SOURCE: “Poetry and the Possibility of Theology: Whitehead's ‘Views Reconsidered,’” in Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. L, No. 4, December, 1982, pp. 507-20.

In the following essay, Brown examines Whitehead's views on “poetry's connection with theology and metaphysics.”

Important as Whitehead has been to much contemporary theology, few students of theology (and still fewer of philosophy) have given careful consideration to various aspects of Whitehead's thought lying outside his metaphysical system per se. Even scholars like Bernard Meland (1969, 1976) and Lyman Lundeen (1972), while emphasizing that there is more to Whitehead than a metaphysical scheme, have discussed such matters as his theory of language without ever giving a truly satisfactory account of the specific topic that concerns us here—namely, Whitehead's views as to the connection between theology and poetry (i.e., literary art).

Whitehead, of course, was no theologian—at least not in the usual sense of the...