Worry and Analytic Theology

3.1 Option 1: Worrywarts, Dolphins, and Quick Stop

One possibility that explains the pattern of worry among analytics is that they are mostly a bunch of worrywarts. Seriously. This possibility cannot simply be dismissed out of hand, however effrontery it may sound. Maybe analytics gravitate to and loiter over worries of one sort or another as a matter of instinctual fear. Maybe they are like Debbie Downer, the famous Saturday Night Live character who parodied the happiest of circumstances with her constant commentary on this or that misfortune (i.e. worries). Or maybe analytic theologians are more like Flipper, the spritely dolphin from the 1960s sitcom who didn’t so much go looking for trouble but was nevertheless always the first to find it and subsequently tell everyone where it was. Maybe that’s how analytics come by all this worry: natural, dolphin-like curiosity. Or perhaps analytics are more like Silent Bob from the 1994 film Clerks whose role was cast (alongside the disgusting character, Jay) as one of a duo of do-nothings and go-nowheres that spent their time protecting their “spot” in front of the Quick Stop. Is this the analytic theologian – occupying a particular “spot” with nothing better to do than call attention to worries that most theological passers-by don’t know or perhaps even care are there?

However possible these depictions of the character of worry might be, such comparisons aren’t all that kind to those who call themselves analytic theologians. To be sure, several of my analytic referees/friends were none too happy with even the satirical possibility of being labelled do-nothings and go-nowheres or anything besides. Such should remember that in this article we are thinking through and eliminating candidate options, and well, this first one is worth considering even if it means getting that option off the table; a very respectable analytic sort of move, I’d say. Sarcasm aside, these pop culture proposals, while ridiculous in one sense, are nevertheless live options on the extreme edge of a worry continuum. There are probably analytics out there somewhere who, both in personality and in practice, are simply, perpetually worried like Debbie Downer. Some may be overly excitable about locating worries, like Flipper. Some may even be do-nothings and go-nowheres like Silent Bob. Honestly, I can’t say that I know analytics like this, personally. Hence, it behoves me to move a little bit further down the continuum of worry and consider other options.

Before I don’t, it’s worth mentioning, to my great surprise, that yet another referee (an analytic philosopher, if you must know) confirmed the aptness of these comparisons, confessing that many analytics are, in fact, quite worried and too self-important to admit it. (I still can’t believe a referee would tell me that!) And this worry, so it was suggested, has a direct bearing on the argumentative posture of many analytics. You see, there’s nothing so worry-inducing as being (argumentatively) laid bare by an analytic (philosopher or theologian alike) for “missing it.” This motivates fellow analytics (philosophers or theologians alike) to quickly and torturously “head off” arguments “at the pass” because they are fretful to be seen as committed to something that has “bad” implications. Accordingly, it seems that analytics, maybe more than any other academic, are worried about being laid bare before their fellow analytics. The evidence for this is, perhaps, their continual efforts to point out enough worries of their own that they themselves aren’t caught for “missing it.” It’s a dog-eat-dog world among analytics sometimes. And with that, let’s consider the next option.

3.2 Option 2: Analytic Missions, Methodology-Consciousness, and Owning Worries

Perhaps analytic worry has more of an evangelistic cultural character than a pop culture one. I’ve already suggested that analytics treat worry as a kind of virtue. So, maybe we should think of them as missionaries, carrying the good news of rigor and clarity to those far-flung countries of Biblical Studies, Systematic Theology, and even to the People’s Republic of Continental Theology. Educating these “natives” about the heinousness of their lack of clarity by appeals to “worry,” they offer, as a solvent, the good news of analytic theology, inducing them to be baptized, so to speak, into the enlightened AT tribe. Every salesman knows that fear (i.e. worry) sells. What a better way to convert souls to AT than to sell them worrying about everything, right? Kind of like how the contemporary Southern Baptist Missionary culture perceives itself as history’s greatest torchbearers for Christ’s command to go to the nations with the gospel (Matthew 28), the AT-as-missionary option helps explain, at least in part, the “I’m doing real theological work,” self-concept that’s in the minds of many (especially evangelicals) who identify themselves with AT. This self-concept is what I refer to as AT’s “methodology-consciousness.”

AT’s methodology-consciousness is, I think, a by-product of what Wood says is a difference between doing theology “appropriately” or not.^[14] That is, it’s a kind of self-assured ethos of intellectual freedom that’s marked by a distinctive – albeit still largely illusive – set of AT-specific assumptions: assumptions with the perceived power to topple entire systems of thought.^[15] What I call “methodology-consciousness” is, I think, what Westerholm rightly says – commenting on Bentley Hart’s critique of AT – is “the illusion that [AT] has purged itself of unexamined presuppositions.”^[16] It is this methodology-consciousness which most defines and, what is more, impels the labours of analytics-as-missionary.

AT’s methodology-consciousness admits of (no less than) two kinds of worries: owned worries and unowned worries. Owned worries up the social stakes among analytics because there may be a genuine disagreement with premises, conclusions, or entailments. Owned worries are borderline “objections” or “critiques,” or even “disagreements.” Unowned worries – what some analytics call “potential worries” – have much lower social stakes, but are more popularly employed, particularly amid analytic-missionary labours. This is because the unowned worry is far more nebulous and therefore more effective when it comes to missionary soul-winning for AT.

It’s worth mentioning that the unowned worry makes it additionally difficult to determine whether the analytic theologian is speaking on his own behalf or the behalf of others. Accordingly, worry may actually be a demographic feature of Millennial or Gen-Z academics that want to deflate, so to speak, any and all potential for social disagreement. We are in a rather bizarre cultural context where a person’s ideas cannot be separated from their person or character. In other words, you are your idea. Under these conditions, it should be no surprise that even analytics might try to cover their hide by unowning their worries by distancing them from their intellectual convictions. After all, voicing a “potential worry” keeps people from being triggered by others if turns out to defeat your argument.

As the social stakes are different, so also is labour difference between owned and unowned worries unequal (and a bit unfair). When someone owns a worry, they are obliged to give several reasons to change their mind on one facet of an argument – a one-to-one exchange. But when someone drags out an unowned worry, then the conversation becomes a kind of one-to-one-to-who exchange. Wrestling with actual objections and not mere worries, Aquinas is a great example to help make this point.

The Summa is crowded with objections to Aquinas’ own position. But we cannot really expect him to have found the hundreds (perhaps thousands?) of objections to be equally pervasive or potent. That is why very few of these objections are unowned. The vast majority of objections that Aquinas contends with are owned by name and citation by a patristic, medieval, or Islamic thinker with whom Aquinas can have a direct one-to-one interaction. Now, swap out objections for worries and imagine an article of the Summa saying: “A potential worry about proving the existence of God is that some people think that the concept of God need not include necessary existence.” This is far too nebulous. For, which part would Aquinas take aim at? Is it an actual argument or is it a mere hunch or intuition (more in a moment)? Doubtless, one of the principal reasons why Aquinas is referred to as the “Angelic Doctor” is because he relentlessly lays out argument after argument in the major premise, minor premise, and conclusion form – one objection, one argument, one reply. With the rare exception, each of these arguments is owned.

By contrast, an owned worry might prompt a similarly direct response – one objection, one argument, one reply – but because the stakes of an owned worry are not as high as an actual objection, the AT response to that worry rises, generally, only to the level of one supplying readers with several explanatory possibilia.^[17] The stakes of an unowned worry are even lower. This is because an unowned worry is far hazier – a one-to-one-to-who exchange. For a helpful example of how unowned worries appear, Tom McCall’s otherwise fascinating and well-researched article, “Crucified with Christ: The Ego and the Omega,” offers up a good one.^[18] I am not picking on McCall. I’ve merely selected his piece to exemplify what I am talking about because he actually explains what he is doing with his worry.

McCall’s article admits of a total of fifteen appearances of the worry, eight of which refer specifically to what he calls the “‘too many persons’ worry.” He says, “I have presented the ‘too many persons’ worry as just that – a worry. I do not serve this up as a fatal objection or as a charge of heresy. But it is a worry that should, I think, really concern the proponents of [Radical Apocalyptic interpretations of Galatians 2:19-20] who might be attracted to the [Theory of final assumptions].”^[19] Do you see the one-to-one-to-who exchange that’s going on here? McCall’s differentiation of worries from objections lowers the stakes similar to the hypothetical conferee from earlier in the article who points out that claims E, F, and G are worries if you head down the A + B = C road. This is what I mean by an unowned worry.

So, if AT soul-winning and missionary labour is your aim, then unowned worries are more likely your game. The continuum of worry doesn’t stop here. So, let’s consider a third option.

3.3 Option 3: The New Straw Man Argument

Rather than a missionary modus operandi, it’s entirely possible, and I’m prone to think even more likely as far as options go, that analytic worry is a new kind of straw man argument. Maybe you’re doing analytic theology if you are 1) locating – even fabricating (i.e. making one up) in some cases – a worry of one sort or another, no matter how esoteric, and 2) “discovering” a sophisticated or clever way to knock it down or get around it with resources that you’ve dredged up from depths of the analytic philosophical tradition. Whether it’s locating or fabricating, this often amounts to little more than rebranding some version of a historic objection/problem as a worry and proposing some philosophical-theological gymnastics that at best “‘move’ us in the direction of accepting certain propositions without taking us all the way to acceptance.”^[20]

Propping up a straw man so that it can knocked down isn’t the most charitable account of what analytic activities look like, I admit. But I may not be altogether off base here, not least if you understand how worry is used by first- and second-generation analytics.^[21] In a consciously oversimplified way of understanding the historical significance of the early-twentieth-century American Fundamentalist movement, consider that the first generation of American fundamentalists was largely caught up in trying to answer the simple question: “what is fundamental (i.e. to the orthodox evangelical Christian faith)?” When the second generation of fundamentalists came along – here’s the oversimplified bit – they grew less interested in the question, “what is fundamental?” and more preoccupied, so it appears, with answering the question: “how do I become a fundamentalist?”^[22] Do you see the parallel?

I think some second- and maybe third-generation analytics seem to be more concerned with becoming an analytic theologian than they are concerned with efforts to ply the analytic tradecraft (whatever that is) for its own sake. Thus, worry looks like the second-generation’s way to identify the first-generation who has the intellectual chops sufficient to be admitted into the analytic guild. While I don’t think it’s worth speculating who in the guild might be doing this, it’s not impossible to imagine that some second-generation (and some third-generation) analytics got their start with the thought that the secret sauce recipe for whipping up some analytic theology consists of a teaspoon of clarity, a tablespoon rigor, two cups of worry, and a pinch of creativity. Mix all these up into five to seven thousand words, bake it in the “appropriate”^[23] journal, and poof, you’re an analytic theologian!

I am altogether conscious that this option will likely raise the blood pressure of some readers. Certainly, no analytic reader will be too thrilled by it. And yet, as far as options go, my gut tells me that this might be an explanatory step in the right direction. My gut-check, however, has me asking another pair of questions about this option, namely, why do first-generation analytics use worry with a degree thrift and what else besides acceptance into the guild might explain the upsurge in worry usage among second-generation analytics?

One way to explain how first-generation analytics use worries is to think of worries as low-fat objections. (Strange, I know. But keep following.) Another way to describe an owned worry, low-fat objections are meant to cause less mental discomfort and are easier to digest for those with weaker theological constitutions. Second-generation analytics know almost intuitively that if they want to supercharge the relevance of their argument, low-fat objections are the way to go. Low-fat objections are, for the second generation, a first principle, only, they’ve since changed up the recipe a bit, opting more often for the unowned worry or the no-fat objection.

At some point, I think that low-fat objections were seen as a kind of limiting factor for more creative endeavours. That is, they were seen as simply too objective to be even potentially recognized by what used to be called an objection. No-fat objections are a kind of no-more-guilt, radically subjective kind of unowned worry. They certainly have more existential gravitas than low-fat objections do.

A no-fat worry is like imagining that somebody, somewhere, might one day resist this or that esoteric notion that you do currently, no matter how singular or whimsical it may be. That is, it’s a radically subjective – dare I say imagined – kind of problem that might one day amount to something more significant than it does to you, today. That, and in the end, because it matters to you – the second-generation analytic theologian – and because it matters now, it might well matter to someone else, one day, in the future.

The idea that radical subjectivity might be one of the only guides for doing analytic theology in the recent past (and present) tells me how it might well be done in the future. This New Straw Man Argument option does well to exemplify the idea of what it looks like for analytic theologians to be “drifting further and further into constructed abstraction.” The fourth explanatory option for worry is even better.

3.4 Option 4: Worry and Intuitions

David Lewis says, “our ‘intuitions’ are simply opinions; our philosophical theories are the same. Some are commonsensical, some are sophisticated; some are particular, some general; some are more firmly held, some less. But they are all opinions.”^[24] So, maybe analytic worries are simply the expression of weak intuitions; mere opinions.^[25] This makes pretty good sense as far as options that explain analytic worries go. It certainly makes sense of things like thought experiments as “intuitions pumps,” which analytic philosophers talk so much about. It makes even more sense in light of van Inwagen’s description of intuitions as “tendencies that make certain beliefs attractive to us, that ‘move’ us in the direction of accepting certain propositions without taking us all the way to acceptance.”^[26] I say that van Inwagen’s account of intuitions makes even more sense of worry because I think van Inwagen takes one illuminating step further than does Lewis.

Notice how van Inwagen says that, on the one hand, intuitions “move us.” By this, he means, I think, that they are a trustworthy source of authority in choosing to commit oneself to this or that proposition. On the other hand, he says that intuitions “dissuade” one from committing too much. I don’t think that van Inwagen is talking about intellectual humility here. Rather, I think it’s much more likely that he’s talking about intellectual fence-sitting and the worries that keep one there.

On this line of thinking, analytic uses of worry appear to be a clever way to keep the compelling side of van Inwagen’s account of intuition in tension with the dissuading side of it. A by-product of this sort of intellectual fence-sitting has analytic theologians revealing something rather remarkable, namely, just how much authority they think they themselves possess to be the final arbiter of this or that truth claim. Of all the options that I have been hitherto entertained in this article, this comes closest to explaining the appearance of so much worry precisely because theologians of the analytic variety – like their philosopher-cousins – appear to be increasingly more comfortable being “moved” in this or that doctrinal direction, provided they need not commit.

If worries just are intuitions, and intuitions are merely opinions, then this dovetails nicely with the idea that worries are simply shape-shifting, subjective objections, like we saw with the previous option. It also explains, at least in part, why analytics are so fond of using perspectival judgements like “from above” and “from below” or my personal favourite: “thin” claims versus “thick” ones. This judgement is my favourite because if you read between the lines, claims that are labelled “thin” are often belittled for their supposed lack of substance whereas claims that are labelled “thick” are simply discarded as untrue because they are pregnant with substance – too much to commit to. If it’s thin, it’s trivial. If it’s thick, it’s false. That’s ever more near the heart of how worry seems to operate among analytic theologians.^[27]

All the thin-thick business emerges from a sense that such claims are often content-empty and thus not prejudiced. Don’t mistake me here. I think that theologians should employ the thin-thick judgement. But they should do so only in so far as it becomes a vehicle to avoid equivocation. For example, if I simply assumed that everywhere I used the word worry throughout this article, I meant worrywart (i.e. option one), then I should have conceded that worry could be understood in multiple ways – thinly, as in showing-off my mental prowess sort of ways, or thickly, as in the logical fallacy sort of ways. In the hands of analytics, however, thin-thick designators are clever terms, often used to hide subjectivity, like the way worry does.

The notion of worries as intuitions, recalls Roderick Chisholm’s account of the Problem of the Criterion.^[28] A centuries old debate, the problem of the criterion is a first principle, epistemic problem that McCain and Rowley’s helpfully reduce into two basic questions: 1) What propositions are true? and more importantly for purpose here; 2) How can we tell which propositions are true?^[29] McCain frames up Chisholm’s version of the problem this way:

According to Chisholm, there are only three responses to the Problem of the Criterion: particularism, methodism, and skepticism. The particularist assumes an answer to (1) and then uses that to answer (2), whereas the methodist assumes an answer to (2) and then uses that to answer (1). The skeptic claims that you cannot answer (1) without first having an answer to (2) and you cannot answer (2) without first having an answer to (1), and so you cannot answer either. Chisholm claims that, unfortunately, regardless of which of these responses to the Problem of the Criterion we adopt we are forced to beg the question.^[30]

Van Inwagen’s account of intuitions as simultaneously compelling and dissuading fits conveniently against the backdrop of Chisholm’s schema, particularly where his “methodist” response is concerned. For, here you can hide all manner of subjectivity. Herein lies the reason why I think worries as intuitions might help explain the analytic abuse of the term worry better than the previous three options. For, if AT has truly been “socialized” by the “shared intellectual culture” of analytic philosophical tradition, as Wood suggests, and if the problem of the criterion afflicts the analytic philosophical tradition to the degree that Chisholm (and others) believes that it does, and if this affliction has steadily decayed the basic markers of credibility that “truth” is being conveyed in much of what is being argued for among analytics, then it looks like analytic theologians who demur theological challenges like the doctrine of divine simplicity, to take an obvious example, may be doing so because they are privileging their own, weak intuitions over the collective voice of the tradition.^[31] Of course, theologians cannot dismiss intuitions about doctrine out of hand. That should be understood. The question is how much authority analytic intuitions – individual and shared alike – are being granted for making (or recommending that others make) doctrinal decisions. To put the question a bit differently: if analytic worry-talk is learned via socialization and socialization forms group intuitions, how then do analytics know whether they are being led by the best argument as opposed to herd instinct or learned intuition? Practically speaking, on this line of reasoning, if divine simplicity is true, then analytic worries preclude having a thick account of it because it would be false. Neither can their account be too thin – just thin enough to compel but not dissuade – or else it will be trivial.^[32] Maybe this is simply the way that analytic theologians simultaneously express self-confidence and epistemic relativism about doctrine, similar to the way that analytic philosophers do when it comes to their opinions on, say, realism and anti-realism.

As for options that explain why analytic theologians appear to be so worried, I confess, this one is hard to beat. And with that, let me sum up.