Gordon D. Kaufman

Views on God In a review of Kaufman's In The Beginning ... Creativity:

In a second review of In the Beginning ... Creativity:

Kaufman in his Prairie View lectures says:

A Zygon abstract on a Kaufman article states:

God as mystery For Kaufman, the only "available referent" for the word God is the construct we hold in our minds, a construct that has developed over the centuries. There may be a "real referent", but even if there is, it remains "a transcendent unknown". Thus, Kaufman thinks of God as "ultimate mystery". He does not speculate whether there is an "extra-human reality" called God. Thus, as a theologian, he views his work as dealing with "profound, ultimately unfathomable, mystery". Hence the resultant is a "theology within the limits of reason alone", holding with Kant the imaginative construction of basic concepts of religious ideas. Thus, Kaufman developed a "generic theology" for postmodern Christians of "an utterly transcendent God".

The "ultimate mystery" called "God" serves as a living symbol in our culture. For many people, it functions as the primary point for "orientation and devotion." Being oriented on the "ultimate mystery in things" is an awareness of one's "bafflement of mind" over the mystery "that there is something and not nothing." When the mystery is thought of as God, it evokes not only bafflement but trust and confidence.

Works In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology - Harvard University Press (October 7, 1993), Jesus and Creativity - Fortress Press (July 30, 2006), In the Beginning-- Creativity - Augsburg Fortress Publishers (July 2004), God, Mystery, Diversity: Christian Theology In A Pluralistic World - Augsburg Fortress Publishers (March 1, 1996), An Essay on Theological Method, An American Academy of Religion Book; 3rd edition (January 2, 1995), Theology for a Nuclear Age - Westminster John Knox Press (May 1985), The Theological Imagination - Westminster John Knox Press; 1st edition (January 1, 1981), Nonresistance and Responsibility, and Other Mennonite Essays - Faith & Life Press (June 1979), God the Problem - Harvard University Press (December 12, 1972), 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), 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) -