Reviewed by John Mann
                                                        Introduction and Outline.

This book continues Cupitt's "expressionist" view of Christianity and religion which sees the exemplary human being as an artist. Cupitt argues that after the end of belief in any higher order of being, it is not enough simply to talk negatively about 'non-realism'. A new sort of ontology, or theory of Being, is needed.

The Religion of Being - Don Cupitt, (SCM 1998 London)

Reviewed by John Mann

This takes Cupitt into an encounter with the German Philosopher Martin Heidegger (1892-1976). Theologians who have already tried to combine Heidegger's ideas with theology have typically tried to replace 'Being' with 'God'. Cupitt is very much against this move and argues that this identification of Being and God was exactly what Heidegger was trying to get away from. Heidegger tried to refocus philosophy around human being I time and man's relation to Being.

For Heidegger, being is the unfolding of all things in time, letting be equals letting go. There is nothing metaphysical underpinning human life, the human world is a 'clearing', a space where everything comes to be and passes away. There are places where Heidegger equates his notion of Being with the Buddhist idea of Nothingness or Emptiness. Being is the insubstantial and metaphysically-empty flux of phenomena.

For Cupitt this view of Being tied in with his own passionate, religious love of pure, fleeting contingency which he has expressed in many phrases: ecstatic immanence, glory, the mysticism of secondariness etc.

There now follows a chapter by chapter summary of the book.

Chapter 1. What is Being? Heidegger is an obscure and difficult writer. Cupitt understands why Heidegger found it necessary to use his obscure terminology, but equally cannot accept that the truth cannot be universally accessible. Cupitt will not accept that truth is only available to an elite clique of specialists, and so is not concerned with being 'faithful' to Heidegger, but rather to produce a deviant reworking of his ideas.

Heidegger does use terms with theological resonances: 'parousia' is substance in philosophy, but Advent or theophany in theology; 'aletheia' is truth (literally unconcealment) in philosophy, in theology it is revelation. This suggests a religious response to Heidegger's ideas is not inappropriate.

Chapter 2. Being's time Being is not to be confused with God. Being is not substance, nature or form. Being is not any sort of force or power. Being is finite, contingent, temporal - it is pure flowing, outpouring, the well-spring, the Fountain. In the west in particular we have forgotten Being is like this.

This forgetting of Being has in the west been accompanied by the realistic philosophy of God. After the death of God we are finding it difficult to return to Being - it seems so much like nihilism.

For Heidegger we cannot simply remember the truth of Being, we simply have to wait for Being to return to us, like waiting for Godot. After the violence of God, Being is too mild and gentle for us to be able to receive it - yet, at least.

Cupitt is not giving us a book about Heidegger - he is writing after Heidegger, sometimes with him, sometimes against him. Being or Be(com)ing could also be called 'the Fountain', or what Nietzsche calls the eternal return. The Fountain is self-returning, pure empty contingency, healing and reposeful. Thought, language and natural energies stream forth. In meditation we surf that streaming forth.

Chapter 3. Be(com)ing Anselm is well known for his 'Ontological Argument' for the existence of God. Yet, Cupitt widens the point - Anselm is trying to argue from meaning to being, for the special case of God. Yet if this special case fails - and most philosophers agree it does - then the general case fails also and we cannot connect language and meaning to Being.

The truth of Being isn't difficult or obscure - as theologians and some philosophers have tried to show - but close and obvious: the transitory, changing nature of reality is its truth. Meditation that attends not to eternity but the Now-moment teaches the importance of nearness of Being.

Everything is purely contingent, things just happen, and there is no one to blame, not God, not my neighbour, not myself. Being is happening, it energises language and its coming to expression in language through us is our world.

Chapter 4. Hap-hap-Happy If we hear of disaster and evil happening we now think 'what rotten luck', we don't blame anyone - God or destiny. So there is no 'problem of evil' and we need to say a religious 'yes' to this Being, living in Being happy-go-lucky. What C. S. Lewis called meaningless Cupitt calls 'divine' - we have learned to love this innocent contingency.

Chapter 5. Coming into the world This 'world' was originally ordered and regulated, it was a 'domain' and 'realm', God was in charge as a transcendent super-Male controlling everything through the Law. Being is seen as super-Feminine, discrete, amenable, quiet. She is a womb - the womb of time, an inturning (Heidegger), vessel
(Kristeva and Irigaray) and matrix of possibilities (Derrida). She creates by self-giving. Being is (poetically) human: in a new sense Human Being.

Chapter 6. Being and Nihilism The wise man has been a favourite culture-hero of the ruling classes since the early Bronze Age. Yet the Trickster has been and remains the culture-hero of the common people. The Wise Man lives in an ordered-harmonious universe, the Trickster's universe is a disorderly play of forces in which he survives by his own joyous resourcefulness and wit.

A wise man sees a cosmos with substances and laws, while the Trickster sees life as wildly capricious with many unmerited ups-and-downs of fortune, but he does not complain - he makes the best of things and lives by his wits.

The nineteenth century intellectual was often driven to pessimism and nihilism through the loss of the 'wise man' philosophy. Yet the 'common people' have never really been convinced of the wise man view at all - they much prefer to see the Trickster break the rules and 'get away with it' than hear the preacher tell them they won't get away with it.

Cupitt's says of middle-class pessimism: 'if nihilism is such a Bad Thing, why is it that the Dali Lama is such a happy man and the Pope is such an unhappy man?' He continues:

"The Dali Lama's religion is sceptical and therapeutic. He truly believes in nothing… Even of his own great office, remarks now only that it will continue if the Tibetan people want it to continue and if not, not… why isn't a Christian allowed to be like that?"

Heidegger's view of Being can be seen as a move towards a more Tricksterish lightness of foot - indeed Cupitt believes such thinking was once prominent in the great religions, for example Judaism and Zen Buddhism.

Cupitt argues that we should not seek for one final last word interpretation, but celebrate multiple interpretations, enjoy the 'lightness of meaning', how it dances and moves, ever changing, never still.

Chapter 7. Being and Language How do we get from language to Being? Behind each veil there is always another veil, we are always within language, as Nietzsche says 'there are no facts, only interpretations' and Rorty says 'interpretation goes all the way down'. Being is something that language pre-supposes but that always eludes language, Being is the no-thing, the O-Void, our M-Other, the ineffable that resists assimilation.

Chapter 8. The Reciprocal Production of being and meaning We have seen that meaning presupposes being, but it is also the case that being presupposes meaning - we can never see a void, a chaotic world, we always see a cosmos, an intelligible world, which is in the end no more than a transient literary creation.

Chapter 9. Being's law Wittgenstein has shown that there is no 'one' being that gives reality to all things: a concerto, a weekend, an eclipse, a smile, a triangle and a human right. Heidegger's use of the single term 'being' can cause us to mistakenly believe there is one 'thing' that being is. But the human world is the channel through which Being comes forth into beings, and a full religious experience is possible anywhere and at any time - even at the worst of times.

Chapter 10. Being and technology Originally it was thought that the first humans were thinking, rational beings. It is only with the advance of science in the nineteenth century that it was discovered that we began from the 'bottom up' with desire and need and only after a long period of evolution developed reason and reflection.

Technology seems to be the realisation of theological hopes - money and electricity now allow us to fulfil dreams we only thought possible in heaven with the gods. But it is this realisation of our theological dreams - of power, pleasure and the sublime, that has allowed us to forget the essential qualities of Being: finite, contingent, changing, we are now possessed by the infinite: total knowledge and control, and so have forgotten Being.

Chapter 11. Being and the end of thinking So technology has taken over everything and out only attempt to counter-it is to appear irrational on its terms. We need to become a trickster, a jester, a Shakespearean fool, a mad prophet like Ezekiel or a cynic like Diogenes. We draw attention to what 'rationality' leaves out - the contingency of life, the dark side of the Moon.

So we are saved not by the incorruptible but by corruption - by Beings unmasterable elusiveness and contingency.

Chapter 12. Human Being Historically we have come to believe that only a total, theological, metaphysical 'complete' explanation could satisfy our desire for meaning against meaninglessness. However now we realise that there is no 'subject' for theology in any special sense. Theology is just a branch of philosophy concerned with our response to the question of Being. When we realise the emptiness of Being we wake up to the death of the self, but in a fruitful and salvic way.

Chapter 13. No object There is no single 'thing' that stabilises meanings and words, religion has become 'objective' and 'cosmic'. "As a mother watches over her child, willing to risk her own life to protect her only child, so with a boundless heart one should cherish all living beings, suffusing the whole world with unobstructed loving-kindness" (p. 123).

So the difference between 'sacred' and 'profane' love is the latter has an object while the former is for 'all beings' - unrestricted. So religious love goes beyond the object and only the person who realises God is not an object and does not exist can truly know how to praise and love God.

Chapter 14. The way to Being For some writers such as Heidegger, Derrida and Baudrillard the world of science hides Being but it does not have to be this way. We can achieve a 'marriage' between Be-ing and Think-ing, it is the religion of Being's version of the spiritual marriage, the vision of God.

Chapter 15. Being's Poem Man is Being's poem, but there is no 'one' person within us, we are multiple-selves. However language provides the promise of unification between the self and the world - that is what makes language sacred and blessed. There might be a world in which we are poets, creators, makers of meaning and midwives of Being.

Chapter 16. Faith in Being Religion is not about belief but practise, yet traditionally this has been towards God. Cupitt argues the religion of the future is focussed on Being, so currently we are in a transition mode from God to Being.

In the religion of Being, faith is not the act of intellectual submission to untruths, but the affirmation of Being - our acceptance of Being's poem. We imagine a time when every human being is a Christ - a son of God.

Chapter 17. In Conclusion Cupitt's evolution

1967-79 Negative theology - theological statements are regulative and action-guiding

1980-85 Non-realism, at first theological non-realism, then philosophical also.

1986-89 Postmodernism and anti-realism

1990-95 Expressionism beyond postmodernism, religion is an art-like world.

1996-1998 Turn to Being - Cupitt has been following not the way of affirmation but the way of Negation. "When everything that is non-God has been unthought, one is left suspended in an Empty Infinite" (p. 156).

Cupitt wonders about his path - why has he taken it? Did he have a choice? Look at his heros - Pascal, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, people who went mad, why has he followed them? He doesn't know, but hopes his path is a calmer, easier religious thinking for the future.

Is language itself the Cave? If so, what is outside? How can we think non-language? Non-language is Being and this is the religious object. What is Being? Nobody can say, but "this book was meant to be a sort of poem in praise of it".

© John Mann 2000