SCM Classics
2 total works
On Dover beach in the 1860s the English poet Matthew Arnold saw in the receding tide at dusk an image of the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the Sea of Faith. Twenty years later Nietzsche was proclaiming the death of God as an event that had taken place long before, but was still unrealized. The modern crisis of belief has deep roots. Don Cupitt shows how the rise in our science-based, democractic industrial society, of historical criticism and of knowledge of other religions has over the centuries slowly eroded the traditional framework of doctrinal belief--leaving us, as it seems to many, free, alone, and disoriented. But there is another story, for Cupitt also shows a line of creative thinkers, from Pascal to Wittgenstein, responding to each new challenge as it has arisen. A new understanding of religion is emerging which Cupitt calls non-realist, for it is without dogma. Instead, Christianity is seen as a way, a spiritual path, and an ethic. Religion becomes more like an art, for it is a function of our primal capacity to generate stories, symbols, and meanings to live by.
This was the book which first garnered international celebrity and notoriety for its author and which fire-started a debate about the supernatural claims of Christianity. Rejecting Christian doctrines and metaphysics in favour of the religious consciousness which characterises human identity, Cupitt 'takes leave' of God by abandoning objective theism. Because he remained an ordained priest of the Church of England, the author attracted considerable attention and criticism for his position. Indeed, Keith Ward, now Oxford's Regius Professor of Divinity, wrote an entire book - Holding Fast to God - which attempted to counter Cupitt's views. Whatever one thinks of the author's beliefs, Taking Leave of God contributed to one of the most important theological discussions of its time.