Mere Summing Up? Some Considerations on the History of the Concept of Emergence and its Significance for Science and Religion

The concept of ‘emergence’ is of increasing interest to Christian theologians working in the science and religion field. This paper offers a long-view of the concept of emergence and its significance for religion and theology. To do so, it reconstructs the accounts of three pioneers of the philosophy of emergence – John Stuart Mill, Samuel Alexander and C. D. Broad. It further relates their positions to contemporary debates concerning the theological appropriation of emergence, in particular in the writings of Nancey Murphy and Philip Clayton.