Gordon D. Kaufman – författare

In this challenging work, Gordon Kaufman asserts that the prime task of theology is the imaginative construction of the doctrine of God. Kaufman maintains that both the absoluteness of the divinity and our own necessity demand that we construct the doctrine of God critically and in a manner appropriate to our own time and place. In thorough examinations of God and theology, Christ and christology, and of the ultimate foundations of religious thought, he shows how this construction can be accomplished faithfully and in full realization of our own humanity.

The possibility of a nuclear holocaust has brought humankind into a radically new, unprecedented, and unanticipated religious situation. Gordon D. Kaufman offers a cogent and original analysis of this predicament, outlining specific proposals for reconceiving the central concerns and symbols of Christian faith. He begins with an account of a visit to Peace Park in the rebuilt city of Hiroshima. Reflecting upon this experience, Kaufman foresees that further use of nuclear weapons will result not in rebuilding but in annihilation of the human enterprise.

This book, first published in 1979, contains Gordon Kaufman's initial attempt to articulate his conviction that theology is, and always has been, an activity of what he calls the "imaginative construction" of a comprehensive and coherent picture of humanity in the world under God. While Kaufman's 1993 work,In Face of Mystery, qualifies and deepens the programmatic proposals offered in An Essay on Theological Method, the earlier book nevertheless remains a sound and accessible statement on theological method by one of America's most distinguished theologians. The Third Edition includes an extensive new Preface by the author, and an appendix on "The Three Moments of Theological Construction."