On Why Analytic Theology Is Not a Club

Abstract

THE ARTICLES IN THIS ROUNDTABLE have already touched on many of the salient and distinctive features of the Analytic Theology project, including some of the more controversial dimensions of the co-editors' introductory accounts of its intentions. In the brief comments that follow, I am first and foremost concerned to stress that my own commitment to the Analytic Theology agenda is born of a deep desire to keep creative and mutually infective communication open between different parties in contemporary philosophy of religion. I am myself (in some contrast, perhaps, to our wonderfully energetic and doughty editors1) rather uninterested in announcing any particular polemical manifesto associated with Analytic Theology, or in declaring hard and fast entrance requirements for belonging to a “club” of this name. Indeed, if Analytic Theology were to turn into a club, then I, for one would want to flee the scene at speed—not least because I suspect that it might be one for Men Only, or to have irksome things like Annual Dues. (And anyway, and contrariwise, as Groucho Marx is supposed once to have declared: “Who would want to belong to a club that had me as a member?” Quite.) But the fact is that, on my rendition at least, Analytic Theology is mercifully no such club, never has been, and should strenuously avoid becoming such in the future if it is to foster its own emerging fruitfulness. I now try to explain why I think this is so.