A Brief History of Radical Theology Cupitt: Taking Leave of God For over twenty years Don Cupitt has developed a body of writing that has charted his progression from liberal theologian to Christian non-realist and more recently to a stance he describes as post-ecclesiastic.
During the course of this intellectual pilgrimage Cupitt has developed a metaphorical conception of God. Ina number of seminal texts, such as Taking Leave of God, Sea of Faith and After God, he has articulated a new subjective and symbolic definition of deity that has influenced many of his contemporaries.
The basis of Cupitt’s theological position is his evolutionary understanding of the development of religious consciousness. He contends that the original monotheistic concept that forms the bedrock of Western theology emerged out of the development of the early Middle-Eastern city-states. The move away from a nomadic hunter-gatherer existence and into settled communities brought with it the requirement for a new way of expressing human experience and a new way of ordering and controlling static and growing society. That expression was, in essence, a heavenly projection of the Earthly political status quo with a ruling dynastic king reflecting, validating and being validated by a powerful ruling God.
The simple hierarchical model of God — king — people, which effectively disallowed ordinary people direct access to deity and which required a ruling kingly and priestly elite, lasted a long time. It proved successful in maintaining social order and tribal allegiance, if by no other method than ‘putting the fear of God into people’.
The next phase in the development of human religious thinking can be encountered in the early Jewish tradition. With the arrival of Abraham and the Patriarchs a new attitude to deity arises, one characterised by questioning and arguing. Simply, due to the developing human intellect and an increasing confidence in establishing and justifying a place in the world, anew - dialogue was begun which engaged God with questions such as ‘why does this happen to me?’ This re-framing of the human situation, evidenced in literature like Job, resulted in, according to Cupitt, a new approach to ideas such as justice, destiny and the relationship of humanity to God. It was to drive human thinking forward into the Axial Period (800BCE — 200BCE) during which the major world religions formulated ideas relating to the salvation of the individual and their personal relationship with deity. It was no longer sufficient to have a remote and inaccessible God as the head of the tribe. Now humanity concerned itself with a personal relationship with God and an individual sense of purpose.
Inevitably the sense of purpose wasn’t confined to individual sensitivities and a notion of the historical development of humanity and society in general was developed in concert. In Christian terms the Church increasingly understood itself as the ark of salvation in a story that started with the creation of the world and which would end with Judgement Day. However, the problem for the post-modern world, as Cupitt sees it, is that quite simply no one subscribes to this model anymore. In this respect he succinctly sums up the new perspective on life, death and the supernatural by engaging with the phrase ‘this is all there is’. For Cupitt, the ‘this’ comprises our physical life on Earth and nothing more.
In Taking Leave of God and other works that followed, Cupitt presents a radical form of anthropocentric Christianity that he believes is more acceptable to modern man than the traditional form of the religion.
The idea of an independent, objective God is no longer tenable. As a result he believes that religious traditions, if they are to survive, must keep up with humanity’s changing worldview. However, he concedes that a certain spiritual continuity is necessary for this survival and he tries to provide this in relating the old ideas of religion to the new form of his own Christian atheism.
The crux of his argument is that there is no supracosmic creator-mind existing separately from the creation. He feels that theistic realism, the belief in such a being, is not truly coherent and he puts forward philosophical objections to the idea. He states, for example, that it is illogical to try to think of a mind that is not embodied and inconceivable that this mind could be active in every part of the universe. Also, if God is omniscient, as theists claim, then he presumably knows everyone’s destiny. This leads to the idea of determinism, which conflicts with theistic notions of free sof 64 March 2004 will. There is also, inevitably, the problem of evil and the question of why so much of it exists in a world that is supposedly governed by a good and omnipotent God.
Alternatively, if we see God as a divine substance that exists everywhere, how can there be room for the finite creation? The idea that God is able to ‘budge over’, as Cupitt puts it, in order to make room for creation represents another of the paradoxes that exist in theistic ideas. For Cupitt, then, the belief in an objectively existing God does not stand up to philosophical questioning. He concludes that it ‘is not certain that his existence can be proved, it is not certain whether the idea of such a being is even coherent...it is not certain that theological realism is such a good thing anyway’.
For Cupitt then, religion must become fully internalised. Women’s and men’s spirituality must not be imposed upon them by a separately existing God but, rather, be self-imposed by their own autonomous selfconsciousness. The external God must now be seen to exist within an individual as their spiritual ideal and the model toward which they direct their spiritual striving.
The process of internalisation, Cupitt maintains, is evident in the development of religion up to the present day. Demons, for example, were once thought of as external forces but are now believed to be aspects of the human psyche. Cupitt believes that this internalising must be taken further to include God himself. The language used in the New Testament comes from a prescientific and pre-philosophical time and it must now be re-interpreted so that it is relevant to modern times.
However, although belief in an external God is no longer feasible there is still a need for a form of spirituality to direct the human autonomous consciousness. Cupitt calls this the ‘religious requirement’. If God is to be internalised he must represent everything that religion requires of us. He is our religious objective and a symbol of the spiritual ideal humans must strive to attain. He is a principle rather than a person.
A requirement of the new anthropocentric view of life and the internalisation of deity is a re-orienting of the way that Radical Christians must live in the world.
Cupitt contends, for example, that they must develop an unselfish and disinterested love of their fellow beings, a love that does not ask for anything in return. Good actions can no longer be performed because we know God is watching what we do or because we hope for rewards in heaven. Cupitt’s Christianity embraces a disinterested love that is perceived as being of much higher value. The question of whether God exists outside of the religious requirement is of no interest; the requirement must be sought for its own value. We must strive to attain a spiritual consciousness because in doing so we lose the old ego, ‘ the part of us which fears death.
Sof 64 March 2004 ‘Quickly we must die to death, escape from the tyranny of this natural ego that clings so hopelessly to life, and enter upon a new life and divine form of consciousness disinterested, universal, non-egoistic and free’.
Cupitt’s non-doctrinal, subjective theology has also resulted in the development of a highly original and creative moral and ethical imperative characterised by an emphasis on individual experience and social responsibility that conveys a new and radical wisdom.
From his viewpoint the ethical life has to be, indeed can only be, a human construction. However, in Solar Ethics, Cupitt outlines a number of religious methods, or tricks as he calls them, that he feels hold value as referents for people living in a post-objective world. And through the application of these methods, which he refers to as the ‘Eye of God’, the ‘Blissful Void’ and ‘Solar Living’ he provides the key to a life lived both fully and meaningfully.
There is, of course, much in Cupitt’s theology that courts contention and much effort has been expended by Christian and non-Christian writers in questioning both assumption and conclusion. Keith Ward, for example, is a renowned Christian theologian who has endeavoured to demonstrate that much of Cupitt’s theology is philosophically unsound or, at best, of less value than mainstream Christian thinking. More recently Dinah Livingstone and others have criticised Cupitt’s writing for being little more than a ‘mess of post-modernism’ and the product not of a liberated consciousness but of a privileged Cambridge don.
Despite these particular criticisms and the general outrage of theological conservatives Cupitt is for many the pre-eminent Non-Realist. It is, perhaps, not without irony that the writings of someone who has done so much to expose the myth of objectivity should be viewed as virtually canonical by many of those who also reject realist credal orthodoxy. That in itself, perhaps, stands testimony to his unique contribution and continuing influence. Cupitt ended a recent apologia by observing that he would be pleased if his work ‘proved to be of use to some other people’. Whether you agree or disagree with Cupitt’s worldview it is hard to deny that in this respect he, indeed, has much to be pleased about.
Trevor Greenfield is an Associate Lecturer in Religious Studies, The Open University, with research interests in Radical Theology.