After All: Religion without Alienation

by Don Cupitt

Don Cupitt argues that our age has recently become post-Christian and post-philosophical. Uncertain what to make of the new situation, people are becoming highly disorientated. Will either philosophy or theology ever be able to focus our cultulre around a coherent, rational and commonly-acknowledged view of life? By way of an answer, Don Cupitt offers a reinvention of metaphysics. He aims to reconcile the scientific vision of the world, which brings everything down to a motion of tiny packets of energy, with the 'arts' vision that reduces everything to a movement of cultural signs. He argues that an anti-realist interpretation of the scientific world-picture both does full justice to the cultural importance of science and opens up new religious possiblilities. After the church comes the this may be the first textbook of post-Christianity, describing a time of fulfilment when religion can at last become completely sensuous, rational and this-worldly.

Genres: Religion

128 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1994

About the author

Don Cupitt was an English philosopher of religion and scholar of Christian theology. He had been an Anglican priest and a lecturer in the University of Cambridge, though he was better known as a popular writer, broadcaster and commentator. He has been described as a "radical theologian", noted for his ideas about "non-realist" philosophy of religion.

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHER FURTHER DEVELOPS HIS IDEAS

Don Cupitt (born 1934) is an English philosopher and theologian, who was an Anglican priest from 1960 until he resigned in 2008; he taught at Emmanuel College, Cambridge since 1965. He has written many books, such as Taking Leave of God; Radicals and the Future of the Church; After All; After God: The Future Of Religion; Reforming Christianity; Radical Theology]], etc.

He wrote in the Introduction to this 1994 book, “The answer I am proposing here is that although we DO need something like a reinvention of metaphysics, it cannot take the form of a reinstatement of one of the old systems… we do need to come to terms with the now-extremely-detailed cosmic narrative offered by modern science. Has it wholly displaced the earlier cosmologies; and anyway, what’s its status?... The present suggestion… is that a new metaphysics might take the form of a network of such unifying metaphors… In short, I’m attempting not a revival of old-style dogmatic metaphysics, but only a sketch… of the antirealist vision of life that follows the end of the old metaphysics and the old systematic theology. I’m asking what view of life is reasonable just now. I’m trying to describe a new sort of natural theology and natural religion, and ending by suggesting that in different parts of the world different faith-traditions may (if they wish) supplement it in various ways.” (Pg. 6-7)

He observes, “Today’s post-Christianity is thus being experienced as a religious liberation. Since the mid-nineteenth century, people who have outgrown ecclesiastical Christianity have tended to think of themselves as ‘lapsed,’ as ‘agnostics’ or ‘humanists.’ They have sounded as if they feel themselves diminished---orphaned by the death of God, and alienated from Mother Church… But today’s post-Christianity sees no reason whatever to describe itself in such romantically pessimistic terms. On the contrary, it regards its own appearance as evidence that traditional ecclesiastical Christianity has now completed its historical task, which always was in the end to go beyond itself, exceed itself and become something greater than itself.” (Pg 21-22)

Later, he adds, “Jesus CAN therefore be seen as a prophet of post-Christianity… the transition from Christianity to post-Christianity is part of the transition from modernism to post-modernism, which … is indeed occurring at the End of history, for it brings to an end a certain conception of what history is.” (Pg. 25) He goes on, “post-Christianity is still a Christianity… in about 1980, ecclesiastical Christianity tipped over into post-Christianity in just the same way as modernism had already tipped over into post-Modernism.” (Pg. 27)

He outlines, “this book contains two little treatises, one on metaphysics or general philosophy, and another (very short) one on active and contemplative religion. A treatise on metaphysics, because after the collapse of tradition we have to rethink everything if we are to find a style of religious thinking that makes sense. And in any case, both in the East and in the West the history of philosophy and the history of religious thought were always intertwined. So it is that today a transition from Philosophy to post-philosophy is taking place in parallel with the transition from ‘organized’ ecclesiastical Christianity to post-Christianity. Nobody has yet explained the affinity between the two transitions, and this now needs to be done.” (Pg. 33-34)

He suggests, “the Age of the Church, the age of objectified religious system, was always like to be rather short. The old, overwhelmingly powerful and immediate God of the prophets had already faded long before the rise of what was eventually to be called ‘Christianity’…. So we need to escape: and it is especially important to escape from today’s worsening religious tribalism and ethnocentrism. We need to claim religious freedom in our new only-human world. So what follows is … going to seem austere, no doubt, because there is so much rubbish that has to be thrown out. I’m still chasing my insane fifteen-year ambition---to write the first not-untruthful Western religious book.” (Pg. 38-39)

He asserts, “On our radically-immanent account, the world is all on one level. There is nothing off the page, nothing between the lines, and nothing behind the scenes. There is only the flux of language-formed events, the dance of appearances. What appears is what there is. There’s nothing else, nothing forbidden and nothing ‘mysterious.’ It’s all as perspicuous as these sentences. In its flux, the world gives itself as completely to you as you are given to it.” (Pg. 55) Later, he adds, “The world, our human world, becomes real in and through our own expressive-emotive-symbolic response to it and writing of it… But the human being need not be left just twitching in pain. There is now a second movement to be made in order to complete the cycle. It is the movement of redemption, to be called ‘ecstatic immanence.’” (Pg. 80)

He acknowledges, “When in the mid-eighties I was asked to attempt a spiritual autobiography, I could find no moral standpoint around which I could unify my life. I have changed too much and---mercifully---have forgotten too much. I’m lost in the flux, a string of selves. There’s my-life-in-the-living here and now, but there is no my-Life in the sense of a coherent completed whole taking shape.” (Pg. 90)

He notes, “To be the Creator, or the space in which everything is produced, the Sacred must include a touch of darkness, otherness, ambivalence and perversity---as the God of the Hebrew Bible does, thank God!” (Pg. 101) He goes on, “There is no ‘objective’ value. WE make values: they are socially established… In the way they depend upon an ever-shifting social consensus, values are very close to meanings… We are valuing human beings because we are living beings, and a living being has an interest in life… we must recognize that when we affirm life we commit ourselves to affirming it as it is and in its ambivalence.” (Pg. 105)

He summarizes, “I have tried to develop an anti-realist vision of the world and the self, as a solution to the problems left by the demise of traditional realistic religious belief and philosophical thinking. The state of religious and intellectual decay and confusion into which we are now falling is so extreme that I have also wanted to argue that the only tolerably rational world-view-option left to us now is thoroughgoing naturalism. So I have attempted something rather way-out---a negotiated settlement between antirealist philosophy and the scientific world-narrative, to show that non-realism does not have to be anti-scientific.” (Pg. 111)

This book will be of interest to those studying contemporary/progressive/Radical Christianity.