God and the World

In order to understand God and the world in this 'postmodern' age, Gregory S. Cootsona analyzes two seminal twentieth-century thinkers: the scientist and philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, and the theologian, Karl Barth. Whitehead began constructing a philosophy of nature in 1910, which developed into a comprehensive metaphysics in his 1929 opus magnum, Process and Reality. Whitehead described the world and God as dynamically interconnected actual entities. Although Barth clearly posited a diastasis between God and the world in the 1922 second edition of Der Römerbrief, he discovered a more subtle, christologically-based reconciliation of the world and God in the Church Dogmatics (1932-1968). Though the two differ greatly, several points of comparison can be found. The final chapter presents the challenge and inspiration that twenty-first century theologians can receive from Barth and Whitehead.