A few more thoughts on Gordon Kaufman’s “In Face of Mystery”

I posted a few days ago on my admiration for Gordon Kaufman’s reconstruction of Christianity in his In Face of Mystery. One of the (many) things I left out in that brief and over-simplified description was that his vision of Christianity is very nicely non-exclusivist. I have remarked before that for myself that is an important element of any religion I’m even considering being a part of.

What Kaufman basically says is that constructing a version of Christianity like this is a choice that one can make or not make. He notes that in fashioning this construction we make many choices along the way that one is free to accept or reject. The point is to construct something capable of orienting us within the world and our lives and he admits that there is more than one way to do that. So, he says, if you are interested in constructing a Christianity that is capable of fulfilling the purpose of orienting your life while maintaining continuity with traditional beliefs and capable of being fully integrated with a modern outlook on life and the world it is possible and here is one way of doing it. However, other Christians and other cultures also have ways of accomplishing this and it is inappropriate to say that if we choose this way we are choosing the ONLY way. We can learn from one another instead of trying to silence everyone who doesn’t choose the orientation we do.

For the modern highly culturally integrated world, this seems to be a must. One problem with it in practice, however, seems to me to be that no Christian church would suffer such a thing as official doctrine. Almost all denominations I know about declares the Bible, for instance, as THE word of God, or at least as uniquely inspired in some sense to the exclusion of all other expressions of the Mystery. That is why I have only felt at home with the Unitarian-Universalists. There, non-exclusivism is pretty much what the church (or fellowship) is all about. In the UU tradition the individual is encouraged to do just what Kaufman suggests – construct a theology that works for you and doesn’t exclude others. The disadvantage is that it is not really done as a fellowship so there is little shared experience for whatever theology you develop.

In any case I find very attractive the idea of developing your own theology within Christianity that is continuous with the traditions and with modern scientific thinking. I have admiration for Borg and Tillich and the like too, but Kaufman is the first Christian theologian I’ve read that I think actually achieves the merger with modern scientific thinking. With Tillich and Borg I think to myself “If Christianity had been presented to me like this, I might have never left the fold” but haven’t left there are still too many barriers with what they believe and with what I believe to be able to fully embrace their versions of Christianity now. Kaufman is the first theologian I’ve read and thought: “If there was a Christian denomination that adopted this, I could sign up tomorrow.”