T&T Clark Handbook of Analytic Theology

James M. Arcadi, James T. Turner, James M. Arcadi, James T. Turner

• Éditeur: T&T Clark
• Année: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780567681331
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Theology & Religion
• Sous-sujet: Theology

This handbook provides theological and philosophical resources that demonstrate analytic theology's unique contribution to the task of theology. Analytic theology is a recent movement at the nexus of theology, biblical studies, and philosophy that marshals resources from the analytic philosophical tradition for constructive theological work. Paying attention to the Christian tradition, the development of doctrine, and solid biblical studies, analytic theology prizes clarity, brevity, and logical rigour in its exposition of Christian teaching. Each contribution in this volume offers an overview of specific doctrinal and dogmatic issues within the Christian tradition and provides a constructive conceptual model for making sense of the doctrine. Additionally, an extensive bibliography serves as a valuable resource for researchers wishing to address issues in theology from an analytic perspective.

PART I

Methods and Sources

CHAPTER ONE

The Importance of Model Building in Theology

OLIVER D. CRISP

Analytic theologians have become known for their use of theological model building.¹ There are other modern nonanalytic theologians who use the language of models, for example, the constructive feminist theologian Sally McFague (1982), or, in the religion and science literature, Ian Barbour (1997). Yet it is true to say that one important way in which analytic theologians have approached the constructive task of theology involves setting forth particular models for given doctrines as a way of “picturing” the view clearly so that it may then be subjected to criticism. But what is meant by a theological model in the analytic literature, and why should we think that models are an appropriate way to think about going about the task of setting out constructive versions of a given doctrine?

This chapter addresses these questions in the following way. In the first section, I give some account of what I mean by a model in this context, drawing on some of the recent literature in philosophy and analytic theology. Armed with this information, the second section focuses on the different sorts of models used in theology. These include instrumentalist, anti-realist, realist, and arealist accounts. The third section briefly considers two case studies of models in analytic theology: the Trinity and the incarnation. Finally, the conclusion draws together the different threads of the foregoing and offers some reflection on how this analytic penchant for model building may be of use to systematic and constructive theology more broadly.

I. MODELS

In this chapter I am particularly concerned with conceptual models, though of course there are physical models as well (a point to which we shall return shortly). So we may begin by distinguishing between a model as a kind of conceptual structure or framework for understanding a particular thing and its target phenomena.

As an initial pass at giving a rough and ready account of what models are—one that is relevant to the theological task—we might say that they are simplified conceptual frameworks or descriptions by means of which complex sets of data, systems, and processes may be organized and understood. Call this rough and ready account MODEL.² On the basis of MODEL, we might then describe some of the most important characteristics such models possess. They are representational, analogous, hermeneutical in nature, have a certain fidelity to aspects of the thing they represent, and take different forms. Let us consider each of these characteristics in turn. Often models are used to represent some aspect of another thing, simplifying a more complex entity or system in such a way that the model is a kind of analog to the phenomena it represents, being both like and unlike it.³ Consider the example of a model aircraft made of wood. It has a shape that is recognizably that of an airplane. We see it and immediately think of it in terms of the thing the wood models: an aircraft. However, we do so knowing that it is also significantly unlike a real aircraft, not just in scale but also in many other respects (e.g., it is made of solid wood, does not fly, has no moving parts, etc.).

There is an important sense in which the manner in which models represent a given thing is a hermeneutical decision made by those formulating the model. We must understand how the model in question is being used to represent the phenomena of which it is a simpler description in order to grasp in what way it is a model and what phenomena it is modeling. This is sometimes referred to as the fidelity of the model to the thing represented. For instance, if the model aircraft is a child’s toy, we know that its role dictates what aspects of a real aircraft it models. It looks like an airplane, having a fuselage, wings, and a tailplane. But the likeness is limited to certain superficial physical characteristics because it is a toy, not, say, a working scale model of an aircraft (so it has no engine, is incapable of flight, etc.). This is a point that has been made elsewhere in the recent philosophical and theological literature.⁴

But models need not be of concrete items in the world around us. We can also model imaginary things, like a model of the Millennium Falcon. The model itself does not need to be some physical artifact either. It can be conceptual, like the model of an atom in a physics textbook or a mathematical model like a graph of an asymptote. It may be an idealized picture of some phenomena such as a frictionless plane, or it may be a toy model, like the toy airplane—one that is simplified, limiting fidelity to certain stripped-down aspects of the phenomena in view. Thus, models have different forms or can be expressed in different ways, whether physical, conceptual, fictional, ideal, or some combination thereof.

Second, and more briefly, a word about the target of a particular model. The target is the particular phenomena or thing that the model is supposed to help clarify. So, in the case of, say, the scale model of a car that is used to test aerodynamics in a wind tunnel for a proposed new model vehicle, the car is the model, and the proposed new vehicle is the target.

The hermeneutical function of models, and the fact that the model and target phenomena can both be real or imaginary, is not formally expressed by MODEL but is commensurate with it. In fact, MODEL is a fairly conceptually “thin” description, and deliberately so. It is consistent with a range of different views about the nature and purpose of models as these things have been understood in recent theology. For theologians have rather different accounts of the sort of things models are (where they are willing to countenance such conceptual structures) and what the target of such models should be.

II. THEOLOGICAL MODELS

It might seem obvious that theologians should adopt the language of models that has been so successful in the natural sciences. But not everyone sees things that way. Some theologians are hostile to what they regard as a kind of Trojan horse—bringing in ways of thinking alien to theology, or that may somehow assimilate theology to a kind of philosophical project—perhaps even a kind of rationalism. (Some, motivated by Barthian concerns about the shape and place of theology, might have this worry.) Others think that the purpose of theological statements is distorted or mischaracterized if we adopt the language of models. (Here I have in mind theologians who think that theology is primarily concerned with producing a coherent grammar for Christian praxis, which is a view often associated with postliberalism. On this view, models might be thought of as a distortion of theology—a kind of category mistake, if you will.) Still others may be concerned that models simply fail as conceptual tools in theology because the target of theological statements, namely, the Deity, is not accessible to human ratiocination in a way that would be necessary for us to be able to construct a model. (For instance, one might think that God is not a being that can be modeled by creatures, or that we know too little about the divine nature to model it, or that model-making is a kind of incipient idolatry because all it can hope to achieve is the formation of a kind of golem, rather than a verisimilitude of the divine. Theologians who are drawn to strong versions of apophatic theology might think something like this.)

There are various reasons for these worries. One might be to do with the cognitive function of models in relation to their targets, which is an epistemic concern.⁵ Here the objection might be: What do models in theology actually deliver? What help can they provide us in making theological statements? What is their cognitive value? And does the cognitive value of the model track some value in the target? (In other words, is the cognitive value we ascribe to the model a value to be found in the target as well, or only in the model?) Another concern might have to do with the ontological status of the model in relation to its target. Then the worry might be: What do we think our models commit us to (if anything), theologically speaking? Do they actually map onto reality in some way so that we may track things about the divine, or do they have a merely instrumental value? Perhaps they are fictions of a sort along the lines of fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes and the worlds they inhabit. Here, too, we can distinguish between the ontological commitments entailed by the model and the extent to which these ontological commitments track some property of the target. For instance, suppose I favor a social model of the Trinity that entails that in God there are three centers of consciousness and will. Does this imply that there really are three centers of consciousness and will in God’s nature, which is the target of this model? Is the relation of the model to the target isomorphic in this respect or is the model merely a kind of approximation to its target in this respect and therefore does not require strict fidelity?⁶

With these semantic, cognitive, and ontological concerns in mind, let us consider three broad theological approaches to models construed along the lines of MODEL, finessed with the comments we have culled from Weisberg (2013) concerning the interpretive aspect of models and the fact that they may target real or imagined phenomena. The three principle ontological commitments in this context are: instrumentalism, anti-realism, and realism. These I take to be broad categories that include a range of different possible options. They may not be the only logically possible options. But they do represent what I take to be some of the most important live options (to borrow William James’s famous phrase) that are the subject of theological discussion and that are relevant to analytic theologians.

To begin, let us consider the prospect of adopting MODEL along with an instrumental view of theological statements. On an instrumental view, as with instrumentalism in the philosophy of science, one is not committed to the reality of the entities posited in the model. It is merely a useful way of conceiving the matter that has a certain instrumental value—that is, as a means to some further end, such as the construction of a coherent grammar by means of which churches and Christians may govern their liturgies and praxis. Such instrumentalism may be anti-realist in nature. That is, it may bottom out as a way of thinking about models that does not commit the theologian to the existence of the target entities posited in the model. For, according to theological anti-realism, such entities do not actually refer to anything that is mind-independent.⁷ On one way of reading her work, this appears to be how McFague thinks about models. They are, on her view, extended metaphors. But they are metaphors all the way down, so to speak.⁸ Of course, one can have a realist account of metaphors. But often in theological discourse the use of metaphorical language has been opposed to realist language (and that is often how it seems McFague uses such language). Those who think of models in instrumentalist terms may take this way of thinking in an anti-realist direction. Then, the entities posited in the model are literally constituents of a mental world built by the theologian. Gordon Kaufman is one recent theologian who seems to think that such imaginative ways of thinking about doctrine are the right way to conceive of the theological task and of model building in theology. He writes,

Theologians should attempt to construct conceptions of God, humanity, and the world appropriate for the orientation of contemporary human life. As we have been observing, these notions are (and always have been) human creations, human imaginative constructions; they are our ideas, not God’s. What is needed in each new generation is an understanding of God adequate for and appropriate to human life in the world within which it finds ...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Dedication Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I Methods and Sources
• PART II Doctrine of God
• PART III Person and Work of Christ
• PART IV Pneumatology
• PART V Creation and Humans
• PART VI Experiences and Practices
• A Comprehensive Categorized Bibliography of Analytic Theology
• Contributors
• Index
• Copyright Page