The past year has witnessed the deaths of three theological giants, Jurgen Moltmann, Gustavo Gutiérrez and Don Cupitt.
Cupitt will be best remembered for his advocacy of the concept of a non-realist god. God only exists in our language and therefore in our mind. Clearly he was influenced by the ideas of the postmodernist Jacques Derrida. The following quotations summarise Cupitt’s ideas.
"Our thinking, our selfhood, our very humanity are constituted within language in such a way that we have nothing to think ourselves right out of language with."
God "is no sort of being. He is our personal concept in a world of meaning in which everything is relative or diferential".
Cupitt defended his position as a cleric thus:
"I am a priest in the Church of England and I practise in a rather traditional way, but when I say the creed. I regard it not as giving me supernatural information but showing me a way to walk in.".
I'll have to remember that when I attend a Book of Common Prayer service of Matins or Evening Prayer.
According to Cupitt God does not exist as a metaphysical figure nor as a spiritual presence external to us. It is internal to us, to our language. Cupitt posits the following:
"I take the idea of God as someone like a guiding spiritual ideal that you use to orientate your life by. God is our values. God symbolises the good of spiritual life."
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