An essay on theological method

the long version

Gordon Kaufman calls for theology to move beyond appeals to sectarian doctrine, revelation, or esoteric religious "experience" and to ground itself in publically available criteria and warrants. Setting out to bring order into what he perceives as the methodological confusion of current theology, Professor Kaufman offers nothing less than a proposed Prolegomena to any Future Theology, in the Kantian tradition. He also follows Kant's lead in rigorously drawing the implications of the constitutive function of human reason and imagination in constructing theological concepts. He argues, in particular, that "the peculiarities of the word 'God'...give theology its distinctive character, and the existence of that word in the common language, together with related images and ideas, provides theological reflection with its central problems." But "the notion of God (like the notion of world) is an imaginative construct built up in quite a different way than the concepts of objects known in and through experience. Theology, therefore, is fundamentally an activity of construction not of description or exposition..." Kaufman's vigorous 'Essay' will plunge students quickly into the deep water of modern theological controversy, and will challenge other theologians to be equally forthright in acknowledging and defending their own methodological assumptions. (Back cover).