Henry Nelson Wieman (1884–1975) was an American philosopher and theologian. He became the most famous proponent of
theocentric
Theocentricism is the belief that God is the central aspect to existence, as opposed to anthropocentrism and existentialism. In this view, meaning and value of actions done to people or the environment are attributed to God. The tenets of theocent ...
naturalism and the
empirical method
Empirical research is research using empirical evidence. It is also a way of gaining knowledge by means of direct and indirect observation or experience. Empiricism values some research more than other kinds. Empirical evidence (the record of one ...
in American theology and catalyzed the emergence of
religious naturalism
Religious naturalism combines a naturalist worldview with ideals, perceptions, traditions, and values that have been traditionally associated with many religions or religious institutions. "Religious naturalism is a perspective that finds religi ...
in the latter part of the 20th century. His grandson
Carl Wieman
Carl Edwin Wieman (born March 26, 1951) is an American physicist and educationist at Stanford University, and currently the A.D White Professor at Large at Cornell University. In 1995, while at the University of Colorado Boulder, he and Eric All ...
is a Nobel laureate, and his son-in-law
Huston Smith
Huston Cummings Smith (May 31, 1919 – December 30, 2016) was an influential scholar of religious studies in the United States, He authored at least thirteen books on world's religions and philosophy, and his book about comparative religion, ' ...
was a prominent scholar in
religious studies.
Early life
Wieman studied at
Park College
Park University is a private university in Parkville, Missouri. It was founded in 1875.
In the fall of 2017, Park had an enrollment of 11,457 students.
History
The school which was originally called Park College was founded in 1875 by John A. ...
in Missouri, graduating in 1907. In 1910, he graduated from the San Francisco Theological Seminary and moved to Germany for two years to study at the universities in Jena and Heidelberg. There, he studied under the theologians
Ernst Troeltsch
Ernst Peter Wilhelm Troeltsch (; ; 17 February 1865 – 1 February 1923) was a German liberal Christianity, liberal Protestant theologian, a writer on the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of history, and a classical liberal politician ...
and
Adolf von Harnack
Carl Gustav Adolf von Harnack (born Harnack; 7 May 1851 – 10 June 1930) was a Baltic German Lutheran theologian and prominent Church historian. He produced many religious publications from 1873 to 1912 (in which he is sometimes credited ...
and the philosopher
Wilhelm Windelband
Wilhelm Windelband (; ; 11 May 1848 – 22 October 1915) was a German philosopher of the Baden School.
Biography
Windelband was born the son of a Prussian official in Potsdam. He studied at Jena, Berlin, and Göttingen.
Philosophical work
Wind ...
, but they all had little impact on Wieman.
Wieman moved back to the United States and spent four years as a
Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...
pastor in California. Then, he moved to Harvard to do a doctorate in philosophy, which he received in 1917, under the tutelage of
William Ernest Hocking
William Ernest Hocking (August 10, 1873 – June 12, 1966) was an American idealist philosopher at Harvard University. He continued the work of his philosophical teacher Josiah Royce (the founder of American idealism) in revising idealism to integ ...
and
Ralph Barton Perry
Ralph Barton Perry (July 3, 1876 in Poultney, Vermont – January 22, 1957 in Boston, Massachusetts) was an American philosopher. He was a strident moral idealist who stated in 1909 that, to him, idealism meant "to interpret life consistently ...
. At Harvard, Wieman became interested in the work of
John Dewey
John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the f ...
,
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson , and
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found applicat ...
.
Career
After Harvard, Wieman started teaching at
Occidental College
Occidental College (informally Oxy) is a private liberal arts college in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1887 as a coeducational college by clergy and members of the Presbyterian Church, it became non-sectarian in 1910. It is one of the oldes ...
. In 1927, as one of America's only Whitehead experts, Wieman was invited to the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
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
The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc, and its co-founder, billion ...
,
West Virginia University
West Virginia University (WVU) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Morgantown, West Virginia. Its other campuses are those of the West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Beckley, Potomac State College ...
, the
University of Houston
The University of Houston (UH) is a Public university, public research university in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1927, UH is a member of the University of Houston System and the List of universities in Texas by enrollment, university in Texas ...
,
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
,
Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...
, and
Grinnell College
Grinnell College is a private liberal arts college in Grinnell, Iowa, United States. It was founded in 1846 when a group of New England Congregationalists established the Trustees of Iowa College.
Grinnell has the fifth highest endowment-to-st ...
. In 1956, he was hired as distinguished visiting professor of philosophy at
Southern Illinois University
Southern Illinois University is a system of public universities in the southern region of the U.S. state of Illinois. Its headquarters is in Carbondale, Illinois.
Board of trustees
The university is governed by the nine member SIU Board of Tr ...
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 1970, he redefined God in a way that some religious naturalists would latch on to: "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."
He had a naturalistic worldview, a form of neo-theistic religious naturalism. For Wieman, God was a natural process or entity and not supernatural and was an object of sensuous experience. His God concept was similar to The All concept of
Spinoza
Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, b ...
and theistic sectors of classical
pantheism
Pantheism is the belief that reality, the universe and the cosmos are identical with divinity and a supreme supernatural being or entity, pointing to the universe as being an immanent creator deity still expanding and creating, which has ex ...
and modern
neo-pantheism but with a liberal Christian tone to it.
He had been ordained a
Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...
minister in 1912 but in 1949, while teaching at the
University of Oregon
The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc, and its co-founder, billion ...
, he became a member of the
Unitarian Church. Nevertheless, he was at the extreme edge of Christian modernism and was critical of 20th-century supernaturalism and
neo-orthodoxy
In Christianity, Neo-orthodoxy or Neoorthodoxy, also known as theology of crisis and dialectical theology, was a theological movement developed in the aftermath of the First World War. The movement was largely a reaction against doctrines of ...
.
Wieman helped start ''
Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science'', which was prompted by discussions at the
Institute on Religion in an Age of Science The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) is a non-denominational society that promotes and facilitates the ongoing dialectic between religion and science. The Institute has held annual week-long conferences at Star Island in New Hampsh ...
. Six days after his death in 1975, he was awarded the
Unitarian Universalist Association
Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) is a liberal religious association of Unitarian Universalist congregations. It was formed in 1961 by the consolidation of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America, both P ...
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."
[The Empirical Theology of Henry Nelson Wieman - Robert Walter Bretall, Henry Nelson Wieman - Macmillan, 1963, p. x]
Major works
*''Religious Experience and Scientific Method'' - Macmillan, 1926
*''The Wrestle of Religion with Truth'' - Macmillan, 1927
*''Methods of Private Religious Living'' - Macmillan, 1929
*''The Issues of Life:'' Mendenhall Lectures - Abingdon Press, 1930
*''Is there a God?: A Conversation'' with Henry Nelson Wieman, Douglas Clyde MacIntosh and Max Carl Otto - Willet, Clark & Company, 1932
*''Normative Psychology of Religion'' - Henry Nelson Wieman, with Regina Westhall Wieman - Crowell, 1935
*''American Philosophies of Religion'' - Henry Nelson Wieman, Bernard Eugene Meland, Willett, Clark & Company, 1936
*''The Growth of Religion'' - Part I by Walter Marshall Horton, Part II by H.N. Wieman: "Contemporary Growth of Religion" - Willet, Clark, 1938
*''Now We Must Choose'' - The Macmillan company, 1941
*''The Source of Human Good'' - Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1946
*''Religious Liberals Reply:'' by Seven Men of Philosophy - H.N. Wieman, Arthur E. Murray, Gardner Williams, Jay William Hudson, M.C. Otto, James B. Pratt, and Ray Wood Sellars - Beacon Press, 1947
*''The Directive in History'' - Ayer Lectures - Beacon Press, 1949
*''Man's Ultimate Commitment'' - Southern Illinois University Press, 1958
*''Intellectual Foundation of Faith'' - Philosophical Library, 1961
*''Religious Inquiry'': Some Explorations - Beacon Press, 1968
*''Religious Experience and Scientific Method'' - Southern Illinois University Press (Arcturus Books reprint with new Preface), 1971
*''Seeking a Faith for a New Age: Essays on the Interdependence of Religion, Science, and Philosophy'' - Scarecrow Press, 1975,
*''Creative Freedom: Vocation of Liberal Religion'' - The Pilgrim Press, 1982
pparently written in the 1950s, edited by Creighton Peden and Larry E. Axel*''The Organization of Interests'' - Wieman's doctoral dissertation of 1917
n creativity as the best principle by which to organize interests edited by Cedric Lambeth Hepler, University Press of America, 1985
*''Science Serving Faith'' - one of Wieman's last theological statements written near the end of his life, and completed by editors Creighton Peden and Charles Willig, Scholars Press, 1987
References
External links
Unitarian Universalist AssociationUnitarian Universalist Association
Henry Nelson Wieman: Philosopher of Natural Religion, 1884-1975Notable American Unitarians 1936-1961
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wieman, Henry Nelson
Process theologians
American Christian writers
American Unitarians
Religious naturalists
Park University alumni
Harvard University alumni
Southern Illinois University faculty
University of Chicago faculty
1884 births
1975 deaths
University of Oregon faculty
West Virginia University faculty
University of Houston faculty
University of California, Los Angeles faculty
Washington University in St. Louis faculty
Grinnell College faculty