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In the Begining...Creativity
Gordon Kaufman's bold and highly regarded works over the last thirty years have pushed theologians to examine honestly, if painfully, their most cherished assumptions about God. Now, in this major contribution to the theology-and-science debate, he argues that our traditional thinking about and worship of God have prepared us badly for perhaps the most important problem we face todaythe ecological crisis.
Kaufman begins with a survey of the pluriform development and effects of the notion of God. He then demonstrates how these concepts of God have become out of sync with contemporary understandings of the world and humanity. He offers an alternative concept by distinguishing the different modalities of creativity as they figure in the creation of the universe, the cosmic evolutionary process (especially the emergence of life), and human symbolic creativity. Finally, he sketches their interconnections and demonstrates in what way they stand for the divine.
This volume not only develops further than ever before Kaufman's idea of God as creativity but also shows what it would mean to think of God in this way, to live with faith in this God, and to cooperate with the divine in meeting our most pressing challenges.
First published September 5, 1989
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About the author
Gordon D. Kaufman
23 books7 followersGordon D. Kaufman is Professor of Theology Emeritus at Harvard Divinity School. He is a past president of the American Academy of Religion and of the American Theological Society, as well as a member of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies. Professor Kaufman is author of numerous articles and reviews as well as 12 books, including In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology (Harvard University Press, 1993), which won the 1995 American Academy of Religion Award for "Excellence" in the "Constructive-Reflective" category of scholarly books on Religion; and two recent books, In the beginning . . . Creativity (Fortress Press, 2004) and Jesus and Creativity (Fortress Press, 2006). He has lectured widely, and taught at universities across the United States, and also in India, Japan, South Africa, England, and Hong Kong. Professor Kaufman has been an ordained minister in the Mennonite Church for 50 years, and has been the subject of two Festschriften.
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September 3, 2020
The goal of this book is to provide an understanding of the meaning of the word "God" in such a way that is consistent with our current scientific understanding of modern astrophysics, cosmology, biology, and evolutionary theory. This requires getting rid of all traces of anthropomorphic concepts of God. This author is suggesting that God be conceived of as serendipitous creativity (not to be confused with the concept of creator). This leads to a God concept that pays attention to the significance of the material and natural environment for the human situation.
Many people assume they understand the meaning of the word "god", and that any other human should have the same understanding. It turns out to not be so simple. The Prologue of this book traces the history of the human understanding of the term "god" which has had a long and varied history. In laying out this history the Prologue shows that extending this trajectory of understandings of the term "god" into our present world environment is a reasonable step to take. The following three chapters of the book do just that.
Chapter 1 sketches a significant dissonance between traditional Christian understanding of humanity in the world under God and today's evolutionary/ecological thinking. It moves then into a presentation of three terms that the author found useful in theological constructions of this book: (1) Humans as biohistorical beings, (2) Widespread serendipitous creativity manifest in the cosmos as conceived today, and (3) The notion of cosmic, evolutionary, and historical trajectories that have emerged spontaneously in the universe at large and on planet Earth in particular. Some time is also spent in this chapter on the partial responsibility of Christian thinking, attitudes, and practices for the current ecological crisis. It follows that a changed concept of God would lead to increased acceptance of responsibility of taking care our our earth's environment.
Chapter 2 elaborates on the author's proposal that we think of God as the serendipitous creativity manifest throughout the cosmos. It responds to some of the questions that may arise, especially for readers encountering this proposal for the first time. In this way it introduces some of the central issues that this book is intended to address, thus putting the reader in a position to move on to Chapter 3, where an enlarged discussion of what it means to think of god as creativity is presented.
Chapter 3 divides the term creativity into three modalities: (1) Creativity-1 is the initial coming into being of the universe often described as the Big Bang, (2) Creativity-2 is creativity manifest in evolutionary processes and the ongoing coming into being of trajectories of increasingly complex novel realities, and (3) Creativity-3 is human creativity seen in the development of language, writing, cultural developments, and knowledge of the physical world. It follows that God (creativity) is always and everywhere active in some degree and some respect. Although God is not regarded here as a person and we are in no position to say what God is, God is clearly to be thought of as the ultimate source and ground of all our human realities, values, and meanings. Thus, we can say something about how we are related to God, though what God (creativity) is remains a mystery.
The book concludes with an Epilogue that provides an intellectual autobiography of the author which portrays the development of his thought as driven simultaneously by two overriding concerns: public morality and the concepts of God. I suggest readers of this book read the Epilogue first to understand where the author is coming from. It helps in understanding the rest of the book.
After this book was published, Gordon D. Kaufman wrote another book, Jesus and Creativity that addresses how Jesus fits with this image of God as serendipitous creativity. My review of Jesus and Creativity is at THIS LINK.
A discussion of Gordon D. Kaufman's theology by Ted Grimsrud—July 24, 2011, titled "Gordon Kaufman R.I.P."
https://thinkingpacifism.net/2011/07/...
Many people assume they understand the meaning of the word "god", and that any other human should have the same understanding. It turns out to not be so simple. The Prologue of this book traces the history of the human understanding of the term "god" which has had a long and varied history. In laying out this history the Prologue shows that extending this trajectory of understandings of the term "god" into our present world environment is a reasonable step to take. The following three chapters of the book do just that.
Chapter 1 sketches a significant dissonance between traditional Christian understanding of humanity in the world under God and today's evolutionary/ecological thinking. It moves then into a presentation of three terms that the author found useful in theological constructions of this book: (1) Humans as biohistorical beings, (2) Widespread serendipitous creativity manifest in the cosmos as conceived today, and (3) The notion of cosmic, evolutionary, and historical trajectories that have emerged spontaneously in the universe at large and on planet Earth in particular. Some time is also spent in this chapter on the partial responsibility of Christian thinking, attitudes, and practices for the current ecological crisis. It follows that a changed concept of God would lead to increased acceptance of responsibility of taking care our our earth's environment.
Chapter 2 elaborates on the author's proposal that we think of God as the serendipitous creativity manifest throughout the cosmos. It responds to some of the questions that may arise, especially for readers encountering this proposal for the first time. In this way it introduces some of the central issues that this book is intended to address, thus putting the reader in a position to move on to Chapter 3, where an enlarged discussion of what it means to think of god as creativity is presented.
Chapter 3 divides the term creativity into three modalities: (1) Creativity-1 is the initial coming into being of the universe often described as the Big Bang, (2) Creativity-2 is creativity manifest in evolutionary processes and the ongoing coming into being of trajectories of increasingly complex novel realities, and (3) Creativity-3 is human creativity seen in the development of language, writing, cultural developments, and knowledge of the physical world. It follows that God (creativity) is always and everywhere active in some degree and some respect. Although God is not regarded here as a person and we are in no position to say what God is, God is clearly to be thought of as the ultimate source and ground of all our human realities, values, and meanings. Thus, we can say something about how we are related to God, though what God (creativity) is remains a mystery.
The book concludes with an Epilogue that provides an intellectual autobiography of the author which portrays the development of his thought as driven simultaneously by two overriding concerns: public morality and the concepts of God. I suggest readers of this book read the Epilogue first to understand where the author is coming from. It helps in understanding the rest of the book.
After this book was published, Gordon D. Kaufman wrote another book, Jesus and Creativity that addresses how Jesus fits with this image of God as serendipitous creativity. My review of Jesus and Creativity is at THIS LINK.
A discussion of Gordon D. Kaufman's theology by Ted Grimsrud—July 24, 2011, titled "Gordon Kaufman R.I.P."
https://thinkingpacifism.net/2011/07/...
June 24, 2024
A PERSPECTIVE OF GOD AS BEING “CREATIVITY ITSELF”
Gordon Dester Kaufman (1925-2011) was an American theologian at Harvard Divinity School, where he taught for over three decades beginning in 1963. He also taught at Pomona College and Vanderbilt University.
He wrote in the Preface to this 2004 book, “I was led to reflect more fully on just what it might mean to think of god not as a personal being who had created the world… but rather as neither more nor less than just this CREATIVITY ITSELF… In this book I seek to explore more fully than I have in the past what it means to speak of all this as a manifestation of CREATIVITY: what we can say about this creativity, how we can think about it, and why it has seemed to me appropriate and illuminating to think of this creativity as God---to think of God as nothing more nor less than precisely this creativity.” (Pg. x) He adds, “Only if we can continue to see God as active in the world as we know it, and thus active in relation to us humans living in this world, will it be possible for us to orient ourselves, and significantly order our lives, in relation to God---that is, to live with a robust faith in God.” (Pg. xiv-xv)
He explains, “three of the complex patterns of… meaning that have emerged in the course of Western history… contributes significantly to the meaning(s) that ‘God’ bears today. The first complex is concerned with the distinction … between…popular images and models for conceiving God and … more reflective and philosophical language… The second complex of meaning concerns the relation of language about God to the understanding of human subjectivity and creativity… our third complex of meaning [is] NEGATIVE THEOLOGY, the awareness and articulation of the inadequacy of ALL human language and ideas about God.” (Pg. 9)
He suggests, “In my view, though God may be dead or largely irrelevant for many in our world, this symbol remains much more powerful and meaningful than any other… those of us who have significant commitments to this symbol have good reasons to carefully explore it seeming lack of fit today. And that may put us into a position to reconstruct the two interrelated symbols of God and humanity in ways that will enable them to orient and guide our lives more appropriately and effectively.” (Pg. 35)
He observes, “A largely unspoken assumption throughout much Christian history has been that faith and theology are concerned with what we have come to call the EXISTENTIAL issues of life… This focus and imagery, I suggest, encourages an understanding of both the Christian God and Christian faith in fundamentally human-centered terms---as concerned this is, largely with certain deep personal problems. This ANTHROPOCENTRIC focus of Christian thinking appears at many points.” (Pg. 36)
He states, “I want to call attention to what can be designated as the SERENDIPITOUS CREATIVITY manifest throughout our evolutionary universe… I use the concept of CREATIVITY here… because it presents creation of novel realities as ongoing processes or events and does not call forth an image of a kind of cosmic person standing outside the world, manipulating it from without. In my view, if we wish to continue using the word ‘God,’ we would do well to understand it as basically referring to this ongoing creativity manifest in the cosmos.” (Pg. 42)
He says, “The understanding of God proposed here can be developed into a full-orbed Christian interpretation of human faith and life, if we think of the creativity that is God in significant connection with the poignancy and power of the story and character of Jesus---regarded (by Christians) as what Colossians 1 called the ‘image of the invisible God.’” (Pg. 50) He continues, “This reconciling and healing power, imaged and symbolized by Jesus and the early Christians, continues to call men and women today to respond to the need for, and to the forces working toward, such reconciling activity in our world.” (Pg. 51)
He points out, “The most foundational kind of creativity for us today, therefore, appears to be that exemplified in the evolution of the cosmos and of life, rather than that displayed in human purposive activity… the evolutionary model… in no way overcomes the most profound mystery at the root of all that is: Why is there something, not nothing?” (Pg. 57)
He argues, “The kind of personal intimacy with God fostered by many of these images---especially such anthropomorphic ones as ‘father,’ ‘lord,’ and ‘king’---no longer seems appropriate, or even imaginable or intelligible. So our human ‘relationships’ with God will have to be conceived in much vaguer and less vivid terms than in the piety of the past… and our understanding of human existence as ‘under God’ will be experienced as much more open, much looser, much less determinate and specific. Life no longer will be thought of or experienced as dependent on our unmediated direct relation to a divine being whose character and will, and whose requirements of the human, are fairly clear and distinct.” (Pg. 67-68)
He asks, “Does creativity (God) go on forever whether the universe dies or not? … we can reconstruct … a vague and general picture of the course in our universe of creative activity to date… but creativity itself---God---never becomes visible in our extrapolations. From our present standpoint it seems likely, therefore, that God (if God is thought of as creativity) may remain profound mystery forever.” (Pg. 93)
He summarizes, “Creativity (God)… is to be found everywhere we turn… That is, God … apparently is always and everywhere active in some degree and some respect---a theologically momentous conclusion. In all of this, it should be clear, God is to be distinguished from everything created… God’s activity, though always CREATIVE, apparently changes (and grows”) in time in distinctive ways appropriate to the context in which God is acting. And thus God also apparently grows and changes. The theological implications of this are vast.” (Pg. 101-102)
He concludes, “There will be those who say that in this theology God has really disappeared in the mists of mystery and that true faith in God is thus also gone. To that I reply, true faith in God is not living with a conviction that everything is going to be okay in the end because we know that our heavenly father is taking care of us. It is, rather, acknowledging and accepting the ultimate mystery of things and, precisely in the face of that mystery, going out… not really knowing where we are going, but nevertheless moving forward creatively and with confidence…. In the serendipitous creativity that has brought our trajectory and us into being, has continued to sustain the human project within the web of life that surrounds and nurtures us, and has given us a measure of hope for that project here on planet Earth… this perspective deepens and widens the radicality of the Christian ethic, and thus the radicality of Christian faith.” (Pg. 106)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying contemporary theology.
Gordon Dester Kaufman (1925-2011) was an American theologian at Harvard Divinity School, where he taught for over three decades beginning in 1963. He also taught at Pomona College and Vanderbilt University.
He wrote in the Preface to this 2004 book, “I was led to reflect more fully on just what it might mean to think of god not as a personal being who had created the world… but rather as neither more nor less than just this CREATIVITY ITSELF… In this book I seek to explore more fully than I have in the past what it means to speak of all this as a manifestation of CREATIVITY: what we can say about this creativity, how we can think about it, and why it has seemed to me appropriate and illuminating to think of this creativity as God---to think of God as nothing more nor less than precisely this creativity.” (Pg. x) He adds, “Only if we can continue to see God as active in the world as we know it, and thus active in relation to us humans living in this world, will it be possible for us to orient ourselves, and significantly order our lives, in relation to God---that is, to live with a robust faith in God.” (Pg. xiv-xv)
He explains, “three of the complex patterns of… meaning that have emerged in the course of Western history… contributes significantly to the meaning(s) that ‘God’ bears today. The first complex is concerned with the distinction … between…popular images and models for conceiving God and … more reflective and philosophical language… The second complex of meaning concerns the relation of language about God to the understanding of human subjectivity and creativity… our third complex of meaning [is] NEGATIVE THEOLOGY, the awareness and articulation of the inadequacy of ALL human language and ideas about God.” (Pg. 9)
He suggests, “In my view, though God may be dead or largely irrelevant for many in our world, this symbol remains much more powerful and meaningful than any other… those of us who have significant commitments to this symbol have good reasons to carefully explore it seeming lack of fit today. And that may put us into a position to reconstruct the two interrelated symbols of God and humanity in ways that will enable them to orient and guide our lives more appropriately and effectively.” (Pg. 35)
He observes, “A largely unspoken assumption throughout much Christian history has been that faith and theology are concerned with what we have come to call the EXISTENTIAL issues of life… This focus and imagery, I suggest, encourages an understanding of both the Christian God and Christian faith in fundamentally human-centered terms---as concerned this is, largely with certain deep personal problems. This ANTHROPOCENTRIC focus of Christian thinking appears at many points.” (Pg. 36)
He states, “I want to call attention to what can be designated as the SERENDIPITOUS CREATIVITY manifest throughout our evolutionary universe… I use the concept of CREATIVITY here… because it presents creation of novel realities as ongoing processes or events and does not call forth an image of a kind of cosmic person standing outside the world, manipulating it from without. In my view, if we wish to continue using the word ‘God,’ we would do well to understand it as basically referring to this ongoing creativity manifest in the cosmos.” (Pg. 42)
He says, “The understanding of God proposed here can be developed into a full-orbed Christian interpretation of human faith and life, if we think of the creativity that is God in significant connection with the poignancy and power of the story and character of Jesus---regarded (by Christians) as what Colossians 1 called the ‘image of the invisible God.’” (Pg. 50) He continues, “This reconciling and healing power, imaged and symbolized by Jesus and the early Christians, continues to call men and women today to respond to the need for, and to the forces working toward, such reconciling activity in our world.” (Pg. 51)
He points out, “The most foundational kind of creativity for us today, therefore, appears to be that exemplified in the evolution of the cosmos and of life, rather than that displayed in human purposive activity… the evolutionary model… in no way overcomes the most profound mystery at the root of all that is: Why is there something, not nothing?” (Pg. 57)
He argues, “The kind of personal intimacy with God fostered by many of these images---especially such anthropomorphic ones as ‘father,’ ‘lord,’ and ‘king’---no longer seems appropriate, or even imaginable or intelligible. So our human ‘relationships’ with God will have to be conceived in much vaguer and less vivid terms than in the piety of the past… and our understanding of human existence as ‘under God’ will be experienced as much more open, much looser, much less determinate and specific. Life no longer will be thought of or experienced as dependent on our unmediated direct relation to a divine being whose character and will, and whose requirements of the human, are fairly clear and distinct.” (Pg. 67-68)
He asks, “Does creativity (God) go on forever whether the universe dies or not? … we can reconstruct … a vague and general picture of the course in our universe of creative activity to date… but creativity itself---God---never becomes visible in our extrapolations. From our present standpoint it seems likely, therefore, that God (if God is thought of as creativity) may remain profound mystery forever.” (Pg. 93)
He summarizes, “Creativity (God)… is to be found everywhere we turn… That is, God … apparently is always and everywhere active in some degree and some respect---a theologically momentous conclusion. In all of this, it should be clear, God is to be distinguished from everything created… God’s activity, though always CREATIVE, apparently changes (and grows”) in time in distinctive ways appropriate to the context in which God is acting. And thus God also apparently grows and changes. The theological implications of this are vast.” (Pg. 101-102)
He concludes, “There will be those who say that in this theology God has really disappeared in the mists of mystery and that true faith in God is thus also gone. To that I reply, true faith in God is not living with a conviction that everything is going to be okay in the end because we know that our heavenly father is taking care of us. It is, rather, acknowledging and accepting the ultimate mystery of things and, precisely in the face of that mystery, going out… not really knowing where we are going, but nevertheless moving forward creatively and with confidence…. In the serendipitous creativity that has brought our trajectory and us into being, has continued to sustain the human project within the web of life that surrounds and nurtures us, and has given us a measure of hope for that project here on planet Earth… this perspective deepens and widens the radicality of the Christian ethic, and thus the radicality of Christian faith.” (Pg. 106)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying contemporary theology.
July 27, 2011
Kaufman posits God as the unfolding creative force behind creation and human creativity--a seemingly great idea. But I found his theology hugely disappointing, and only toward the end of the book, when he shares the evolution of his theological thinking, did I realize why. "I have come to see that for me as for Nietzsche the traditional anthropomorphic God has long since died." Despite devoting his life to theology, Kaufman has never had a personal experience of divinity (he writes off Christian mystical tradition with a single sentence), and instead sees "God" as a worthy symbol for steering human behavior. As such, we can shape that symbol to encourage a more just and loving relationship to one another and to the planet. So he replaces the "God" symbol with the fact of unfolding creativity.
What I find baffling about theologians like Kaufman is that they seem completely ignorant of the creative process--the human experience of engaging in a creative act, and how very relational this process can be. At the end of this book, I felt like Flannery O'Connor--if it's just a metaphor, to hell with it. Human beings can actively engage with a creative, loving, just source that is not simply a symbol but a lived reality. Once again, here's an example of a smart person dismissing the power of imagination. Just because humans have created "God" as an imaginative symbol does not mean that God does not exist. We co-create in relationship with this mystery.
What I find baffling about theologians like Kaufman is that they seem completely ignorant of the creative process--the human experience of engaging in a creative act, and how very relational this process can be. At the end of this book, I felt like Flannery O'Connor--if it's just a metaphor, to hell with it. Human beings can actively engage with a creative, loving, just source that is not simply a symbol but a lived reality. Once again, here's an example of a smart person dismissing the power of imagination. Just because humans have created "God" as an imaginative symbol does not mean that God does not exist. We co-create in relationship with this mystery.
January 26, 2016
Very important book for me; date of reading uncertain
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews