I recently read of the death of a theologian who influenced me deeply. Gordon Kaufman was a Mennonite who spent most of his career at Harvard Divinity School. Kaufman’s theological method and his creative reinterpretation of the symbol “God” helped shape the thought of countless students. While I was not his formal student, I kept up with Kaufman through books and articles; I heard him speak only once at a conference of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science in 2006.
In his essay, “The Development of My Theological Thinking: Two Themes,” (which appears as an Epilogue in the book, In the beginning…Creativity), Kaufman reflects on a lifetime of theological work, identifying his two primary concerns:
“[There are] two central themes with which I have been preoccupied throughout my life, and which are expressed in the development of my theological reflection from a very early age on: the problem of God–the questionableness of all our thinking and talking about God–and my life-long concern that human relations should be pervaded, above all, by loving, caring, responsible attitudes and activities.“
In his reflection on the problem of God, Kaufman puzzled with how to understand the mystery of God in ways that were not anthropocentric or superstitious but might fit within the picture of the world offered by the natural sciences, particularly the theory of evolution (biological and cosmic) by natural selection. And in his consideration of human relations, Kaufman wrestled with the application of his earliest Mennonite convictions; namely, nonviolent ways of being that respected other people and the planet.
Kaufman’s theological project is too complex to summarize in the space of a short blog post, but I would like to share one piece of his work that helped me immensely. Kaufman suggested that rather than thinking of God as “Creator,” we consider God as “creativity” itself. In some places he referred to this as “the mystery of creativity,” but more often than not he chose “serendipitous creativity” as a way of referring to the deep mystery of the emergence of life. Kaufman’s theology left room for ambiguity, but it took very seriously the idea of God and how that idea might be best understood in conversation with the natural sciences. In his own words:
“For many this creativity–God–manifest through throughout our universe (as we today conceive that universe) is very awe-inspiring. It calls forth emotions of gratitude, love, peace, hope, and fear, and a sense of the profound meaningfulness of our distinctive human existence in the world…It is entirely appropriate, therefore, to think of God as precisely this magnificent panorama of creativity with which our universe, as well as our lives in this universe, confronts us.” (“A Religious Interpretation of Emergence: Creativity as God,” Zygon Journal of Religion and Science, Dec. 2007)
What Kaufman did for me was provide a context for Christian faith that was intellectually credible and scientifically informed. I always felt that as a Mennonite scholar he was trying to make peace between the worlds of religion and science, to reconcile areas of knowledge and bring us to a tough-minded wholeness. His work offers deep senses of reverence, wonder, and awe–they are to be found in the sacred stories and symbols of our tradition and experienced in the ineffable beauty and complexity of the natural world.
As I reflect on the death of a theologian, someone who influenced me, I wonder who influenced you. What theologians, philosophers, or writers have most deeply shaped the way you see things? What thinkers puzzled over the same questions that you puzzle over? What teachers have helped you to reconcile certain things in your own life?
With a bow to Gordon Kaufman, I look forward to reading your responses.
J
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November 2, 2011 at 2:42 pm
Jeff N.
Jeremy, thanks for this. It’s timely and helpful for me to read your thoughts about Gordon Kaufman and his thoughts about thinking about God. I’ve also been thinking about how I think about God, and especially whether my thoughts are helpful to anyone else — or whether that is even something I should worry about.
In October I was responsible for planning and facilitating the Bible Study at our church. Our curriculum chose a series of Old Testament stories about Moses, Mount Sinai, the Ten Commandments, and then Joshua chapter 3 — where God stops the flow of the river Jordan so the nation of Israel can make its miraculous crossing into the promised land. This crossing involves the Ark of the Covenant and God’s detailed instructions about who should walk where and when, who should go first, and who should stand in place until the crossing was completed. It’s a rich story with powerful images.
We stopped reading before we got to the part where Israel uses the Ark of the Covenant as a magic talisman to smite its enemies. God plays a direct rule in killing children, women, and men who belong to different nations, while fulfilling a promise to the nation of Israel that they will control this land.
These stories are obviously troubling because they’re bloody and militaristic. In my understanding, though, these aren’t stories about Israel’s actual history — they’re stories about how the people who created these stories understood their origins and how they thought about God, as their protector and refuge in bloody times, and as a person who would punish them when they were not faithful.
A thought that helps me comes from Eli Wiesel, who wrote that God created humans because he loves stories. We humans are a small part of nature, but we have an ancient talent for understanding reality, and explaining it, through stories. God doesn’t write our stories; we humans use our God-given talents to write them for ourselves. For me to understand God in this way feels right and intellectually honest, and what you write above, about Kaufman, feels the same way.
I was trying to say this at our Bible Study class last Sunday, but felt completely helpless to articulate it in a way that conveyed how true and powerful this feels to me. This week, that’s caused me to question whether I should be be leading Bible Study. Fortunately, our class includes a group of very smart and opinionated people who have their own ideas about God and these stories. I don’t need to be in charge of their ideas.
So I appreciate your thoughts about Kaufman and how we think about God, Jeremy. Thanks again.
November 2, 2011 at 6:13 pm
Paul Beedle
Your description of Kaufman’s thought reminds me of that of Henry Nelson Wieman, a Unitarian with a very similar message as influential on me as Kaufman’s was on you. Wieman’s lifelong project – manifestly – was an attempt to “translate” traditional Christian language into philosophical equivalents that could carry the same meanings. Often it came across as substituting the dictionary definition of a word whenever you wanted to use it, and never actually using the word. So, “prayer” is “methods of private religious living” and “God” is “the source of human good,” and so on. His key concept was “creative transformation” – that was the point of religion (and the action of “the source of human good” in our lives). His was a reconciliation with philosophy rather than science, but reconciliation it was, and the creativity theme was right there.
The other great influence on my theological thinking is Friedrich von Hügel, an English (German-born, but raised in Britain) Catholic who improved on the 16th-century Anglican Richard Hooker’s “three-legged stool” – that religion/theology should be based first on scripture, in light of reason and tradition (which serve to correct each other). Instead, von Hügel wrote of three elements in religion: mystical (experiential), speculative (rational), and traditional (institutional) – effectively substituting experience for scripture (which is part of tradition, not separate from it). Not only does this make more sense to me as a description of how religion really operates in our lives, but it affords an interfaith bridge our world so sorely needs.
November 2, 2011 at 7:51 pm
Martha Murphree
When the call from the Missions Committee came to name our saints, those people important to us who shaped our lives, the names that spang to mind were neither theologians nor philosophers–at least not in the strictest definition. But as I try to respond to the question you posed, Jeremy, I’m rethinking the definition. I think the influence that has formed my theological perspective and set me on the path to even have a theological perspective is the creation of Covenant and the people, some whom I know and others whose writings I have read, who shaped this community at its beginning. Harvey Cox, whose The Secular City started me on the path away from the compartmentalization of life into sacred and secular. John Cook, who guided us through the early days of trying to define what “church” can mean. Helen Greve and Bill Burkhart who challenged us with the tension of ideas and action. Of course Leon Meeks, who always surprised us with a new take on things. And the actual theologians whom we studied in those early days–Tillich,with the Courage to Be; Barth, with his Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other; Bonhoeffer, with his actual courage and challenge to avoid “”Cheap Grace”; Buber, “I and Thou.”. And before all of them, my major history professor, Ralph Lynn, who demonstrated how to live a life of integrity, in all definitions of that word.
My cloud of witnesses is quite a large one and my debt to them is great. My theological journey continues to be enriched by the people in this congregation, the challenges they put before me, the writers they recommend, the ideas they share. From our beginnings we described ourselves as people on a journey. I am grateful for all these guides. I suppose it would be safe to call them theologians after all.
November 2, 2011 at 10:11 pm
Ginny
Jeremy, thank you for sharing your appreciation of Kaufman’s work and theology. I appreciate Womanist theologians such as Renita Weems and Katie Geneva Cannon for broadening my understanding of the Divine to embody the perspectives of those who, until recently, were not considered credible theologians. I am grateful for Marcus Borg for his ability to bridge the gap between the academic setting and the local church with such fluidity. I am grateful for Joan Chittister, who continues to prophetically preach against oppression and systems of domination, especially in the name of God. When I met her at a conference and told her I was a pastor of a local church, she took my face in her hands and said, “Don’t let them take your passion away from you.” She also challenged me to start writing because she was tired and wanted to retire (she didn’t know me from Eve but it certainly made an impression on me).
November 4, 2011 at 7:18 pm
Link
Ok, this might get a bit wonky and is certainly not what you asked for but it’s a topic I’ve wanted to get my thoughts around expressing for a while and your blog gives me a good opportunity. You asked, “Who influenced [me]?” but I’d rather describe “what” has influenced me most recently and profoundly; geographic analysis and geographic information systems.
As a child, the topics and associated questions that interested me most of all were theological and what I would call “humanities-based”; culture and history. This is no doubt because of my upbringing in the Southern Baptist subculture (albeit the “moderate” end of the spectrum-there is no truly liberal end within the baptist confines as I have learned over time).
When I went to college, this fascination with the humanities persisted, though I became a psychology major and was introduced to more of a social science perspective with its attempts to measure and statistically analyze interior phenomena. In college, I also re-developed an interest in computers that I had left un-nurtured from childhood. Technology was exploding all around me in the 1990s and I was excited to apply it to these nagging psychology questions of behavior and personality.
After college, my curiosity with my own religious upbringing led me to seminary. There, the questions were addressed in words, both written in theological works and verbally exchanged in the form of Boisen’s “living human documents”. This was a return to the much more “humanistic” methods of inquiry of my youth. Even so, I remember an attempt to bring analytical methodology to an assignment in a class on Missiology. I had taken Hebrew and become familiar with a computer program that could parse the grammar and text of the Bible. For an assignment on texts of the missiological imperative, I used the computer to produce a chart of the frequency of verbs conjugated in the imperative tense in psalms of lament. When I showed it to an adjunct professor of Hebrew, he was dismissive, and suggested that I should now use my analysis to identify individual specific texts that spoke to the missiological imperative and generalize from their specifics. I was crushed and disappointed to realize that within biblical theology, my affinity for pattern analysis of the whole was secondary to the weight given to individual “proof texts.”
A return to graduate school some ten years after seminary has finally given me the opportunity to ask the questions I care about, using a methodology that is both immersive like the theological/humanities’ textual method and statistically meaningful like the social sciences of my college days. GIS was criticized by humanists in its early years for its positivist perspective and use of data from “official” sources as authoritative. Indeed, these were valid critiques but some that geographers have since made strides towards improving through the use of non-authoritative “crowdsourced” data, immersive virtual reality visualizations, quantification of data uncertainty, and implementation of fuzzy data measurements. GIS is far from perfect but it has allowed me to once again think rigorously about the nature of the world and my place in it in a way that no longer feels forced.
As grateful as you are for theologians and philosophers like Gordon Kauffman who take words and ideas seriously, I am equally grateful for GIS pioneers like Roger Tomlinson, Ian McHarg, and Jack Dangermond who took seriously data about the natural world and how to present it for analysis and understanding. The human brain has evolved wonderfully to detect visual patterns and when we put data on a map or into a spatial context, those patterns are made manifest, revealing their underlying phenomena.
My own religious perspective these days comes closest to expression in Religious Naturalism, which takes seriously both the mystery of the natural world and an imperative to care for it. I sit at the computer now for many hours a day, making maps, analyzing data, and thinking about how to represent natural phenomena as points, lines, and polygons. It’s not exactly “lectio divina” but it does have a similar meditative quality about it that I enjoy and benefit from. Insight is insight, whether it originates from a text or a set of data measurements. They are both beautiful in their own way.