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BlogProfessor Keith Ward
Professor Keith Ward is a world-renowned philosopher and theologian. He held positions teaching philosophy and theology at Glasgow, London and Cambridge Universities before taking up the position of Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford.
In this 4-part interview he discusses atheism, philosophy, science and belief.
Subscribe to our iTunes Vodcast/Podcast - If you have a podcast reader other than iTunes click here
Professor Keith Ward is a world-renowned philosopher and theologian. He held positions teaching philosophy and theology at Glasgow, London and Cambridge Universities before taking up the position of Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford.
In this 4-part interview he discusses atheism, philosophy, science and belief.
Subscribe to our iTunes Vodcast/Podcast - If you have a podcast reader other than iTunes click here
| 08-Dec-2008 09:25 PM Anonymous |  |
| Keith Ward's talent is to express concepts and arguments simply and clearly. Brilliant | |
| 12-Dec-2008 11:27 AM Anonymous | |
| I had planned to go out this morning but listening to Keith Ward instead was much more interesting and rewarding. Many thanks. | |
| 19-Dec-2008 03:03 PM Anonymous |  |
| Ward’s response to Dawkins is a non sequitor: the fact that theology ‘looks at’ philosophy, history, ancient languages, and textual studies does not show that it is itself a genuine academic subject. Suppose a university were to offer a new subject in fairyology. It would not be difficult to imagine (suitably reimbursed) academics assigned to the task of teaching such a subject. They might begin by ‘looking at’ philosophy, history, textual studies, and so on. One can even imagine a steady stream of new journals, publications and conferences. Over time, as the subject gains secure funding and student popularity increases, a distinctive degree – the Bachelor of Fairyology – might emerge. The problem, of course, is that such a subject could only survive in academia by deriving all its content from the legitimate disciplines that it has drawn upon to cover up the fact that it is a subject without any basis in reality. The historians will have a real topic (i.e. the history of fairy-belief); the philosophers will have a real topic (i.e. the concept of fairies and the arguments for and against); the linguists will have a real topic (i.e. the languages and texts in which the concept of fairies appears). But what about the topic of Fairyology itself? Clearly, this would be a topic without any real content. In other words, Fairyology would be a ‘fig leaf’ subject, its utter emptiness cleverly disguised by the swelter of genuine, rigorous academic endeavour that surrounded it. It would be the study of ‘much ado about nothing’. Dawkin’s point is that Theology falls into the same category as Fairyology. Unless theologians can show (a) that there is a God, and (b) that they have discovered some way of knowing his nature, attributes and governance (as distinct from mere speculation) then theology (as distinct from the study of religion) does not belong in any university, no matter how many legitimate subjects it clothes itself in. As Dawkins himself puts it “university departments of theology house many excellent scholars of history, linguistics, literature, ecclesiastical art and music, archaeology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, iconology, and other worthwhile and important subjects. These academics would be welcomed into appropriate departments elsewhere in the university. But as for theology itself, defined as "the organised body of knowledge dealing with the nature, attributes, and governance of God", a positive case now needs to be made that it has any real content at all, and that it has any place in today's universities.” http://richarddawkins.net/article,1698,Letters-Theology-has-no-place-in-a-university,Richard-Dawkins | |
| 19-Dec-2008 03:37 PM Anonymous | |
| If you read Keith Ward's excellent Doubting Dawkins: Why there almost certainly is a God you will see that he does advance evidence for the existence of God. Ward's point is that Dawkins dismisses theology without actually engaging with any of the arguments because he assumes that he is right. | |
| 19-Dec-2008 05:26 PM Anonymous | |
| Thank you for your response. I’ll try to put my point in a slightly different way. Ward has written a book which contains philosophical reasoning. As such, it is the kind of thing that anyone (so inclined) can access, read, interpret, discuss, disagree with, critique, and so on. And you don’t have to agree with Ward in order to do this. Any old atheist can pick up his book, study it, and so on. The problem is that this kind of ‘open, neutral access’ is not available when it comes to the study of theology. (Just to be clear, I take it as understood that whilst theology might draw upon, it is not the same thing as comparative religion, philosophy of religion, history of religions, psychology of religion, sociology of religion, anthropology of religion, and so on). To study theology (understood as ‘the study of God’), one must surely have a belief in the existence of God. Atheists could happily study religion, but how could they think of themselves as inquiring into the nature and attributes of a being that, so far as they are concerned, doesn’t even exist? I don’t need to be a theist in order to study Ward’s arguments for the existence of God. But to study God? That is surely a different matter. It is this confessional assumption that distinguishes theology from all other legitimate academic disciplines. Their methods of investigation are (or should be) neutral and secular. Theology requires a confessional assumption, and so should be located in institutions where faith is taken to be unproblematic: i.e. seminaries, bible colleges and the like. Universities serve a different purpose. Look forward to your reply, and thanks again for engaging in a discussion. | |
| 21-Dec-2008 05:19 AM NYCPaul |  |
| Ward's lecture series on the history of Christianity is excellent http://www.gresham.ac.uk/events.asp?pageid=45&frmProfessor=69&frmKeyword=Keyword&frmAllDates=on&image.x=16&image.y=9 | |
| 22-Dec-2008 05:02 PM Anonymous | |
| Thank you for your response. I’ll try to put my point in a slightly different way. Ward has written a book which contains philosophical reasoning. As such, it is the kind of thing that anyone (so inclined) can access, read, interpret, discuss, disagree with, critique, and so on. And you don’t have to agree with Ward in order to do this. Any old atheist can pick up his book, study it, and so on. The problem is that this kind of ‘open, neutral access’ is not available when it comes to the study of theology. (Just to be clear, I take it as understood that whilst theology might draw upon, it is not the same thing as comparative religion, philosophy of religion, history of religions, psychology of religion, sociology of religion, anthropology of religion, and so on). To study theology (understood as ‘the study of God’), one must surely have a belief in the existence of God. Atheists could happily study religion, but how could they think of themselves as inquiring into the nature and attributes of a being that, so far as they are concerned, doesn’t even exist? I don’t need to be a theist in order to study Ward’s arguments for the existence of God. But to study God? That is surely a different matter. It is this confessional assumption that distinguishes theology from all other legitimate academic disciplines. Their methods of investigation are (or should be) neutral and secular. Theology requires a confessional assumption, and so should be located in institutions where faith is taken to be unproblematic: i.e. seminaries, bible colleges and the like. Universities serve a different purpose. Look forward to your reply, and thanks again for engaging in a discussion. | |
| 30-Jan-2009 09:15 PM Andrew Mackie |  |
| I would agree with you, that the study of theology requires a 'confessional assumption' except that the Christian faith is not based on a human attempt to reach out and understand the unknowable divine, it's based on accounts of God reaching out to us, initially to and through Abraham, then through the prophets and ultimately in the person of Jesus. To a Christian (or someone investigating the Christian faith), then, the questions that matter are whether biblical accounts are historical, whether Jesus is credible, whether he rose from the dead and, if all those things are true, what the implications for humankind are. To undertake this study requires no confessional assumption - any person could educate themselves in the relevant discpilines - ancient language, history, etc - to create their own open and neutral access to the topic. At the end of this process, however, they would make up their mind on the topic and be seen by others to have a bias. Ultimately the vast majority of us need to rely on people who are prepared to undertake these studies (as the guys behind the Centre for Public Christianity have) and assess what they report to us, checking for indefensible bias in what they say. If at the end of this investigative process you were to conclude that the historical accounts in the bible are accurate, then the study of God is both defensible and appropriate. Indeed, if having done due diligence and come to the conclusion that the God of the bible is real and that the Christian world view is accurate (that we live once, die and will live either with or without God's blessing for eternity depending on whether we accept Jesus' offer of forgiveness), what is more important? | |
| 03-Feb-2009 09:46 AM Anonymous | |
| Hi Andrew, thanks for your response. Like you, I think it is both possible and useful to study, in an objective and neutral way, the grounds upon which Christianity claims to rest (e.g. the historical evidence, philosophical arguments, religious experience, and so on). I have no objection to universities providing opportunities for this kind of study. But none of this is "theology' per se, which assumes a belief in the existence of the entity (theos) it claims to study (logos). It is, if you like, the difference between a course which sets, as an exam question: ‘What does the Gospel of Mark reveal about the ways in which we can experience the love of God through Jesus?’ (confessional) and ‘To what extent, if any, is the Gospel of Mark historically reliable?’ (non-confessional). The question, then, is this: If, at the end of this kind of ‘non-confessional’ study, someone decides that “the God of the bible is real and that the Christian world view is accurate”, and would like to study what they now take to be ‘God’s word’, and in a way that DOES assume belief (i.e. ‘theology’), then what kind of educational institution would be most suitable? Is it a place in which a neutral, objective, non-confessional approach is taken by the lecturers (i.e. a university)? Or should they go to a place which is ‘all about equipping God's people for service in his world, in whatever workplace or situation they found themselves in’ (i.e. a theological seminary or bible college)? Surely, it is the latter. Think of it like this: if you wanted to study Islam at university, would you think it appropriate if the teachers all assumed that the students accepted the truth of Islam from the outset, and saw their task as ‘equipping the students to be better advocates for the Muslim faith in a hostile world’? Would you be happy if they taught the subject in a way that was self-evidently biased – for example, by including texts that were mostly written by Islamic believers, rather than balancing the reading list, more or less evenly, with texts written by scholars who are sceptical about the truth of Islam? Best wishes, Anon. | |
| 02-Mar-2009 11:26 AM Anthony | |
| Excellent | |
| 25-Apr-2009 07:06 PM John Dickson | |
| I feel that 'Anonymous' badly misunderstands Theology as a contemporary discipline. I am not myself a theologian but I have read quite a lot of theology, so I offer the following comments as an academic spectator. It is not enough to make the etymological observation that 'theos' and 'logos' equals 'knowledge of God' and then assume that theology is a confessional discipline. Some theologians don't even believe in God in the traditional sense at all. Theology as it is practised in Universities around the world today is a very, very impressive academic discipline--far more complicated than my own area of history. Theology is essentially the philosophical, linguistic and historical analysis of both the texts of Christianity (Old and New Testaments as well as Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, Apostolic Fathers and others) and its greatest thinkers (Irenaeus, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, et al). It is a lot like English Literature, though far more comprehensive (apologies to my colleague, Greg Clarke). It requires a huge array of skills, including expert facility in at least two non-English languages (usually more), formal training in philosophy, a depth of historical knowledge and, nowadays, a deep grasp of contemporary science. Leading theologians such as Alister McGrath, John Polkinghorne and Wolfhart Pannenberg are experts in science as part of their theological reflection. I challenge 'Anonymous' to thumb through Pannenberg's 'Systematic Theology' or McGrath's 'A Scientific Theology' and come back suggesting that Theology is not a real academic discipline, worthy of a place in the University. Cheers, John | |
| 29-Apr-2009 12:13 PM Anon. | |
| Thanks for your reply John. I didn’t for a moment suggest that "the philosophical, linguistic and historical analysis of both the texts of Christianity and its greatest thinkers" should not have a place in university. If you, or others, want to call this kind of study “theology”, then I accept your point entirely. But this is merely a concession, on my part, about how the term “theology” should be used. I would suggest that, given the word’s etymology, it would make good sense for it to be limited to ‘the study of God as a confessional discipline’. (Or, as a more pragmatic alternative, there could be a subdivision into (1) Academic Theology and (2) Confessional Theology.) At any rate, I think my argument still holds: ‘Theology’, if defined as a confessional discipline, should not be located within the University. It belongs in seminaries and bible colleges. I'm pretty sure that we agree about the principle here, John – even if we might disagree about the use of the term ‘theology’. Cheers, Anon. | |
| 16-May-2009 07:55 PM jono andrews | |
| How ironic it is that theology as a discipline should be expelled from a place called a 'university'?! Then again, may be the verse is different now, but getting less liberal it seems given Anon's desire. | |
| 05-Jan-2010 06:00 PM Anonymous | |
| Brilliant | |
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