Faithful to the Earth: Nietzsche and Whitehead on God and the Meaning of Human Life

On the surface, Friedrich Nietzsche and Alfred North Whitehead represent very different positions on God and the meaning of human life. Put simply, Nietzsche is an atheist--belief in God, he argues, denies the value and meaning of human life. Whitehead says the opposite--human life finds no meaning unless God exists. Faithful to the Earth, winner of the Bross Prize for Christian Scholarship that is awarded only once every 10 years, goes way beyond contrasting the theist with the atheist. J. Thomas Howe argues that Whitehead's understanding of God lays the foundation for a religious life strikingly similar to that described in Nietzsche's tragic, but affirmative, philosophy. In Howe's eyes, the theology of Whitehead provides a doctrine of God that is not subject to Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity. For Whitehead, religious life is not opposed to life in the world.

by Thomas J. Howe