Louisville Process Theology Network

Henry Nelson Wieman and Creativity

Passion is All Important

“Religion, in one sense, is like baseball or any other form of play or art. The professionals who play in the big leagues render a great service to baseball. Baseball would certainly not pervade our national life as it does were it not for these big leagues.

But, if you want to find the true spirit of baseball in all the glory of a passion, you must not go to the big leagues. You must go to the backyard, sandlot, the side street and the school playground. There it is not a profession. It is a passion.

When passion becomes profession, it often ceases to be passion. That is as true of religion as it is of baseball. Among the professionals you find superb mastery and a great technique, but not too frequently the pure devotion. Perhaps in baseball the passion is not too important, but in religion it is all important.

A religion that is not passionate is not worth considering. Therefore, I say we need more sandlot religion. The professional, whether White Sox or Methodist, controls inordinately our baseball and our religion.”
Henry Nelson Wieman, 1968

Creativity

Wieman’s passion was to work out a theology that would respond to what we’ve learned about the universe from science; and conversely, would avoid the dualistic supernatural concepts that had become unbelievable to so many. Put simply, he wanted to find ways to talk intelligibly about God in the 20th Century.

But, he did not set out to prove the existence of God. Wieman left that philosophical task to others. His contribution to the philosophy of religion was to seek a basic definition of God that would revitalize religion. He wanted to find concepts of God that are “operational, experimental, and directive.”

So, he identifies God’s work in the universe with the “creative events” described by Whitehead's Process Theology. Our participation in God’s “Creativity” is termed our “creative interchange.”

Wieman's concepts are generally classified today as “natural theology” because he envisioned God working in nature instead of outside or above nature.

The Reality of Creativity

Bruce Southworth's book, "At Home In Creativity", presents a list of ten statements about God's nature from Wieman's various works. (See the book excerpt at www.books.google.com.)

• God transcends humankind but does not transcend nature or history.
• God is supranatural but not supernatural, nor personal or personality.
• God is the source of human good and the growth of human value but not omnipotent.
• God is the creator but require human cooperation to further human good.
• God participates in the natural order but not in the pantheist sense.
• God answers prayers.
• God is “the mothering matrix of existence.”
• God acts as a sovereign judge upon our actions and at time opposes humanity.
• God acts in history and paradigmatically so in the Christ event.
• God is love and creates community.


So, Wieman sought a God who is real, not theoretical, and believable in the context of modern science. Theologian Bernard Loomer summarized Wieman’s concepts this way. “Wieman has looked into the experienceable world to discover, if possible, an empirically given, objective, concrete reality upon which all men and women are ultimately dependent for their fulfillment, a reality directly experienceable and known as other concrete realities are known."

More about Wieman''''s Creative Interchange

A biographical sketch