Contemporary Theology II: From Theology of Hope to Postmodernism. Feminist Theology and Process Theology. ST507 LESSON 13 of 24

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1 Contemporary Theology II: From Theology of Hope to Postmodernism ST507 LESSON 13 of 24 John S. Feinberg, PhD University of Chicago, MA and PhD Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, ThM Talbot Theological Seminary, MDiv University of California, BA In our previous lectures you have been getting quite a taste of feminist theology, and I want to complete our thinking on that in this lecture by interacting with Elizabeth Johnson, but before we get to that, I want to begin with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for these opportunities we ve had to reflect upon yourself and upon doing theology in ways that are different from the ways that we may typically do so. We pray now as we come to evaluate what we have heard that you would help us to both be accurate and fair in what we say. And then, Lord, as we begin reflecting on a new movement in theology, process theology, we pray for your guidance and direction, your Holy Spirit s ministry in aiding our understanding as well. Help us then as we study. For it s in Christ s name we pray it. Amen. We have given you quite a taste of feminist theology by giving you quite a taste of Elizabeth Johnson s work, She Who Is. There are, indeed, many other works on feminist theology that are significant. I ve mentioned one of them; I d like to repeat that again. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza s In Memory of Her is a rather significant book. It deals with a reconstruction of Christian origins and of church history in light of feminist concerns and tries to show that though women have been overlooked throughout church history they have been very, very active. She shows that we need new ways of looking at Scripture that will be liberating, and she also spends time focusing on some key Scripture passages and her understanding of them, especially Paul s passage in Galatians that talks about there being neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, bond nor free. You would find much of value in that work as well as in many others on feminist thinking. I have chosen this one in part because here you have someone who not only has talked about some of the history of what s to women, not only talks about one or two doctrines as to how they might look in a feminist mold; not only 1 of 14

2 talks about exegesis of certain passages of Scripture but gives us a vision, if you will, of how a thoroughgoing theology, dealing with all members of the Godhead, might look from a feminist perspective. What can we say about what we ve heard from Johnson? What I d like to do in the next few moments is to talk first of all about contributions from what we have heard, and I take this that this is not only contributions from Johnson s thinking, but from feminist theology generally, and then I d like to raise some concerns, especially with what we have heard from Johnson herself. First, then, to the contributions. Initially I want to point out that it is surely right that God is neither male nor female, so there should be, so to speak, a no-privilege way of referring in virtue of some idea that God is inherently male or inherently female. Likewise, it is also abundantly true that women are the image of God just as much as men are, so that characteristics of men and women alike should reflect the true character of God. Hence, it should be possible to speak appropriately of God in terms that are female, as well as in terms of male metaphors. In addition, we can also say that it is also true that women are called to imitate Jesus Christ just as men are, and women are capable of doing that. As a matter of fact, qualities of Christ, like His compassion, love, justice, faithfulness, His willingness to suffer unjustly for the sake of others, qualities like these and many more have nothing to do per se with one s gender, and because they don t, they are equally possible for men and women to exhibit. All of these things, I think, are correct, and they are either stated explicitly or implicitly suggested by what Johnson says. It is also true that men who have accepted Christ as Savior are no more and no less saved than women who have done the same. Surely there is nothing about the gender of either men or women that has anything to do with their judicial standing before God, that has anything to do with God s love of them or their significance to God. Nothing about gender affects any of those things. All of the preceding suggest that we should oppose any practices and attitudes that deny what can be stated as the ontological equality of women and men; that is, in their very being they are equally imago Dei, they are equally significant, equally loved by God, etcetera, etcetera. So we should oppose any practices and attitudes that deny that ontological equality of women and men, or practices that treat women as less saved, less loved by God, less significant to God than men, less important 2 of 14

3 members of the body of Christ. All of the preceding also suggest that it should be equally possible to think and speak about God in female metaphors as well as male metaphors, and I think that you can do so without being theologically inaccurate. I think, as well, that by using both male and female metaphors, you re probably going to be more likely to give a full-orbed, accurate account of God than if you were only to speak of God in terms of one human gender rather than the other. I would also like to add that I think it is also correct that there are many people who have abused their positions of power and authority to degrade and to denigrate women. That kind of oppression and injustice should be admitted, it should be repented, it should be stopped, and where possible, I think restitution should be made. God does not use His authority and position unjustly or oppressively, and we should not either. There are many, many things that I think are very helpful, very correct about what Johnson and feminist thinking has to say, but there are also many things that I find as concerns, and I m sure that while you listened to the positive things I had to say, you noted a number of things that I left out. So let me share with you some things that do concern me. An initial problem that I find with what Johnson has presented is not something that focuses so much on her feminism or feminism in general, but rather it focuses on one of the central theological claims that she makes, and a lot is staked on this idea; namely, the idea that God is totally incomprehensible. When we came to that point in her discussion, I made quite a point to read passages to you from her book and to mention that these were rather strong statements. What about this matter of God being totally incomprehensible? Indeed there is much about God that we do not know, and I think we have to agree that in God s essence as pure Spirit, it is surely true that no one has seen God, as the apostle John reminds us. But my question is this: Is God really as incomprehensible as Johnson and others in this tradition, I don t mean the feminist tradition, but in the tradition that sees God as basically ineffable, is God really as incomprehensible as suggested? If He is that incomprehensible, then are we really sure that we really have any revelation of this God? If God is beyond anything we might say or think, then are we really sure that anything has been revealed about God in any way? 3 of 14

4 It seems to me that theologians who take the stance that Johnson has taken sometimes say that God is revealed at the same time that He is veiled and vice versa. We ve heard that in the orthodox thinking. But if God is as far beyond human knowledge as we heard Johnson suggest, and others concur with her, I doubt that we know whether anything has been revealed about God, and if it has been, I m not sure that we know exactly what it is that s been revealed or what it means. So if God is really as incomprehensible as suggested, then I want to know how we know that the metaphors really postulate anything true about God. And you remember that Johnson says that all of our language about God is metaphorical, and she surely follows the lead of Tillich in taking a stance like this. But how do we then know that the metaphors about God really postulate anything true about God at all? If God is totally ineffable, then we know no positive quality of God s as literally true. And you remember Johnson admits this by saying that our language is analogical in regard to God, that s the best we can say, but I would like to suggest to you that this creates a major problem for any theology that takes this kind of approach. If language about God is all analogical, but we know nothing literally true about one of the analogs, namely, about God, because that analog is ineffable, He s beyond being known, then how do we know that God has any characteristics analogous to the characteristics of either men or women? You see, my point is that if you cloud God in too much mystery, then you say that our language about Him is analogical; how do we know if in fact the analogical language about God, or the supposedly analogical language about Him is correct at all? If you don t know anything literally true about one of the members of an analogical relationship, one of the analogs, namely, God, then how do you know whether any of your language about that analog tells you anything that s true? Johnson might hear this and reply, But we can know because Scripture says that all of us are the image of God, and as a result, some things about human beings must be analogous to traits in God. Even though that may sound like a way to get out of this problem, I would suggest to you that it doesn t help us. This fails to take seriously the fact that if all language about God is metaphorical because God is totally incomprehensible, then even the phrase image of God is itself a metaphor, and since God is so mysterious and so totally other as Johnson is telling us, then I would suggest to you that we do not have a clue as to which of our qualities actually image God and how they go about imaging God 4 of 14

5 at all, if in fact they do. So I would suggest to you that this approach to God talk which we also, as we ve said, have seen in Tillich, is tremendously problematic, tremendously problematic for any theology that incorporates it. If you want to see this point developed more fully, I would suggest that you might want to consult an article that I wrote some years ago. It s entitled Rationality, Objectivity, and Doing Theology: Review and Critique of Wentzel Van Huysteen s Theology and the Justification of Faith. This was a book review, but it was more than just that, and Van Huysteen s book takes this same idea that all of our language about God is metaphorical, and I ve interacted with that and shared some of the problems there. The article appeared in Trinity Journal 10, the new series, in fall of 1989, pages 161 to 184. I would also encourage you if you want to read an excellent treatment more broadly of the issue as to whether language about God needs to be understood equivocally, univocally, analogically, or some other way, I would encourage you to get hold of William Alston s article entitled Functionalism and Theological Language. This is an article that appears in various places, but one place that it has been anthologized is in a book edited by the philosopher Baruch Brody (B R O D Y), entitled Readings in the Philosophy of Religion: An Analytic Approach [2nd ed.; New York: Prentice-Hall, 1992]. So much on that initial point about language being metaphorical in regard to God. Let me turn more specifically to the feminist issues that are raised in Johnson s book. I want to say here initially that a lot in Johnson s book, and I think in feminism generally, rests on the assumption that other than the obvious physical differences between men and women, there are really few if any traits that are peculiarly male or peculiarly female. As a result, tasks that require certain personality traits should be equally open to women as they are to men. I m wondering whether this assumption is absolutely correct. Is it abundantly clear that this is so, that there are no peculiarly male, peculiarly female personality traits? Perhaps that is correct, but I would like to suggest to you is that that is a very significant assumption of the book. It is not just an assumption, it is stated blatantly, but Jonson really offers us no evidence in favor of it at all, and when so much rests on it, one would at least like to see some evidence that this is so. 5 of 14

6 Suppose that we be generous andgrant the truth of this assumption for a moment for the sake of argument. Suppose it is the case, for the sake of argument, that there are no traits that are peculiarly female, peculiarly male. Even so, I would like to suggest that when biblical writers speak about God in male or in female terms, they are in no way asserting that such speech means that men are better than women. They are simply adopting the typical convention of associating certain traits with men and certain traits with women, but by doing that they are neither denigrating women nor uplifting men. Or in some cases, downgrading men if the trait isn t particularly complimentary to men. If there are such gender-specific traits, and you remember, we re saying for the sake of argument that there aren t, but let s say for the sake of argument that again that there are such gender-specific traits, then even though the writers are not asserting that those traits are specifically male, specifically female, they re only finding those ideas useful in speaking of God, then surely the biblical writers would not be wrong in using such manners of speech. But now even if we grant on the other hand the assumption that there really are no gender-specific traits, I would suggest to you that that still does not mean that the biblical writers are making an error when they speak of God in certain male terms or female terms. We might say, if we wanted, that they are accommodating and so is God, who is the giver of Scripture, they are accommodating their speech about God to these conventions of society, but by doing that they are not also saying that God is literally male. They are not saying that maleness is better than femaleness, or that male concepts are the only way to speak of God, as even Johnson has shown. There are a lot of female images and metaphors that can be associated with God and even are associated with God in Scripture. So I think we need to realize that just because God may be called a Father and Christ the Son, just because God may be referred to as He that is not at one in the same time asserting that God is literally male, that maleness is preferable to femaleness. No, it may in fact be true that there are people who have looked at that biblical usage and have concluded those things about men and women, but that s there inaccurate conclusion. That s not what Scripture says. That s not what God has revealed. 6 of 14

7 Theologians like Thomas Aquinas who suggested that women in fact are defective men, they re surely are wrong about that, but Aquinas s teaching surely comes not at all from Scripture. It s not what God or what the biblical writers in Scripture say. In addition, I think it s important to see that Scripture is given by the Holy Spirit, and it is inerrant. Johnson would have us to see only the human hand in Scripture, and in regard to any statement, she tells us we need to ask the question, cui bono, to whose advantage is this? But obviously that s a question that you would have impressed upon you if you thought that only human beings were involved in producing Scripture, but when you also factor in the fact that this is God s Word, it is what He has revealed and the Holy Spirit has inspired the biblical writers, the fact that God Himself refers to Himself in male or in female imagery surely is not to God s advantage. Johnson would say that it is, however, to the human writers advantage since they were all men. In fact, even the fact that I ve been using on a few occasions the pronoun he or him suggests how ingrained all of this is, and it s to be expected, I suppose, because I am a male. But I am simply using speech that is conventional. Indeed, a lot of feminists are saying we need to change the conventions, and that may in fact be so, but don t take the speech to mean that we are saying we think women are inferior, we think they are not the image of God, we think that God somehow or other is male. That s not what we re saying again. That s not what we re saying at all. Now let me say as well that we have to remember that even though the human writers of Scripture were all men and one could say that what their writing could be seen as to male advantage, again, we have to remember that God s hand is in the writing of this book, so the book cannot be an error. And we have to remember that no biblical writer is saying that God is literally male, no biblical writer is saying that maleness is better than femaleness, and the male writers also do speak of God in female metaphors, as Johnson herself shows, and they do this without predicating femaleness of God or implying that femaleness is better than maleness. So it seems to me that once you see what the biblical writers are actually asserting about God and what they re not, you don t have to see them as having done anything that is wrong factually, anything that is sexist, etcetera, etcetera, in their portrayal of God. It is true that there are a lot of interpreters of Scripture who may have abused it that way, but then they need to be corrected, 7 of 14

8 and books like Johnson s book can be helpful in correcting some of that thinking, but the complaint should not be against God or against Scripture per se. There are traits that are often associated with the genders, and I think it would be hard to prove that those traits in no way do reflect the different genders, but if in fact that is so, it seems to me that it s not a problem to refer metaphorically to God in such terminology. You remember that even Johnson agrees that metaphors and symbols do not set up a one-to-one correspondence of everything about the two items being compared, so that even if God is like certain things about women and if He is like certain traits about men, that doesn t mean that everything about women is identical to God or everything about men is identical to God at all. I mean, that s the nature of a metaphor or a symbol. It does not postulate a one-to-one correspondence between the two things being compared. Let me return again though for a moment to the assumption that we were granting Johnson: namely, that other than obvious physical differences, there are no personality traits that are peculiarly male or female. If this is so, if we re going to be generous and grant this for the sake of argument, then I have another question. Why is it that throughout this book, and you find it I think generally in feminist literature, why is it that Johnson repeatedly makes the following kinds of equations? On the one hand you have this equation: maleness equals domination, aloofness, unrelatedness, an unfeeling attitude, sexism. On the other hand, you have this equation: femaleness equals relationship, friendship, mutual respect, equality, so on and so forth. My question is this: Isn t this sexual stereotyping? If men and women really do have the same qualities as Johnson states, then the first list that I gave, that is, the first list of things that are associated by her with males, then that first list is not exclusively male and the second list is not exclusively female. As a matter of fact, all of us can surely find many examples of women who fit the first list of traits and men who fit the second list. Hence, I would suggest to you that there is a real problem here for Johnson s agenda and for any feminist who would argue in the same way. And let me explain it to you this way, either there are no peculiarly male and female traits so that women and men are capable of the same things, but then the list just mentioned maleness equals sexism, domination, etcetera; femaleness equals friendship, mutual respect, etcetera. Okay. Then those lists are 8 of 14

9 wrong or the other side of it is that there are peculiarly male and female traits, not necessarily the ones that have been described in these two equations I ve mentioned, but then if there are peculiarly male and female traits, then Johnson s project is, again, in trouble. You see the dilemma that I m raising? It s an either/ or. Either there really aren t any peculiarly gender-specific traits and then how can you say, We ve got to give God these female traits which are always going to be different than what you claim are male traits, or on the other hand, there really are differences between male and female in terms of their traits, and then maybe it would be appropriate to use gender-specific language in regard to our portraits of God because some traits are more typical of men and other traits are more typical of women. Beyond that, this constant exertion, both explicitly and implicitly, of negative traits as being male and the positive traits as always being portrayed as female, I would suggest engages in the same sexual stereotyping that Johnson so loudly complains against. Without denying that many men have been sexists, patriarchal, and andocentric, that does not mean that there is no sexism, no matriarchy, and no gynocentrism in what Johnson and other feminists are saying. That doesn t mean that either the male or the female stereotyping is right, but what it is saying is that it is problematic to be claiming and complaining about denigration of women in such a way that is negatively characterizing stereotyping the mass of male human being. I also find it very strange in this book that of all the qualities that God is allowed to have as we speak metaphorically about God, qualities like authority and sovereignty are not in the list. Scripture, to which Johnson appeals, clearly portrays God as being sovereign, as being in control, and of course Johnson would say this is so because men wrote Scripture and they fashioned God in their image. But I would suggest to you that this is again the sexual stereotyping that I just was complaining about, that men are always domineering and always trying to be in control and aloof, etcetera, etcetera. Moreover, it also ignores the fact that authority and sovereignty are not necessarily negative qualities that someone might possess, especially when the person who possesses them is the absolutely perfect God. When men and women exercise traits like authority and control, sovereignty, when they do, oftentimes they do so very poorly, but that s because men and women are imperfect. But that can t be true of God, so if God exercises these traits, they will not be exercised in a way that is oppressive, domineering, tyrannical. 9 of 14

10 Even beyond that, though, I d like to point out that human beings don t always exercise these traits in a domineering and oppressive way either. For example, is the parent who orders her child or his child, orders that child to stay out of the streets so the child won t be hit by a car, is that parent being a tyrant? Of course not, but that parent is surely exercising authority and control over the child. Even more so in the case of a perfect God exercising sovereignty and authority, God will not do so in an improper way. Moreover, since human beings are the image of God, as Johnson reminds us repeatedly, so the things that are true of human beings are also true in some way of God, what can we say about human beings? What we can say about human beings is that both men and women do exercise authority and control in various relationships. But if that s so and if they are in fact imaging God, then why can t God also have such characteristics, and yet Johnson would prefer to portray God s relation to us as one of friendship, respect, no control or authority, or whatever control is there, it s an attempt to persuade us, but never to have a strong control over us. So God is not allowed to exercise traits, then that we as human beings are. I find that extremely strange and troublesome. Finally I have to concur with the very outstanding biblical and theological, evangelical scholar Susan Foh in her handling of this whole matter of male/female relationships. As she has written in a number of different places and has demonstrated, I think quite effectively, Scripture, and typically she appeals here to Genesis 1 2, Scripture teaches ontological equality between men and women. Both of them are the image of God; they are equally significant; God loves both just as much; there is no advantage ontologically to being male as opposed to being female. But as well she notes that in those portions of Genesis, as well as in other biblical passages, Scripture also teaches functional subordination of women to men in various situations. This does not mean that men are better than women, or more important than women, although it surely is unfortunate that many men and many societies have thought that that was so, nor does it mean that women do not have any abilities and if those women are Christians that they don t have spiritual gifts. They do have abilities, and if they re Christians, they do have spiritual gifts, and they re quite capable in using those abilities and gifts, but as Foh argues, Scripture shows that in the home and in the church, there are some roles where women are functionally subordinate to men. The fact that many men have taken such functional subordination as a basis for and even justification of oppressing women and treating them tyrannically does not overturn the fact 10 of 14

11 that someone must lead and someone must follow and that God has placed men in positions of leadership in a variety of areas. Johnson and others will complain that this simply reads off the teachings of Scripture that were written by men for their own benefit. We ve already heard that before, and we ve seen some of the problems with it. For someone who rejects the inspiration and the inerrancy of Scripture, such a response, as I ve just imagined, is to be expected, but for those of us who see Scripture as God s Word, it is impossible to reject its teaching on this matter or on any other matter, just because the writing of Scripture also included only men rather than women who would benefit from the things that they wrote. None of that justifies oppressing, downgrading, denigrating women, but as we ve argued, Scripture doesn t do so, and we should read and interpret and apply Scripture correctly. As you can see, this is a most interesting topic. We could go on quite a bit and say much more about feminist theology, but we do need to move on to our next topic. And our next topic is process theology. Process theology has continued in our day to gain popularity. Some of the first expressions of it came out in the early twentieth century, but it has really become more popular since we went past the death of God theologies, and you remember in those theologies that there was a concern that God was too remote. There was a concern that there was no access to Him. We have also seen by looking at Immanuel Kant and his epistemology that there s a problem for doing metaphysics because there s no empirical way to get to God. We had suggested, though, that after death of God theology there were various proposals to resurrect God, and one of the proposals we re turning to at this point, although as I say some of the initial work on this predated death of God theology, but conceptually, what we find in process theology is in a way a response to Immanuel Kant s concern for empiricism and to some of the concerns that we saw in death of God theology. The point being, that this attempt to resurrect God attempts to do so by outlining for us a thoroughly empirical metaphysic. Let me begin by talking about some of the backgrounds of process theology, and we ll go from there. In his work, Religion in the Making [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926], Alfred North Whitehead wrote, and I quote him, Christianity has always been a religion seeking a metaphysic. What he meant by that was that since the Bible records God s revelation and man s responses, it mainly records religious experiences without clearly enunciating a general explanation of reality. In contrast 11 of 14

12 to that, Whitehead saw Buddhism, for example, as a metaphysic generating a religion. It begins with certain dogmas about the nature of reality, which explain the world of experiences and how to respond to them. While Scripture surely presupposes a certain worldview, it is true that no metaphysic as explicitly stated in Scripture as metaphysic per se claims that the Old Testament exemplifies a Hebraic mindset and the New Testament a Hellenic one and supposedly those two perspectives are antithetical to one another; those claims merely underscore the lack of an explicitly stated metaphysic in Christianity s foundational document. Throughout the centuries, theologians and philosophers have adopted various understandings of reality for communicating the Christian message to their own day. Whitehead purported to do the same for our day, and his system, which is most thoroughly expounded in his monumental work entitled Process and Reality, and that book was published in 1929 [reprint ed.; New York: Free Press, 1978], did not try to set forth a totally secular understanding of reality because he intended his system to cover all of reality, including God. As a matter of fact, Process and Reality ends with a chapter on God and the world. Even though Whitehead planted the seeds of process theology, his successors have developed it. The very term process thought was first used by Bernard Loomer as a title of a seminar that he taught at the University of Chicago Divinity School many, many years ago. However, Loomer is only one of the key figures in the development of process theology, and let me mention a few other names. You may have heard many or even most of these. But we re thinking about people like Henry Nelson Wieman, Charles Hartshorne, John Cobb, Schubert Ogden, Bernard Meland, Daniel Day Williams, Norman Pittenger, Lewis Ford, David Ray Griffin, and so on and so forth. The list goes on and on. Since the eclipse of the Barthian trend in contemporary theology, process thought, along with the various political theologies that we have been discussing in this course, has become a major movement within nonevangelical theology in the latter portion of the twentieth century. What makes it so attractive to many people is its claim to render biblical data and Christian theology more intelligible to the modern mind than does historic orthodoxy, and even some evangelicals on the contemporary scene have been trying to accommodate various aspects of orthodoxy to process thinking and process thinking to orthodoxy. 12 of 14

13 Let me turn first of all to look at the backgrounds of process theology. No conceptual scheme, including process theology, arises in an intellectual vacuum. I would like to suggest to you that there are four main factors that help to understand the development of process thought, and I think to some extent also its appeal. They are, first of all, developments in science. Second, process theism s attack on classical orthodox theology as inadequate. Then third, there are some philosophical concerns, and then fourth, the theological and religious climate of the times. All of these were especially significant for Whitehead, but the whole movement shares many of these same concerns. Let me look at each one of them individually. First of all, developments in science that are of significance. Of particular importance was the breakdown of Newtonian mechanistic physics. According to Newtonian physics, the physical is matter which in itself is changeless, inert, stuff-like. Each thing has its own spatial temporal location independent of everything else so that bits of matter are essentially discrete and discontinuous with other bits of matter. On this view, the only change possible for anything is locomotion or movement. In the seventeenth century, it was thought that God occasionally intervened in the world to stimulate such locomotion, but by the end of the eighteenth century, scientists had discovered a way to render divine intervention in the natural order totally unnecessary. By the end of the nineteenth century, the system s implications were fully worked out, but there were certain anomalies that scientists began to notice. Whitehead astutely noticed implications of some new discoveries in science, and he applied those implications in constructing a new metaphysic. What did Whitehead do? Whitehead focused first on the new discoveries about energy and electromagnetic theory. He saw that in the scientist [James] Clerk Maxwell s hands, electromagnetic theory demanded that there be electromagnetic occurrences throughout all of space. Hence, electromagnetic effects were conceived as arising from a continuous field. This meant that the idea of discrete, unrelated bits of matter could no longer be sustained. As to energy, the key was the doctrine of the conservation of energy, which entailed a quantitative permanence underlying change. All of this meant that matter was not the only kind of permanence, but it also meant that there could not only be change in place, that would be locomotive change, but change in energy. Since energy change is not reducible to locomotive change, there could be other kinds of 13 of 14

14 change in the physical realm than locomotive change. So both the theory of energy and electromagnetism led Whitehead to reject the notion of the physical as changeless, inert matter. Instead, he claimed that the primary physical entities must be basically event-like, and the process thinker Ivor Leclerc explains what Whitehead meant by event as follows. He writes, For event does not mean a mere or sheer happening. Whitehead used the word event in its primary etymological sense of to come out from the Latin [veni], which implies something which comes out. This entails that the something must necessarily be continuous with that out of which it comes, and it also entails that the something must have an essential discreteness as itself different from that out of which it comes. These nineteenth-century scientific discoveries suggested something was wrong with Newtonian physics, but only in the twentieth century did the new physics emerge. Relativity theory and quantum mechanics have shaped scientific understanding in our century. To summarize the point on relativity, Whitehead explains that under mechanistic physics, time and space, the Newtonian understanding of things, time and space each have a unique meaning. Hence, whatever meaning is given to spatial relation as measured on earth, the same meaning pertains when measured on a comet or by an instrument at rest in the ether. The same is true of temporal relations. Relativity theory denies these assumptions. Instead, what a thing is and how it should be understood can never be determined in isolation form its relations to other things. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 14 of 14