Kaufman reminds us that the traditional Christian model or worldview, where God is perceived as a quasi-personal reality ‘out there’ who has a purpose for us and tasks for us to do, who loves and cares for each one of us, has been found wanting, despite the powerful response such a picture evokes from us. A powerful cosmic agent can become — and indecd throughout history has often become — an authoritarian tyrant. The author painstakingly and with passion reconstructs, not a swept-up, fresh-coat-ofpaint version of the old, but a radically new world picture from a Christian perspective. To be fair, Kaufman does not reject or down-grade the familiar traditional symbols, e.g.
Christ, Creator, Trinity, etc. (our downfall has been to teify, ic. to make ‘a thing’ of them, to literalize them).
Rather he reinterprets them and shows how they can fit into and give meaning to this reconstructed model of God, the world and our place in it.
Kaufman contends that we need a new conception of God that resonates more with our modern human experience.
IIe explores in depth the evolutionary and _ historical development of life on planet earth which provides a clue to the ultimate mystery of things and which can be regarded as ‘meaningful’ and ‘good’. Devotion to God (traditionally Creator/Lord/Father) consists in the attempt to live in rapport with the movements of life and history that provide the actual context of our human existence. It is to attempt to be in tune with what we discern as the nature of things, to live and to work ‘with the grain’ of the universe as apprehended in our part of it. Our received traditions about God are therefore inadequate, even destructive, of human life and the environment. God can no longer be imagined as a personal being in the heavens above with whom we interact. Our personal relationship with God (the ultimate reality and mystery, which is trustworthy) is to be found most fundamentally in and through our interpersonal relationships with our fellow humans, and our care for the environment.
This is a very important book and, as the author concedes, a very daunting read (461 pp.)! A popular version would be helpful. It is a timely follow-up to Geering’s Tomorrow's God, covering similar ground and showing how the traditional Christian symbols (especially Christ, incarnation, IToly Spirit) need to be interpreted. They no longer fit into the overall cast of life and must change in decisive ways if they are not to die out. This calls for momentous changes by the churches — in worship, in ministry, in the sacraments, in many hymns and our attitudes to the bible. It will only happen, says Kaufman, if there is a recognition that this is a life-or-death matter for the churches. Sadly, this recognition seems to be slow in coming.
Alan Goss Telling God’s Story by Gerard Loughlin (Cambridge University Press, 1995) ISBN 0-521-43285-5. £35 Which came first — the Bible or the Church? Neither, says Gerard Loughlin in this excellent (though rather technical) book, since they evolve together as ‘the scriptural story makes the Church by which it is made in the telling of the story’. It is the story which is crucial here. Loughlin tells us that narrative theology depends upon there being a single ‘story of God’ discernible through the many and diverse narratives in the Bible. In this he opposes theologians such as Frank Kermode, who says that to find any such story is in principle impossible, and Maurice Wiles, who holds that the choice of any particular story is bound to be arbitrary.
Review of 'In Face of Mystery' by Gordon D. Kaufman (Harvard University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-674-44575-9).