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Harvard theologian, Gordon Kaufman define a discipline
of theology in a very unusual manner back in the 1980s.
According to Kaufman, "All theology is
understood to be a primarily work of the imagination."
Gordon Kaufman began to speak of the imaginative nature of theology in his early book,
An Essay on Theological Method, published in 1975.
Kaufman had long endeavor to find a methodological foundation for
theology that does not take revelation as its basis.
Kaufman replaces the stance of a revelation which comes from God
directly with human construction that is the imagination.
Later, he naturally published a book entitled,
The Theological Imagination: Constructing the Concept of God in 1981.
In 1985, Kaufman developed some of these ideas even further in his book,
Theology for a Nuclear Age.
His experience of visiting the city of Hiroshima in
Japan reminded him of the destructive power of humanity in our age.
Just to mention, Hiroshima,
as many of you would already know,
is the city that was destroyed by atomic bombings during the World War II.
As Kaufman contrast his view with the historicist world view
"the end of history which we in the late 20th century must contemplate,
must be conceived primarily not as God's doing but as ours. "
His theological proposal for our new era was quite radical.
Our age of a nuclear holocaust can no longer be uplifted or be
rationalized by the dualistic and asymmetrical perspective of imaging God.
This dualistic asymmetrical point of view
originated from the traditional rarefied images of God such as Father,
King, Lord, and Creator.
What did Kaufman mean by dualistic and asymmetrical image of God?
The religious fact that God is your father does not mean that God is all as good to you.
Think about your own father.
Every father raises his children and disciplines them from time-to-time.
Some time he is very angry at his children when they are disobedient.
God is no exception.
When I studied abroad in the United States,
I witnessed President George Bush launching the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.
I still vividly remember his depiction about
him experiencing the revelation of God to make such a decision.
Bush publicly said, "I'm driven with a mission from God."
God would tell me, "Go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan."
And I did. And then God would tell me,
"George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq." And I did.
Bush went on, "I feel God's words coming to me,
go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security,
and get peace in the Middle East."
And by God I'm going to do it.
You probably know that Mr. Bush became a born again Christian at the age of 40,
and he's one of the most overtly religious leaders who serve in the White House.
You might be able to picture his dualistic image of God,
that is God the Judge favoring his friends and the same God attacking his foes.
This is what Kaufman's critique on the danger of traditional God images is all about.
What is then Kaufman's alternative?
He claimed, only through the imaginative work of
theology centered on God as the symbol of ultimate mystery,
can revelation be properly understood with
regard to the contemporary problems of human existence.
Kaufman also suggested that God should be
imagined as whole grand cosmic evolutionary movement.
The whole grand cosmic evolutionary movement,
what the heck is this?
It must be very confusing idea to you all. Oh, I know.
I agree as well. But hold on to it.
I will endeavor to explicate his idea
step-by-step in Korean context throughout this whole course.
So, to explain the whole grand cosmic evolutionary movement briefly before we move on,
it is suggesting that we should understand God as a force constantly giving life to
us rather than as a anthropomorphize conception of
God that is dominant while we are obedient.
I have a question for you at this point.
Can you imagine that God is not a human-like figure?
You might have imagined God as the one in human shape.
We often imagine that God had created all the creatures including human beings in
the same way humans today make puppets out of clay or assemble tiny pieces for a machine.
Kaufman challenged our long-standing God images.
For example, God is Father,
King, Lord, and Creator.
And yeah, Kaufman never gave a solution to the question of
which other personal images beside the traditional images we can use to imagine God.
Unfortunately, Kaufman did not spend much time explaining
the meaning and function of imagination in
human life in general and in theology in particular.
We cannot find even a clear definition of his concept of imagination.
One clear thesis he proposed was that,
the human works of theological construction should be based on imagination because
human experience is not enough to interpret the meaning of revelation.
The experience itself is ambiguous.
It's not the matter of whether it's right or wrong.
We've already talked about different experiences of Jesus among His disciples.
Soo-Young KwonProfessor
