Gordon Kaufman, flat ontology, and value: Toward an ecological theocentrism

Zygon 48 (3):565-577 (2013)
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Abstract

Gordon Kaufman's theology is characterized by a heightened tension between transcendence, expressed as theocentrism, and immanence, expressed as theological naturalism. The interplay between these two motifs leads to a contradiction between an austerity created by the conjunction of naturalism and theocentrism, on the one hand, and a humanized cosmos which is characterized by a pivotal and unique role for human moral agency, on the other. This paper tracks some of the influences behind Kaufman's program (primarily H. Richard Niebuhr and Henry Nelson Wieman) and then utilizes the flat ontology that emerges in the work of philosopher/sociologist of science Bruno Latour and of environmental philosopher Timothy Morton in order to point toward a reconstructed immanent theocentrism that no longer stakes meaning and value on the unique place of the human. Such a theology remains theocentric, but is now fully ecological

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References found in this work

We have never been modern.Bruno Latour - 1993 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Difference and repetition.Gilles Deleuze - 1994 - London: Athlone Press.
The ecological thought.Timothy Morton - 2010 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology.Gordon Kaufman - 1993 - American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 15 (3):327-332.

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