What is most likely to draw attention to the two volumes of the Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology is that they have ‘philosophical theology’ in the title. Philosophy of religion anthologies abound, but philosophical theology anthologies are much less common, and so these two volumes seem to promise something new.
Of course, it matters a great deal what is meant by ‘philosophical theology’. Given the content of the recent Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, which generated controversy by being to all intents and purposes a handbook of the philosophy of religion, it also matters how publishers understand the term. The discipline of the philosophy of religion has fairly clear boundaries, not least because of the curricula of standard undergraduate courses in the subject. This is much less true in the case of philosophical theology.
In terms of the philosophy/theology distinction, philosophy of religion would seem to be on the philosophy side of the distinction, but addresses the sorts of questions that arise in theology and religious practice. Similarly, it would seem that philosophical theology is theology with ‘philosophical’ as an adjective, and therefore on the theology side of the distinction. Since the distinction between philosophy and theology is itself not sharp, it would be unreasonable to expect a sharp distinction between philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. This does not, however, mean that the distinction is invalid or without use. The Thomist distinction between sacra doctrina and philosophia is one obvious starting point. In the post-Enlightenment context of the Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology, the distinction proposed by Paul Tillich in the introduction to his Systematic Theology may be more typical of current understandings. Tillich admits that although philosophy and theology both address the question of being, there are important differences. Philosophers aim for a detached, objective perspective towards being and its structures, whereas the theologian is not detached, but involved. Likewise, the pure philosopher looks at reality as a whole, whereas the theologian must look where that which concerns him ultimately manifests itself, and must place himself where the manifestation touches him most deeply.
The point being made here is not to advocate Tillich's account, but to register that the philosophy/theology distinction, and likewise the philosophy of religion/philosophical theology distinction, is not one that ought to be dispensed with. In practice the distinction is serviceable and used without much difficulty, even if it is difficult to give a precise account of it. For example, Richard Swinburne and Alvin Plantinga are generally described as philosophers of religion, with their work centred around philosophical method (as in analytic philosophy) and focusing on issues as such logical consistency; whereas Donald MacKinnon and Nicholas Lash are generally thought of as philosophical theologians, employing philosophical method as one tool among others, but also giving centrality to other approaches such as scriptural exegesis and the history of doctrine. Even so, it has to be admitted that the meaning of ‘philosophical theology’ has been slipping. Since the 1980s philosophical theology has increasingly come to refer to applying philosophical method to particular explicitly theological questions, such as the Resurrection, the Incarnation and the Trinity, very often with theology supplying the question but with philosophical method showing the way forward. As recent publications clearly show, the shift towards philosophy has continued, to incorporate topics more typical of the philosophy of religion: divine attributes, providence, the problem of evil and arguments for the existence of God.
In this context the subject matter of the Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology comes somewhere between philosophical theology as generally understood since the 1980s and the philosophy of religion. The editor of the two volumes, Michael Rea, is also one of the editors of the Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology (the other being Thomas P. Flint). From the subtitles of the two volumes one might get the impression that the theological is in the ascendant. The readings are on the subjects of Trinity, Incarnation and Atonement (Volume I) and Providence, Scripture and Resurrection (Volume II). An inspection of the contributors and contributions, however, would undermine such assurance. To take issue with these volumes for being mainly on philosophy of religion is not merely to object that the titles are misleading. It is also to object to the undermining of a useful distinction. How publishers use terms is bound to influence how they will be understood in the future. Also lamentable is that an opportunity has been lost. General collections of essays of philosophical theology aimed at the non-specialist are all too few.
It is therefore ironic that the issues raised by the philosophy/theology distinction are relevant to evaluating many of the articles. The problem is that in philosophy of religion one often finds comparatively little awareness of the hermeneutics of theological discourse and the specific nature of religious language. Take, for example, the essay by Jeffrey E. Brower and Michael C. Rea, ‘Material Constitution and the Trinity’, where they write about ‘The problem of the Trinity’ and their ‘solution’ of the problem. Since Brower and Rea cite the Athanasian Creed as a paradigm of Trinitarian orthodoxy, and see themselves as following in the footsteps of the authors of the creed, this suggests that they see the creed as putting forward a problem, even if it does not give a solution to it. The impression might be given by Brower and Rea that Trinitarian discourse aims at the descriptive and, ideally, also at the explanatory. However, it is highly arguable that Trinitarian doctrine emerged less from a desire to solve intellectual puzzles, than to establish demarcations between what can legitimately be said about God and what cannot. For theologians of the past there was greater emphasis on the expressive aspect of language, having a theological grammar of the Trinity, so that talk about the Trinity in theology and in worship might not collapse into the meaningless or the contradictory.
In albeit simplistic terms, the former tends towards intellectual resolution, whereas the latter tends towards establishing the pre-conditions for talk about the Trinity and invoking the Trinity in prayer. While Brower and Rea present a highly ingenious and illuminating way of making sense of the Trinitarian paradox of three-in-one, earlier theologians tended to have a more dynamic approach, emphasising a plurality of models, thereby suggesting that to think of the mystery as a problem to be solved is to risk committing a category error.
These concerns, however, are not to suggest that the quality of the contributions in the Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology are anything less than excellent. That this review focuses on wider issues and not individual essays attests to their well-established authority as leading articles in their fields of recent years. Nor are the concerns expressed in this review meant to suggest that all the papers suffer from a lack of appreciation of theological hermeneutics. The contributions of Richard Cross on the Trinity and on the Atonement evince considerable historical sensitivity. Surprisingly, perhaps, and unlike almost all the other papers in the two volumes, there are contributions that could conceivably feature in anthologies of New Testament scriptural theology, such as Craig A. Evan's paper on Jesus’ self-designation: ‘The Son of Man’, Albert C. Sundberg's paper on scriptural canonicity and inspiration, and Stephen T. Davis on whether Jesus was ‘mad, bad or God’.
Nor are the concerns raised in this review put forward in order to question the value of what the authors of the articles in the Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology are doing, but to clarify some of the working assumptions employed in the majority of these articles and how they use and understand the theological tradition. The issue is not so much the methods used, but the lack of appreciation of the theological process, shown in particular by the lack of awareness of hermeneutical complexities in using theological texts as sources for their arguments. In this they risk propagating to students using these anthologies the same lack of awareness. But regardless of sensitivity to the hermeneutics of theological discourse, at the very least, the use of philosophical method can help shed light on the nature of the claims being made in theology. Peter Van Inwagen's superb paper on resurrection, where he argues to the admittedly highly odd conclusion that bodily resurrection can only be explained by God replacing each body at the point of death with a simulacrum and then storing the body somewhere until the general Resurrection, has the merit of highlighting the difficulties in applying our criteria of personal identity across the boundary of life and death. Similarly, the contribution of Brian Leftow, where he argues that the persons of the Trinity may be thought of by analogy to a time traveller who appears three times at a single time, despite what may be his aims, made less of an impression on this reader as a ‘solution’, than as masterfully highlighting the depth of a central Christian mystery that demands the engagement of our minds as well as our hearts.
Given the concerns raised, it is unfortunate, but not surprising, that the two volumes include no papers that deal explicitly with the issue of theological language and theological hermeneutics. That a set of statements within the context of theological discourse can be extracted to become the premises in seemingly invalid syllogisms that then need to be solved can take place with barely any registering that there may be other difficulties in this is intellectually concerning. That this is so widespread within the philosophy of religion, and now within what is presented as philosophical theology, is highly problematic. In contributing to the shift of meaning of the term ‘philosophical theology’, these two volumes bring to our attention an issue that has been commented on in other reviews, and may perhaps help kickstart a much needed debate on the relationship of philosophy and theology in the future.
