The American philosopher and theologian Henry Nelson Wieman (1884-1975) developed an "empirical theology" which opposed both orthodoxy and humanism and claimed that through the scientific method one could discover "God"--that is, "that creative good which transforms us in ways in which we cannot transform ourselves."

Born on August 19, 1884, the son of a Presbyterian minister in Richhill, Missouri, Henry Nelson Wieman became the most famous proponent of theocentric naturalism and empirical method in American theology. As a student at Park College, he had dreamed of following his uncle into a career in journalism--until a fateful experience one April evening in 1907. As he sat alone looking over the Missouri River in the faint light of dusk, a sudden conviction came over Wieman--a conviction that he should devote his life to religious inquiry and its central problem.

The central problem of religious inquiry, as it presented itself so forcefully to...