Introduction to Vol. 4

With this fourth volume of the Journal of Analytic Theology, we cross a milestone. We can no longer lay claim to being a “fledging” journal. Quite the contrary, what we ended up with was essentially a double issue. Herein (if that term still applies to online journals) you will find ten original essays, three symposia, and over a dozen book reviews. Analytic theology continues to grow in the US and abroad.

This issue begins and ends with essays by Nicholas Wolterstorff, yet on very different topics. It is a tribute to his theological seriousness and diversity of interests that he is featured both for his religious epistemology and political theology, each deeply informed by reflection on the Christian tradition. His long, distinguished career places him among the most important religious thinkers in America today, and we are proud to have his contributions to this volume. The symposium on his analytic political theology began as part of a workshop held at the University of Notre Dame organized by Rick Garnett, concurrent professor of Law and of Political Science at Notre Dame. The other conference symposium was organized by Olli-Pekka Vainio, University Lecturer of Dogmatics at the University of Helsinki and visiting faculty member at Oxford University, who served as guest editor for this symposium. The book symposium on John Stackhouse’s book Need to Know: Vocation as the Heart of Christian Epistemology, began as an author-meets-critics session organized by Myron Penner at the 2015 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion. We are grateful to all the organizers for their cooperation in bringing these contributions to publication here.

We are very pleased with the fact that this volume displays quite a spectrum of analytic theology involving historical theology, confessional theology, philosophical theology, and mystical theology. We hope to demonstrate by example the breadth of analytic theology, which, in turn we hope encourages many more theologians regardless of interest to approach their subject with rigor and clarity as major goals.

The book review section has continued to grow significantly. We are very grateful for the indefatigable work of our book review editor, Jordan Wessling.

This large volume would have been impossible to produce without the excellent work of a number of editorial assistants. Liz Jackson and Rachel Jonker took the lead, doing truly admirable work. They were assisted by and Rose Brugger, Lindsay Cleveland, and John Rosenbaum.

Trent Dougherty and Kevin Diller
Executive Editors