We Have Liftoff…

The editorial team are very pleased to present the first edition of the Journal of Analytic Theology.  We begin the issue with a model dialogue of the conversation we hope will continue.  The normal mode of JAT’s contribution to this conversation will consist in articles and book symposia such as this issue exhibits as well as book reviews, discussion notes, and the usual academic journalistic items. 

William “Billy” J. Abraham’s essay began as an after dinner lecture at the annual LOGOS Workshop in Philosophical Theology at the University of Notre Dame in 2012.  JAT will continue to draw from LOGOS papers as a source for great essays in analytic theology.  JAT will also continue to feature the annual Analytic Theology Lecture at the American Academy of Religion, beginning with this issue of publication of Alan Torrance’s essay.

Our hope is that both philosophers and theologians of many backgrounds, traditions, temperaments, and specialties will benefit from JAT’s contents and even contribute regularly.  One of the main barriers to the conversation between philosophers and theologians of different stripes is a lack of a common forum of publication.  One of the simplest ways to “size up” a theorist is to find out what journals she reads and publishes in.  The greater the degree of overlap between two scholars in this regard, the greater, typically, the degree of understanding and collegiality.  Wishing to promote these, the Journal of Analtyic Theology offers a common space in which to dwell academically.  We seek contributions from many kinds of scholars who are interested in promoting, questioning, or otherwise engaging analytic theology, which bears important relations to both systematic theology and philosophical theology.  The project of Analytic Theology is broad enough to include varying degrees and kinds of reliance on historical texts, formal methods, and doctrinal constraints. 

We thank the contributors of this special issue for working with us, especially when time got tight.  We are grateful for those who refereed papers with such acumen.  The staff at Texas Digital Library were very helpful in getting us to this point, and thanks to the Baylor Library staff who directed us to the appropriate resources, especially Billie Peterson-Lugo. Two people deserve special thanks for their unique contributions.  Jonathan Jacobs, having just done the yeoman’s work in starting Res Philosophica, hosted by Saint Louis University, was a source of much good advice (and no bad advice!) and guidance in this surprisingly complicated process.  The one deserving the most gratitude, however, is Father Raphael Mary Salzillo, O.P.  He worked so hard for so long on so many aspects of the journal it is impractical to catalogue them all.  As editorial assistant for the first issue, he bore the burden of seeing to a million details and learning a lot from scratch.  To say that we could not done it without him is extreme understatement. 

—Oliver Crisp, Kevin Diller, Trent Dougherty, Michael Rea