Gordon D. Kaufman

Gordon Kaufman
Born	June 22, 1925 Newton, Kansas
Died	July 22, 2011 (aged 86)
Fields	Theology
Institutions	Harvard Divinity School Vanderbilt University Pomona College
Alma mater	AB Bethel College MA Northwestern University BD Yale Divinity School PhD Yale University LHD Bethel College LHD, honoris causa, Carleton College
Known for	progressive religion
Notable awards	2 Festschriften

Dr. Gordon D. Kaufman (22 June 1925 - 22 July 2011) was the Mallinckrodt Professor of Divinity (Emeritus) at Harvard University where he taught since 1963. He lectured widely, and taught at universities across the United States (Pomona College and Vanderbilt), and also in India, Japan, South Africa, England, and Hong Kong. Kaufman was an ordained minister in the Mennonite Church for 50 years, and he was also the subject of two Festschriften. He was a past president of the American Academy of Religion(1982)^[1] and of the American Theological Society, as well as a member of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies. Kaufman was the author of over 12 books which have had a dramatic impact on how many in the mainline have considered the question of God language and religious naturalism. Among these are An Essay on Theological Method, God The Problem, Theology for a Nuclear Age, and In the Face of Mystery. This work earned him the 1995 American Academy of Religion Award for excellence among constructive books in religion.

He participated for many years in the discussions on Religious Naturalism at the The Highlands Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought and the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (Lecturer 2006) ^[2]

God as Creativity

In a review of Kaufman’s In The Beginning…Creativity^[3] –

For religious people a challenge is to bridge their belief in God with scientific explanations of the world. There is a huge need for a new understanding of God that bridges these viewpoints(…) His book is the first that makes a big step forward on this issue. Starting with the notion offered in the Bible of God as Creator he offers a proposal of God as "creativity". Creativity as a mystery that somehow was involved in the initial coming into being of the universe, in evolutionary processes, and in human symbolic creativity(…)This framework is a scholarly step forward towards resolving the faith-science debate. It provides a framework where God is not Protestant, Jew or Muslim. And it plants protection of the environment as a foundation of moral life (…) He is following the same theme Albert Einstein described in his writings on religion. And Kaufman's proposal complements the religious naturalist proposals of Ursula Goodenough

In a second review of In the beginning …Creativity .^[4]

One must wonder what would bring about this radical shift, and Kaufman is very honest with readers about why he believes the traditional understandings of God are inadequate. First, he discusses today's ecological crisis, and asserts that the situation of our world today and the threat of global disaster and decay through human actions is unlike anything Christianity has ever faced before. He not only concludes that this is a bigger issue than Christianity has ever faced (it is before been preoccupied with existential questions of guilt, sin, happiness, and so on), but he further concludes that Christianity may be in the way. The second major development that in his view stands in the way of traditional faith in a personal God is the developments of science (specifically evolutionary cosmology and biology) have shown us a much bigger universe than was once thought to exist. A personal God is not an idea that is comprehensible in this type of setting

Kaufman in his Prairie View lectures says –^[5]

I suggested that what we today should regard as God is the ongoing creativity in the universe - the bringing (or coming) into being of what is genuinely new, something transformative;(…)In some respects and some degrees this creativity is apparently happening continuously, in and through the processes or activities or events around us and within us(…) is a profound mystery to us humans(…)But on the whole, as we look back on the long and often painful developments that slowly brought human life and our complex human worlds into being, we cannot but regard this creativity as serendipitous(…)I want to stress that this serendipitous creativity - God! - to which we should be responsive is not the private possession of any of the many particular religious faiths or systems(…)This profound mystery of creativity is manifest in and through the overall human bio-historical evolution and development everywhere on the planet; and it continues to show itself throughout the entire human project, no matter what may be the particular religious and or cultural beliefs

A Zygon abstract on a Kaufman article states –.^[6]

Thinking of God today as creativity (instead of as The Creator) enables us to bring theological values and meanings into significant connection with modern cosmological and evolutionary thinking. This conception connects our understanding of God with today's ideas of the Big Bang; cosmic and biological evolution; the evolutionary emergence of novel complex realities from simpler realities, and the irreducibility of these complex realities to their simpler origins; and so on. It eliminates anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism from the conception of God(…)This mystery of creativity—God—manifest throughout the universe is quite awe-inspiring, calling forth emotions of gratitude, love, peace, fear, and hope, and a sense of the profound meaningfulness of human existence in the world—issues with which faith in God usually has been associated. It is appropriate, therefore, to think of God today as precisely this magnificent panorama of creativity with which our universe and our lives confront us

Works

• In Face of Mystery - Harvard University Press (October 7, 2006, ISBN 0674445767, 4.5 Stars, GoodRead Award
• Jesus and Creativity - Fortress Press (July 30, 2006), ISBN 0800637984
• In the Beginning-- Creativity - Augsburg Fortress Publishers (July 2004), ISBN 0800660935, 5 Stars
• God, Mystery, Diversity - Augsburg Fortress Publishers (March 1, 1996), ISBN 0800629590, 5 Stars
• God, Mystery, Diversity - Christian Theology In A Pluralistic World, Fortress Press (1996) , ASIN: B0016A525G
• An Essay on Theological Method , An American Academy of Religion Book; 3 edition (January 2, 1995), ISBN 0788501356
• Theology for a Nuclear Age - Westminster John Knox Press (May 1985), ISBN 0664246281
• Theology an Imaginative Construction - Edwards Brothers (1982), ASIN: B0016JFF9A
• Nonresistance and Responsibility, and Other Mennonite Essays - Faith & Life Pr (June 1979), ISBN 0873030249
• God the Problem - Harvard University Press (December 12, 1972), ISBN 0674355261, 5 Stars, GoodRead Award
• The Theological Imagination - Westminster John Knox Press; 1st edition (January 1, 1981), ISBN 0664243932
• Systematic Theology - Scribner's (1968) , ASIN: B001OXJ7DS
• The Context of Decision;: A theological Analysis - Abingdon Press; 1st edition (1961), ASIN: B0007EB8QY
• Relativism, Knowledge, and Faith - University of Chicago Press (1960) , ASIN: B001P5RABQ
• Theology at the End of Modernity: Essays in Honor of Gordon D. Kaufman - Co-editors Sheila Greeve Davaney & Gordon D. Kaufman , Trinity Pr Intl (October 1991), ISBN 156338017X
• Mennonite Theology in Face of Modernity: Essays in Honor of Gordon D. Kaufman - Cornelius H. Wedel Historical Series 9, co-editors Gordon D. Kaufman & Alain Epp Weaver - Bethel College (July 1996) - ISBN 0963016075

See also

• Creativity
• Mennonitism
• emergence
• Religious Naturalism
• Spiritual Naturalism
• Ursula Goodenough
• Karl E. Peters

References

1. ^ American Academy of Religion
2. ^ A Religious Interpretation of Emergence: Creativity as God
3. ^ Amazon Book Review
4. ^ Developing Theology Developing Theology
5. ^ Mennonite Life December 2005,vol. 60 no. 4
6. ^ Zygon: Journal of Science and Religion - Volume 42 Issue 4, Pages 915 – 928, published online, Nov 2007

• Joshua Braley, "A Critique of Gordon Kaufman’s Theological Method, with Special Reference to His Theory of Religion," The Journal of Religion, 88,1 (2008), 29-52.

External links

• Harvard Faculty
• Interview with Gordon D. Kaufman, Harvard Divinity School, February 2009
• HDS obituary for Gordon Kaufman
• Amazon link for God the Problem

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