In the Beginning... Creativity
- Science & Faith
- Publisher: Fortress Press (Augsburg Fortress)
- Published: 2004
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Publisher's Description
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 today — the 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.
Endorsements (1)
“Gordon Kaufman's new book is the one many of us, including myself, have been urging him to write: a version for the educated layperson of his profound and sweeping reconstruction of the symbol of God through the metaphor of serendipitous creativity. As he notes, his theology lies in the tradition of his teacher, H. Richard Niebuhr: a form of radical monotheism, a stern and unsentimental recognition of the mystery of God, and yet at the same time of 'the indwelling of divine spirit in our own spirit.' Gordon Kaufman has been my teacher and I want to thank him for this clear, eloquent, and moving imaginative construction of an understanding of God that can help us live more humanely and more honestly in our evolutionary, ecological world of the 21st century.”
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