Fields Theology/Philosophy Name Henry Wieman | ||
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Institutions Occidental CollegeUniversity of Chicago Divinity SchoolUniversity of Southern Illinois Alma mater Park UniversitySan Francisco Theological SeminaryHarvard University Known for Naturalistic religion, Empirical Theology Influences Notable awards UUA Award for Distinguished Service to the Cause of Liberal Religion. Influenced by John Dewey, Alfred North Whitehead, Karl Barth, Henri Bergson, Josiah Royce Influenced Jerome A. Stone, Karl E. Peters, Loyal Rue Books The source of human good, Man's Ultimate Commitment, Normative psychology of religion, Science Serving Faith, Intellectual foundation of faith Similar People Jerome A Stone, John Dewey, Alfred North Whitehead, Loyal Rue, Karl Barth | ||
Faith of Henry Nelson Wieman
Henry Nelson Wieman (1884–1975) was an American philosopher and theologian. He became the most famous proponent of theocentric naturalism and the empirical method in American theology and catalyzed the emergence of religious naturalism in the latter part of the 20th century. His grandson Carl Wieman is a Nobel Laureate.
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Biography
Wieman studied at Park College in Missouri, graduating in 1907. In 1910, he graduated from the San Francisco Theological Seminary and then moved to Germany for two years to study at the universities in Jena and Heidelberg. In Germany, he studied under the theologians Ernst Troeltsch and Adolf von Harnack, as well as the philosopher Wilhelm Windelband, but none of these had any significant impact on Wieman.
Wieman moved back to the United States and spent four years as a Presbyterian pastor in California before moving to Harvard to do a doctorate in philosophy under the tutelage of William Ernest Hocking and Ralph Barton Perry, which he received in 1917. At Harvard, Wieman became interested in the work of John Dewey, as well as the work of Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead.
After Harvard, Wieman started teaching at Occidental College. In 1927, as one of America's only Whitehead experts, Wieman was invited to the University of Chicago Divinity School to give a lecture explaining Whitehead's thought. Wieman's lecture was so brilliant that he was promptly hired to the faculty as Professor of Christian Theology, and taught there for twenty years, and for at least thirty years afterward Chicago's Divinity School was closely associated with Whitehead's thought. He retired in 1949.
In the years following, Wieman taught at the University of Oregon, West Virginia University, the University of Houston, UCLA, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and Grinnell College. In 1956 he was hired as distinguished visiting professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Wieman retired for the third time in 1966.
Religious naturalism
Wieman was instrumental in shaping thinking about religious naturalism. In 1963 he wrote, "It is impossible to gain knowledge of the total cosmos or to have any understanding of the infinity transcending the cosmos. Consequently, beliefs about these matters are illusions, cherished for their utility in producing desired states of mind. . . . Nothing can transform man unless it operates in human life. Therefore, in human life, in the actual processes of human existence, must be found the saving and transforming power which religious inquiry seeks and which faith must apprehend."
In 1971 - "How can we interpret what operates in human existence to create, sustain, save and transform toward the greatest good, so that scientific research and scientific technology can be applied to searching out and providing the conditions - physical, biological, psychological and social - which must be present for its most effective operation? This operative presence in human existence can be called God..." In this statement he is redefining God in a way that some Religious Naturalists would latch on to.
His was a naturalistic worldview, and as it was religious, a form of neo-theistic Religious Naturalism. For Wieman, God was a natural process or entity and not supernatural. This God was an object of sensuous experience. His God concept was similar to The All concept of Spinoza and theistic sectors of classical Pantheism and modern neo-Pantheism but with a liberal Christian tone to it. He had been ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1912 but in 1949 while teaching at the University of Oregon became a member of the Unitarian Church. Nevertheless, he was at the extreme edge of Christian modernism, critical of 20th Century supernaturalism and neo-orthodoxy.
Wieman helped start Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science, which was prompted by discussions at the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science. Six days after his death in 1975, he was awarded the Unitarian Universalist Association Award for Distinguished Service to the Cause of Liberal Religion.
Robert Bretall, editor of The Empirical Theology of Henry Nelson Wieman, volume 4 of the Library of Living Theology, wrote: "Like most great thinkers Wieman escapes categorization. Influences have come to bear upon him, but he has quietly absorbed them and gone his own way, impervious to the ebb and flow of theological fashions. It is quite possible that he may be what his students have almost unanimously acclaimed him - the most comprehensive and most distinctively American theologian of our century."