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. 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?
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.
Narrowness of Scope?
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.Inappropriate Methods?
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).
Responses to the Worry that APR is “Too Theological”
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.
Or Not Theological Enough? Theological Critiques of Analytic Philosophy of Religion
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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