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Jesus And Creativity

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Let me introduce a piece of my story that is related to Gordon D. Kaufman's book 'Jesus and Creativity.'

I was raised (it seems so long ago) in a Fundamentalist Roman Catholic Church. In 1959 I entered its major seminary to study its fundmentalism that would lead to a fundamentist priesthood. I was unaware (in 1959) of a personal emerging shift. In that first year I read a particular book that changed the trajectory of my thinking, of my imagining, of my living. I began a serendipitous creative experience.

It is these words, at this time, like a hot iron branded my consciouness, "Is evolution a theory, a system or a hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow" 'The Phenomenon of Man,' by Teilhard de Chardin page 218.

Like Gordon Kaufman I have been invited by Nature and History 52 years ago to freely think critically and creatively about the connectivity or entanglement between three symbolic or metaphorical words: God, humanity and world. Hence, I can feel and associate with Gordon Kaufman's long journey as we have that similarity with God, humanity and world.

Gordon Kaufman in 'Jesus and Creativity' goes beyond theological reductionism. There is no reductive oxygen in a theology that wants to try to understand the unknowable or the mystery of God, humanity and world.

How shall we critically think or imagine an emergent world? How shall we think or imagine a God, humanity, world that is coming into being? How shall we think or imagine a God, humanity, world that we cannot prestate, prevision or predict? How do we live not knowing the future?

Is the Kingdom of God that Jesus fortold the Kingdom of Creativity? And, is that Kingdom made from three entangled metaphors: God, humanity, world? I can imagine that Jesus the human being fits well into Kaufman's metaphor, humanity.

Gordon Kaufamn offers his methodology in the Preface of his book 'In the Beginning...Creativity.' "By 1975, with my book 'An Essay on Theological Method,' I had come to the conclusion that all theological ideas, including God, could best be understood as products of the human imagination, when employed by men and women seeking to orient themselves in life. This freed me to experiment with a variety of ways of thinking about God, humanity and world...."

This methodology freed Kaufman from supernaturalism to rethinking God, humanity, world in terms of a naturalist and historicist. Margaret Wertheim written echo applies to Kaufman, in her book 'Pythagoras' Trousers' in her Introduction she writes, "Rather than see ourselves in relation to mythical heroes, gods, and religious laws, we in the West see ourselves now in relation to atoms, stars, and scientific laws. Whatever people's private beliefs, it is THIS scientific picture that is taught in our schools and universities, that is endorsed in encyclopedias, atlases, science magazines, television programs, and newspapers...Christian theologians assigned to these spheres ranks of celestial beings, angels, archangels, cherubim, and the like...This Christian cosmos, alive with souls and animating spirits was dismantled by the new physics of the seventeeth century...it is not that the universe itself changed but the PEOPLE had; the old explanations that had been satisfactory for centuries no longer sufficed."

We are the authors of our predicament and we are the solution as well. When we talk about the symbol of God as Creativity we are talking to ourselves as creativity that is totally responsible for the creativity within humanity and world. The Jesus trajectory for God as Creativity is found in Matthew 18:20. Where two or three are gathered in creativity therein is the presences of Creativity. Creativity is not solely in a book, person, or thing. It is gathered in two or three people in creative love and caring.

Gordon kaufman is projecting as a naturalist and historicist that Creativity is God, and creativity is in humanity and in the world is the Good News. He paraphases this in the Preface of his book from John's Gospel opening verses 'In the Beginning...Creativity:' "In the beginning was creativity, and the creativity was with God, and creativity was God. All things came into being through the mystery of creativity; apart from creativity nothing would have come into being."

God as Creativity is not outside of humanity and world but within the creativity pageantry in humanity and world; this makes the three creative symbols interconnected and interdependent. This is the sacred relationship. This is a relationship toward a reverence of life to engage the whole of humanity to be wise.

Can I or Gordon Kaufman force you to sense the sacredness of a creative life? No! But maybe the vastness of the universe, the vastness of human invention and historicity can invite you! The choice is yours.

The book 'Jesus and Creativity' shifts Jesus back into creative humanity and I think the creative human Jesus would gladly accept (my) and Kaufman's demotion from divinity. That demotion is irreversible. Jesus came from the same creativity that humanity came from, that is, from the creativity of a 15 billion year old world and as our consciousness span we gave birth to God and the honored named of Creativity.

Behind all our thinking with mystery are word symbols. O, Language, you are so, so finite, so, so at home in time, space and matter that you cannot deliver conceptualization of your own so, so word - God.

We like Jesus are humbled by our finiteness. This humility began for Jesus 2000 years ago and for me in 1959 at the age of 24 and 52 years later I accept Robert Bellah's humble words, "in the last analysis (we human beings and Jesus are) responsible for the choice of (their) symbolisms." I find Gordon Kaufman's symbolism in 'Jesus and Creativity' a joy. I hope you find the same joy as you begin to reconceive the Jesus-trajectory. Creativity is Good News.

George Pieczonka is the author of "Ann of Green Pastures." The makings of your married American Catholic Pastor. Check it out on [..]

The late Gordon D. Kaufman was one of my professors when I was a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School. Reading his more recent books on "God as creativity" and "Jesus and creativity" has brought me to a new level of appreciation for Dr. Kaufman's contribution to theology for the modern/postmodern age. He does a great job of explaining how we must move beyond the personified, anthropomorphic, and supernatural images (imaginings) of God to an understanding that embraces and highlights the Eternal Divine Mystery of all life. His descriptions of "serendipitous creativity" reveal how science and religion need not be at odds with each other but can compliment one another. His writing is at times a little dense, redundant, and "academic" but what would you expect from a Harvard Professor. My only real criticism is that he does not make many practical suggestions as to how his insights can be adapted into specific forms for worship, prayer, meditation, etc. I have written a book "SPIRITUAL NONBELIEVER: Religion as Creative Art Form" (2011) that does make some suggestions about these things, and I am currently working on another project what will focus on practical ways of expressing non-literal, non-supernatural, and non-anthropomorphic images for the sacred/divine. Professor Marcus Borg and Bishop emeritus John Shelby Spong have also written extensively on these issues in a way that is theologically solid but somewhat less technical sounding than Kaufman. It is of utmost importance that religion cease to be a divisive and even dangerous factor in our pluralistic and interconnected world. Gordon Kaufman has made a great contribution to the process of rethinking and reimagining "theology" in a way that can advance the positive influence of religion and spirituality in our global village.

Carl L. Jech, Th.M. Harvard Divinity School
Humnanities, DeAnza College