Rejoinder to Mikael Stenmark

American Academy of Religion

Rejoinder to Mikael StenmarkAuthor(s): Gordon D. KaufmanSource: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Mar., 2003), pp. 183-186Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1466311 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 13:53

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Oxford University Press and American Academy of Religion are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to Journal of the American Academy of Religion.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.108 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 13:53:59 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oup

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1466311?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Rejoinder to Mikael Stenmark

ALTHOUGH MIKAEL STENMARK does not discuss the main point of my recent essay, "On Thinking of God as Serendipitous Creativity" (2001), he does present a sharp critique of my claim (in the first two or three introductory pages) that it is becoming increasingly difficult to think of God as a "person" or a "personal being." Stenmark sums up the prin- cipal conclusions of his response in these words: "What Kaufman needs to demonstrate is that the claim that the 'only reality we can know anything about is the one that science has access to' belongs to the stock of scientific knowledge-or that science implies scientism." Since I fail to affirm any of these points, his final conclusion is that "Kaufman has not given traditional believers any good scientific reason for abandoning a personal conception of God." The essay was not intended to persuade "traditional believers" (a very vague category) of anything at all.' After point- ing out in my introductory remarks that the increasing acceptance of evolutionary/ecological modes of thought today is making the long- standing problems with the anthropomorphism of much traditional thinking about God even more severe, the essay is devoted to the claim that a theologically appropriate way to respond to this problem is to think of God in terms of the metaphor of creativity (instead of as "the Creator").2

Stenmark offers in three steps a summary of what he thinks must be the argument behind my early remark that it is increasingly difficult to make sense of the idea of God as "creator of the heavens and the earth" (2001: 410). I will pass here on points 1 and 2, with which I have little disagreement, and move on to his third presumption: that I hold that science-in addition to setting out the conditions under which humans came into being-"has also shown that personal beings of any sort could only come into existence after billions of years of cosmic and biological evolution." No such absolutistic statement concerning what science has shown about "personal beings of any sort" is to be found in the essay,3

1 Stenmark fails to observe that the essay is addressed throughout to "those of us who think of the universe in our modern evolutionary way" (2001: 411).

2 A fuller discussion of the problem of anthropomorphism in thinking about God today, and my resolution of that problem, can be found in my book, In Face of Mystery (1993: especially 268- 280 and chaps. 21-23).

3 Indeed, I explicitly preface the remarks Stenmark is examining here with the qualifying phrase, "As far as we know" (2001: 410).

Journal of the American Academy of Religion March 2003, Vol. 71, No. 1, pp. 183-186 @ 2003 The American Academy of Religion



184 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

though I do point out that the sciences inform us about conditions re- quired for certain "complex features" of the world to emerge (2001: 411 n ). Apparently taking this to mean that I believe the sciences present us with logically "necessary truths" about the world, Stenmark eagerly points out that such a claim is a mistake; I agree, of course, that any such claim would be incorrect, and nowhere do I make it.4 What Stenmark does not discuss is that the sciences can inform us about strong probabilities, and it is, of course, on the basis of such probabilities that I am working in this part of the essay. Although I directly quote a statement by the well-known astrophysicist Martin Rees summarizing widely held views of scientists about what "must be" the case for "life like us to evolve"-and briefly explaining that point as well (Kaufman 2001: 414-415)-Stenmark (in- explicably) asserts that I do not offer any explanation of this claim or ref- erence any scientists who make it.

If Stenmark's third point does not properly represent me, and has in fact moved him somewhat off the track, how should it be formulated? I suggest something like this: 3. Humans are the only beings (of which we know) that possess qualities such as intentions and being able to act, create, love, and the like. It was only in the course of a long, complex, distinctive evolutionary and historical process that these qualities appeared, and we have no reason to suppose that qualities of this sort would be likely to appear elsewhere apart from a quite similar process. This is, of course, a debatable point, de- pending in part on the extent to which we understand qualities of this sort to be historical, and not simply biological, emergents.5 In any case, however, according to the general pattern of evolutionary thinking, although increasingly complex forms emerge (are created) out of simpler ones, the reverse is seldom (if ever) the case. Now surely a God with humanlike qualities of the sort we are considering here would be at least as complex as we humans are. So to posit a God of such complexity at the beginning of the whole world process does go directly counter to the basic thrust of evolutionary thinking, though it is certainly not logically impossible.

4 I also agree with Stenmark that it is a mistake to suppose (as some "scientistic" types perhaps do) that "our knowledge is limited to what can be known through the sciences"; so his arguments on these matters are largely beside the point. I further agree with him (and with what he calls "some traditional believers") that-though I would want to nuance the statement a bit more-"religion ... is about faith and not about knowledge" (see Kaufman 2001: 424). It was not possible in the space of that short essay to discuss this last point, but in my book (1993)-for which my essay is a kind of appendix and further nuancing (as is clearly indicated in 2001: 409-411 as well as in many subsequent references)-I develop the notion that every step in a theological argument is what I call a "step of faith" (not knowledge); it is a creative imaginative act in and through which, as we hope, we are moving to a deeper understanding of what we mean when we speak of God (see the many references in the index under "Faith, small steps of' [1993: 502]).

5 I have discussed these distinctions in some detail in 1993: chaps. 8-10, 20-21.



Kaufman: Responses and Rejoinders 185

Traditionally, of course, God was thought of as an absolutely simple reality, not complex at all; but that only increases the puzzlement about how we can think of God in humanlike terms. Conceiving God as simply the mystery of creativity (instead of as "the Creator") significantly diminishes this problem. The more we are persuaded that evolutionary/ecological pat- terns of thinking are the most appropriate ones now available for understanding the realities with which we humans have to do, the more questions we will have when we try to think about God in an anthropomorphic way. It is better (as it seems to me) that we not seek to go back behind the pro- found mystery of creativity when we attempt to characterize God today.

How is this notion of creativity to be understood? Had Stenmark ex- plored my essay's main point, thinking of God as "serendipitous creativity," he might have seen that I really do not disagree with him as much as he supposes. I point out that the idea of creativity is a direct "descendant of the biblical idea of creation" (2001: 409, 411); and I make use of that idea in thinking of God precisely because it preserves some of the central emphases of the older notion-such as that God should be understood as a reality of an entirely different order from anything and everything created. The radical distinction between God (creativity) and the whole created order is affirmed explicitly and strongly (see especially Kaufman 2001: 412-414, 423-424).6 Furthermore, I attempt to show (even though I regard characterizing God in anthropomorphic language as no longer appropriate) that we can still say such things as "God is love" (2001: 419- 420), provided we make the appropriate qualifications (as has, of course, always been theologically necessary). Why did Stenmark pay no attention at all to the picture of God I actually sketch in the article, instead of just speculating (somewhat wildly) on what my introductory remarks mean?

In the picture of evolution that I draw, I certainly go-in many re- spects-beyond what can be scientifically established (as theology always should be free to do); Stenmark's mistaken supposition that I seek to do my theological work completely within scientific bounds is a major source of the confusions in his discussion. I do argue, however, that today's scientific pictures of the world and its evolutionary development must be taken very seriously as we pursue our thinking about God; they can provide enor- mously fertile stimulation for the theological imagination, as it continues to focus its attention on its long-standing central task: the question of God.

Gordon D. Kaufman Harvard Divinity School (emeritus)

6 Stenmark's suggestion that perhaps my "point is really that we can no longer ... make sense of a God who is believed not to have come into being" is obviously completely off the mark.



186 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

REFERENCES

Kaufman, Gordon D. In Face ofMystery: A Constructive Theology. Cambridge: 1993 Harvard University Press.

2001 "On Thinking of God as Serendipitous Creativity." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 69/2: 409- 425.

Rees, Martin Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others. Reading, 1997 MA: Addison-Wesley.



Documents

Rejoinder to Mikael Stenmark