Chapter IV, "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman"

Author: King, Martin Luther, Jr. (Boston University)

Date: April 15, 1955?

Location: Boston, Mass.?

Genre: Essay

Topic: Martin Luther King, Jr. - Education

Details

Chapter IV

WIEMAN’S CONCEPTION OF GOD

One of the most important phases of Wieman’s thought is his concept of God. His emphasis is theocentric throughout. He never wearies of pointing out that God (creative good) must be dominant over all created good in the devotion of man. Wieman plainly states that his purpose in the field of religion is to promote a theocentric religion over against the prevalent anthropocentrism. In this endeavor he stresses the fact that men must worship the actuality of God and not their ideas about God. Further, it is imperative that men not allow their wishes and needs to shape their ideas of God but rather that the ideas of God be shaped solely in the light of objective evidence.

It is the success of this approach that constitutes the significance of Wieman. “One of the most persuasive reconstructed forms of theism that has appeared in this country,” says Bernard Meland, “is the philosophy of religion developed by Henry Nelson Wieman.”\[Footnote:] Meland, MMW, 139.\ D. C. Macintosh in a more definite but no less laudatory statement says:

No one has gone as far as Professor Henry N. Wieman in suggesting a variety of ways in which the divinely functioning reality may be characterized and defined and at the same time known, strictly speaking, to exist. His definitions of God, insofar as God may be undeniably affirmed to exist, have a more curious interest, aiming to formulate the irreducible minimum of religious knowledge, they generally succeed sufficiently to have positive value for reasonable reassurance in religion.\[Footnote:] Macintosh, PRK, 165.\

As we shall see throughout this chapter, Wieman’s conception of God is quite different from that of traditional theism. He has classified his view as “theistic naturalism.” This means that he would avoid any ultimate separation of God from nature; that he views God as one natural process or structure of processes among others which can be apprehended in clearly defined ways with predictable results. Such a process or structure of processes may be superhuman but cannot be “supernatural,” because nature is defined by him as “what we know through the interaction between the physiological organism and its environment,” while the supernatural is unknowable by definition.¹ With these introductory remarks we turn now to a discussion of the nature of God.

1. The nature of God

Wieman contends that it has been his purpose “so to formulate the idea of God that the question of God’s existence becomes a dead issue.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1932)³, 276.\ To accomplish this he has offered as a “minimal” definition of God the following: “God is that something upon which human life is most dependent for its security, welfare, and increasing abundance … that something of supreme value which constitutes the most important condition.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, RESM, 9\² But Wieman has developed this minimal definition in various ways. At one point in his intellectual pilgrimage he suggested that God as so defined is “that interaction between individuals, groups, and ages which generates and promotes the greatest mutuality of good … the richest possible body of shared experience.”\[Footnote:] This definition suggests Dewey’s “religion of shared experience.”\ In another volume he speaks of God as “that interaction which sustains and magnifies personality … the process of progressive integration”;\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1932)¹, 351.\ while in another place he undertakes to defend Whitehead’s view of God as “the principle of concretion.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, WTR, 179–212.\³ In his most mature work, The Source of Human Good, Wieman defines God as the “creative event.” He feels that this latter definition most adequately expresses the nature of God.

i. God as the creative event

True to his naturalistic predilections Wieman defines God as the “creative event.”⁴ God as creative event is that process of reorganization which generates new meanings, integrates them with the old, and endows each event as it occurs with a wider range of reference.\[Footnote:] This is quite reminiscent of the thought of a long line of naturalistic thinkers. Some call it “the progression of emergents” (Morgan, Alexander); “holistic evolution” (Smuts); “a thrust toward concentration, organization, and life” (Montague); “the value-actualizing function of human imagination within the total cosmic-social matrix that sustains it.” (Dewey).⁵\ God as creative event is actually creative good, standing in contrast to both kinds of created good, one of which is instrumental and the other intrinsic. It is by means of this creative good that systems of meaning having intrinsic value, previously so disconnected that the qualities of the one could not get across to the other, become so united that each is enriched by qualities derived from the other.⁶

The total creative event is made up of four subevents. This does not mean that there are four distinct subevents working apart from each other which constitutes the creative event. Wieman makes it clear that the distinctions are made only for the purpose of analysis, and must never obscure the unitary character of the creative event.⁷

The four subevents are: emerging awareness of qualitative meaning through communication with other persons; integrating new meanings with ones previously acquired; expanding and enriching the appreciable world by a new structure of interrelatedness; a widening and deepening of community.⁸ We shall examine each of these separately.

(1) The first subevent

The first subevent is emerging awareness of qualitative meaning derived from other persons through communication. Qualitative meaning consists of actual events so related that each acquires qualities from the other. Every living organism so reacts as to break the passage of existence into units called “events” and to relate these to one another in the manner called “qualitative meaning.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 58\ This may be done by the organism without the aid of linguistic communication. In such a case the range and richness of qualitative meaning is very limited. But the world of meaning and quality expands to its greatest compass when the single organism is able to acquire the qualitative meanings developed by other organisms and add them to its own. Therefore the first subevent in the total creative event is this emerging awareness in the individual of qualitative meaning communicated to it from some other organism. Wieman admits that interaction between the organism and its surroundings, by which new qualitative meaning is created without communication, is certainly creative.⁹ But it is the creative event as it works through intercommunication in human society and history that the miracle happens and “creativity breaks free from obstacles which elsewhere imprison its power.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 59.\¹⁰

(2) The second subevent

One of the chief sources of the growth of personality appears when these new meanings derived from others are integrated with meanings previously acquired. These new meanings integrated with the old both deepen and enrich the thoughts and feelings of the individual. Wieman emphasizes the point that this integration does not occur in every case of communicated meaning, since there is much noncreative communication in our modern world by way of radio, newspapers, and casual interchange between individuals.¹¹ “The mere passage through the mind of innumerable meanings,” says Wieman, “is not the creative event.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 50.¹²\ Before the creative event can occur the newly communicated meanings must be integrated with meanings previously acquired. To make sure that this integrating is not the work of the individual, Wieman contends that it is largely subconscious, unplanned and uncontrolled by the individual, save only as he may provide conditions favorable to its occurrence.¹³

The supreme achievement of this second subevent seems to occur in solitude, sometimes quite prolonged. After the many meanings have been acquired through communication, there must be time for them to be assimilated. If one does not for a time withdraw himself from the material world and cease to communicate with others, the constant stream of new meanings will prevent the deeper integration.¹⁴ “A period of loneliness and quiet provides for incubation and creative transformation by novel unification. If new meanings are coming in all the time, the integration is hindered by the new impressions.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 60.\

Examples of creative integration in solitude are Jesus in the wilderness of temptation and in Gethsemene, Buddha alone under the Bo tree, Paul in the desert on the way to Damascus, and Augustine at the time of his conversion. It seems that the individuals through whom the creative event has done most to transform and enrich the world with meaning have spent more time in lonely struggles.¹⁵

In spite of this emphasis on solitude, however, Wieman makes it clear that mere solitude is not enough. Nothing can be more dangerous to the human spirit than solitude. Solitude ceases to be creative if the mind degenerates into a state of torpor in its moments of being isolated from communication with others. One of the major problems confronting man is to learn how to make solitude creative instead of degenerative.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 61.\¹⁶

(3) The third subevent

The expanding and enriching of the appreciable world by a new structure of interrelatedness is the third subevent. This subevent necessarily follows from the first two subevents. After there has been intercommunication of meanings and after these meanings have been creatively integrated, the individual sees what he could not see before. Events as they happen to him now are so connected with other events that his appreciable world takes on an expanded meaning unimaginable before. There is now a richness of quality and a reach of ideal possibility which were not there prior to this transformation.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 62.\¹⁷

Wieman asserts that this expanding of the appreciable world may actually make a man more lonely than he was before; for now he knows that there is a greatness of good which might be the possession of man but is not actually achieved. Such a profound sense of loneliness is difficult for any man to bear, and yet it is the hope of the world.¹⁸

This expanding of the appreciable world is not only the actual achievement of an increase of value in this world; it is also an expansion of the individual’s capacity to appreciate and his apprehension of a good that might be, but is not fulfilled.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 63.\¹⁹

(4) The fourth subevent

The fourth subevent is a widening and deepening community between those who participate in the creative event. This new structure of interrelatedness, brought about by communication and integration of meanings, transforms not only the mind of the individual and his appreciable world but also his relations with those who have participated with him in this occurrence.²⁰ “Since the meanings communicated to him from them have now become integrated into his own mentality, he feels something of what they feel, sees something of what they see, thinks some of their thoughts.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 64.\

This deepening community includes intellectual understanding of one another. This means having the ability to correct and critize one another understandingly and constructively.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 65.\²¹

So for Wieman, these are the four subevents which together compose the creative event. They are so intertwined as to make a single, total event continuously recurrent in human existence.²²

A vivid example of the fourfold nature of the creative event is found in the originating events of the Christian faith. It began with Jesus engaging in intercommunication with a little group of disciples. This intercommunication took place with such depth and potency that the organization of the disciples’ personalities were broken down and they were remade.²³ “They became new men, and the thoughts and feelings of each got across to the other.… There arose in this group of disciples a miraculous awareness and responsiveness toward the needs and interests of one another.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 39, 40.\

But this intercommunication was not all; something else followed. The meanings that each disciple derived from the other were integrated with meanings that each had previously acquired. This led to a new transformation and each disciple was lifted to a higher level of human fulfillment.²⁴

A third consequence that followed necessarily from these first two was the expansion of the appreciable world round about these men. They could now see through the eyes of others and feel through their sensitivities. The world was now more ample with meaning and quality.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 40.\²⁵

Finally there was more depth and breadth of community between them as individuals with one another and between them and all other men. This followed from their enlarged capacity to get the perspectives of one another.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 41.\²⁶

So we can see that the creative event is one that brings forth in the human mind, in society and history, and in the appreciable world a new structure of interrelatedness, whereby events are discriminated and related in a manner not possible before. It is a structure whereby some events derive from other events, through meaningful connection with them, and abundance of quality that events could not have had without this connection.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 65.\²⁷

ii. God as growth

In his earlier works Wieman sought to define the nature of God under the concept of growth. He says:

God is the growth of meaning and value in the world. This growth consists of increase in those connections between activities which make the activities mutually sustaining, mutually enhancing, and mutually meaningful.\[Footnote:] Wieman, NPOR, 137. Wieman’s definition of God as “growth of meaning and value” is generalized after the manners of “experience” in Dewey’s familiar use of the word. (see Dewey’s Experiences and Nature, p. 8.)

He goes on to affirm that “growth is creative synthesis. It is the union of diverse elements in such a way that the new relation transforms them into a whole that is very different from the mere sum of the original factors.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, GOR, 325.\ Chemical elements unite in this way. Flowers grow by absorbing such elements as sunshine, air, water, and minerals, however, these are transformed in the new synthesis so that the original elements are no longer recognizable. The human mind grows by absorbing ideas and sentiments from the social environment, which are in turn transformed in the new synthesis. The culture of a community grows by absorbing the ideas, techniques, sentiments of the past and adding to these the newer developments of the present, but the gifts from the past and the present transform one another into a new kind of whole.\[Footnote:] Wieman, GOR, 325, 326.\²⁸ This is what Wieman means by growth.

Wieman makes it clear that this process of growth is not evolution as science uses the term. Growth is only one form of evolution. Much of the decomposition, conflict, and mutual destruction going on throughout nature science would call evolution. But through it all we also find the formation of connections of mutual support, mutual control, and mutual fulfillment between diverse activities forming new systems in which each part supports the whole and the whole operated to conserve the parts.\[Footnote:] Wieman, GOR, 367.\²⁹ This is growth.

We can see now that in the concept of growth Wieman is saying essentially the same thing he is saying in the concept of “creative event.” In both cases God is an actual, existing operative reality in our midst bringing forth all that is highest and best in existence. He is the creative synthesis at work in the immediate concrete situation. In both cases God is that something that brings about a new structure of interrelatedness whereby events are related in a manner not possible before.

iii. God as supra-human

One of the persistent notes that runs the whole gamut of Wieman’s writing is the affirmation that God is supra-human. Wieman is adverse to anything that smacks of humanism. His emphasis is theocentric through and through. He never wearies of pointing out that it is not the intelligence and purpose of man that is responsible for the creation and increase of good. “God,” he contends, “is that which sustains, promotes and constitutes the greatest good, operating with men and in men, but also over and above the conscious and intelligent purpose of men.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1932)³, 320.\ Again he says:

When men try to construct an order of good and superimpose it upon existence, they will fail. But when they seek out in existence the growing good with all its possibilities, near and remote, so far as they can, and minister to it with every ability, love it, give their lives to it, their living will be effective. But when they do this they are depending upon God, living for God and with God.\[Footnote:] Wieman, ITG, 324.\

Still again Wieman writes:

We feel there is no more dangerous misinterpretation of religious experience than to represent it as “subjective.” Our whole point has been to show that it is an experience of something not ourselves.\[Footnote:] Wieman, RESM, 209.\

Wieman is convinced that the chief tragedies that befall man and his historic existence stem from man’s tendency to elevate created good to the rank of creative good (God). The best in Christianity, contends Wieman, is the reversing of the order of domination in the life of man from domination of human concern by created good over to domination by creative good (God).\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 269.\ ³⁰

(1) God and man

Wieman’s aversion to humanism is clearly expressed in his affirmation that the work of God is totally different from the work of man. The difference is not merely of degree or magnitude. It is a difference of kind.³¹ For Wieman there is a qualitative difference between God and man.

Wieman contends that the work of God is the growth of organism, while the work of man is the construction of mechanism.³² In setting forth an example of this distinction, Wieman says:

God rears a tree by growth of organic connections. Man constructs a house by putting the parts together mechanically. Man can choose the place for the tree to grow. But the actual growing he cannot do.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1932)², 441.³³\

The same applies to all growth, of flowers, friendships, cultures, self-development, and meanings.

Wieman looks upon mechanisms and organisms as two different kinds of systems which enter into the existence of almost everything.³⁴ “A mechanism is a system of external relations. An organism is a system of internal relations or, as I prefer to say, of organic connection.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1936)², 442.\ Internal relations are creative. Therefore, when things are internally related, they undergo transformation and mutually control one another. All through the world is found organism, that is, systems of internal relations. But we also find mechanism. Organism cannot develop without mechanism to support it.

God’s work is the growth of organic connections, that is, “the growth of meaning and value.” This is not and can never be the work of man. However, man can serve it devotedly.³⁵ Man can provide some of the needed mechanism which enables the organism to develop.³⁶ Man can do innumerable things to remove obstacles and provide sustaining conditions which release the power of God to produce value. But it is only God that produces a structure which could not be intended by the human mind before it emerges, either in imagination or in the order of actual events. The structure of value produced by the creative event (God) cannot be caused by human intention and effort, because it can by produced only by a transformation of human intention and effort.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 42.\³⁷

So God is superhuman because he operates without the conscious intent of man. God is superhuman, furthermore, because he generates personality. Wieman seeks to explain how this takes place. He begins with the theory of social psychology that personality can exist only in society. Personality is something that develops only when there is some interaction between individuals. Therefore, human personality does not create this kind of interaction. Rather this interaction creates personality.³⁸ This interaction is the God of the universe.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1931)², 1209.\

Even God’s purpose is different from purpose as found in man. Wieman writes:

But we must understand purpose in two different senses. First, the kind of purpose which we see in minds, namely, the purpose involved in constructing mechanisms. Secondly, the kind of purpose we see in God, namely, the purpose involved in generating and promoting the growth of organic connections directly. This last we call simply by the name of growth.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1937), 212.\

In an even more emphatic passage, Wieman declares:

God, I have come to see with increasing clarity, is not merely man lifted to the nth dimension of perfection, any more than he is horse or any other animal so glorified. God is different from man. God works concretely. Man cannot possibly do that. Man must work abstractly … That is to say, man’s plans, his ideals, his purposes, are necessarily abstractions by reason of the very nature of the human mind. God alone is concrete in his workings. God is creator. Man cannot be creator. The production of unpredictable consequences through the forming of “internal relations” is creation. A common word for it is growth. It is God’s working not man’s.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1939), 118.\

These rather lengthy passages are rich in ideas. They express in no uncertain terms Wieman’s strong conviction that there is a qualitative difference between God and man. God operates in ways over and above the plans and purposes of man, and often develops connections of mutual support and mutual meaning in spite of, or contrary to, the efforts of men.

In stressing the fact that God is supra-human, Wieman does not mean that God works outside of human life. Rather he means that God creates the good of the world in a way that man can never do. Man cannot even approximate the work of the creative event.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 76.\³⁹

(2) God not supernatural

Wieman’s persistent affirmation that God is supra-human might easily give the impression that he also holds that God is supernatural. But nothing is farther from Wieman’s intention. He is as opposed to supernaturalism as he is to humanism. Both humanism and supernaturalism fail to get at the true nature of the universe.

As we have seen, Wieman’s position is naturalistic. This means that he sees nothing in reality accessible to the human mind more basic than events and their qualities and relations.\[Footnote:] Relations is another word for “structure.”\⁴⁰ The basic things in the world are events, happenings, or processes. They are the “stuff” or substance of experience. There is nothing more fundamental or elemental than events. There is nothing transcending or undergirding events. Events do not happen to something which or someone who is not an event. Everything that exists is either an event, an aspect of an event, or a relation between or within events. Therefore, Wieman’s naturalistic philosophy is opposed to substance philosophy. All philosophical categories are descriptive of events, and events of various kinds are the primary data for all inquiry.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 6.\

Wieman’s naturalistic position also leads him to affirm that all things are “somewhere,” and “somewhere” refers to events. There are no events without structures, and there are no structures or forms existing or subsisting apart from events.\[Footnote:] Whitehead calls this the “ontological principle.”\ There is no disembodied or nonincarnate order as Logos.

This principle also means that the world of our experience is self-explanatory. There are no floating transcendental principles which explain the world in terms of something outside the world. As we shall see subsequently, Wieman totally denies the traditional doctrine of creation. Principles, descriptions, and explanations refer to events and their relations (structures). Therefore, the ultimate in explanation is simply the most general concrete description possible.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 7.\

Wieman is quite emphatic on the point that the limits of knowledge are defined by the limits of the experienceable, and the limits of the experienceable are defined by the limits of relationships. What we are not related to we cannot experience. What is unrelated to us is unknowable, and the unknowable is unknown. “Nature” comprises the experienceable. Therefore, in this case by definition, a purely transcendental or noumenal realm is regarded as unknown and superfluous. Everything that exists has the power either to affect other things or to be affected by them.\[Footnote:] Wieman is following Whitehead at this point. In Whitehead’s system, every event is first of all affected by past events and then, subsequently, affects other future events.\

All of this leads to the principle that God must be found within the natural order. Like everything else that exists, God is a material being, a process with an enduring structure which distinguishes his character from that of other processes. Whatever may be his several other attributes, his transcendence is not of the noumenal or completely independent variety. Whatever transcendence he has will be seen to arise out of his very immanence in the world of events.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 33, 35.\

Wieman contends further that God is directly experienceable, and experienceable in the same basic way that other processes are directly perceivable. Contrary to most schools of thought, Wieman holds that the God he is talking about is observable, and observable in a fundamentally physical manner. From this point of view the meaning of “revelation” is to be understood as a disclosure of one process to another resulting from their relationship or confrontation. So all theology is natural theology for Wieman.

Although God is not supernatural for Wieman, he insists that God is hidden. God’s hiddenness derives from three factors: (a) man’s sin makes him blind to that upon which he is most dependent; (b) God’s inexhaustible richness of creative power and goodness is such that man’s appreciative awareness is only dimly alive to the creative and dynamic depth that confronts him; (3) man’s consciousness appears to be such that it does not easily perceive those elements of our experience which are always present. We more easily observe those factors which are sometimes absent. Thus it is exceedingly difficult to analyze and describe what we mean by “time.” At a deeper level it is still more difficult to perceive God because it is by the working of that very process in us that our minds are recreated.

However, in spite of God’s “hiddenness,” Wieman insists that God’s standard of value is compatible with ours. So when Wieman says that God is the creative source of all value, he means that the source of all value must have a structure or character that is compatible with, or supportive of, the structure which characterizes values in general. The notion that God is the “wholly other” needs to be qualified by this general consideration.

So for Wieman, nature includes all that is knowable, actually or potentially, by normal processes of knowing. Nature includes mind, personality, and value. According to this view, the “supernatural” is the semantically meaningless. Wieman sees the idea of the “supernatural” as not only unnecessary to religion but confusing and frustrating in any genuine attempt to achieve adjustment to the word of God in the world.

So Wieman would answer the question, Where is God found? by saying that God is within the cosmic whole. He is one aspect of it. He is here in nature, present, potent, and widely operative. Wieman says further that God is not the pervading purpose of the cosmic whole, as Protestant liberalism would say. God is not to be identified with the cosmic whole in any way. Neither is he the creator of the cosmic whole as the supernaturalists say. God is found in nature all about us; he must be known by the same cognitive procedure by which other realities in nature are known.

(3) The functional transcendence of God

Wieman’s naturalistic position leads him to the conclusion that nothing can make the slightest difference in our lives unless it be an event or some possibility carried by an event. This means that that which is considered metaphysically transcendent literally has nothing to do, since all value, all meaning, and all causal efficacy are to be found in the world of events and their possibilities. So Wieman finds it necessary to deny the metaphysical transcednence of God as set forth by traditional Christianity. But there is a sense in which God is transcendent, viz., functionally. Concerning God’s transcendence Wieman says:

Since creativity is not readily accessible to awareness, we can speak of creativity as transcendent. But it is not transcendent in the sense of being nontemporal, nonspatial, and immaterial. It can be discovered in the world by proper analysis.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 77.\

Although Wieman rejects the metaphysical transcendence of God, he is quite certain that God’s functional transcendence serves all of the vital and saving functions performed by the “myth” of a metaphysically transcendental reality.⁴¹ He lists six saving functions of the metaphysical myth of transcendence and seeks to demonstrate how a functionally transcendent God meets all these conditions.

The six saving functions of the “metaphysical myth of supernaturalism” are as follows: (1) The Christian myth has directed the absolute commitment of faith away from all created good and thus delivered man from bondage to any relative value. (2) It has established a demand for righteousness far beyond the socially accepted standards of a given time and place. (3) It has established a bond between men vastly deeper and more important than personal affection, mutual interest, and racial identity. (4) It has revealed that evil is deeper than any wrong done to society, or to any person, because in the last analysis evil is against the transcendental reality. (5) It has revealed any obligation laid upon man which overrides an obligation derived from society, tradition, ideal, or loyalty to persons. (6) It has opened the possibility for creative transformation beyond anything that could be accomplished by human effort.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 264, 265.\⁴²

God as creative event fulfills every one of these functions. However, the creative event (God) cannot accomplish these services unless men by faith give themselves to its control and transforming power.⁴³ Wieman also contends that God is functionally transcendent in the sense that he is the uncomprehended totality of all that is best. “God is both immanent and transcendent. Consider first the transcendence, meaning by transcendence not necessarily what is far away but what is too loftily good to be comprehended by us.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1932)³, 237.\

Wieman further asserts that God is transcendent, “not in the sense of being wholly unknown, but in the sense of being unknown with respect to his detailed and specific nature.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1936)², 437.\ At times Wieman comes close to saying that we can know that God is, but not what he is. What else can be inferred from the following passages?

We are inert and unresponsive to the specific forms of God’s presence. We cannot know save to an infinitesimal degree, these specific forms. But we can know that the reality is there, even when the specific forms of that reality are unknown.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1937), 206, 207. This passage seems to contradict Wieman’s assertion that God is the unknown rather than the unknowable. This statement implies that we can never know certain aspects of God.\

But the fullness of God’s being, and the richness of value in God, are immeasurable beyond the weak little fluttering attempts of human imagination to comprehend.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1937), 207. Here again Wieman is saying that the fullness of God’s being can never be known.\

Here Wieman is saying that God can never be known in his fullness and richness. In this sense God is transcendent. He is more than we can think.

iv. God as absolute good

Wieman contends that creative good (God) is the only absolute good. He seeks to defend this claim by defining absolute in a fivefold sense. First of all, absolute good refers to that which is good under all circumstances and conditions. It is a good that is not relative to time or place or race or class or need or desire. It is good that remains changelessly and identically the same. It is good that remains even if it runs counter to human desire. It is a good that continues to be identically the same good even when it works with microscopic cells prior to the emergence of any higher organism.⁴⁴

Creative good meets all these requirements. Its goodness is not relative to time or place or desire or even human existence.⁴⁵ It is good that would continue even if human existence ceased to be.

This is what distinguished God’s goodness from all types of created good. Created good is relative in all the senses that stand in contrast to the absolute as just described. Created good does not retain the same character of goodness under all circumstances and conditions. The creative good, however, does retain its character of goodness under all circumstances and is therefore the only absolute good.\[Footnote:] Wieman rejects the view that absolute means out of relation. “Instead of being out of all relations, it is rather the one kind of goodness that, without losing its identity, can enter into all relations. It is good always and everywhere, therefore relative to everything.” (SHG, 80 n.)\⁴⁶

A second mark of absolute good is that its demands are unlimited. A good is absolute if it is always good to give oneself, all that one is, possesses, and desires into its control to be transformed in any way that it may require.⁴⁷ Creative good is absolute in this sense because it demands wholehearted surrender.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 80.\

A third mark of absolute good is its infinite value. This mark is somewhat inseparable from the second. Absolute good is unlimited in its demands because it is infinite in value.⁴⁸

Its worth is incommensurable by any finite quantity of created good. No additive sum of good produced in the past can be any compensation for the blockage of that creativity which is our only hope for the future.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 80.\

Fourth, absolute good is unqualified good. There must be no perspective from which its goodness can be modified. Always and from every standpoint its good must remain unchanged and self-identical, whether under the aspect of eternity or under the aspect of time, whether viewed as means or an end.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 81.\⁴⁹

Finally, creative good is absolute because it is entirely trustworthy. Wieman is certain that the outcome of the working of the creative event will always be the best possible under the conditions, even when it may seem to be otherwise.⁵⁰ Concerning the trustworthiness of the creative event, Wieman says:

Even when it so transforms us and our world that we come to love what now we hate, to serve what now we fight, to seek what now we shun, still we can be sure that what it does is good. Even when its working re-creates our minds and personalities, we can trust it.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 81.\

Creative good will always be with us, even when other good is destroyed. So in this dual sense creative good is absolutely trustworthy: it always produces good; it never fails.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 81.\⁵¹

Wieman makes it clear that his claim that God is absolute good does not imply that absolute good means all powerful good. Such a view would conflict with Wieman’s empiricistic position. He insists that the claim that any kind of good is almighty cannot be defended.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 82.\⁵²

We see here an emphasis in Wieman’s thought concerning God which is found throughout his writings. Most thinkers are impressed with the power of God. Wieman, on the contrary, is more impressed with the goodness of God. His interest concerning God is axiological rather than ontological. The ever-recurring words in Wieman’s concept of God are goodness and value. He says: “I maintain … that the basic category for God must be goodness or value.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1943)³, 267.\

2. God and value

The one word that appears throughout Wieman’s discussion of God is the word value. Indeed he defines God as “growth of living connections of value in the universe,”\[Footnote:] Wieman, GOR, 363.\ and as “the growth of meaning and value in the world.” He feels that values are the “primary data for religious inquiry,” including inquiry concerning God. So we can see that his theory of value is all-important for an understanding of his conception of God. A summary of his value-theory is thus in order at this point.

i. Wieman’s theory of value

Wieman holds that values are perceptible facts and that they constitute the primary data for religious inquiry, since religion is concerned with loyalty to supreme value.\[Footnote:] Wieman, NPOR, 137. For similar statements cf. RR, 155; Art. (1932)³, 13, 158–163.\ Any distinction between value and fact in this realm is confusing. He says:

We believe a great deal of confusion in religious thought may go back to the assumption that values are not facts. If value is a fact, just as truly as anything else, then many of the difficulties in the search for God would fade away as dreams. If values are in nature and are facts, God can be found as readily and naturally as other persistent and pervasive realities.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1934), 117–118.\⁵³

Wieman gratefully recognizes his indebtedness to Dewey in his theory of value. His refusal to separate values from nature is clearly in line with Dewey’s position. And this refusal to make a sharp ontological distinction between the realms of value and of fact leads him also to reject the preferential treatment given to “ideals” in metaphysics by Brightman and other ethical idealists.\[Footnote:] Brightman defines value as “whatever is actually liked, prized, esteemed, desired, approved, or enjoyed by anyone at any time. It is the actual experience of enjoying a desired object or activity. Hence, value is an existing realization of desire.” (POR, 88). Concerning ideals Brightman writes: “Ideals constitute a special class of instrumental values. An ideal is a general concept of a type of experience which we value.” (POR, 90).\ If one defies conceptual ideals, he says, then all concepts must share this status indiscriminately, and the resulting chaos can only be overcome through a further appeal to experience; ideals, in other words, are functional guides in the interpretation of experience but are not “transcendental”\[Footnote:] Wieman, RESM, 272–278.\⁵⁴

In order to get a clearer understanding of Wieman’s value-theory we shall discuss it both in its negative and positive aspects. We shall begin by glancing at some of the value-theories that he rejects. Then we will turn to a discussion of Wieman’s positive theory of value.

(1) Value theories rejected by Wieman

Wieman holds that any substantial theory of value must be based on something that transcends the subjective. He finds that most value-theories are lacking at this very point. Thus he finds it necessary to reject most theories of value. Most of these theories that Wieman rejects are quite familiar.

Emotion or feeling has been selected by some as giving the essence of value. Also specific emotions like love, satisfaction, liking, pleasure and happiness have been taken as guiding threads. But no amount of observation and analysis and interrelating of subjective emotions, cut off from the personalities having them and from the situation calling them forth, can be made to yield a rational structure or principle helpful in solving the important practical problems of life. Emotions are certainly involved in all experiences. But one could scarcely bring all values into the category of either of the above-mentioned emotions.⁵⁵

Love, for instance, is a very vague term. It must be analyzed into forms that can give us some guidance. Satisfaction of desire, or liking, does enter into any direct experience of value, but it is precisely when we mistrust our own likings and satisfactions that we need and want a guiding theory. Happiness has in it all the ambiguities of liking and satisfaction.⁵⁶

A second theory that Wieman rejects is the contention that intelligence is the substance of all value. Such a contention seems to overlook the fact that there are flagrant cases of evil intelligence. If it is admitted that evil is negative value, that is the criterion which distinguishes the positive from the negative value of intelligence.⁵⁷

A third theory that Wieman rejects is the assertion that biological patterns, such as survival or adjustment or life, determine the mark of value. It is easy, says Wieman, to find instances of evil that has survived and good that has perished. The same general principle applies to adjustment and life. There is good adjustment and bad, and good life and bad. Hence these terms give us no guidance.⁵⁸

A fourth theory that Wieman dismisses as false is the contention that personality is the distinctive mark of value. Sheer observation reveals that personalities are good and bad to the extreme. Hence it is not mere personality, but something about personality which is the value.⁵⁹

A fifth theory that Wieman rejects is the assertion that the criterion of value is found in patterns in the physical world, such as order and purpose. It is true that value implies order of a kind. But what kind of order is better and what kind worse? More order is not necessarily more value unless it is the right kind of order. The same is true of purpose. Neither order nor purpose in itself gives us a clear distinction between better and worse.⁶⁰

All of these theories are emphatically rejected by Wieman. They are not rejected because they are alien to value, for he quite readily admits that all of these elements enter into any experience of value. They are rejected as constructive theories of value. For such a theory one must go to something else.

(2) Value as appreciable activity

Wieman thinks that the factor in value which lends itself most readily to a guiding pattern by which to formulate a value theory is appreciable activity. He is determined to base his theory of value on something that transcends the shaky foundations of subjectivity. So it is in activity that he find something objective. It can be observed, computed, foreseen. Activities can be connected in meaningful and supporting ways.⁶¹

Since the words, activity and meaning, are of first importance in Wieman’s theory of value, we may profitably pursue their meaning. An activity is first of all a change. But not all changes are activities. A change is an activity only when it is so related to other changes that they mutually modify one another in such a way as to meet the requirements of a system to which they belong. For instance, many of the changes that transpire in a cell are so related to many other changes of the physiological organism that they all mutually modify one another to the end of meeting the requirements of the living system. Or, again, gravitational changes mutually modify one another in such a way as to meet the requirements of the gravitational system.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1936)⁴, 388.\⁶²

It is possible for a change to be an activity with respect to one system and not in relation to another. As was stated above, gravitational changes are activities with respect to the gravitational system, but they are not necessarily activities with respect to the system of a living organism. Actually changes which sustain one system may be destructive of others.⁶³

Wieman stresses the fact that an activity is a value only when it is appreciable. If it is not appreciable activity, it is not the datum in which value can be found.⁶⁴ “Activity may be a mechanical routine or a spasmodic impulse or a dizzy whirl.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1936)⁴, 386.\ To be appreciable means that some living consciousness may be affected by it with joy or suffering. But this does not mean that the consciousness must have some knowledge of this activity. Many activities qualify consciousness without being objects of consciousness. Oxidation of the blood in one’s lungs, for instance, qualifies one’s consciousness when one is not at all conscious of what is going on. These changes pertain, however, if their removal or cessation would destroy the system which yields the experience of value.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1936)⁴, 387.\⁶⁵

With this explanation of activity let us now turn to a discussion of Wieman’s view of meaning. He affirms that activity and meaning are closely related but not identical.⁶⁶

One change means another change when the first represents the second to an actual or possible experiencing mind. One change can mean another most effectively if the two changes so connected that, when certain modification occur in the one, certain other correlative modifications occur in the other.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1936)⁴, 389.\

So the connection between changes which makes them to be activities within a system in a connection which is best fitted to make them carriers of meaning by virtue of the fact that they can represent one another to a mind that understands the connection between them. A throbbing pulse, for instance, means the presence of life to a mind that is able to understand the connection between these throbs and that system of co-ordinated changes in the organism which makes it a living thing. Rising smoke in the distance means the presence of fire to the mind that understands the connection between smoky changes in the atmosphere and correlative changes called combustion.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1936)⁴, 390.\⁶⁷ This leads Wieman to say:

Meaning is that connection between the here-and-now and the far-away which enables a mind that understands the connection to experience the far-away through the mediation of the here-and-now. This ability to transmit the far-away to the experience of a mind by way of representation is what we call meaning. This ability depends on two things: (1) The right connections and (2) the mind’s understanding of these connections.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1936)⁴, 391.\

Wieman insists that meaning as set forth in his philosophy is not subjective. The experience of the meaning is subjective, but the meaning which is experienced, namely, the connection of mutual control or correlation between changes is not subjective. It is true, moreover, that meaning is dependent on understanding and appreciation which are themselves subjective, but that which is understood and appreciated is no more subjective than a mountain or a city.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1936)⁴, 392.\⁶⁸ Now that we have discussed Wieman’s “meaning of meaning” we can move on to his contention that value is a kind of connection.

It was stated above that value is not enjoyment. Enjoyment is too subjective to constitute the essence of value. What is enjoyable for one person may not be for another. What one person enjoys at one time is something loathsome to him under other conditions. But no matter how diverse may be the enjoyments of different people, one thing seems plain.⁶⁹ “The enjoyable activities, utterly different thought they may be, can be had only when they are so connected that they do not destroy one another.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1936)⁴, 392.\ Therefore, when we have any enjoyment, what we are actually experiencing is a great system of activities all connected in such a way as to yield that sort of enjoyment.⁷⁰

Now since value is what makes an experience enjoyable, this analysis seems to indicate that value consists of the way activities are connected with one another.

All of this leads Wieman to the conclusion that value is not enjoyment, but it is that connection between activities which makes them enjoyable. In moments when we experience enjoyment, it is not merely our enjoyment that we enjoy; rather it is a certain connection between activities that we enjoy.⁷¹ Out of this grows Wieman’s definition of value. He says:

Value is that connection between appreciable activities which makes them mutually sustaining, mutually enhancing, mutually diversifying, and mutually meaningful.†

Wieman prefers the term appreciable over the terms enjoyed and enjoyable because the latter may blind us to the fact that there are high austere values which can be experienced at times only through great pain and suffering.⁷²

Wieman makes it clear that his doctrine of value is not a hedonism which identifies value with any sort of enjoyment.⁷³ Increase of value is not the mere “additive sum of disconnected enjoyment.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, NPOR, 48.\ Rather it is connection between activities which makes them enjoyable by reason of their mutual support, mutual enhancement and mutual meaning.⁷⁴

The first principle of value is mutual support. Eating wholesome food is more valuable than eating unwholesome food because it is an activity which supports many other appreciable activities. The same is true of honesty over against dishonesty, good music over against bad, and the like.⁷⁵

The second principle of value is mutual enhancement. Wholesome food not only supports other enjoyable activities, but it makes those others more appreciable. Honesty not only supports but may enhance the value of many other activities.⁷⁶

Mutual diversification is a third characteristic of that connection between activities which makes them appreciable and gives them value. “Activities must be connected in such a way as to permit increase in their diversification and number without permanently destroying their mutual support.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1936)⁴, 396.\ It is quite possible, for instance, to have a system of mutual support which is achieved and maintained by excluding all other activities and fixating the system, as is found in political dictatorships in contrast with democracy.⁷⁷ “Connections of value must provide for increasing diversification on the part of the activities which are connected.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1936)⁴, 396.\

A fifth characteristic of this connection between enjoyable activities deals with that activity which is exceedingly painful in itself, and yet is enjoyable by virtue of the meaning it carries. One chooses this painful but meaningful activity because of the enjoyableness of its meaning, not because of the enjoyableness of its pain.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1936)⁴, 397.\⁷⁸

We can now summarize the fivefold principle which Wieman sets forth as a way of distinguishing activities which are better from those that are worse. It is the principle of mutual support, mutual enhancement, mutual diversification, mutual meaning, and transformation of suffering into an experience which is positively appreciated. This fivefold principle is the principle of value, lifting it above the immediate subjective feeling of enjoyment. One activity is better when it is more appreciable by virtue of its connection with other activities. The connection is that of support, enhancement, diversification, meaning, and transmutation.⁷⁹

ii. God as supreme value

In one of his writings Wieman defines God as “that structure which sustains, promotes and constitutes supreme value.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1931)³, 155.\ This structure of supreme value enters into existence, and it also extends far beyond existence into the realm of possibility. The terrible magnitude of evil makes it plain that the whole of existence is by no means conformant to this structure of God.⁸⁰

Supreme value is defined as that “system or structure which brings lesser values into relations of maximum mutual support and mutual enhancement.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1931), 157.\ This mutual support and enhancement is not only between contemporaries but also between successive generations, ages and culture.⁸¹ This system or process which constitutes supreme value is variously called by Wieman “progressive integration,”\[Footnote:] Wieman, IOL, Art. (1931), 156.\ “creative event,”\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 56.\ and “rinciple of concretion.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, WRT, 179–212.\ All of these are names for what we traditionally call God.

(1) God as more than possibility

One of Wieman’s important contentions is that that to which all human life should be dedicated by reason of its supreme value is not merely some possibility or system of possibilities, but is rather the process which carries these possibilities. God is not merely the possibility of highest value, but he is actuality which carries those possibilities.⁸² “He is present, potent, operative, existing actuality.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1932)², 110.\ In this claim Wieman is seeking to refute outright the theory that the most important reality which can concern human life is not anything that exists, but rather some non-existent possibility. Wieman emphatically states:

When we cut off the possibility from the process which makes it a possibility, and prize the possibility as more important than the process that carries it, we are assuming a self-defeating and self-contradictory attitude … To say that the process is mere means and therefore of less value than the possibility which is the end, is to set up a wholly vicious dichotomy between means and ends. The highest possibilities of value can never be attained except by way of process which leads to them.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1931), 158.\

Again he writes:

God is not merely possibility to be achieved. That is the ideal. But God is that order of existence and possibility by virtue of which the greatest possible good is truly a possibility and can be achieved by human effort.\[Footnote:] Wieman, IOL, 162.\

Wieman also rejects the theory that the best is an impossibility. Such men as R. B. Perry, Bertrand Russell, Herman Randall, and George Santayana have affirmed that if men are to be faithful to the best, they must not supinely yield to the vulgarity of existence, either actual or possible, but must give their highest devotion to that nonexistent impossibility that never can be. But for one to adore the impossible, affirms Wieman, implies that his adoring of it is of great value. This adoring is itself a process of existence because he who adores is an existing personality. Therefore, if the value be a value, even when impossible of existence, that process of existence which enables one to value it as such, cannot be ignored or excluded from the high esteem we give to the impossibility of itself. Thus, some process of existence must be combined with some possibility (or impossibility) to make up the object of one’s supreme devotion.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1931), 159.\ Since God is the name given to such an object, God must be identified with that process of existence which carries the possibilities of greatest value.⁸³

Now we can see that, for Wieman, supreme value is always a combination of actuality and possibility. When these two are combined we have what is called growth. Growth is a kind of change which increases what is, so as to approximate what might be.

From this Wieman is led to affirm that supreme value is growth of meaning in the world. Why is this growth supreme value? It is supreme value for the following reasons:⁸⁴

1. In it the greatest value that can ever be experienced at any time is always to be found.

2. It carries the highest possibilities of value, possibilities reaching far beyond the specific meanings we now know.

3. All increase of value is found in it.

4. The best conceivable world can be approximated in existence to some degree through this growth, and in no other way.\[Footnote:] Wieman, NPOR, 50.\

As we have seen above, this growth of meaning and value in the world is God.⁸⁵ Wieman seeks to justify the claim that this supreme value is God on five grounds:

1. Growth of meaning commands our supreme devotion and highest loyalty by right of its worthfulness.

2. It creates and sustains human personality.

3. It carries human personality to whatsoever highest fulfillments are possible to it.

4. It has more worth than personality, hence human personality finds its highest destiny in giving itself to this growth to be mastered, used, and transformed by it into the fabric of emerging values.

5. The greatest value can be poured into human life only as we yield ourselves to the domination and control of this growth. When we try to dominate and use it, we lose these values.\[Footnote:] Wieman, NPOR, 51, 52.\

All of this gives weight to Wieman’s basic contention that God is the supreme value of the universe. He is certain that God is that order of structures of value, actual and possible, which will ultimately issue in the realization of the greatest value when we rightly conform to its requirements.\[Footnote:] Wieman, IOL, 221, 222.\⁸⁶

(2) God as the unlimited growth of the connection of value

One of the main bases of Wieman’s interpretation of God as supreme value is God’s work as the unlimited growth of the connection of value. Every specific system of value is definitely limited, whether it be a living organism or a society of organisms, or a community of minds with the institutional structure called a culture. Each of these must perish. They are capable of carrying the growth of connections of value only to a certain limit, and then must stop. In order for values and meanings to grow indefinitely, it is necessary for each of these limited systems of value to pass away in time and give place to some other orders of existence and value.⁸⁷ Therefore, God cannot be identified with any of these limited systems of value. God is the growth which has no limit.

God is the growth which goes on through the successions of these limited systems of value. God is the growth which exfoliates in all manner of value … God is the growth which springs anew when old forms perish. When one organism dies, others spring up. When one society perishes, others arise. When one epoch of culture declines, others in time come forth. This unlimited growth of connections is God.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1936)⁴,404.\

iii. God as creative source of value

Wieman defines God not only in terms of the maximum achievement of value, analogous to an ideal of perfection, but also in terms of those natural conditions which underlie the achievement of value. God, in other words, is not simply the greatest possible value or the process by which such value is achieved; he is also the sum-total of all the natural conditions of such value-achievement. Thus in a very interesting article Wieman says that “the value of God … is that of creative source … that particular sort which pertains to creator of all created values. The value of god is the value of creativity.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1943)¹, 25.\⁸⁸ Again he says:

The value of God is the value not of the gifts but of the giver. Not the goal but the source, not the golden eggs but the goose that lays them, not the grains and fruit but the creative earth, not the products of love but the loving, not beauty but the generator of beauty, not truth but the source of truth, not moral righteousness but the creator and transformer of righteousness, not the profits of industry but the ultimate producer, not the goods but the creativity, must be given priority over all else if we would escape destruction, have salvation, and know the true and living God.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1943)¹, 25.\

This rather lengthy pasage is an eloquent expression of Wieman’s conviction that God is underlying “ground” or the “power” behind the creation of value.

Now it must be emphasized that when Wieman uses the term “create” he does not mean what traditional Christianity means by the term. Historically creation first referred to the act whereby the underived self-existent God brought into being what had no form of independent existence hitherto. This Christian notion contrasted radically with the Greek concept of “creation” as an “informing” or reshaping of pre-existent entity. So strong was the Christian, theistic belief in an absolute, transcendent God who worked under no external limitations, that creation was said to be ex nihilo, i.e. generation out of nothing. With this concept, however, Wieman is in total disagreement. He contends that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is self-contradictory. Moreover, it would be impossible for Wieman on the basis of his method to get any knowledge of such an initial generation, supposing it ever occurred. By “create” Wieman means to produce what never was before, either in existence or in the imagination of man, to produce that which exposes to appreciative awareness more of the qualities of reality, or builds in that direction.\[Footnote:] Wieman, DIH, 61.\⁸⁹

Another point that Wieman emphasizes is that God as creative source is not “the source of everything”. He is only “the generative source of all other value.” Wieman writes:

God is not the creator, meaning the mysterious source of everything; he is only the source of the good, or rather is himself the good. The source of all good is simply the cosmic growing roots of all good, and these roots are themselves good.\[Footnote:] Wieman, GOR, 267.\

It is clear that Wieman is seeking to avoid pantheism by identifying God with only the good in the universe. Wieman is emphatic in affirming that “all is not God and God is not all. All is not good and good is not all.” There are many disintegrating processes at work. There is death, futility and ruin. There is evil in the world vast and devastating. These facts Wieman never overlooks. What he is anxious to make plain is that there is also good, and that this good is derived from the process of integration.⁹⁰ “It is derived from God, the integrating behavior of the universe.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, MPRL, 58.\

It is now clear what Wieman is seeking to say concerning the creative activity of God. God is not only supreme fulfillment or ideal perfection, but also creative source of value. This does not mean that God creates and sustains the universe as a whole. As we shall see in the discussion of “God and evil,” such an assumption generates the “false problem” of evil. It is a flagrant contradiction to affirm the goodness of God’s unlimited power in the face of the evil in the world of which he is creator.\[Footnote:] Wieman, GOR, 353, 354.\ So in order to escape this contradiction Wieman denies that God is author of the universe. Instead of being the creator and sustainer of the universe, God is the creator and sustainer of all that is good in the universe. Such a creator and sustainer is not of the universe as a whole, but only of the good that is in it.⁹¹

We may ask at this point whether it is justifiable for Wieman, on the basis of his empirical point of view, to speak of a creative source of value. If he means to refer to the natural conditions or forces which underlie value achievement, than it must be pointed out that empirically there is a plurality of such conditions, and the notion of a “creative source” is at best figurative and imaginative.

It is interesting to note that Dewey has discovered the same ambiguity in Wieman’s concept of God.⁹² Dewey grants “that there are in existence conditions and forces which, apart from human desire and intent, bring about enjoyed and enjoyable goods, and that the security and extension of goods are promoted by attention to and service of these conditions.”\[Footnote:] Dewey, Rev. (1933), 196.\ But these conditions and forces, contends Dewey, do not have enough unity to constitute a unitary object of devotion and so cannot be considered God. So Dewey concludes that Wieman reaches his view of God through the hypostatization of an undeniable fact, experience of things, persons, causes, found to be good and worth cherishings, into a single objective existence, a God.\[Footnote:] Dewey, Rev. (1933), 196, 196.\⁹³

From a more consistent empirical point of view, Dewey’s criticisms seem justified; indeed he has pointed out a difficulty that appears over and over again in Wieman’s whole system. When Wieman speaks of God there seem to be at least three different meanings. When he characterizes God as “supreme value” he seems to mean the ideal of perfection or of the achievement of maximum value. When he speaks of God as the “the unlimited connective growth of value-connections” he seems to mean the human and social processes which aim at the achievement of value. When he described God as the process of progressive integration and as the creative event he seems to mean the natural forces underlying the achievement of value. Certainly these three meanings cannot be viewed as constituting a unity except in a highly figurative and imaginative sense, and positively not for a religious philosophy which would be consistently empirical. We must conclude that at this point Wieman has failed to be consistently empirical.⁹⁴

3. God and evil

Wieman holds that from a consistently empirical point of view the problem of evil, which has troubled so many thinkers, is a false problem. It arises only when one departs from the empirical evidence for God as “the good” or the chief factor for good in nature, and begins to speculate about God as somehow being the creator and sustainer of the universe. As we have seen, Wieman totally denies the view that God is creator of the universe. God is only the creator and sustainer of the good in the universe, namely the power of growth. Wieman feels that one must either deny the reality of evil, which is clearly unempirical, or give up the idea of God as Creator of all.\[Footnote:] Wieman feels that Brightman’s idea of a finite deity only reformulates the false problem, which is stated as truly “insoluble.”\ He chooses the latter. Wieman contends that the more empirical problem is to define the actual nature and scope of evil, and not indulge in unempirical speculation concerning its origin.⁹⁵ At this point we turn to a discussion of his view of the nature and scope of evil.

i. Evil as destructive of good

We have seen that Wieman follows Whitehead in defining God as “the principle of concretion.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, WRT, 182.\ On the basis of this definition evil is that which is destructive of concrete existence. It is anything that hinders the prehensive\[Footnote:] In the terminology of A. N. Whitehead, prehension is the process of feeling whereby data are grasped or prehended by a subject. See Process and Reality, Part III.\ capacity of any particular thing.⁹⁶

The more fully any object prehends the rest of being, the more it is subject to the destructive works of evil. The higher we rise in the levels of prehension, the greater place there is for the destructive works of evil.⁹⁷

Since evil is destructive of good there can be no evil unless there is first good. Evil is thus parasitic.\[Footnote:] Wieman, WRT, 201.\ It is dependent on the good. It cannot stand on its own feet. Evil can thrive and develop only when there is good to sustain it.⁹⁸ “The world is based on the good. The concrete world would have no existence were it not for the principle of concretion which constitutes the good. Good and concrete existence are identical.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, WRT, 201.\ The concrete order of the world is good. Evil tends to destroy the order of concreteness,\[Footnote:] The meaning of “concreteness”, for Wieman, is contrasted with the meaning of “abstraction.” By “concrete” he has reference to events in their wholeness, their individualized totality, their unique and full particularity. Anything less than this concrete wholeness of unique particularity is an abstraction. The being and therefore the power of causal efficacy of events refers to their concreteness.\ and therefore the whole order of existence.

Evil is not merely a principle of nonbeing or an absence of something. It is both positive and aggressive.\[Footnote:] Wieman, GR, 358.\ But God is not evil, nor can evil and good be confused. Insofar as the existing world is concrete, it is due to the work of God, the principle of concretion and order.⁹⁹ But evil is destructive of all levels of concreteness. So Wieman concludes:

God excludes evil, evil excludes God. God does not create evil nor sustain evil, except as a parasite is sustained. Evil could not exist without God’s good to provide a standing ground; but the good alone is of God.\[Footnote:] Wieman, WRT, 202.\

ii. Kinds of evil

Wieman distinguishes between those evils rooted in the nature of things not caused by man and those that originate in human life. Evils rooted in the nature of things are called “inertias” and “protective hierarchies.” Evils that originate in human life are called sin and demonry.¹⁰⁰

By inertia Wieman means more than simply the opposite of change. It is first “lack of the sensitivity and responsiveness necessary to get the thought and feeling of another or to participate appreciatively in a more complex community.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 105.\ Secondly, it is resistance to that kind of transformation whereby the individual organism, the world relative to that organism, and the associated community are all re-created so as to increase qualitative meaning.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 105.\ In short, inertia is insensitivity and resistance to creativity. This kind of inertia is due to at least three things: the lack of vital energy, the running down of energy, and the cancelling-out of conflicting energies.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 105.\¹⁰¹ This threat of inertia and loss of meaning is not peculiar to human life. It hangs over all the world. It seems to be a cosmic drift and threat. But Wieman is certain that it can be conquered. He contends that there is a power more than human which works against it.\[Footnote:] When Wieman contends that there is a power more than human which works against inertia, one is reminded of Brightman’s view that God eternally controls the “given”. However there is one distinct difference. For Brightman the “given” is within God. For Wieman inertia is outside of God.\ Wieman sees several times since this planet cooled when it seemed that power reached a level when defeat was imminent.¹⁰² But this threatening defeat was avoided. “The transition from inanimate matter to the living cell may have been such a time. The transition from lower animal existence to man may have been another such dangerous and difficult passage.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 117.\

Another evil, derivative from this of inertia, is the evil of protective hierarchy. Wieman contends that there are many kinds of hierarchy, but his concern is only with what he calls the “hierarchy of sensitivity.” When he speaks of the “hierarchy of sensitivity,” Wieman means that the graded capacity to undergo creative transformation and the graduated levels of sensitivity impose a hierarchy on existence in which only the few at the top can be the medium through which the creative event works most fully. This order of life is a hard necessity, contends Wieman, but it is evil because not all forms of life, not even all human organisms, can share equally the supreme fulfillments of qualitative meaning;¹⁰³ moreover “it is evil because some forms of life must support other forms by enduring hardships or other stultifying effects that render them less responsive and less sensitive.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 118.\ Concerning the necessity and evil of the hierarchy, Wieman says:

The hierarchy is both necessity and an evil: It is necessary to enable the creative event to produce the richest fulfillment of value with those most capable of engaging in that kind of communication. It is evil because it imposes upon many an undue protection from pain and discomfort; upon some an undue fatigue from hard labor; upon others impoverished organisms; upon still others the irresponsible existence which puts on the throne of life what they happen to like, without demonstrating by any reliable method that it is truly most important.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 119, 120.\

Wieman concludes that the high peak of creative transformation will continue to soar far above the mass of people, with only a very few finding a place there. This is a hard necessity, an evil inherent in the cosmic situation. But it is a fact that we must face, ordering our lives accordingly.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 124.\¹⁰⁴

The evils thus far treated are thrust upon man from sources outside of human living, and are somewhat inherent in the nature of things. Wieman admits that there are times when these evils pass over from the external source to the internal affairs of man, making it hard to draw the line precisely determining the place where human responsibility begins. Moreover, we unquestionably have responsibility for many of the inertias and hierarchies. Nevertheless, they are, by and large, thrust upon us from sources external to human life.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 125.\ ¹⁰⁵

Sin and demonry are the two kinds of evil originating with man. Sin is any resistance to creativity for which man is responsible. Man’s responsibility is not limited to instances in which he is consciously aware of obstructing creativity or deliberately intending to do so. Unintended and unconscious resistance is sin, too, because it is the consequence of many past decisions for which the man is responsible.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 126.\ Most sin is unconscious and unintended. To be unconscious of one’s sin when he could be conscious of it is itself a darker sin. Man can, if he will, be far more fully conscious of his sin than he generally is.¹⁰⁶ “To be conscious of one’s sin is to be that far in the direction of deliverance from it; for the deeper enslavement to sin is the state in which one is not conscious of it.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 127.\

When Wieman says that sin is man’s resistance to the creative event, he refers to what was meant by the theological statement: “Sin is man’s rebellion against the will of God.”¹⁰⁷ Another way that Wieman describes sin is to say that it is the creature turning against the creator—it is created good turning against creativity.\[Footnote:] For Wieman the terms “creativity” and “creative event” are inseparable, but the two words carry an important distinction in meaning. “Creativity is the character, the structure, or form which the event must have to be creative. Creativity is therefore an abstraction. The concrete reality is the creative event.” (SHG, 299).\ Man’s personality, for instance, is a created good, and so also are his society, his culture, and his ideals. He, with his society and ideals, is forever refusing to surrender himself to the transforming power of the creative event. This is sin. He refuses to provide the conditions which he could provide and which are necessary for the freer working of creativity. This is rebellion against God. The “will of God is the demand of creative power that man provide conditions most favorable to its working.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 127.\¹⁰⁸ When man fails to remove or fight the conditions obstructing creativity he is failing to do the will of God, and is thereby sinning.

The evil of demonry is another evil which Wieman refers to as originating within human nature. Demonry is the evil of resisting creative transformation for the sake of a vision of human good. In traditional usage the term devil means the archtempter. The devil is what tempts man to sin in the most dangerous and evil way; and the devil is also one of the most glorious sons of God.¹⁰⁹ The devil is, symbolically speaking, “the most glorious vision of good that our minds can achieve at any one time when that vision refuses to hold itself subject to creativity.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 128.\ Wieman contends that this is the most subtle and dangerous sin that man can commit. No vision of any race or culture at any time may be listed up and made supreme against the creative event.”¹¹⁰

In the midst of the tremendous increase of power, due to the intensive industrialization of the planet, some group will surely rise to the height of power that no men ever before enjoyed. Such a group will be tempted to use its power to achieve what seems to it good and refuse to use it to serve the creative event.¹¹¹ To yield to such a temptation would mean that one is yielding to the worse form of demonry.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 129.\

So we now see the distinction which Wieman makes between evils rooted in the nature of things and those that originate in human life. Both types are mutually destructive. However, it is those evils rooted in the nature of things that we can do least about.

Traditional views have affirmed that evil will ultimately be overcome by the workings of an almighty God. Wieman’s naturalism prevents him from accepting such a view. However, he does find some ground of hope from empirical sources. First, there are the empirical facts of the increase of good through millions of centuries. No one can doubt that qualitative meaning has increased over the years. The second ground of hope is the fact that evil cannot destroy creativity. It can only obstruct it.

Wieman finds an ultimate dualism more empirical than either a monistic idealism which would deny the existence of evil, or a quasi-monistic idealism which would seem to equivocate the issue.¹¹²

iii. God’s finiteness

Wieman’s conclusions on the whole problem of evil reveal that he is a theistic finitist. A theistic finitist is one who holds that the eternal will of God faces given conditions which that will did not create, whether those conditions are ultimately within the personality of God or external to God. All theistic finitists agree that there is something in the universe not created by God and not a result of voluntary divine self-limitation, which God finds as either obstacle or instrument to his will. Now it is clear that Wieman fits into this category. He does not hesitate to affirm that God’s power is limited by evil. As we have already seen, “inertias” and “hierarchies,” which are basic evils, originate in sources external to God, the creative event. Wieman’s idea of a finite God clearly comes out in his affirmation that “the problem of evil arises only when you claim there is an almighty and perfectly good power that controls everything. I make no such claim.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1932)³, 201.\ God is only the source of the good and not of the universe as a whole. Wieman is thus content with an ultimate dualism.\[Footnote:] Wieman’s finite God may be compared with Brightman’s finite God at many points. Brightman holds to the idea of a personal finite God whose finiteness consists in his own internal structure: An eternal unitary personal consciousness whose creative will is limited both by external necessities of reason and by eternal experiences of brute fact. These limits Brightman calls “the Given.” The Given is an aspect of God’s consciousness which eternally enters into every moment of the divine experience and into everything that is, either as obstacle or as instrument to the will of God. Wieman denies that God is a person. Also Wieman insists that that which limits God is outside of his nature. In a word, Wieman’s finite God is a “process of integration” which is continually confronted with external conditions working against integration. Brightman’s finite God is a personal being who is continually confronted with obstacles inside his own nature.\

He is confident, however, that although God is finite his purpose and work cannot be defeated. In fact God tends to gain ground over the forces of evils as time goes on. Wieman writes:

Our point is that the universe seems to be so constituted that this movement toward higher integration springs up again and again under all manner of conditions, places and times. Sometimes it mounts high, sometimes not so high. Again and again it may be beaten back or overwhelmed. But on the whole it seems to gain ground as ages pass.\[Footnote:] Wieman, MPRL, 55.\

There is a striking parallel between Wieman’s thought at this point and Brightman’s idea of God as “Controller of the Given.” Brightman contends that God controls the Given in the sense that he never allows The Given to run wild. “God’s control means that no defeat or frustration is final; that the will of God, partially thwarted by obstacles in the chaotic Given, finds new avenues of advance, and forever moves on in the cosmic creation of new values.”\[Footnote:] Brightman, POR, 338.\

4. The question of the existence of God

As we have seen, one of Wieman’s chief aims is that of making the question of God’s existence a dead issue. To this end he sets forth the following definitions of God: “God is that actuality which sustains, promotes and constitutes the supreme good.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1932)³, 276.\ “God is that something upon which human life is most dependent for its security, welfare, and increasing abundance.…, that something of supreme value which constitutes the most important conditions.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, RESM, 9.\ “God is that structure of existence and possibility which is supremely worthful.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1932)³, 276.\ If God be defined as supreme value or as that process which underlies and makes possible the maximum achievement of value, then the fact of his existence, if not full knowledge of his specific nature, is “inescapable.” “The best there is and can be.… is a self-proving proposition.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1931)², 1171.\¹¹³

Wieman’s interest in seeing a curtailment to the debate on the question of God’s existence stems from his broader theocentric concern. He is deeply concerned in seeing men turn all their energies to living for God and seeking better knowledge about God. “Dispute about the existence of God,” says Wieman, “is blocking and diverting that outpouring of constructive energy which religious devotion ought properly to release for the tasks that confront us.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1932)³, 283.\

So Wieman looks upon all arguments for the existence of God as futile and invalid. Just as it is folly to attempt to prove the existence of nature to natural creatures, or the United States to its citizens, it is equal folly to try to prove to humans, whose essential nature consists in seeking, adoring, and serving whatever has greatest value, that there is something which has greatest value.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1932)³, 82.\¹¹⁴ So Wieman is led to say:

All the traditional arguments to prove the existence of God are as much out of place in religion as arguments to prove the existence of nature would be in science. Never in any of my writings have I tried to prove the existence of God except by “definition,” which means to state the problem in such a way as to lift it out of the arena of debate.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1932)³, 284.\

Again he writes: “No one has less interest than I in trying to prove the existence of God. As already stated, I hold such procedure folly.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1932)³, 84.\

Despite his insistence that he has made the existence of God so certain that all arguments for his existence are unnecessary, Wieman at times uses the argument of the gradation of being, an argument quite prevalent in Thomistic thinking. Wieman says, for example:

There are a number of general truths about reality which we know with a very high degree of certainty, and these general truths are of utmost importance. We have mentioned a few of them, such as the truth that I exists, that other people exist, that there is better and worse and that, therefore, there is the inevitable implication of better and worse, which is the Best, or God.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1937), 207. Italics mine.\

In a more concise passage he says:

Since I know there is better and worse, I know there is the Best; for the best is the inevitable implication of the reality of better and worse. When I say ‘God’, I mean the best there is. Therefore I know God is.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1937), 204.\

In both of these passages Wieman is explicitly seeking to prove the existence of God through the argument of the gradation of being. This certainly conflicts with his persistent claim that all arguments for God’s existence are invalid. We must conclude, therefore, that Wieman fails to achieve one of his basic objectives, viz., making the question of God’s existence a dead issue. Against his fundamental intentions, he ends up seeking to prove (whether consciously or unconsciously) the existence of God.

5. The question of the personality in God

One of the most controversial phases of Wieman’s thought hinges around the question of personality of God. In his earlier works Wieman granted the possibility that God might be mental or personal. “Nature,” he says, “may very well be moved and sustained by the operation of a supreme mind or personality.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, RESM, 180.\ Again he says: “It may be that what gives the character and creative advance to the whole of nature and every part of nature is that there is operative throughout the whole of nature a mind.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, RESM, 181.\

Despite this earlier willingness to grant the possibility of personality in God, Wieman, in his later works, emphatically denies that God can be a person. He is convinced that “God towers in unique majesty infinitely above the little hills which we call minds and personalities.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1936)², 432.\ In order to get a better understanding of Wieman’s thought at this point, we turn to a discussion of the objections which he raises to the idea of a personal God, and then to a consideration of his view that God is process.

i. Objections to the idea of a personal God

One of the basic reasons why Wieman objects to the idea of a personal God is his contention that personality is inconceivable apart from a society of persons. Personality is generated by interaction between individuals. If this is the case then God cannot be a personality. The only ground on which the theory can be defended is on the basis of the doctrine of the trinity. But there is not the slightest empirical evidence, contends Wieman, of such an ontological trinity.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 180.\

Another reason why Wieman denies that God is mental or personal is found in the essential limitations of personality. Something infinitely richer and more pervasive and precious than personality produces and constitutes the value of the world. Indeed it is this something which generates personality. Wieman turns to the sciences of personality, psychology, social psychology, and anthropology to gain validation for his contention that it is something more than a personality which generates personality, sustains and promotes its growth, and brings it to highest fulfillment. The reality which does all this, according to these disciplines, is a very complex and delicate system of connections of mutual control which grows up between the individual psycho-physical organism and its physical and social environment.¹¹⁵

For similar reasons Wieman cannot conceive of God as “mind.” Mind and personality are “summit characters” in nature, but they are not universal features of nature as are process and interaction. To possess mind would automatically limit God. In discussing God in relation to prayer, Wieman says:

To be conscious as we know consciousness is to have focus of attention. But to have focus of attention is to be able to attend to a few things in a certain area and not to attend to anything beyond. Can God function as God must, if he is so limited?… To have human mentality God must see things from a viewpoint that is localized at a certain time and place.\[Footnote:] Wieman, NPOR, 133.\

As we have seen, Wieman holds that the work of God is clearly distinguished from that of man. The difference is not merely of degree or magnitude. It is a difference of kind. An understanding of this distinction is all-important for an understanding of Wieman’s view that God is more than mind.

Wieman contends that the work of God is the growth of organism, while the work of man is the construction of mechanism. He looks upon mechanisms and organisms as two different kinds of systems which enter into the existence of almost everything.¹¹⁶ “A mechanism is a system of external relations. An organism is a system of internal relations or, as I prefer to say, of organic connections.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1936)², 442.\ Therefore when things are internally related, they undergo transformation and mutually control one another.¹¹⁷

So God’s work is the growth of organic connections, i.e., “the growth of meaning and value.” This is not and can never be the work of man. Since God’s way of working is so different from that of mind as seen in man, Wieman concludes that God is more than mind.¹¹⁸ “Mind,” Wieman writes, “is just exactly what God is not. God is not intelligence, for what God does is.… exactly the opposite of what intelligence does.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1936)², 441.\

Another basic reason why Wieman rejects the claim of a personal God is to be found in his general naturalistic and empiricistic positions. As we have seen, he is determined to confine God to nature. God is the “creative event” within nature rather than the “creative event” above nature. There is not the slightest empirical evidence that God as the creative event within nature is personal in character. Empirical observation points more to process and interaction than to personality as the basic character of the “creative event.”

Although Wieman denies the personality of God, he is quite certain that he preserves in God those things which the religious man is demanding when he asserts that God must be a person. God does respond to the intimate needs and attitudes of the individual personality.\[Footnote:] Wieman insists that God answers prayer. “Prayer,” he says, “is a reverent, appealing attitude toward the process of interaction which makes for the greatest mutuality.” (Art. (1932)³, 89). The answer to prayer comes through this interaction producing precious blessings of mutuality which were only possibilities prior to one’s taking this attitude.\ Moreover, human personality and fellowship find in God the source of their origin, the continuous source of their enrichment, and the condition of their most abundant flowering.\[Footnote:] Wieman, GOR, 363.\¹¹⁹

Wieman also quite readily sees the value of personality applied to God as a symbol for religious purposes:

From all this we conclude that the mythical symbol of person or personality may be indispensable for the practice of worship and personal devotion to the creative power, this need arising out of the very nature of creative interaction and so demonstrating that the creative event is the actual reality when this symbol is used most effectively in personal commitment of faith. This symbol may be required even by those who know through intellectual analysis that a person is always a creature and that therefore personality cannot characterize the nature of the creator.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 267–268.\

However, this need of religious devotion to think of God as a person must not blind our minds to the fact that God cannot be a person.

The fact that God is not personal does not mean that he is impersonal. Wieman insists that God responds to personal adjustments in a “personal” manner, and that his nature must be so conceived that it accounts for the existence of personality. Because of this God cannot be impersonal. Actually, God is not sub-personal but supra-personal. Therefore, Wieman uses the personal pronoun in referring to God, though at the same time conscious of its inadequacy.\[Footnote:] Wieman, IOL, 219–230; GOR, 359–362.\¹²⁰

ii. God as process

One of the first things that the interpreter of Wieman discovers is his persistent affirmation that God belongs to the category of process. This appears throughout all his definitions of God. In one book Wieman refers to God as

that integrating process which works through all the world not only to bring human lives into fellowship with one another but also to maintain and develop organic interdependence and mutual support between all parts and aspects of the cosmos.\[Footnote:] Wieman, MPRL, 22. Italics mine.\

Again he says:

God is that integrating process at work in the universe. It is that which makes for increasing interdependence and cooperation in the world.\[Footnote:] Wieman, MPRL, 46, 47. Italics mine\

Elsewhere he declares: “God is that interaction between things which generates and magnifies personality and all its highest values.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, ITG, 13.\ Now an interaction is not a thing or a concrete object;\[Footnote:] Wieman, WRT, 193.\ it is a process in which concrete objects affect one another; it is an event, not a continuing entity. Interactions are not “persistent realities.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1932)³, 45.\

When Wieman speaks of God as integrating process at the level of human society he means the process by which men are made increasingly interdependent and their behavior is so changed as to make them more cooperative and mutually helpful one to the other. Because this process goes on independently of human purpose Wieman calls it superhuman. But while it is more than human it will not lift humanity to the great goods of life unless men make right adaptation to it. “The process goes on whether we will or no, but we must ‘get right with it’ if we would escape catastrophe.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, WRT, 62.\¹²¹

Wieman makes it clear that this process of progressive integration which is seen at work in human society is cosmic in scope. It can be seen in electrons interacting in such a way as to make atoms, atoms to make molecules, molecules to make cells, cells to make living organisms, living organisms to make individual minds and human society. This process of progressive integration is quite similar to what Smuts calls Holism, Whitehead the principle of concretion, S. Alexander and Loyd Morgan the nisus toward ever higher creative syntheses, and Hocking the Whole Idea.¹²²

Another way in which Wieman expresses the idea that God belongs to the category of process is that of referring to God as the pattern of behavior. He notices that the universe is not a passive state of being; it is rather a total event which is continually transpiring. It is a total event made up of an infinite number of subordinate events. In other words, the universe is continually behaving.

Now this behavior of the universe, which is infinitely complex and varied, has a certain pattern and structure. This pattern of behavior upon which man is dependent for maximum security and increase of good, is the God of the universe. “God is the behavior of the universe which has thus nurtured human life and which continues to keep it going and growing.” ¹²³

As we have seen above, Wieman makes it clear that God is not to be identified with all patterns of behavior or with the universe in its entirety (pantheism). Only that pattern of behavior can be called God “which preserves and increases to the maximum the total good of all human living where right adjustment is made.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, WRT, 62.\

From the above we may conclude that Wieman’s God is a process, an order of events, a system or patten of behavior. All of this is consistent with his naturalistic leanings. Traditional theism tends to see God as an all-powerful person who is the shaper of events, or the overruler of them, or somehow the generator of them. Wieman however, following his naturalistic learnings, sees God as a process within nature, a process which is the structure or order of events.

6. Wieman’s use of specifically Christian symbols in his conception of God

No exposition of Wieman’s mature view of God is complete without a discussion of the rather illuminating way in which he reinterprets many of the traditional Christian concepts concerning God. Wieman seeks to preserve and interpret everything which has given power to the life and worship of the Christian religion. As we have seen, this interpretation is made in the frame of his own naturalistic processes of thought. “Nothing has value except material events.…”\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 8.\ This means that most of the terms of classical Christianity must be used with a new and different meaning. These subtle changes in meaning must always be kept in the mind of the interpreter of Wieman because of Wieman’s constant tendency of using historical phrases in a sense other than that which has been carried by them in the past.

Wieman’s whole life’s work represents the most valiant attempt to keep the values of evangelical Christianity while discarding its philosophy and thelogy. He looks upon the literal interpretation of most Christian doctrines as absurd and unscientific. But when these literal interpretations are removed, Christian doctrines are found to have a symbolic value that is indispensable for living religion. In an article which appeared in a series entitled, “How My Mind Has Changed in the Last Decade,” Wieman writes:

I use traditional Christian symbols much more than I did ten years ago. I do not think that this indicates any access to orthodoxy. But I find that when the ambiguities and superstitions and superficialities have been cleared away from these ancient forms of expressions, they carry a depth and scope of meaning which no other words can convey, because the same history which has made them has made us.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1939), 116.\

With these propaedeutic remarks we turn now to a discussion of the basic Christian symbols which receive fruitful treatment in Wieman’s conception of God.

i. The grace of God

Wieman agrees with the view that man can never achieve the good by his own power. Whenever man uses his power to serve the good that is discerned by his own appreciative consciousness rather than serve the good that is determined by the creative power of God, his efforts are doomed to defeat.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 49.\ The structure of man’s appreciative consciousness is too limited in scope and distorted in form ever to become an independent guide for human life. Man’s awareness of this inadequacy leads to despair. But the despair which arises at this point is not totally destructive; it really opens the way to salvation; for despair concerning the adequacy of his own appraisal of value may lead man to give himself to the guiding grace of God.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 49.\¹²⁴

Despair for its own sake has no value. But when it turns man from trust in his own reason or sense of value to absolute trust in the grace of God, it opens the way to salvation. “As a gateway into this transformed way of living, where security is found in the power and goodness of God, despair is the highest wisdom.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 49.\

Now what is this “grace of God” upon which man is so dependent. The grace of God is “creative transformation become dominant in the life of man.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 49.\ Every individual has the important task of searching out the nature of creativity and seeking to live in accord with its demands. But the actual directing toward the good and the actual achievement of it cannot be exercised by the ability of man; this can be done only by the creative event when accepted as sovereign over life.¹²⁵ This creative event operating in its sovereignty is what Wieman means by the “grace of God.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 50.\

ii. Divine love and justice

Wieman’s interpretation of the love of God grows out of his doctrine of the creativity of God. As we have seen, God is the growth of connection between sensitive organisms, all the way from cells and plant spores to human personalities and groups. He is that creative interaction from which originates all the richness of experience, as well as personality and society. So as human personalities we are both originally and continuously generated by God’s creativity. God’s love is this creativity.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1940)², 155.\¹²⁶

God’s “judgment” is inseparable from his love. It is the same thing working under different conditions. God’s love is the growth of connections whereby individuals and groups are brought closer together in mutual interaction. It is what we have just described as creativity. God’s judgment is the “mutual destructiveness” which comes to individuals and groups as a result of their resistance to the transformtion which is required by the new life of interdependence. The closer drawn the cords of love, the more destructive of one another do men become when they resist the transformation brought forth by these closer connections.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1940)², 156.\¹²⁷

iii. Divine forgiveness

The forgiveness of God is an expression of his love. It is accomplished by God setting up conditions whereby it is possible to transform sinners despite their resistance to his love. Sin is clinging to anything, or the striving after anything, when such clinging or striving is obstructive to creative transformation.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 278.\¹²⁸ Sin is anything in one’s personality which resists the creativity of God. When sin is unforgiven, God cannot overcome this resistance except by destroying the individual or group which does the resisting. When sin is forgiven the resistance is still present but God can overcome it without destroying the persons who do the resisting.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1940)², 150.\¹²⁹

Before this forgiveness of sin can be accomplished at least three things are required. First, creative interaction must be released from the coercive and absolute control of any one order of life or set of structures. Wieman holds that this first condition for the forgiveness of sin was partially met in the Roman Empire by the intermingling of races and the interpenetration of cultures.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1940)², 160.\¹³⁰

The second condition which has to be met in order that sins be forgiven is

that a psychological, social historical process get under way which would make creativity potent and sovereign over the lives of a few (at least) so that no hope or dream, no ideal or order of existence could exercise equal control over them.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1940)², 159.\

This was accomplished by the life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.¹³¹ We shall discuss Wieman’s conception of the death and resurrection of Christ subsequently.

A third condition which must be met before the power of God unto salvation is free to deliver men from sin is repentance. The confession and repentance of sin means three things. It means, first, to recognize that there is something deep in one’s personality which does resist the transformation required for that fullness of creative interaction demanded by the connections one has with other people.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1940)², 164.\¹³²

Confession and repentance of sin mean, in the second place, that one shall resolve repeatedly to hold oneself subject to every transformation required by creative interaction, no matter what pain or loss such changes may involve.\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1940)², 164.\¹³³

Confession and repentance of sin mean in the third place that one must search out every habit, every object of desire, fear, hope, and dread which seems to be recalcitrant to creative interaction, and resolve that each of these shall be taken from or given to one only as creative interaction may require.¹³⁴ “Nothing shall be mine except as I receive it from the creativity of God. Nothing shall be held back by me when the creativity of God would take it away.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, Art. (1940)², 165.\

Whenever the three conditions stated above are met, Wieman is certain that God’s forgiving power will be at work. God’s forgiveness is not some static decree. Rather it is a dynamic reality working in history, in society and in each personality who meets the necessary conditions.

iv. The crucifixion and resurrection of Christ

Wieman looks upon the death and resurrection of Christ as indispensable events for the salvation of man. Jesus during his life developed in a small group of men a richness of creative interaction that was unique and sublime. So long as Jesus lived, however, this creative interaction never broke free of the established patterns of the Hebrew traditon. The followers of Jesus continued to dream and hope that he would establish an earthly kingdom as Hebrew tradition prescribed.¹³⁵

The crucifixion cracked this structure of existence and possibility. It did this by destroying the hope of the disciples, and even temporarily destroying the creative interaction which they had had in fellowship with one another when Jesus was with them. With the crucifixion Jesus failed them utterly. They had hoped that he was the messiah. But he died miserably upon a cross and was wholly unable to do what their Hebrew way of life prescribed for him. The hopes and dreams of the disciples all disappeared in the black-out of the crucifixion.¹³⁶

But after the despair had lasted for about three days, something miraculous happened. The life-transforming creativity which Jesus had engendered among them came back.¹³⁷ It had risen from the dead.

But what rose from the dead was not the man Jesus; it was creative power. It was the living God that works in time. It was the Second Person of the Trinity. It was Christ the God, not Jesus the man.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 44.\

Who is this Christ that rose from the dead? As we have seen, he is not merely the man Jesus. “Christ is the domination by the creative event over the life of man in a fellowship made continuous in history.”\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 269.\ Through this domination Christ is the revelation of God to man, and the salvation of the world.\[Footnote:] Wieman, SHG, 269.\¹³⁸

^1. James Alfred Martin, Jr., Empirical Philosophies of Religion: With Special Reference to Boodin, Brightman, Hocking, Macintosh, and Wieman (Morningside Heights, N.Y.: King’s Crown Press, 1945), pp. 87–88: “Wieman has classified his view as ‘theistic naturalism’. This means that he would avoid any ultimate separation of God from nature; that he views God as one natural process or structure of processes among others which can be apprehended in clearly defined ways with predictible results.… Such a process or structure of processes may be superhuman but cannot be ‘supernatural’, because nature is defined by him as ‘what we know through the interaction between the physiological organism and its environment’ and the supernatural is unknowable by definition.”

^2. Martin, Empirical Philosophies of Religion, p. 87: “It has been his purpose, he says, ‘so to formulate the idea of God that the question of God’s existence becomes a dead issue’. To accomplish this he has offered as a ‘minimal’ definition of God the following: ‘God is that something upon which human life is most dependent for its security, welfare, and increasing abundance … that something of supreme value which constitutes the most important conditions’.”

^3. Martin, Empirical Philosophies of Religion, p. 102: “But he has developed these ‘minimal’ definitions in various ways. At one point in his intellectual pilgrimage he suggested that God as so defined is ‘that interaction between individuals, groups, and ages which generates and promotes the greatest mutuality of good … the richest possible body of shared experience’, a definition suggesting Dewey’s ‘religion of shared experience’. In another volume he speaks of God as ‘that interaction which sustains and magnifies personality … the process of progressive integration’; while in another place he undertook to defend Whitehead’s view of God as ‘the principle of concretion’.”

^4. On a draft of the dissertation Schilling suggested that King “avoid repetition” of Wieman’s definition of God as the creative event (King, Draft of chapter 4, 1954–1955, MLKP-MBU).

^5. Wieman, “Authority and the Normative Approach,” p. 190: “Some call it the ‘principle of concretion’ (Whitehead); ‘the progression of emergents’ (Morgan, Alexander, Calhoun); ‘holistic evolution’ (Smuts); … ‘a thrust toward concentration, organization, and life’ (Montague); … ‘the value-actualizing function of human imagination within the total cosmic-social matrix that sustains it’ (Dewey).”

^6. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 56: “When good increases, a process of reorganization is going on, generating new meanings, integrating them with the old, endowing each event as it occurs with a wider range of reference.… It is creative good, standing in contrast to both kinds of created good we have been considering. By means of this creative good, systems of meaning having intrinsic value, previously disconnected so that the qualities of the one could not get across to the other, are so unified that each is enriched by qualities derived from the other.”

^7. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 58: “It is made up of four subevents; and the four working together and not any one of them working apart from the other constitute the creative event.… We have to describe them separately, but distinctions made for the purpose of analysis must not obscure the unitary, four-fold combination necessary to the creativity.”

^8. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 58: “The four subevents are: emerging awareness of qualitative meaning derived from other persons through communication; integrating these new meanings with others previously acquired; expanding the richness of quality in the appreciable world by enlarging its meaning; deepening the community among those who participate in this total creative event of intercommunication.”

^9. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 58: “Let us remember that qualitative meaning consists of actual events so related that each acquires qualities from the others. Every living organism so reacts as to break the passage of existence into units or intervals called ‘events’ and to relate these to one another in the manner here called ‘qualitative meaning.’ So long as this is done by the organism without the aid of linguistic communication, the range and richness of qualitative meaning is very limited. Not until the single organism is able to acquire the qualitative meanings developed by other organisms and add them to its own can the world of meaning and quality expand to any great compass. Therefore the first subevent in the total creative event producing value distinctively human is this emerging awareness in the individual of qualitative meaning communicated to it from some other organism. Interaction between the organism and its surroundings, by which new qualitative meaning is created without communication or prior to communication, is certainly creative.”

^10. On a draft of the dissertation Schilling underlined “it is the creative event” and “that the miracle happens” and wrote in the margin, “Revise faulty construction” (King, Draft of chapter 4). King did not correct the error.

^11. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 59: “This integrating does not occur in every case of communicated meaning, since there is much noncreative communication in our modern world by way of radio, television, movies, newspapers, and casual interchange between individuals.”

^12. The citation should read Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 59.

^13. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 59: “These newly communicated meanings must be integrated with meanings previously acquired or natively developed if the creative event is to occur. This integrating is largely subconscious, unplanned and uncontrolled by the individual, save only as he may provide conditions favorable to its occurrence.”

^14. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 60: “The supreme achievements of this internally creative integration seem to occur in solitude, sometimes quite prolonged. When many meanings have been acquired through communication and through much action on the material world, there must be time for these to be assimilated. If one does not for a time draw apart and cease to act on the material world and communicate with others, the constant stream of new meanings will prevent the deeper integration.”

^15. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 60: “Jesus in the wilderness of ‘temptation’ and in Gethsemane, Buddha alone under the Bo tree, Paul in the desert on the way to Damascus, Augustine at the time of his conversion—all these exemplify creative integration in solitude.… It seems that the individuals through whom the creative event has done most to transform and enrich the world with meaning have been more lonely than other men and have spent more time in lonely struggles.”

^16. Wieman, Source of Human Good, pp. 60–61: “But mere solitude is not enough. Nothing can be more deadening and dangerous to the human spirit than solitude. If the mind degenerates into a state of torpor, as it generally does when isolated from communication with others, solitude is not creative.… One of the major unsolved problems of our existence is to learn how to make solitude creative instead of degenerative.”

^17. Wieman, Source of Human Good, pp. 61–62: “The expanding and enriching of the appreciable world by a new structure of interrelatedness pertaining to events necessarily follow from the first two subevents. It is the consequence of both the first two, not of either one by itself. If there has been intercommunication of meanings and if they have been creatively integrated, the individual sees what he could not see before; he feels what he could not feel. Events as they happen to him are now so connected with other events that his appreciable world has an amplitude unimaginable before. There is a range and variety of events, a richness of quality, and a reach of ideal possibility which were not there prior to this transformation.”

^18. Wieman, Source of Human Good, pp. 62–63: “One important thing to note is that this expanding of the appreciable world may make a man more unhappy and more lonely than he was before; for now he knows that there is a greatness of good which might be the possession of man but is not actually achieved.… Such a profound sense of loneliness is difficult for any man to bear, and yet it is the hope of the world.”

^19. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 63: “This expanding of the appreciable world, accomplished by the third subevent, is not, then, in its entirety the actual achievement of an increase of value in this world, although it will include that. But it is also, perhaps even more, an expansion of the individual’s capacity to appreciate and his apprehension of a good that might be, but is not, fulfilled.”

^20. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 64: “Widening and deepening community between those who participate in the total creative event is the final stage in creative good. The new structure of interrelatedness pertaining to events, resulting from communication and integration of meanings, transforms not only the mind of the individual and his appreciable world but also his relations with those who have participated with him in this occurrence.”

^21. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 64: “This community includes both intellectual understanding of one another and the feeling of one another’s feelings, the ability to correct and criticize one another understandingly and constructively.”

^22. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 65: “These are the four subevents which together compose the creative event. They are locked together in such an intimate manner as to make a single, total event continuously recurrent in human existence.”

^23. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 39: “Jesus engaged in intercommunication with a little group of disciples with such depth and potency that the organization of their several personalities was broken down and they were remade.”

^24. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 40: “But this was not all; something else followed from it. The thought and feeling, let us say the meanings, thus derived by each from the other, were integrated with what each had previously acquired. Thus each was transformed, lifted to a higher level of human fulfilment.”

^25. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 40: “A third consequence followed necessarily from these first two. The appreciable world expanded round about these men, thus interacting in this fellowship. Since they could now see through the eyes of others, feel through their sensitivities, and discern the secrets of many hearts, the world was more rich and ample with meaning and quality.”

^26. Wieman, Source of Human Good, pp. 40–41: “There was more depth and breadth of community between them as individuals with one another and between them and all other men. This followed from their enlarged capacity to get the perspectives of one another.”

^27. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 65: “The creative event is one that brings forth in the human mind, in society and history, and in the appreciable world a new structure of interrelatedness, whereby events are discriminated and related in a manner not before possible. It is a structure whereby some events derive from other events, through meaningful connection with them, an abundance of quality that events could not have had without this new creation.”

^28. Henry Nelson Wieman and Walter Marshall Horton, The Growth of Religion (Chicago: Willett, Clark, 1938), pp. 325–326: “Chemical elements unite in this way and it may be that all growth is a chemical process. A flower grows by absorbing such elements as sunshine, air, water, and minerals, but these are transformed in the new synthesis so that the orginial elements are no longer recognizable. The mind of a human being grows by absorbing ideas, sentiments, attitudes from the social environment, but these are transformed in the new synthesis. The culture of a community grows by absorbing the ideas, techniques, skills, sentiments of the past and adding to these the newer developments of the present. But the gifts from the past and the present … transform one another into a new kind of whole.”

^29. Wieman, Growth of Religion, pp. 326–327: “What we have described is not evolution as science uses that term. Growth is only one form of evolution. A great deal of decomposition, conflict, and mutual destruction is going on throughout nature. Much of this would be called evolution by science. But through it all we also find the formation of connections of mutual support, mutual control, and mutual fulfillment between diverse activities forming new systems in which each part supports the whole and the whole operates to conserve the parts.”

^30. Wieman, Source of Human Good, pp. 268–269: “The best in Christianity … is revelation of God, forgiveness of sin, and salvation of man.… These three are different strands woven together into a single complex event, the character of which can be simply stated: the reversing of the order of domination in the life of man from domination of human concern by created good over to domination by creative good.”

^31. Henry Nelson Wieman, “God Is More than We Can Think,” Christendom 1 (1936): 441: “Man’s work can be clearly distinguished from that of God.… The difference is not merely a matter of magnitude and power. It is a difference in kind.”

^32. Wieman, “God Is More,” p. 441: “The work of God, which man never does, is the growth of organism. The work of man is the construction of mechanism.”

^33. The correct citation should read Wieman, Art. (1936)², 441. There are two additional sentences in the original before “Man can choose the place for the tree to grow” (Wieman, “God Is More,” p. 441).

^34. Wieman, “God Is More,” pp. 441–442: “The same applies to all growth, to growth of flowers, friendships, cultures, self-development, meanings. Mechanisms and organisms are not two different kinds of things. Rather, they are two different kinds of systems which enter into the existence of almost everything.”

^35. Wieman, “God Is More,” p. 442: “Internal relations are peculiar. They are creative. That means that when things or parts of things are internally related, they undergo transformation and mutually control one another.… All through the world … we find organism, that is, systems of internal relations. But we also find mechanism.… The work of God is the growth of organic connections, that is, the growth of all meaning and value. Man cannot do that. But he can serve it devotedly.”

^36. Wieman, “God Is More,” p. 441: “The work of man is to provide some of the needed mechanism which enables the organism to develop.”

^37. Wieman, Source of Human Good, pp. 74–75: “Innumerable things can be done by men to remove obstacles and provide sustaining conditions which release the power of creative good to produce value.… The creative event produces a structure which could not be intended by the human mind before it emerges, either in imagination or in the order of actual events.… The structure of value produced by the creative event cannot be caused by human intention and effort, because it can be produced only by a transformation of human intention and effort.”

^38. Henry Nelson Wieman, “God, the Inescapable, Part 11,” Christian Century 48 (30 September 1931): 1209: “It is superhuman because it operates without the conscious intent of man.… It is superhuman, furthermore, because it generates personality. It is a commonplace of social psychology that personality can exist only in a society. Personality is something that develops only when there is some intereaction of the sort we have described. Therefore, human personality does not create this kind of interaction. Rather this interaction creates personality.”

^39. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 76: “The creative event is supra-human, not in the sense that it works outside of human life, but in the sense that it creates the good of the world in a way that man cannot do. Man cannot even approximate the work of the creative event.”

^40. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 6: “There is nothing in reality accessible to the human mind more basic than events and their qualities and relations. (‘Relations’ is another word for ‘structure.’)”

^41. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 264: “This source is not metaphysically transcendental, but it is functionally transcendental. It serves everyone of the vital and saving functions performed by the myth of a metaphysically transcendental reality.”

^42. Wieman, Source of Human Good, pp. 264–265: “The Christian myth has directed the absolute commitment of faith away from all created good and thus delivered man from bondage to any relative value and has thus saved him from good become demonic. It has established a demand for righteouness far beyond the socially accepted standards of a given time and place.… It has established a bond between men vastly deeper and more important than personal affection or kinship, mutual interest or shared ideal, institution or race. Moreover, it has shown evil to be deeper and darker than any wrong done to society, to any group, or to any person, because in the last analysis evil is against the transcendental reality. It has revealed an obligation laid upon man which overrides any obligation derived from society, tradition, ideal, or loyalty to persons. Finally, it has opened possibilities of creative transformation beyond anything that could be expected from human effort, idealism, or any other such power.”

^43. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 265: “But [the creative event] can accomplish these services only when men by faith give themselves to its control and transforming power.”

^44. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 79: “When we speak of ‘absolute good’ we shall mean, first of all, what is good under all conditions and circumstances. It is a good that is not relative to time or place or person or race or class or need or hope or desire or belief. It is a good that remains changelessly and identically the same.… It is a good that retains its character even when it runs counter to all human desire. It is good that continues to be identically the same good even when it works with microscopic cells prior to the emergence of any higher organism.”

^45. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 79: “Creative good meets all these requirements pertaining to absolute good. Its goodness is not relative to human desire, or even to human existence.”

^46. Wieman, Source of Human Good, pp. 79–80: “On the other hand, created good—the structure of meaning connecting past and future that we feel and appreciate—is relative value in all the senses that stand in contrast to the absolute as just described.… Thus created good does not retain the same character of goodness under all circumstances and conditions.… The creative good which does retain its character of goodness under all these changing conditions is, then, the only absolute good.”

^47. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 80: “A second mark of absolute good is that its demands are unlimited. A good is absolute if it is always good to give myself, all that I am and all that I desire, all that I possess and all that is dear to me, into its control to be transformed in any way that it may require.”

^48. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 80: “Thus in a third way, inseparable from the second, creative good is absolute. It is unlimited in its demands because it is infinite in value.”

^49. Wieman, Source of Human Good, pp. 80–81: “Fourth, absolute good is unqualified good. There must be no perspective from which its goodness can be modified in any way. Always, from every standpoint, its good must remain unchanged and self-identical, whether from the worm’s view or the man’s view, whether under the aspect of eternity or under the aspect of time,… whether viewed as means or as end.”

^50. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 81: “Finally, creative good is absolute in that it is entirely trustworthy. We can be sure that the outcome of its working will always be the best possible under the conditions, even when it may seem to us to be otherwise.”

^51. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 81: “We can also be sure that creative good will always be with us. When all other good is destroyed, it springs anew; it will keep going when all else fails. In this dual sense creative good is absolutely trustworthy: it always produces good; it never fails.”

^52. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 82: “The claim that any kind of good is almighty cannot be defended.”

^53. Martin, Empirical Philosophies of Religion, p. 95: “For he, like Macintosh, holds that values are perceptible facts and that they constitute the primary data for religious inquiry, since religion is concerned with loyalty to supreme value. Any distinction between value and fact in this realm is confusing, he says: ‘We believe a great deal of confusion in religious thought may go back to the [assumption] that values are not facts. If value is a fact, just as truly as anything else, then many of the difficulties in the search for God would fade away as dreams. If values are in nature and are facts, God can be found as readily and naturally as other persistent and pervasive realities.’”

^54. Martin, Empirical Philosophies of Religion, p. 96: “Wieman’s indebtedness to Dewey in this theory is gratefully recognized by him.… His refusal to separate values from nature is clearly in line with Dewey’s position. And this refusal to make a sharp ontological distinction between the realms of value and of fact leads him also to reject the preferential treatment given to ‘ideals’ in metaphysics by Brightman and other ethical idealists. If one reifies conceptual ideals, he says, then all concepts must share this status indiscriminately, and the resulting chaos can only be overcome through a further appeal to experience; ideals, in other words, are functional guides in the interpretation of experience but are not ‘transcendental’.”

^55. Henry Nelson Wieman, “Values: Primary Data for Religious Inquiry,” Journal of Religion 16, no. 4 (October 1936): 381: “Emotion, or that more general term, feeling, has been selected by some as giving us the essence of value. Emotions and feelings are certainly involved in all experiences of value. But no amount of observation and analysis and interrelating of feelings, cut off from the personalities having them and from the situations calling them forth, can be made to yield a rational structure or principle helpful in solving the important practical problems of life.… Love is certainly one kind of value, but one could scarcely bring all values into this category.”

^56. Wieman, “Values,” p. 382: “Love is a very vague term. It must be analyzed into forms or relations that can give us some guidance and light.… Satisfaction of desire, or liking, does enter into any direct and appreciative experience of value. But is is precisely when we mistrust our own likings and satisfactions that we need and want a guiding theory.… Happiness has in it all the ambiguity of liking and satisfaction.”

^57. Wieman, “Values,” p. 382: “Intelligence has sometimes been honored as the substance of all value.… Apparently that is meant, and yet there seem to be flagrant cases of evil intelligence. If one says evil is negative value, then what is the criterion which distinguishes the positive from the negative value of intelligence?”

^58. Wieman, “Values,” p. 383: “Biological patterns have been said to be the determining mark of value, such as survival or adjustment or life. But it is easy to find instances of evil that have survived and good that has perished.… The same general principle applies to adjustment and life. There is good adjustment and bad, and good life and bad. Hence these terms give us no guidance at all.”

^59. Wieman, “Values,” p. 383: “Personalities are good and bad to all extremes. Hence it is not mere personality, but something about personality which is the value.”

^60. Wieman, “Values,” p. 384: “Patterns in the physical world, such as order and purpose, have been selected as criteria of value. Doubtless value implies order of a kind, but what kind of order is better and what kind worse? More order is not necessarily more value unless it is the right kind of order. The same is true of purpose.… At any rate, purpose of itself does not give us a clear distinction between better and worse.”

^61. Wieman, “Values,” p. 385: “We believe the factor in value which lends itself most readily to a guiding pattern or principle by which to discover, appraise, and appreciate values is appreciable activity. Activity is objective. It can be observed, computed, foreseen.… Activities can be connected in meaningful and supporting ways.”

^62. Wieman, “Values,” p. 387: “Since these two, activity and meaning, are of first importance in our interpretation of value, we must try to make plain the idea we wish to express by each. An activity is, first of all, a change. But it is not every change. A change is an activity when it is so related to other changes that they mutually modify one another to the end of meeting the requirements of a system to which they belong. For example, gravitational changes mutually modify one another in such a way as to meet the requirements of the gravitational system.… Or, again, many of the changes that transpire in a cell are so related to many other changes in the physiological organism that they all mutually modify one another to the end of meeting the requirements of the living system.”

^63. Wieman, “Values,” p. 388: “We have shown that gravitational changes are activities with respect to the gravitational system. But they are not activities, necessarily, with respect to the system of a living organism.… It is plain that a change may be an activity with respect to one system and not in relation to another.… Changes which sustain one system are often destructive of others.”

^64. Wieman, “Values,” pp. 386, 388: “The activity must be appreciable. Otherwise it is not the datum in which value can be found.… An activity is a value only when it is appreciable.”

^65. Wieman, “Values,” pp. 388–389: “To be appreciable means that some living consciousness sometime, somewhere, some way, may be affected by it with joy or suffering. This does not require that the consciousness have any knowledge of this activity.… They qualify consciousness without being objects of consciousness. Oxidation of the blood in my lungs qualifies my consciousness when I am not at all conscious of what is going on. These changes pertain to value, however, if their removal or cessation would destroy the system which yields the experience of value.”

^66. Wieman, “Values,” p. 389: “With this understanding of activity let us now turn to the interpretation of meaning. Activity and meaning are closely related but not identical.”

^67. Wieman, “Values,” pp. 389–390: “So we see that the connection between changes which makes them to be activities within a system is a connection which is best fitted to make them carriers of meaning by virtue of the fact that they can represent one another to a mind that understands the connection between them. A throbbing pulse means the presence of life to a mind that is able to understand the connection between these throbs and that system of coordinated changes in the organism which makes it a living thing. Rising smoke in the distance means the presence of fire to a mind that understands the connection between smoky changes in the atmosphere and correlative changes called combustion.”

^68. Wieman, “Values,” pp. 391–392: “Meaning, as here set forth, is not subjective. The experience of the meaning is subjective if you equate experience with subjectivity. But the meaning which is experienced, namely, the connection of mutual control or correlation between changes, is no more subjective than a mountain or a city.… Meaning is dependent on understanding and appreciation, but that which is understood and appreciated is not subjective.”

^69. Wieman, “Values,” p. 392: “What is enjoyable for one person is not for another.… What one person enjoys at one time is sometimes loathsome to him under other conditions.… But no matter how diverse may be the enjoyments of different people, or of the same person at different times in his development, one thing seems to be plain.”

^70. Wieman, “Values,” p. 393: “Therefore, when we have any enjoyment, what we are actually experiencing is a great system of activities all connected in such way as to yield that sort of enjoyment.”

^71. Wieman, “Values,” pp. 393–394: “If value is what makes an experience enjoyable, then our analysis would seem to indicate that value consists of the way activities are connected with one another.… All this points to the conclusion that value is not enjoyment, but it is that connection between activities which makes them enjoyable. When we experience enjoyment, it is not merely our enjoyment that we enjoy; what we enjoy is a certain connection between activities.”

^72. Wieman, “Values,” pp. 394–395: “There is a further reason for speaking of appreciable rather than of enjoyed or even enjoyable connections.… Such terms as enjoyed, enjoyment, and enjoyable may blind us to the fact that there are high austere values which can be experienced at times only through great pain and suffering.”

^73. Wieman and Westcott-Wieman, Normative Psychology of Religion, p. 48: “Thus the doctrine of value we are here presenting is not a hedonism which identifies value with any sort of enjoyment.”

^74. Wieman and Westcott-Wieman, Normative Psychology of Religion, p. 48: “Rather it represents value as that connection between activities which makes them enjoyable by reason of their mutual support, mutual enhancement and mutual meaning.”

^75. Wieman, “Values,” p. 395: “Thus eating wholesome food is an activity which supports many other appreciable activities, while eating unwholesome food is an activity which does not.… The same is true of honesty as over against dishonesty, good music as over against bad.”

^76. Wieman, “Values,” p. 395: “Thus wholesome food not only supports other enjoyable activities, but it makes those others more appreciable.… Honesty not only supports but may enhance the value of many other activities.”

^77. Wieman, “Values,” p. 396: “It is quite possible to have a system of mutual support which is achieved and maintained by excluding all other activities and fixating the system. In political order this is dictatorship as contrasted with democracy.”

^78. Wieman, “Values,” p. 397: “There is still a fifth characteristic of this connection between enjoyable activities.… An activity may even be exceedingly painful, and yet be enjoyable by virtue of the meaning it carries.… We choose this painful but meaningful activity because of the enjoyableness of its meaning, not because of the enjoyableness of its pain.”

^79. Wieman, “Values,” pp. 398-399: “We can now summarize the fivefold principle by which to distinguish activities which are better from those which are worse. It is the principle of mutual support, mutual enhancement, mutual diversification, mutual meaning, and transformation of suffering into an experience which is positively appreciated. This fivefold principle is the principle of value.… But one activity is better when it is more appreciable by virtue of its connection with other activities. This connection is that of support, enhancement, diversification, meaning, and transmutation.”

^80. Henry Nelson Wieman, “God and Value,” in Religious Realism, ed. D. C. Macintosh (New York: Macmillan, 1931), p. 155: “In so far as this structure of supreme value enters into existence, we can speak of God as a process. But it extends far beyond existence, into the realm of possibility. And the whole of existence is by no means conformant to this structure of God. The terrible magnitude of evil makes this plain.”

^81. Wieman, “God and Value,” p. 156: “This mutual support and enhancement must be not only between contemporaries but also between successive generations, ages, and cultures.”

^82. Henry Nelson Wieman, “Theocentric Religion,” Religion in Life 1 (1932): 110: “God must be conceived not merely as the possibilities of highest value. God is the actuality which carries those possibilities.”

^83. Wieman, “God and Value,” pp. 158–159: “Some hold that the best is not a possibility at all, but an impossibility. Therefore, if we are to be faithful to the best, we must not supinely yield to the vulgarity of existence, either actual or possible, but must give our highest devotion to that non-existent impossibility that never can be. R. B. Perry, Bertrand Russell, Herman Randall, Joseph Wood Krutch, George Santayana,… have been eloquent on this point. But he who adores the impossible, implies that his adoring of it is of great value.… But this adoring is itself a process of existence because he who adores is an existing personality.… Second, if the value be a value even when impossible of existence, then that process of existence which enables us to value it as such, cannot be ignored or excluded from the high esteem we give to the impossibility itself. Thus in any case some process of existence must be combined with some possibility (or impossibility) to make up the object of our supreme devotion. Since God is the name we give to such an object, God must be identified with that process of existence which carries the possibilities of greatest value.”

^84. Wieman and Westcott-Wieman, Normative Psychology of Religion, p. 51: “[Supreme value] is always a combination of actuality and possibility. When these two are combined we have what is called growth. Growth … is that kind of change which increases what is, so as to approximate what might be.… [Supreme value] is growth of meaning in the world. This is the supreme value for the following reasons.”

^85. Wieman and Westcott-Wieman, Normative Psychology of Religion, pp. 51–52: “This growth of meaning and value in the world is God.”

^86. Wieman, Issues of Life, pp. 221–222: “It is that order of structures of value, actual and possible, which will ultimately issue in the realization of the greatest value when we rightly conform to its requirements.“

^87. Wieman, “Values,” pp. 403–404: “The most important reality which can command the loyalties of men is the unlimited growth of the connections of value.… Every specific system of activities having value is definitely limited, whether it be a living organism with its sustaining environment, or a society of organisms, or a community of minds with all their meanings and with a historic development and institutional structure called a culture. Each of these must perish.… If values and meanings are to grow indefinitely, each of these limited systems of value must pass away in time and give place to some other order of existence and value.”

^88. Martin, Empirical Philosophies of Religion, p. 104: “But we have noted that Wieman defines God not simply in terms of the maximum achievement of value, analagous to an ideal of perfection, but also in terms of those natural conditions which underlie the achievement of value. God, in other words, in not simply the greatest possible value or the process by which such value is achieved; he is also the sum-total of all the natural conditions of such value-achievement. Thus in a recent article he says that ‘the value of God … is that of creative source … that peculiar sort which pertains to the creator of all created values. The value of God is the value of creativity’.”

^89. Henry Nelson Wieman, The Directive in History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1949), p. 61: “It would be impossible for us to get any knowledge of such an initial generation, supposing it ever occurred.… By create we mean to produce what never was before, either in existence or in the imagination of man, to produce that which exposes to appreciative awareness more of the qualities of reality, or builds in that direction.”

^90. Henry Nelson Wieman, Methods of Private Religious Living (New York: Macmillan, 1929). pp. 57–58: “There are many disintegrating processes at work.… All is not God and God is not all. All is not good and good is not all.… There is death, disintegration, futility and ruin.… There is evil in the world vast and devastating. But there is also good.… All good is derived from the process of integration.”

^91. Wieman and Horton, Growth of Religion, pp. 353–354: “The assumption which generates the false problem of evil is this: A perfectly good God creates and sustains the universe and all that is in it.… The contradiction is between the goodness of God’s unlimited power and the evil in the world of which he is creator and sustainer.… One who denies that God is the creator and sustainer of the universe, simply does not have the contradiction on his hands.… There is a creator and sustainer of all that is good in the universe.… Such a creator and sustainer, however, is not of the universe as a whole, but only of the good that is in it.”

^92. Martin, Empirical Philosophies of Religion, pp. 104–105: “If he means to refer to the natural conditions which may be utilized in the achievement of value, then once again we must point out that empirically there is a plurality of such conditions, and the notion of ‘a’ creative ‘source’ is at most imaginative and figurative.… It is interesting to note, in this connection, that Dewey has pointed to some of these ambiguities in objecting to Wieman’s claim that his idea of God is a faithful theistic formulation of the religious faith implicit in Dewey’s philosophy.”

^93. John Dewey, Review of Is There a God? ed. C. C. Morrison, Christian Century 40 (8 February 1933): 196: “I can but think that Mr. Wieman’s God rests upon hypostatization of an undeniable fact, experience of things, persons, causes, found to be good and worth cherishing, into a single objective existence, a God.”

^94. Martin, Empirical Philosophies of Religion, p. 105: “Now it seems to us that, from a more consistently empirical point of view, Dewey’s criticisms are justified; indeed, it seems that he has pointed clearly to the chief sources of difficulty in Wieman’s total view. When Wieman speaks of God there seem to be at least three different meanings. He seems to mean the ideal of perfection or of the achievement of maximum value; the human and social processes which aim at the achievement of value; and the natural forces underlying or utilized in these processes. He does not realize that these three meanings may be viewed as constituting a unity (or a Trinity!) only in a highly imaginative and figurative sense, a sense appropriate to the life of faith and devotion, perhaps, but not to a religious philosophy which would be consistently empirical in this connection. We believe that it is his failure to be consistently empirical in this connection which is largely responsible for the confusions which we have found in his views of religious perception and method.”

^95. Martin, Empirical Philosophies of Religion, p. 108: “From a consistently empirical point of view, he holds, [the problem of evil] is really a false problem; it arises only when one departs from the empirical evidence for God as ‘the good’, or the chief factor for good in nature, and begins to speculate about God as also somehow the creator of all existence. That is, one must either deny the reality of evil, which is clearly empirical, or give up the idea of God as Creator of all.… Brightman’s idea of a finite deity only reformulates the false problem, which as stated is truly ‘insoluble’. The more empirical problem is to define the actual nature and scope of evil, and not to indulge in unempirical speculation as to its ‘origin’.”

^96. Henry Nelson Wieman, The Wrestle of Religion with Truth (New York: Macmillan, 1927), p. 200: “Evil is anything which hinders the prehensive capacity of any particular thing.… It is destructive of concrete existence.”

^97. Wieman, Wrestle of Religion with Truth, pp. 200–201: “The more fully any object prehends the rest of being, the more complicated and delicately balanced must all its adjustments be.… The higher we rise in the levels of prehension, the greater place there is for the destructive works of evil.”

^98. Wieman, Wrestle of Religion with Truth, p. 201: “Since evil is the destruction of good there can be no evil unless there is first the good.… Evil, then, is parasitic. It cannot stand on its own feet. It can thrive and flourish only when there is good to sustain it.”

^99. Wieman, Wrestle of Religion with Truth, p. 202: “Evil is something positive and aggressive, not merely the lack or absence of something. But God is not evil and there is no confusion of good and evil. Insofar as the concrete world exists at all, it is due to God, the principle of concretion and order.” Cf. Wieman and Horton, Growth of Religion, p. 358: “We do not mean to say that evil is negative in the sense of being merely the absence of something. Particular evils are destructive and positive.”

^100. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 105: “The most general classification of evils distinguishes between those rooted in the nature of things not caused by man and those that originate in human life.… Evils that originate in human life we shall call ‘sin,’ ‘immorality,’ and ‘demonry’.”

^101. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 105: “By ‘inertia’ we mean … resistance to that kind of transformation whereby the individual organism, the world relative to that organism, and the associated community are all re-created so as to increase qualitative meaning.… We shall discuss this kind of inertia—insensitivity and resistance to creativity—in three rough categories, according to its causes: inertia due to lack of vital energy, inertia due to the running-down of energy, and inertia due to the canceling-out of conflicting energies.”

^102. Wieman, Source of Human Good, pp. 116–117: “This threat of inertia and loss of meaning is not peculiar to human life. It hangs over all the world. It seems to be a cosmic drift and threat, but it can be conquered. There is a power more than human which works against it. Several times since this planet cooled, it seems, this power reached a level where further advance was precarious, where defeat was imminent.”

^103. Wieman, Source of Human Good, pp. 117–118: “Another evil, derivative from this of inertia, is the evil of protective hierarchy. There are many kinds of hierarchy, but here we are concerned only with what could be called the ‘hierarchy of sensitivity.’ The graduated levels of sensitivity and the graded capacity to undergo creative transformation impose a hierarchy on existence in which only the few at the top can be the medium through which the creative event works most fully. This ordering of life is a hard necessity, but it is evil. It is evil because not all forms of life, not even all human organisms, can share equally the supreme fulfilments of qualitative meaning.”

^104. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 124: “The high peak of creative transformation will continue to soar far above the mass of people, with only a very few finding a place there. This a hard necessity, an evil inherent in the cosmic situation, so it seems. If this claim should be mistaken, none would be more happy than we; but if it is true, we must face the fact and order our lives accordingly.”

^105. Wieman, Source of Human Good, pp. 125–126: “The evils thus far treated are thrust upon man from sources outside of human living, and they seem to reside in the nature of things.… It is true that these evils pass over from the external source to the internal affairs of man, and it is hard to draw the line precisely determining the place where human responsibility begins. We unquestionably do have responsibility for many of the inertias.… Nevertheless, the inertias and the hierarchies are, primarily and in the large, thrust upon us from sources external to human life.”

^106. Wieman, Source of Human Good, pp. 126, 127: “Sin is any resistance to creativity for which man is responsible.… What is important, however, is that man recognize that his responsibility is not limited to instances in which he is consciously aware of obstructing creativity or deliberately intending to do so. Unintended and unconscious resistance is sin, too, because it is the consequence of many past decisions for which the man is responsible.… Most sin is unconscious and unintended. To be unconscious of one’s sin when he could be conscious of it is itself a darker sin.… We here point only to the fact that man can, if he will, be far more fully conscious of his sin than he generally is.”

^107. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 126: “When we say that sin is man’s resistance to the creative event, we refer to what was meant by the theological statement: ‘Sin is man’s rebellion against the will of God.’”

^108. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 127: “Another way of describing sin is to say that it is the creature turning against the creator—it is created good turning against creativity. Man’s personality is a created good, and so also are his society, his culture, his ideals. He, with his society, culture, and ideals, is forever refusing to meet the demands which must be met if the creative event is to rule in his life. This is sin. He refuses to provide the conditions which he could provide and which are necessary to release the freer working of creativity.… All this is rebellion against God. The ‘will of God,’ so far as it prescribes what man should do, is the demand of creative power that man provide conditions most favorable to its working.”

^109. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 128: “The evil of resisting creative transformation for the sake of a vision of human good remains.… The devil is what tempts man to sin in the most dangerous and evil way; also the devil is the most glorious of the sons of God.”

^110. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 129: “This is the most subtle and dangerous and obstructive sin that man can sin. No vision of any man, race, or culture at any time can be lifted up and made supreme against creativity.”

^111. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 129: “When the power of man increases by leaps and bounds, as it is doing today with the intensive industrialization of the planet,… some group will surely rise to a height of power that no men ever before enjoyed. It will be tempted to use its power to achieve what seems to it good and refuse to use it to serve the creative event.”

^112. Martin, Empirical Philosophies of Religion, p. 108: “Thus Wieman, like Boodin, finds an ultimate dualism more empirical than either a monistic idealism which would deny the existence of evil, [or] a quasi-monistic idealism which would seem to equivocate the issue.”

^113. Martin, Empirical Philosophies of Religion, p. 87: “If God be defined as supreme value or as that process which underlies and makes possible the maximum achievement of value then the fact of his existence, if not full knowledge of his specific nature, is ‘inescapable,’ he feels. ‘The best there is and can be … is a self-proving proposition.’”

^114. Henry Nelson Wieman, “Is There a God?“ in Is There a God? ed. C. C. Morrison (Chicago: Willett, Clark, 1932), p. 82: “In fact, anyone who started out to prove the existence of nature to natural creatures like ourselves, or of United States to its citizens, would be a fool. It is equal folly to try to prove to animals like ourselves, whose essential nature consists in seeking, adoring, and serving whatever has greatest value, that there is something which has greatest value.”

^115. Wieman and Horton, Growth of Religion, p. 361: “What generates personality, sustains and promotes its growth, and brings it to highest fulfillment? The reality which does all this is a very complex and delicate system of connections of mutual control which grows up between the individual psycho-physical organism and its physical and social environment.”

^116. Wieman, “God Is More,” p. 442: “Mechanisms and organisms are not two different kinds of things. Rather, they are two different kinds of systems which enter into the existence of almost everything.”

^117. Wieman, “God Is More,” p. 449: “That means that when things or parts of things are internally related, they undergo transformation and mutually control one another.”

^118. Wieman, “God Is More,” p. 449: “The work of God is the growth of organic connections, that is, the growth of all meaning and value. Man cannot do that.… Since God’s way of working is so different from that of mind, as we see it in man, we feel that God is not only more than mind, he is more than we can think.”

^119. Wieman and Horton, Growth of Religion, p. 361: “Do human personality and fellowship find in God the source of their origin, the continuous source of their enrichment, and the condition of their most abundant flowering?… Now the religious naturalist says that God does respond to the intimate needs and attitudes of each individual personality.”

^120. Martin, Empirical Philosophies of Religion, p. 107: “It is true that God responds to personal adjustments in a ‘personal’ manner, and that his nature must be so conceived that it accounts for the existence of personality; that, in brief, God is not impersonal. Therefore Wieman uses the personal pronoun in referring to God, being at the same time conscious of its inadequacy.”

^121. Wieman, Methods of Private Religious Living, pp. 51–52: “When we speak of the integrating process at the level of human society we mean the process by which (1) we are made increasingly interdependent and (2) our behavior is so changed as to make us more cooperative and mutually helpful one to the other.… But while it is more than human it will not lift humanity to the great goods of life unless men make right adaptation to it.… The process goes on whether we will or no, but we must ‘get right with it’ if we would escape catastrophe.“ Note that King’s reference to Wrestle of Religion with Truth is inaccurate.

^122. Wieman, Methods of Private Religious Living, pp. 52–53: “This process of progressive integration which we see at work in human society is cosmic in its scope. Electrons interact in such a way as to make atoms, atoms to make molecules, molecules to make cells, cells to make living organisms, living organisms to make individual minds and human society. It is what Smuts calls Holism,… Whitehead the principle of concretion,… S. Alexander and Lloyd Morgan the nisus toward ever higher creative syntheses, Hocking the Whole Idea.”

^123. The quotation is from Wieman, Wrestle of Religion with Truth, p. 62.

^124. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 49: “Man uses his power and prosperity to serve the good as discerned by his own appreciative consciousness rather than the good as determined by the creative power of God.… This judgment of God and the despair it brings are not merely condemnation; they really open the way of salvation and fulfilment; for despair concerning the reliability of his own appraisal of value may lead man to commit himself to the healing and guiding grace of God.”

^125. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 50: “But the actual directing toward the good and the actual achievement of it can be exercised not by any ability of man but only by the creative event when accepted as sovereign over life.”

^126. Henry Nelson Wieman, “What Is Most Important in Christianity?” Religion in the Making 1 (1940): 153–155: “It is the growth of connections between sensitive organisms, all the way from cells and plant spores to human personalities and groups.… [Creative interaction] is the creative origin of all richness of experience as well as of personality and society.… As human personalities we are both originally and continuously generated by God’s creativity.… God’s love is this creativity.”

^127. Wieman, “What Is Most Important?” p. 155: “God’s ‘judgment’ or ‘wrath’ is inseparable from his love. It is, indeed, the same thing, but working under different conditions. God’s love is the growth of connections whereby individuals and groups become mutually enriching members of a shared life. It is what we have just been describing as creativity. God’s wrath is the mutual destructiveness of such individuals and groups when they are drawn closer together by these connections but resist the transformation which is required by the life of mutual enrichment within these closer bonds of interdependence.… The closer draw the cords of love, the more destructive of one another do men become when they resist the transformation imposed by these closer connections.”

^128. Wieman, “What Is Most Important?” p. 156: “God’s forgiveness is accomplished by setting up conditions whereby it is possible to … transform sinners despite their resistance to God’s love.… Sin is the clinging to anything, or the striving after anything, when such clinging and striving prevents one from undergoing the transformations involved in creative interaction.”

^129. Wieman, “What Is Most Important?” p. 150: “Sin is anything in the conduct of human living which resists the creativity of God. When sin is unforgiven, God cannot overcome this resistance except by destroying the individual or group which does the resisting. When sin is forgiven the resistance is still present but God can overcome it without destroying the individuals or groups concerned.”

^130. Wieman, “What Is Most Important?” p. 159: “Creative interaction between persons must be released from confinement to any one set of structures or order of life.… This first condition for the forgiveness of sin was partially met in the Roman Empire by the intermingling of races, the interpenetration of cultures.… In this way the individual and the group was somewhat released from the coercive and absolute control of any one order of life.”

^131. Wieman, “What Is Most Important?” p. 160: “This was accomplished by the life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

^132. Wieman, “What Is Most Important?” p. 164: “There is, however, a third condition which must be met before the power of God unto salvation is free to work without limit in delivering men from that sin which is unto death.… The confession and repentance of sin means three things. It means, first, to recognize that my personality at depths far below the reach of consciousness at any given time is patterned and structured by an organization which does resist the transformations required for that fullness of creative interaction demanded by the connections I have with other people.”

^133. Wieman, “What Is Most Important?” p. 164: “Confession and repentance of sin mean, in the second place, that I shall resolve repeatedly, and with all the depths of sincerity that is in me, to hold myself subject to every transformation creative interaction may require, no matter what pain, death or loss such changes may involve.”

^134. Wieman, “What Is Most Important?” p. 165: “Confession and repentance of sin mean in the third place that I shall search out every habit, every object of desire, fear, hope and dread, that I can at all suspect to be recalcitrant to creative interaction, and resolve that each one shall be taken from me or given to me, according as creative interaction may require.”

^135. Wieman, “What Is Most Important?” p. 160: “Jesus during his life developed in a small group a height and depth and richness of creative interaction that was unique.… It never broke free of the established patterns of their Hebrew heritage as long as Jesus lived. They continued to dream and hope that Jesus would establish a kingdom … as Hebrew tradition prescribed.”

^136. Wieman, “What Is Most Important?” pp. 160–161: “The crucifixion cracked this structure of existence and possibility.… It did this by destroying their hope and even, for a little while, the creative interaction which they had had in fellowship with one another when Jesus was with them. With the crucifixion Jesus failed them utterly. They had hoped that he was the messiah. But he died miserably upon a cross and was wholly unable to be or to do what their Hebrew way of life prescribed for him.… The hope of Israel … all disappeared in the black-out of the crucifixion.”

^137. Wieman, “What Is Most Important?” p. 161: “But after the numbness and the despair had lasted for about three days, a miracle happened. That kind of interaction which Jesus had engendered among them came back.”

^138. Wieman, Source of Human Good, p. 269: “Through this domination Christ is the revelation of God to man, the forgiveness of sin extended to all men, and the salvation of the world.”

Source: MLKP-MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954-1968, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass.

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