theological creationism See PREEXISTENCE. theological naturalism, the attempt to develop a naturalistic conception of God. As a philosophical position, naturalism holds (1) that the only reliable methods of knowing what there is are methods continuous with those of the developed sciences, and (2) that the application of those methods supports the view that the constituents of reality are either physical or are causally dependent on physical things and their modifications. Since supernaturalism affirms that God is purely spiritual and causally independent of physical things, naturalists hold that either belief in God must be abandoned as rationally unsupported or the concept of God must be reconstituted consistently with naturalism. Earlier attempts to do the latter include the work of Feuerbach and Comte. In twentieth-century American naturalism the most significant attempts to develop a naturalistic conception of God are due to Dewey and Henry Nelson Wieman (1884–1975). In A Common Faith Dewey proposed a view of God as the unity of ideal ends resulting from human imagination, ends arousing us to desire and action. Supernaturalism, he argued, was the product of a primitive need to convert the objects of desire, the greatest ideals, into an already existing reality. In contrast to Dewey, Wieman insisted on viewing God as a process in the natural world that leads to the best that humans can achieve if they but submit to its working in their lives. In his earlier work he viewed God as a cosmic process that not only works for human good but is what actually produced human life. Later he identified God with creative interchange, a process that occurs only within already existing human communities. While Wieman’s God is not a human creation, as are Dewey’s ideal ends, it is difficult to see how love and devotion are appropriate to a natural process that works as it does without thought or purpose. Thus, while Dewey’s God (ideal ends) lacks creative power but may well qualify as an object of love and devotion, Wieman’s God (a process in nature) is capable of creative power but, while worthy of our care and attention, does not seem to qualify as an object of love and devotion. Neither view, then, satisfies the two fundamental features associated with the traditional idea of God: possessing creative power and being an appropriate object of supreme love and devotion. See also NATURALISM , PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION , PROCESS THEOLOG. W.L.R.