Jesus and Creativity  is an excellent book. I will adopt a critical tone and stance in what follows, but I would not want this to be misunderstood.   I may question the wisdom of Kaufman's general stategy for taking liberal Christianity into the twenty-first century, but I do not question the execution of that aim in  the least. Even for those, such as I, who are disposed to be critical of an impersonalist Jesus (that may be hard to imagine, but has been accomplished), Kaufman's newest books come as a serious challenge to our assumptions.  The book is beautifully written, with an economy of language and expression that few academic writers could achieve, even if they made the effort.  Kaufman accomplishes in 114 pages what many excellent thinkers could not have done in 500.  And Kaufman knows his intended audience -i.e.  the postmodern Christian who accepts scientific truth as the best arbiter of human knowledge, and who finds implausible (no longer believable) those aspects of traditional religious faith which cannot be squared with a broad naturalism and historicism.  Indeed, Kaufman finds this audience, and speaks to it extremely well.  Given the standard assumptions made by his intended readers (and that is a numerous group), Kaufman's arguments are simply  definitive; his arguments are convincing even to those who do not share the naturalisitc and historicist assumptions about the relationship between faith and knowledge, to many who do not cast religious faith or practice in epistemic terms.

Whitehead does not provide us with a systematic account of the various types of experience to which the word "memory" is applied. Nevertheless, he does provide us with a way of understanding the world, and living creatures who inhabit it, that places the discussion in a different context from the usual one: the diverse features of human experience that we call memory are developed forms of basic patterns of relationship that characterize all actual entities. I will first review the relevant features of Whitehead's conceptuality, then contrast the resulting view with its usual formulation, and then speculate about some forms of memory in Whiteheadian categories.

Abstract - With great appreciation for Gordon Kaufman's influential body of work, I begin my reflection on his more recent In the Beginning...Creativity , with two important points regarding the significance of the book's contributions to constructive theology.  First, in a period when science-theology controversy is heating up in school boards and courts around the United States, Kaufman deliberately and splendidly continues to construct theology informed by scientific themes of origin and development.  Second, Kaufman privileges readers to engage the process and progress of his thinking about God. He invites us to entertain both the methodological clarity and autobiographical candor supporting the ever-constructive movement of his imaginative theological proposals.  In recognition of his monumental contributions to Christian theology, the following reflection continues the spirit of appreciative, imaginative inquiry-with hope that the discussion draws Kaufman into expression of what may be left unsaid in the short book.