The Source of Human Good (AAR Texts and Translations Series)

This is a facsimile edition of a 1946 work of the American pragmatic theologian Henry Nelson Wieman (1884-1975). For Wieman, science and technology represent great power for good and evil, and they must be directed toward the service of that force which creates, sustains, and fulfills human life. But as long as this force is portrayed in supernaturalist terms, as the God who is wholly transcendent of the world, its actual operation in human life is beyond the reach of inquiry. For science to serve the source of good, that source must be understood as open to rational-empirical examination.

Henry Nelson Wieman (1884-1975), a pastor, scholar, and teacher, was an American pragmatic theologian originally trained at San Francisco Theological Seminary. He also studied with philosophers Rudolph Eucken at Jena and Wilhelm Windelband and Ernst Troeltsch at Heidelberg. His teaching career included positions at the University of Chicago Divinity School, the New School in New York City, the University of Oregon, the University of West Virginia, and Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Among his many publications, The Source of Human Good is one of his best known.