- The history of Christianity
Modern views of God
If 18th- and 19th-century rationalism and scientific attacks on the idea of God were often called âthe first Enlightenmentâ or âthe first illumination,â in the 20th century a set of trends appeared that represented, to a broader public, a âsecond illumination.â This included a rescue of the idea of God, even if it was not always compatible with previous Christian interpretations. Some notable scientists of the 20th century, such as Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Max Born, and others, allowedâon occasion, and against the testimony of the majority of their colleaguesâfor an idea of God or religion in their concepts of life, the universe, and human beings.
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An influential rethinking of the concept of God was spurred by the Anglo-American mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who developed a speculative metaphysical framework for his scientific study. For Whitehead, creativity is the first metaphysical principle. God was the first creature to emerge from it, and Godâs own process of continually emerging into reality serves as the âdivine lureâ that guides and sustains everything else in creation. Some notable thinkersâsuch as the American philosopher and logician Charles Hartshorne, the American theologians Bernard M. Loomer and David Ray Griffin, and the Australian biologist Charles Birchâfound such a âprocess philosophyâ (a term coined after Whiteheadâs death) amenable to their own worldviews and professional projects. Variations on what came to be called âprocess theismâ promoted a vision according to which God was omnipresent and transcendent while also being immanent in such a way as to be intricately related to and bound up with creation.
When the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche prophesied what he called âthe death of God,â many Christian thinkers agreed that a certain set of culturally conditioned and dogmatic concepts of God were inaccessible, implausible, and dying out. Some of these apologists argued that such a âdeath of Godâ was salutary, because it made room for a âGod beyond the godsâ of argument, or a âgreater God.â Thomas J.J. Altizer became one of the most outspoken proponents of the so-called âDeath of God Theologyâ in the mid-20th century. The French Jesuit thinker Pierre Teilhard de Chardin for a time attracted a large following as he set out to graft the theory of evolution onto âgreater Godâ proclamations.