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Constructing Moral Concepts of God A THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO TOWARD A GLOBAL, HUMANISTIC THEOLOGY: CONSTRUCTING MORAL CONCEPTS OF GOD A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVINITY SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY MYRIAM RENAUD CHICAGO, ILLINOIS JUNE 2018 © 2018 Myriam Renaud All Rights Reserved. Although it certainly sounds questionable, it is in no way reprehensible to say that every human being makes a God for himself, indeed, he must make one according to moral concepts. - Immanuel Kant [T]he idea of God…enables us to face most directly the question of whether human life should be oriented primarily on men’s desires and value intuitions, or whether these must be relativized by something beyond them. - Gordon Kaufman CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi I INTRODUCTION 1 CH. 1 – LONGING FOR GOD IN A TIME OF VIOLENCE, GLOBALIZATION, AND UNCERTAINTY 2 I. WHY GORDON KAUFMAN’S THEOLOGICAL METHOD? 5 II. WHY THE DECLARATION TOWARDS A GLOBAL ETHIC? 10 III. WHY FOCUS ON THE CONCEPT OF GOD? 13 IV. WHY FOCUS ON MORAL CONCEPTS OF GOD? 14 V. WHY THE GLOBAL ETHIC TO TEST CONCEPTS OF GOD? 15 VI. CLARIFYING KEY TERMS 16 humanistic 17 humanizing 18 imagination 19 construction 20 recursion 21 concept 22 VII. THE DISSERTATION IN BRIEF 23 part I 23 part II 24 part III 27 II GORDON KAUFMAN’S ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM OF GOD 30 CHART 1 ABBREVIATIONS FOR KAUFMAN’S MONOGRAPHS 31 CHART 2 PHASES OF KAUFMAN’S THEOLOGY (MONOGRAPHS ONLY) 32 CHART 3 KAUFMAN’S MONOGRAPHS ARRANGED BY THEOLOGICAL PHASE 33 CH. 2 – KAUFMAN’S GOD: AN IMAGINATIVE CONSTRUCT 34 I. PHASE I OF KAUFMAN’S THEOLOGY 37 agnosticism: the only prudent view of God’s existence 37 analogies for the transcendent God 39 God manifested God’s self in person-event of Jesus Christ 41 II. KAUFMAN’S CRITIQUE OF PHASE I 48 concepts of God are grounded in human experience 47 p. iv revelation in scripture and tradition is a fallacy 49 III. PHASE II OF KAUFMAN’S THEOLOGY 52 God as imaginative construct orienting human life 52 does God exist? concepts of God exist 56 the proper business of theology 58 moment 0: who is the ‘I’ doing the constructing? 61 moment 1: what is world? 64 moment 2: who is God? 68 moment 3: adjusting world to God 78 Kaufman’s critique of Gustafson’s concept of God 79 IV. KAUFMAN’S CRITIQUE OF PHASE II 84 constructing world and God is a gradual process 84 no neat distinction between ego-self and world 86 V. PHASE III OF KAUFMAN’S THEOLOGY 88 world must be intelligible to science and history 88 imaginative concepts are unreliable representations of God 89 God as serendipitous creativity 95 VI. ACROSS THE PHASES OF KAUFMAN’S THEOLOGY 98 CH. 3 – PERSON-LIKE CONCEPTS OF GOD: STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS 102 I. GOD: TRANSCENDENT AND COMPATIBLE WITH SCIENCE 106 II. PUBLIC VETTING TO COMBAT ANTHROPOCENTRIC GOD 112 III. A TRANSCENDENT GOD WHO ACTS: KAUFMAN’S DEFENSE 114 for most theists, God is person-like and acts in the world 114 God is autonomous and self-sufficient 116 God’s master act and sub-acts 119 human agent as model for God’s transcendence and activity 123 IV. CRITIQUES OF THE HUMAN AGENT AS A MODEL FOR GOD 129 God: modeled on an introverted or opaque human agent 129 Michael McLain’s critique: residual Cartesianism 131 Vernon White’s critique: uniformitarianism 137 V. GOD: A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT 141 VI. THE INEVITABILITY OF PERSON-LIKE CONCEPTS OF GOD 146 anthropomorphism: the core of religious experience 146 p. v Kant on the role of the imagination 150 Kaufman on the role of the imagination 152 Kant and Kaufman: person-like God concepts are inevitable 156 VII. THE DECISION TO BELIEVE 158 God: most Westerners have a range of options 158 why human beings bind themselves to a thought experiment 160 God orients and motivates to do the right and the good 163 VIII. PERSON-LIKE GOD HAS MORE IMPACT ON MORAL CHOICES 166 God may be most effective way to defeat anthropocentrism 166 an impersonal God is unlikely to succeed at orienting lives 168 CH. 4 – KAUFMAN’S HUMANE AND HUMANIZING GOD 170 I. GOD: ABSOLUTE REFERENCE POINT PROVIDING GUIDANCE 174 II. KAUFMAN’S CRITERION OF HUMANIZATION 177 moral relativism is no longer appropriate 180 expressive individualism and pic-n-mix theologies 183 is Kaufman’s criterion of humanization Christian? 186 evaluation of the criterion of humanization 189 III. CHECKS AND BALANCES INTERNAL TO KAUFMAN’S METHOD 193 IV. GOD: THE MOTIF OF HUMANIZATION 194 the “ideal” human model for God 198 Kaufman’s own humanizing motif: the suffering Jesus 200 critiques of the humanization motif 204 V. GOD: THE MOTIF OF RELATIVIZATION 210 abstract metaphors establish God’s transcendence 211 reminders of God’s beyondness: key to moral orientation 214 new metaphors must replace traditional ones 216 motif of relativization as a test of self and society 217 VI. MOTIF OF HUMANIZATION VS. MOTIF OF RELATIVIZATION 220 VII. STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF KAUFMAN’S METHOD 223 III THE GLOBAL ETHIC: MORAL DIRECTIVES SHARED BY ALL 227 CH. 5 – THE GLOBAL ETHIC AND 1993 PARLIAMENT OF WORLD’S RELIGIONS 228 p. vi I. A GLOBAL ETHIC FOR A GLOBALIZED WORLD 232 II. THE REDACTION AND RATIFICATION OF THE GLOBAL ETHIC 238 III. THE ENDORSEMENT OF THE GLOBAL ETHIC 247 controversies during the 1993 Parliament 250 agreement on need for common ethical teachings 255 IV. THE CONTENT OF THE GLOBAL ETHIC 257 V. TWO MORE WAYS THE GLOBAL ETHIC CAN BE HELPFUL 267 moral support for the U.N.’s Declaration of Human Rights 268 religion’s partner in changing moral consciousness 270 VI. FINDING THE GLOBAL ETHIC IN SACRED TEXTS 272 selective choice of passages 275 strategic hermeneutics 276 VII. OTHER GLOBAL ETHICS: HOW DO THEY COMPARE? 280 VIII. THE IMPACT OF THE GLOBAL ETHIC SINCE 1993 284 CH. 6 – THE GLOBAL ETHIC: STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES 289 I. CHALLENGED: THE DRAFT-TO-RATIFICATION PROCESS 291 a way to preserve the West’s privileged structures of power? 291 Human Rights Declaration: no longer “too Western” 293 II. DOES THE GLOBAL ETHIC EXPRESS A SHARED ETHIC? 302 an unacceptable emphasis on non-violence? 303 resistance to the equal status of men and women 307 conservative traditions did not help draft the Global Ethic 309 a problematical focus on “authenticity” and “credibility?” 317 III. THE GOLDEN RULE: HELP OR HINDRANCE? 319 a version of the Golden Rule exists in every tradition? 319 Rule’s ubiquity is not as straightforward as is often claimed 323 the religions interpret and apply the Rule in different ways 332 polyvalent and simple formulation is Rule’s strength 338 IV. ARE THE GLOBAL ETHIC’S DIRECTIVES TOO VAGUE? 339 too vague for individuals to use? 340 too vague for global change? 344 p. vii CH. 7 – WHAT KIND OF ETHIC IS THE GLOBAL ETHIC? 348 I. A PRODUCT OF A BOTTOM-UP, ‘EMERGENT UNIVERSALISM’? 354 linkages: Western vs South and East Asian religions 354 different ethical systems are shared in a meaningful sense 360 II. THE RESULT OF AN ‘OVERLAPPING CONSENSUS’? 366 III. A CONSTRUCTIVIST ETHIC? 370 moral facts are mind-dependent and identified by procedures 370 IV. THE GLOBAL ETHIC: A CONSTRUCTIVIST-REALIST ETHIC 379 the Global Ethic’s moral facts are real (mind independent) 379 V. TOP-DOWN AND BOTTOM-UP VERSIONS WILL CONVERGE 386 VI. EMBEDDED HUMAN GOOD VS. U.N. DEVELOPMENT METRICS 389 the Global Ethic’s built-in assumptions about the good life 389 the Global Ethic’s human good correlates to UNDP metrics 398 VII. MIDDLE WAY BETWEEN UNIVERSALISM AND PARTICULARISM 404 VIII. AN EXPRESSION OF SHARED MORAL IMPERATIVES 408 . IV TOWARD A GLOBAL, HUMANISTIC THEOLOGICAL METHOD 415 CH. 8 – A THEOLOGICAL METHOD FOR CONSTRUCTING VALIDLY MORAL CONCEPTS OF GOD 416 I. A SKETCH OF THE METHOD 422 a two-moment constructive method 422 moment 1: a concept of God aligned to the Global Ethic 427 the role of religious communities 431 moment 2: concepts of world and self aligned to God 432 II. HOW DOES THE GLOBAL ETHIC IMPROVE THE METHOD? 446 the Global Ethic is not a conventionalist ethic 447 tested by the Global Ethic, concepts of God humanize 451 tested by the Global Ethic, concepts of God relativize 452 III. MOMENT 1 OF THE METHOD: DOES IT WORK IN PRACTICE? 455 a test case: Kaufman’s Phase III concept of God 456 Kaufman abandons epistemological humility 461 Kaufman’s creative serendipity vs. the Global Ethic 463 p. viii IV. A CRITIQUE OF THE METHOD 468 V. WRAPPING UP AND LOOKING FORWARD 474 APPENDIX A: TOWARD A GLOBAL ETHIC: AN INITIAL DECLARATION 478 APPENDIX B: INTRODUCTION TO THE GLOBAL ETHIC 492 APPENDIX C: OTHER GLOBAL ETHICS 494 BIBLIOGRAPHY 505 p. ix LIST OF TABLES TABLE A: GLOBAL ETHIC’S IMPLICIT INDICATORS OF THE HUMAN GOOD BASED ON RENAUD’S ANALYSIS 392 TABLE B: COMMER’S ECONOMIC GROWTH INDICATORS VS HIS HDI-BASED HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS 398 TABLE C: RENAUD’S LIST OF GLOBAL ETHIC ‘HUMAN GOOD’ INDICATORS VS COMMER’S ‘HUMAN DEVELOPMENT’ HDI-BASED INDICATORS 399 p. x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS O project as significant as a dissertation is ever the product of a single Nindividual. It is an honor and a pleasure to glance back over the past several years and thank the many family members, friends, mentors, colleagues, and organizations whose support made this project possible. Several people were key in helping me make my application to the doctoral program a success: Rev. Dr. Cynthia Lindner, the Director of the Ministry program at the Divinity School offered wise counsel; Rev.
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