SOURCE: “Whitehead and Berdyaev: Is there Tragedy in God?,” in The Journal of Religion, Vol. XXXVII, No. 2, April, 1957, pp. 71-84.

In the following essay, Hartshorne traces affinities in the ethical thought and philosophies of religion of Whitehead and Nicolas Berdyaev.

The obvious differences between A. N. Whitehead and Nicolas Berdyaev seem to have obscured their remarkable similarities. Thus, while one was logician and mathematician, the other was theologian and historian of culture. The one aimed at technical precision and appealed mainly to the secular intelligence; the other frankly employed partly mythical language and appealed mainly to the Christian tradition. The Anglican background of Whitehead contrasts with the Greek Orthodox background of Berdyaev. (Curiously enough, both men did much of their work outside their native countries.) Neither writer seems to have had the slightest influence upon the other (Berdyaev was thirteen years younger, having been born in 1874). These may...