Searching in Face of Mystery: A theology based on the methodology of Gordon Kaufman

Johan Bernhard le Grand

Research output: PhD ThesisPhD-Thesis - Research and graduation internal

327 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Gordon Kaufman challenges theologians, both from Christian and non-Christian traditions, to describe the assumptions and steps of faith that lead from an agnostic starting point to their faith positions using his method of imaginative construction. In this thesis I’m taking on this challenge for what I consider my faith, i.e. religious seekerism. Here, I define a religious seeker as a person who looks for inspiration in more than one religious and/or wisdom tradition without committing exclusively to any one of them. The topics discussed in my seeker theology are based on empirical studies in literature: ethics, spiritual growth, the truth, the human, the world, the ultimate, the key to the ultimate, life in community, inspiration, afterlife, ultimate direction and religious diversity. An important difference between Kaufman’s theology and the theology in this thesis is that the latter deliberately refrains from taking any decisions on some theological topics. Thus, although the ultimate, the key to the ultimate, life in community, inspiration, afterlife and ultimate direction are important topics for many religious seekers, it is suggested not to take firm positions on them. For the other topics: ethics, spiritual growth, truth and religious diversity, as well as general spiritual interest, I conclude that religious seekers have good reasons to adopt stable positions. This leads to the following steps of faith: Step 1: The decision to accept the view of the human as a biohistorical individual as normative. Step 2: The decision to accept the view of the world as the environment for life and human life in particular as normative. Step 3: The decision to explore (at least in a rudimentary way) our position on some existential questions about life, death and reality. Step 4: The decision to commit to a process in which the self as a religious person and one’s ideal self become increasingly the same. Step 5: The decision to leave the last word in theology to individual experience with respect to any theological questions in which one wants to seek. Step 6: The recognition of the aporetic character of the insights of various religious and wisdom traditions and the decision to take these aporias serious as aporias. Together, step 1 to 6 constitutes the theology for religious seekers I constructed based on Gordon Kaufman’s method and as such they replace the six steps Kaufman proposes to end up at a contemporary Christian view. Here accepting step 1 up to 2 defines what according to the religious seeker is a moral person. Accepting step 1 up to 4 leads to a moral person with religious interest. If a specific interpretation of step 4 and 5 are also accepted, the result is a liberal religious position and hence these first five steps can be considered a theology of religious liberalism. If religious liberals also accept step 6, they are religious seekers. In conclusion, the research question whether it is possible to construct a theology for the religious seeker based on the methodology of Gordon Kaufman is answered affirmatively. The result is an innovative way to do theology, because the exercise leads to several new aspects of theological thinking: constructing a theology based on what empirical studies show to be the believes of a large number of people, deliberately considering and justifying theological topics to be unstable, justifying breaking down of traditions as part of a systematic approach and developing an entirely new approach to religious diversity. Because of all the new facets which came on my way, this thesis can only be considered a very first sketch of what a theology of religious seekers could be.
Original languageEnglish
QualificationPhD
Awarding Institution
  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Supervisors/Advisors
  • Doude van Troostwijk, Chris, Supervisor
  • Moyaert, Marianne, Supervisor
  • McKanan, D.P., Co-supervisor, -
Award date6 Nov 2023
Place of PublicationKampen
Publisher
Print ISBNs9789493288997
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 6 Nov 2023

Keywords

  • Religious seeker, Gordon Kaufman, constructive theology, aporetic pluralism,
  • religious liberalism, spiritual but not religious, multiple religious belonging, step of faith, Nicholas Rescher, theology of religious diversity

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Searching in Face of Mystery: A theology based on the methodology of Gordon Kaufman'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this