Continental v. Analytic

R. R. Reno helpfully explains the attractions of Continental philosophy to theologians by suggesting that Continental philosophy has “become a form of theology.” More elaborately: “As an intellecutal practice, this branch of modern philosophy organizes itself around the task of discerning and proclaiming the deep meaning that is necessary to breathe life into a Western culture that has lost its confidence in the power of Christian teaching.” This “prophetic trajectory” is intensified in postmodern philosophy, which returns to “the deeply religious and theological ambitions of ancient philosophy.”

Reno believes that theologians’ attraction to Continental thought is “understandable but perilous” because it gives up the modern theological battle over truth and turns instead to questions of meaning. Instead, hs suggests that it is “crushingly obvious that in contemporary Western culture the English-speaking, analytic tradition in philosophy holds out the most promise as a suitable partner for theology in the crucial jobs of strengthening the doctrinal backbone of theology and restoring a culture of truth.” Analytic philosophy has “produced a great body of literature about human identity, the nature of truth and the concept of knowledge, the good and the nature of evil, what counts as real and how consciousness is related to matter, and more. This literature is developed with extensive arguments and in a scholastic mode open to Christian use.” Analytic philosophy is not only “open but positively congenial in its basic sttructure” to theological interests because of its “underlying loyalty to truth,” because analytic philosophy is “unequivocally and fundamentally a force for the strengthening of truth, not its weakening.”

On this last point, I find Reno less than convincing, and not just because Reno admits that analytic philosophy is “antagonistic toward the old queen of the sciences” and that most analytic philosophers are “atheistic.” It seems that analytic philosophy is the more seductive, since it masks its theological assumptions while Continental philosophy openly professes them. Should theologians operate on the assumption that the analytic “loyalty to truth” is the same thing, or the same kind of thing, as Christian faith in Truth Incarnate? Can’t employing analytic philosophy tempt us to assume that we as Christians have some more fundamental foundation (ie, a general concept of truth) than Jesus Christ, the cornerstone?

I am no uncritical admirer of Continental philosophy, which is often as atheistic as analytic philosophy, and I have profited from various philosophers in the analytic tradition. But Continental philosophy has the advantage of clarifying the battle lines with theology by posing theological questions in an often theological idiom. Continental philosophy recognizes, as Christian theology does, that philosophical questions are finally questions of faith. They play in our playground. Playing with them can, as Reno warns, be perilous, because we might be seduced into believing that they are playing the same game. They are not, but then neither are analytic philosophers.