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Book Review: Oliver D. Crisp, Analyzing Doctrine: Toward a Systematic Theology

Through his Analyzing Doctrine, Oliver Crisp sets to the task of defending the primary claim “that analytic theology can (and should) be practiced as a species of systematic theology” (p. 17). In support of this thesis, Crisp develops a number of essentialist accounts of foundational doctrines. Each of these is “conceptually thinner” (p. 77) than what some may want from a systematic theology, but the goal of this work is to apply the tools of analytic philosophy, which are adept “at analyzing and clarifying; at stripping away ambiguity and distinguishing difficult and subtle concepts” (p. 238), to the systematic task in such a way as to provide a clear picture of each doctrine’s core and place in the theological story rather than to fully explicate them. In setting these tools to work, Crisp treats doctrines and topics ranging from divine simplicity and Trinitarianism to dyothelitism and atonement. Chapters 2 through 4 broadly cover the doctrine of God (“Picturing God,” “Divine Simplicity,” and “Trinity and Mystery”), chapters 5 through 7 address creation, sin, and salvation (“God’s Eternal Purpose,” “Incarnation Anyway,” and “Original Sin”), and chapters 8 through 11 tackle Christological concerns (“Virgin Birth,” “Christ’s Two Wills,” “Salvation as Participation,” and “Bodily Resurrection”). Each chapter lucidly and accessibly defines the concepts used in its syntheses throughout as well as in their applications. The more philosophically minded will find Crisp’s employment of analytic strategies for conceptual clarification in the service of theology helpful for placing theological topics in an intelligible framework; the more theologically minded will find his attention to historical theology, and the norms of theological inquiry as a whole, heartening since not all philosophers, or even analytic theologians, accomplish this sort of work with such grace. While readers may well find points of disagreement with Crisp throughout, the ease with which one is likely to do so can itself also be attributed to the volume’s clarity. For example, consider the notoriously tricky doctrine of divine simplicity following a discussion of which Crisp offers “a parsimonious model of divine simplicity” (p. 70). His six-point model