god. Here APR

does not deal with the God of any tradition or encounter, but with a conceptual construct, a simulacrum or ‘the God of the philosophers’…. (Oliver 2010: 467–468; see also Hyman 2010)

Another multi-faceted line of theological criticism criticizes APR for “idolatry”, “univocity”, and “ontotheology”. This line reflects the general worry that APR does not take divine mystery or transcendence seriously enough. “Ontotheology” is a theological term of opprobrium that, in its current usage, derives from Heidegger (1957; see also Marion 1982 [1995]). It means, roughly, treating God like “a being” or “a thing in the world”. According to its theological critics, APR constitutively assumes that God is a possible object of human knowledge, even apart from revelation, and therefore treats God as fundamentally similar to any other object “out there” passively waiting to be discovered. Yet a God like this (so runs the worry) is not really God at all, but something else—an idol.

The worry about ontotheology and idolatry is also a worry about univocity—the view that our terms bear the same meaning when applied to God and creatures (Trakakis 2010). According to opponents of theological univocity, precisely because God is not “a being” or a “thing in the world”, God and creatures differ absolutely; they share no properties and so cannot be described by univocal predications. (So, e.g., the word “good” cannot have the same meaning in the statements “God is good”, and “Socrates is good”.) Worries about theological predication and univocity date back to the Patristic period, but in contemporary philosophy of religion, they are best understood as continuations of the late medieval disputes between followers of Duns Scotus, who defends univocal predication, and his Thomist opponents (T. Williams 2005; Burrell 2008; Cross 2008). As a generalization, most contemporary analytic philosophers of religion endorse a univocal account of theological language, whereas contemporary Christian theologians are more likely to deny univocity in favor of analogical or metaphorical predication, or even non-predicative forms of theological language (Pickstock 2005; Marion 1999).

Notwithstanding the sharp rhetoric, there has been very little direct engagement between analytic philosophers of religion and their theological opponents on these questions. T. Williams (2005), Cross (2008) defend univocal predication, and Adams (2014) tries to rehabilitate ontotheology. Other analytic thinkers offer their own positive accounts of divine transcendence (Crisp and Rea [eds.] 2009: 9–11; Rea 2015, 2020; Jacobs 2015). More generally, analytic philosophers and theologians have a variety of strategies for avoiding the deleterious consequences of univocity and ontotheology (Wood 2021: 130–74).

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Murray, Michael and Michael Rea, “Philosophy and Christian Theology”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = < https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2021/entries/christiantheology-philosophy/ >. [This was the previous entry on this topic in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — see the version history .]

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Theology: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edn)

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3 (page 30) p. 30 (page 31) p. 31 Thinking of God

Published: October 2013
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‘Thinking of God’ is concerned with the basic question: Is God real? There are two crucial issues embraced by the question of God's reality. The first is: What is meant by God? The second is: What is meant by being real? It is no obstacle to theology that it cannot aim at conclusive demonstrative proof of the reality of God — there are many other worthwhile intellectual goals. The richest theological engagements are between those who acknowledge where they are coming from and then patiently study, communicate, and discuss with others (whether of their own or different persuasions) about matters of importance.

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Ecclesio.com

the current scene through a Gospel lens

The Power of Critical Thinking in Teaching Theology By Cynthia Holder Rich

I received the blessings of a good education, at the public school, university, and graduate levels. I often think of those who taught and formed me, and from whose mentoring I continue to draw as I teach students at Tumaini University Makurima, here in Tanzania. Of the many things that I have learned, critical thinking is among the most valuable, whether the subject matter was music, gender studies, theology, social justice, economic development or ministry.

I have come to value this part of my education even more as I teach and work with students who have not been blessed with this kind of educational background. Most of the students at Tumaini received their education in overcrowded classrooms, with few teaching materials available, in an educational culture convinced that the teacher holds all the wisdom in the room. Our students arrive at University having learned well—and excelled in learning—how to conform to expectations, how to repeat what has been told, and how to not (that is, never, ever) challenge authority. Educators and educational administrators in Tanzania come by this approach to teaching honestly . This is a legacy passed down by colonial and mission leaders, who had no interest in encouraging critical thinking among the colonized. Once this approach was established it became very difficult to uproot.

Additionally, Tanzania is an incredibly beautiful land—and a very poor country , where teaching, like lots of the other activities of life and ministry, is just harder than it is in countries that have more resources. For example, some of the lecture courses here at the University have 700 students in the class. Because books are so expensive and incredibly hard to access, the resources for a course are often comprised of whatever the lecturer puts on the board. It would be great to have smaller classes, greater access to curriculum materials, and for lecturers to interact more with students—and that doesn’t happen because the funds needed to hire more teachers, to access books and other resources, and to develop more interactive teaching strategies aren’t in the budget.

Finally, the teaching of critical thinking skills may bring questions to, and from, those in power. Paulo Freire, whose very important book Pedagogy of the Oppressed was published 50 years ago, was arrested, tortured and exiled by Brazilian authorities for his work empowering poor people through education. Freire spoke against what he called the “banking” model of education—where students enter as empty vessels and teachers deposit knowledge—and spoke for education as freeing people for critical thought and action. Freire taught that education is always “political”, “revolutionary”, and “liberating”. Half a century later, Brazil’s current leaders see Freire’s work as dangerous. Thinking critically carries risk.

Our students are preparing to serve as pastors and leaders for the church. It is an inconvenient and unfortunate truth that the false idea that the person standing in front of the room holds all the wisdom in the room has bled from the classroom into the church. This concept can be found both in Tanzanian and US church life. So we in the church have some unlearning and relearning to do.

For all of us as disciples, thinking critically about one’s culture is a required part of following Jesus. Jesus calls this “loving the Lord your God with your whole mind” (Mark 12:30). It is also one of the most difficult things about discipleship—to commit each day to following, both when it confirms our cultural values and when it conflicts with them. As many pastors and church leaders have learned quite painfully, one’s job security can be put at risk when one preaches about the Gospel’s call to confront and critique one’s own culture. Thinking critically, especially about one’s own context, is hard. It is hard for disciples in the US. It is equally hard for disciples in Tanzania.

We are working with our students toward a more integrated ecclesiology—a more fulsome understanding of church, where the people of God, each and every one, gather, bringing their individual gifts together to build holy community. To approach the church in this way takes open minds and hearts, and an inspired curiosity about what God might have in store for the future. It takes faith in the power of the Spirit to change the present. It takes sacred imagination. It takes critical thinking.

To help students move from educational and ministry goals like conforming and repeating toward goals of thinking and imagining —this is not an easy task. It takes a lot of work, and there are some days when we both wonder if progress is happening. And, by God’s grace, we are regularly granted the opportunity to witness when the change, the integration, and the joy of transformational ideas happens for a student. When that happens, it is wondrous to behold.

As a theological educator, I am so grateful for those on whose shoulders I stand, from whom I have learned so much. Using beloved texts like Maria Harris’ Fashion Me a People , Letty Russell’s Household of Freedom , and yes, Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed —these classics still hold power for me. Books like these and many more were introduced to me by great teachers who believed in and knew the power of critical thinking . I learned to think through reading with and learning from people who knew how to think. In my work here in Tanzania, I seek to share this kind of love of learning—and of critical thinking—that will serve my students well, no matter what the future brings or where the Spirit leads them.

Cynthia Holder Rich serves as a Lecturer in the Faculty of Theology at Tumaini University Makumira , Usa River-Arusha, Tanzania. She founded and directs ecclesio.com.

← Let Us Walk in the Light of Life! By Jiyoung Kim
The Bible and Sexuality by Mark Rich →

How to Be a Logical and Rational Christian: A Guide for Spiritual Thinkers

As a Christian, it’s essential to understand the role of logic and reasoning in your spiritual journey. While faith plays a significant role, incorporating critical thinking skills can help you make better decisions and navigate complex issues in your life. This guide will provide practical advice and tips on how to be a logical and rational Christian.

Logic , rationality , and faith are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they can complement each other in powerful ways. By learning how to think critically and objectively, you can deepen your spiritual understanding and strengthen your relationship with God.

In this guide, we will explore various topics such as overcoming emotional biases, developing a rational approach to your faith, and embracing critical thinking in your Bible study. Whether you’re a seasoned spiritual thinker or a new believer, this guide will provide practical insights and tools to help you grow in your faith.

If you’re ready to take your spiritual journey to the next level, keep reading and discover how you can become a more logical and rational Christian.

Understanding the Role of Logic in Christianity

As a Christian, it’s natural to assume that faith and reason are at odds with each other. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Logic plays a crucial role in our understanding of God and the world around us.

For example, the concept of apologetics – the rational defense of the Christian faith – is rooted in the idea that our beliefs must be logically sound and supported by evidence. Critical thinking is another important aspect of being a logical and rational Christian. We must be willing to question our assumptions, test our beliefs, and seek out answers with an open mind.

Moreover, the Bible itself is full of examples of people using logic and reason to understand God’s will. Proverbs 14:15 states, “The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps.” This verse highlights the importance of being thoughtful and analytical in our approach to faith.

Ultimately, being a logical and rational Christian isn’t about sacrificing our beliefs or ignoring our emotions. It’s about recognizing that our faith is grounded in a foundation of reason and evidence, and using these tools to better understand and serve God.

Logic as a Tool for Understanding God’s Plan

Reasoning is a valuable tool in comprehending God’s plan. When we approach the Bible with logic, we can better understand the motives and actions of God.

Logic helps us avoid flawed interpretations of scripture. If we don’t use reason and instead rely on our emotions or preconceived ideas, we risk misinterpreting God’s message.

Logical thinking can lead us to new insights about our faith. By approaching Christianity with a critical mindset, we can challenge ourselves and deepen our understanding of God’s plan.

Using logic as a tool for understanding God’s plan can help us avoid misinterpretations, gain new insights, and deepen our understanding of the Bible. It is important to approach our faith with an open mind and a willingness to challenge our assumptions.

The Relationship Between Faith and Reason in Christianity

Many people view faith and reason as being in opposition to each other. However, in Christianity, faith and reason work together to create a fuller understanding of God’s plan. Reason is a tool that helps us interpret and understand the Bible, and faith is what allows us to trust in God’s plan even when we don’t fully understand it.

Throughout history, there have been many debates about the relationship between faith and reason. Some have argued that faith requires the rejection of reason, while others have argued that reason can be used to support faith. In reality, faith and reason are complementary aspects of our spiritual lives that work together to deepen our understanding of God’s plan.

Faith allows us to trust in God’s plan even when it doesn’t make sense to us.
Reason helps us to interpret the Bible and understand God’s plan in a more complete way.
Together, faith and reason create a more complete picture of God’s plan for us.
As Christians, it is important to embrace both faith and reason in our spiritual journey.

Ultimately, faith and reason are not in opposition to each other, but rather they work together to create a more complete understanding of God’s plan. As we seek to deepen our faith and understanding of God, it is important to embrace both reason and faith in our spiritual journey.

Developing a Rational Approach to Your Faith

Question Your Beliefs: It’s important to ask yourself why you believe what you believe. Examining the foundations of your faith can help you better understand it, and ultimately strengthen it. Don’t be afraid to ask tough questions or seek out different perspectives.

Study the Bible: The Bible is an essential tool for understanding Christianity, but it’s important to approach it with a rational mindset. Take the time to study it in depth, and seek out resources that can help you better understand its context and history.

Embrace Reasoning: Christianity is a faith that is grounded in reason, so don’t be afraid to use your own reasoning skills to analyze and interpret your beliefs. This can help you avoid blindly following dogma or accepting beliefs without evidence.

Engage with the World: Don’t be afraid to engage with the world around you and learn from people with different beliefs and experiences. By engaging in open dialogue and intellectual discussions, you can strengthen your own faith and gain a deeper understanding of the world.

Recognizing the Importance of Evidence in Your Beliefs

Evidence is a crucial aspect of rational thinking, and this applies to Christianity as well. To be a logical and rational Christian, you need to understand the importance of evidence-based beliefs.

Examining evidence helps you understand the reasons behind your beliefs and provides a solid foundation for your faith. It’s essential to differentiate between beliefs based on evidence and those based on personal preferences or cultural traditions.

Being open to new evidence and considering it in your beliefs is vital for growth and development as a Christian. As we learn and gain new insights, our understanding of the world and our faith can evolve.

Avoiding biases in examining evidence is crucial for rational thinking. Confirmation bias, for example, can lead us to seek out evidence that supports our beliefs while ignoring or dismissing evidence that contradicts them.

Approaching Difficult Theological Questions with a Rational Mindset

As Christians, we are called to examine our beliefs with a critical eye and engage in intellectual inquiry when faced with difficult theological questions. It is important to approach these questions with a rational mindset, utilizing critical thinking skills and sound reasoning to arrive at informed conclusions.

One way to approach difficult theological questions is to engage with the text and study the context and historical background of the scriptures. This can help provide a more comprehensive understanding of the text and help in discerning its meaning.

Overcoming Emotional Biases in Your Spiritual Journey

Emotions play a significant role in shaping our spiritual beliefs and practices, but they can also lead us astray. It’s essential to be aware of how emotions can bias our thinking.

Confirmation bias is a common emotional bias that can hinder rational thinking. It involves seeking out and interpreting information in a way that confirms our existing beliefs, even if the evidence contradicts them.

Cognitive dissonance is another emotional bias that can cause us to reject information that conflicts with our beliefs. It’s the discomfort we feel when holding two conflicting beliefs or ideas simultaneously.

Mindfulness can help us overcome emotional biases by cultivating awareness of our thoughts and feelings. When we observe our emotions, we can acknowledge them without being controlled by them.

Critical thinking is another powerful tool for overcoming emotional biases. It involves evaluating evidence objectively and logically, regardless of our personal feelings or biases.

By understanding and overcoming emotional biases, we can develop a more rational and logical approach to our spiritual journey, one that is grounded in evidence and free from the distortions of our emotions.

The Role of Emotions in Your Faith

As a Christian, it’s essential to recognize that emotions play a significant role in your spiritual journey. Your emotions can be a source of strength and comfort, but they can also be a source of bias and error in your thinking.

One of the key things to keep in mind is that emotions are not inherently good or bad. They are simply a part of being human, and they can help you connect with God and others on a deeper level. However, when your emotions become overwhelming or start to cloud your judgment, it can be challenging to think rationally and make informed decisions.

How to Address Emotional Biases When Making Decisions About Your Faith

Acknowledge your emotions: Recognize and accept your emotions instead of suppressing them. Emotions are a natural part of the decision-making process.
Identify your biases: Reflect on your beliefs and consider if your emotions may be influencing your decision-making process.
Seek diverse perspectives: Seek out information from a variety of sources, including people with different viewpoints, to challenge your own biases and broaden your perspective.
Use critical thinking: Evaluate evidence objectively and logically, using reason and evidence to form your beliefs rather than relying solely on emotions.

By acknowledging your emotions, identifying your biases, seeking diverse perspectives, and using critical thinking, you can address emotional biases and make more informed decisions about your faith.

Exploring the Intersection of Science and Religion

Science and religion: For centuries, these two fields have been at odds with each other, with many people believing they are incompatible. But is that really the case?

Modern understanding: Today, many religious individuals believe that science and religion can coexist, and some even argue that science can enhance our understanding of God’s creation.

Areas of overlap: There are several areas where science and religion intersect, such as the origin of the universe, the nature of consciousness, and the ethics of scientific research.

Challenges: While there is potential for science and religion to work together, there are also challenges. One issue is the conflict between scientific findings and religious beliefs, such as the theory of evolution versus creationism.

The Compatibility of Science and Christianity

Science and Christianity have often been viewed as incompatible. However, many Christians see science as a way to better understand God’s creation.

The scientific method seeks to explain natural phenomena through empirical evidence and logical reasoning. This approach is consistent with the Christian belief that God created an orderly universe.

The theory of evolution is often viewed as a point of contention between science and Christianity. However, many Christians believe in the compatibility of evolution and the Biblical account of creation.

Many scientists throughout history have been Christians, including Galileo, Newton, and Mendel. They saw their scientific work as a way to understand God’s creation and serve Him better.

The Limitations of Science and the Role of Faith in Your Understanding of the World

Science has its limitations, and it cannot explain everything. There are questions that it cannot answer, such as questions of purpose, meaning, and morality. These are questions that faith attempts to address.

Faith can provide answers to questions that science cannot. It can offer a framework for understanding the world that goes beyond the physical realm. However, it’s important to recognize that faith is not a replacement for science but rather complements it.

Both science and faith can coexist and work together to provide a more complete understanding of the world. Science can help us understand the natural laws and physical processes that govern the universe, while faith can help us understand the purpose and meaning behind it all.

It’s important to strike a balance between science and faith. We should not let our faith blind us to scientific discoveries, nor should we let science dismiss our faith. Instead, we should approach both with an open mind and a willingness to learn and understand.

Embracing Critical Thinking in Your Bible Study

Bible study is a vital aspect of spiritual growth for many Christians. However, approaching the Bible with a critical mindset can enhance the experience and lead to deeper understanding. Questioning the text and analyzing it in its historical and cultural context can reveal new insights and perspectives. Additionally, comparing different translations and interpretations can also expand understanding.

It is important to be open to new ideas and interpretations, while also remaining grounded in the text. Discernment is key when evaluating different viewpoints or interpretations. Critical thinking allows for a more nuanced understanding of the Bible and can also help reconcile apparent contradictions or inconsistencies.

Embracing critical thinking can also help bridge the gap between faith and reason. By approaching the Bible with an analytical mindset, it is possible to reconcile scientific or historical discoveries with religious beliefs. This can lead to a more holistic understanding of the world and our place in it.

Finally, incorporating critical thinking into Bible study can also lead to a more personal and transformative experience. By critically examining the text and our own beliefs, we can deepen our spiritual connection and grow in our faith.

Approaching the Bible with a Critical Mindset

Question assumptions: When reading the Bible, it’s essential to question assumptions and preconceptions. Doing so can help you see the text in a new light and understand the message better.

Context matters: The Bible was written in a specific historical and cultural context. To understand it better, we need to consider the context in which it was written and the audience it was written for.

Interpretation: The Bible is open to interpretation, and there are often multiple ways to understand a particular passage. We should be open to different interpretations and willing to explore them to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the text.

Use reason and evidence: Critical thinking involves using reason and evidence to evaluate claims and arguments. When studying the Bible, we should apply this same approach to understand the text better.

How to Use Critical Thinking to Interpret Scripture

Understand the context: It’s important to consider the historical, cultural, and literary context of the passage you’re studying. This can help you understand the author’s intended meaning and how it applies to your life today.

Ask questions: Don’t be afraid to ask questions about the text, such as who wrote it, when it was written, and who it was written for. This can help you gain a deeper understanding of the message.

Consider different interpretations: There are often multiple ways to interpret a passage of scripture. Consider different viewpoints and interpretations, and weigh the evidence for each one.

Apply critical thinking skills: Use critical thinking skills like analysis, evaluation, and inference to examine the text and draw conclusions about its meaning.

The Importance of Context in Your Bible Study

Context is essential to understanding any text, including the Bible. Without it, we risk misinterpreting the meaning and message of scripture. Understanding the cultural and historical context in which the Bible was written can provide insight into the author’s intended meaning.

Context also includes examining the literary genre of a particular passage or book. Is it poetry, history, or prophecy? Each genre has its own unique style and purpose, which affects the interpretation.

Another important aspect of context is considering the surrounding verses and chapters of a passage. This can help clarify any ambiguous language and provide a more complete understanding of the message.

Finally, context includes understanding how a particular passage fits into the larger narrative of the Bible. The Bible is a collection of books with a unifying message, and understanding how each passage contributes to that message is crucial.

Applying Logic to Your Decision-Making as a Christian

As a Christian, making decisions that align with your faith can be challenging. However, logic can help you navigate complex situations with clarity and confidence.

Clear thinking is essential when making decisions that impact your life and the lives of others. Taking the time to consider all the options and potential consequences can help you make informed decisions.

Objectivity is critical in decision-making. By removing personal biases, you can make decisions based on facts and evidence, rather than emotions. This approach can help you avoid making rash decisions that may not align with your values.

As a Christian, prayer and seeking guidance from God can also help guide your decision-making. By taking the time to listen to God and ask for guidance, you can make decisions that align with your faith and values.

Finally, wisdom gained through experience and knowledge can also help you make sound decisions. Seeking advice from trusted mentors or friends can provide valuable insights and perspectives to help you make informed choices.

Critical thinking: Applying logic to decision-making involves critical thinking, which is the ability to analyze information objectively and make reasoned judgments based on evidence.

Objective evaluation: By using logic, you can evaluate situations objectively, free from biases and emotions, to determine the best course of action.

Practical applications: Applying logic to your decision-making process can help you make practical and effective decisions in all areas of your life, including your personal relationships and professional pursuits.

Compatibility with faith: Applying logic does not have to be in opposition to faith. In fact, many religious traditions encourage the use of critical thinking and reasoning as a means of deepening one’s faith and understanding of God.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the importance of logic and rationality in christianity.

Logic and rationality are essential components in making sound decisions, interpreting the Bible accurately, and defending your faith effectively.

How can you improve your logical and rational thinking as a Christian?

You can enhance your logical and rational thinking by studying logic and philosophy, seeking out opposing viewpoints, and examining your own biases.

What are some common logical fallacies to avoid as a Christian?

Some common logical fallacies include ad hominem attacks, straw man arguments, and false dichotomies. It is crucial to recognize and avoid these fallacies in your reasoning.

How can you apply logical and rational thinking to your daily life as a Christian?

You can apply logical and rational thinking to your daily life by making informed decisions, resolving conflicts effectively, and engaging in meaningful discussions about your faith with others.

What is the relationship between faith and logic in Christianity?

Faith and logic are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary. Faith provides a foundation for your beliefs, while logic helps you to analyze and understand those beliefs more deeply.

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Christianity and Critical Theory

2021, Canadian American Theological Review

Contemporary discourse on the intersection of Critical Theory (CT), Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Christian theology and ethics has reached an all-time high. This is particularly true with white evangelicalism in the U.S., where denominations, popular figures, and an endless stream of media regularly, publicly, and explicitly decry “Critical Theory” in all its forms—even if it is clear that critics have not informed themselves of what exactly they are critiquing. What explains this social and cultural phenomenon? And is CT really inherently opposed to all things “Christian”? This paper will suggest that, despite being categorically different, CT and certain traditions of Christian thought are highly complementary, even to the point where specific ideas of specific Critical Theories function as extensions of classical theological dogmas. Specific attention is given to the psychology of racism in Critical Race Theory and the doctrine of total depravity in reformed thought, among others.

Related Papers

This chapter for my recent book, The Rhetoric of Genocide, makes the secular case for Christianity as Critical Theory. Working from secular standpoints proposed by Jurgen Habermas, I make the case that Christianity actively critiques two abhorrent human practices: 1) the public killing of the innocent and 2) the patriarchy.

First Things

South African Baptist Journal of Theology

Bradley Trout , Alyssa Kleinhans

Critical race theory (CRT) is much discussed yet poorly understood. In this article, we attempt to define CRT, especially in light of its historical development in the context of the US legal system. CRT is a diagnostic tool beginning in legal scholarship but extending into other fields that explores the connection between racism and power. Further, we discuss five "core tenets" of CRT. Second, having defined CRT and its core tenets, we critically consider some of the most prominent responses it has received, particularly those from Neil Shenvi, Voddie Baucham, and Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay. In general, we find the responses inadequate and lacking either in their understanding of CRT or their exaggeration of its problems. This leads us, third, to offer our own theological analysis. Utilising a diachronic and biblical theological model and following Wolters' categories in Creation Regained, we consider CRT in light of the categories "creation," "fall," and "redemption." When viewed through these categories, it is demonstrated that CRT is compatible with Christian eschatology, which considers the world in terms of the realisation of the kingdom of God in the present age. Any diagnostic tool that better enables us to live in light of God's justice is to be welcomed.

Religion Dispatches

Andre E . Johnson

Critical Race Theory (CRT), the academic study in which students and scholars examine how race and racism function, is under attack by conservatives who claim that CRT promotes a distorted view of American history through a racial and ideological lens. According to the Washington Post, conservative activists and politicians use the term as a “catchall phrase for nearly any examination of systemic racism in the present.” It’s often “portrayed as the basis of race-conscious policies, diversity trainings and education about racism, regardless of how much the academic concept actually affects those efforts.” But how did an academic theory, taught primarily to upper-division undergraduates and graduate students, about how racism has impacted the nation and world become this iniquitous thing ‘ruining’ America?

Itzhak Benyamini , Yotam Hotam

In recent years, critical thought and theological discourse have been challenging each other, as they share mutual themes alongside contesting motivations. Against this broad background, this outline presents a possible formula for “critical theology,” which negotiates between the critical and the theological fields of inquiry. Stemming from the contemporary Israeli framework of religion, society and political imagination, the formula points to the difference between the call to critically navigate in the theological field of meanings, and the call to faithfully adopt its message; between the call “to the call” of theology, and the call “by means of” theology. By doing so, the outline aims to present theology as the original realm of non-religious, perhaps even un-religious, critique, and not as its adversary, while nonetheless maintaining “the religious” as such. Critical theology, we suggest, from our Israeli/Jewish perspective, is a social and political challenge of our time in which religion and religiosity have returned to the forefront of the social, political and cultural world. http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/VedkRWA6ezZPQqhc6dBf/full

Susannah Heschel

MD Litonjua

Isaac Pinto

This article explores what Critical Race Theory (CRT) is, its similarities, distinctions and compatibility with the Gospel in cautioning Baptist churches in South Africa. CRT is a growing ideology in addressing the issue of 'racism', while its popularity has grown, we have a need to evaluate the concepts of CRT according to the Scriptures in order to discern whether, such concepts should be used or implemented in Baptist churches. We explore whether CRT is dangerous for the church. Upon our findings we provide some practical to churches in how they should be aware regarding dealing with CRT.

Eric L . Johnson

Critical thought considers ways in which humans are unaware of some of their beliefs, values, and motives. Christianity is a religion which is permeated by a critical sensibility. The origins of this orientation are found in Scripture. However, Christian critical thought did not clearly emerge in the Christian tradition until the work of Søren Kierkegaard. More recent developments are also discussed.

Theory in a Time of Excess

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Special book review: Biblical Critical Theory

By Revd Dr Richard Turnbull

Christopher Watkin’s aim is to analyse and critique our contemporary culture through the lens of the Bible. He seeks to set out a Christian social and cultural theory based in theology and Scripture to help us understand and relate to the world in which we live. A laudable objective indeed, as shown in the sub-title, ‘How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture’, and a welcome endeavour to deal with an important topic.

The book consists of 28 chapters set out over more than 600 pages and 114 figures or illustrations covering a wide range of theological themes and biblical overview. Dr Watkin, who is not a theologian, admits that he is not saying anything radically new. He takes an expansive overview of the subject matter and quotes from a range of diverse authors across various disciplines, although the choice does not always seem entirely relevant.

While the aim is admirable, it is not achieved. Rather, there is a good deal of fog and lack of clarity. The title is problematic and so too is much of the content. Perhaps most problematic of all is what is excluded.

Critical theory, which originated in the ‘Frankfurt School’ (a school of critical theory, philosophy, and social thought deriving mainly from the 1920s) is primarily an approach to action ( praxis) rather than dogma or belief. The aim is to pursue certain outcomes – for example, equality or social justice . The late sociologist, Professor Christie Davies, always used to point out that the insertion of the word ‘social’ before a noun tended to reverse the actual meaning of the noun itself.

We see the impact of critical theory today in the current contemporary challenges around gender, racial issues, and approaches to history. We must overthrow the existing structures which prop up unjust systems of power or economics, rewrite partial and discriminatory histories, and so we end up with critical race theory, critical gender theory, and so on.

Critical theory or theories seek to overturn biblical norms for the family, for work and the economy, for justice, history, and gender, to name but a few. To equip us to respond, we need biblical clarity. But this book does not provide it.

Watkin develops an idea which he calls ‘diagonalization’ (is that even a word?). He argues (p.15): ‘Given a choice between two camps or positions in our culture, the Bible frequently settles for neither and presents us with something richer than both, a subtler solution that neither position has the resources to imagine.’

Consequently (p.17), ‘diagonalization presents a biblical picture in which the best aspirations of both options are fulfilled, but not in a way that the proponents of those options would see coming.’

Forgive me if I see this as simplistic, illustrative of the often superficial discussion of the actual issues Christians face today. Extreme dichotomies are presented. For example, immersion in the culture or separation from the culture? And diagonalization tells us we are ‘in but not of’. There are over a hundred such simplistic diagrams, which I found irritating rather than helpful.

Indeed, one consequence of all of this is little or no discussion of the actual cultural issues facing Christians. This derives from two structural weaknesses in the book.

First, there is a failure to properly discuss the creation mandates and the place of the moral law in society. One would expect to see both of these foundational points in any biblical social or cultural theory.

The first chapters of Genesis are authoritative and decisive for all humanity for all time. Yet the book lacks a proper discussion of the principle of a creation mandate. There is some helpful discussion around the Sabbath, but no attempt to place that into a context built on the creation principles.

One would expect something about creation mandates in general and then a discussion around particular examples and how we apply these today – dignity and life, work and wealth creation, marriage and gender, family, property rights, and so on. How is it even possible to discuss creation without discussing the creation mandate for marriage?

Perhaps it is this failure to consider creation mandates which explains the author’s intense criticism of the market economy which is spread throughout the book? The material on economics, markets, and taxation is shallow and insufficiently grounded in a proper understanding of God’s created order.

The so-called diagonalization on tax is between paying taxes and refusing to pay tax, a simply bizarre dichotomy. Perhaps there could have been a discussion as to why the Bible has no examples of progressive income taxes, only flat rates, but I suppose it would not fit the narrative.

Second, one would look for some discussion around the continuing place, or otherwise, of the moral law in society. We got emancipation and liberation theologies (old hat, I am afraid), but nothing on the manner or extent to which God’s moral law continues to apply to society. Does the moral law matter, or not? Does it matter today, or not? None of this was discussed in what was supposed to be a book on biblical engagement with culture.

Where is the debate around values, marriage, abortion, dignity, enterprise, work, crime, the nation state, the role of government, the voluntary principle? This type of discussion from a biblical perspective (and yes, wider than the traditional personal moral issues) would be genuinely beneficial.

One final point is that C. S. Lewis is often quoted; but he would be aghast at the content. Lewis viewed family, marriage, life, and liberty at the heart of what God has provided for us – the natural law, or the Tao as he referred to it sometimes. Biblical Christians see that reflected in the moral law of Scripture and its continued relevance for us today. Lewis was also concerned for economic and educational independence and highly resistant to an overpowerful state.

I am not convinced I am much the wiser after wading through over 600 pages. In reality I don’t expect many people will get that far. The book would be much improved at half the length.

Christians need help in engaging with the culture around us, clarity over the principles involved, the dangers faced, and the stands to take. We need high quality reflection on biblical and theological foundations, as well as the inspiration of examples from history. We need concise, coherent, and clear expositions and reflections to guide us. Perhaps try Sharon James’s The Lies we are Told, The Truth we must Hold ?

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Revd Dr Richard Turnbull is Director of the Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics, a trustee of The Christian Institute, and visiting professor at St Mary’s University, Twickenham.

This article first appeared in Evangelical Times and is reproduced here with permission.

Theology and Its Role in Indian Christian Thinking

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Did the Biblical Flood Really Happen? An Interview with Dan Biddle, Executive Producer of The Ark and the Darkness Thinking Christian: Clear Theology for a Confusing World

Christianity

In this episode, James speaks with Dan Biddle, executive producer of The Ark and the Darkness. In addition to discussing the new film, James and Dan consider some of the evidence presented in the film and the plausibility of the biblical account of the worldwide flood. For more on The Ark and the Darkness click here. You can also find out more about Dan's minisry at Genesis Apologetics. Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

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It was a pleasure to welcome Shayna Rattler from A God Shift to Thinking Christian. Shayna talks about the trajectory her ministry is taking and how every Christian needs to be listening to and following Christ. She also talks about her ministry with Christian women. Find out more about Shayna here.
‎Thinking Christian: Clear Theology for a Confusing World: How Should
A Reflection on Easter and the Transgender Day of Visibility Thinking Christian: Clear Theology for a Confusing World Christianity In this episode, James discusses the convergence of Easter and the Transgender Day of Visibility that occured this March 31st. After clearing some ground about the Bible's teachings about our misdirected desires and ...
‎Thinking Christian: Clear Theology for a Confusing World: Did the
An Interview with Dan Biddle, Executive Producer of The Ark and the Darkness Thinking Christian: Clear Theology for a Confusing World Christianity In this episode, James speaks with Dan Biddle, executive producer of The Ark and the Darkness. In addition to discussing the new film, James and Dan consider some of the evidence presented in the ...