Analytic Theology

In recent years a number of new approaches to theology have emerged. In 2009 a major international symposium was published by Oxford University Press entitled Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology. In it, the editors and contributors set out the prospect of analytic theology — very roughly, a method of doing theology utilising the tools of analytic philosophy. In one sense, this is not new. Analytic philosophers have been doing philosophical theology for at least twenty years. But theologians have been slow to draw on the potential benefits an analytic approach to theology promises. The book is an attempt to stimulate theologians to consider this approach as a theological, rather than philosophical, project. This paper sets out some of the potential benefits of analytic theology. My aim is to give the reader a sense of what analytic theology entails; and to commend analytic theology as a theological method.