Don Cupitt's Ideas

QUESTION: I was wondering whether you've read much of Don Cupitt's work or had any connections with the “Sea of Faith“ movement. Here is a link to a talk he gave last year as an overview of his thinking:
An Apologia for My Thinking
I've been reading his Emptiness & Brightness book and it struck me that some of his views about what faith, religion and indeed meaning to life may appeal to you. certainly, I'd love to hear a Pureland critique of it!

DHARMAVIDYA: Thank you. Don Cupitt's work is not something I have looked into before and I have not read Emptiness and Brightness, but I have now read the talk you refer to and I certainly appreciate the philosophical dilemmas that he seems to have been struggling with. It occurs to me that in some ways he has been moving through similar seas to myself, though perhaps travelling in the opposite direction, as I, having considered the same areas of deconstruction and encountered the same nihilistic consequences, have gradually become more tolerant of metaphysics (by which I mean something close to what Iris Murdoch called “the sovereignty of good”) and, in particular, have at last come to see the value in “maintaining an unbridgeable gulf between Holy God and the sinful human being”, though, as Buddhists, we do not talk about God, but about the ideal Buddha, Amida. This gulf is not, in Buddhism, at least, “for the sake of social control”, but, rather, serves at once, on the one hand, to ground our spiritual life in a personhood and an existential world that never are ideal, whilest, on the other hand, never losing sight of that ideal by which alone our lives can be lifted and inspired. Collapsing one of these poles into the other one seems to me to be spiritually reckless, though I appreciate that many Buddhists would disagree with me. My position in this respect is characteristically Pureland. I do not, however, see the spiritual life as a journey from the mundane to the divine, the ordinary to the ideal. Rather it is a journey in which both are eternally present as the landmarks by which one discerns a Middle Way. The Middle Way takes into account Amida's illimitable light and my own incorrigible darkness. As a result, I feel accepted just as I am, not as I might become only after scaling whatever spiritual heights there might be, but precisely as I am now, darkness and all. It is precisely this world just as it is that is the place where the spiritual life takes place, and it is here that I discern the “unbridgeable gulf”. This does not instil a feeling of alienation, but of realism, in the ordinary sense of the word. Anything else smacks of hubris.

QUESTION::
(The questioner sent me an essay, not reproduced here, explaining Cupitt's position on a number of issues.)

DHARMAVIDYA: Regarding your criticism of traditional religion:
“Traditionally religions have presented the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with the human condition (and the world) and so have offered solutions to attain ‘salvation’ and enter the better state to come (E.g. heaven, Nirvana etc.)”,

I feel I want to say, well, there is, isn’t there? How about war, torture, slavery, or, closer to home, everyday nastiness? I suppose I am less sanguine than Cupitt about humans. Saying something is (post-/) modern and human does not recommend it to me. Also, I think his criticisms of the traditional way are a bit overly stereotypic. Is he not setting up a straw man? For instance, in the Western tradition, it was gnosticism that really polarised heaven and earth and that was declared a heresy for precisely that reason by the orthodox traditions. There is a middle way, that recognises human nastiness and offers a better state and that is the Buddhist way, but I think it has also been the way of many traditional Christians too. The idea that “earth is already heaven” that you introduce is valuable in some contexts, but it is not adequate as a complete dogma because it needs to be balanced by the fact that “earth is already hell” too. Pureland accepts that there is much that is wrong with us, but asserts that, nonetheless, we can become acceptable to Amida, even if we have been cruel and greedy and proud, if we give birth to faith. This is because faith will work a transformation within us. It will do so because it will open us up to an influence that, because it is not from within, is not corrupted by our past negative karmic formations. Unless we set up something that is good and sublime outside of self, this will not happen and religion will simply become a game of self-congratulation in which we preen our souls or buddha nature or whatever but never escape from the loop of solipsism. Awareness of our failings is more important than pride in our virtues. Even in Pali Buddhism, Shakyamuni says that he would rather have a sinner who realised his fault than a complacent saint who, through ignorance, was bound to decline. The idea that “Earth is already heaven” is a bit like “everybody is already inherently enlightened”. They are not and it is not. It is beautiful and sublime in many ways, but it is also many other things and dukkha is everywhere.

You say that,
“Traditional metaphysical religion was fixed, unchangeable, firm. It was rock, where contemporary faith must ride the wave, the swell, embracing perpetual motion. But why speak of “faith” at all? Not because we see any merit in “having faith” in unprovable religious dogmas and doctrines. We do not set up “faith” against reason, as metaphysical religion tended to do, nor do we use it as a synonym for blind belief. Faith for us is the trust that it is possible to give value and meaning to life: we can't prove it, but we choose to live by that faith”.

Very interesting. On the other hand, there is certainly some value in religion being a rock. One could say that that is what it is for. The Dharma too is presented as the eternal truth that holds us in the midst of impermanence. There does seem to be some contradiction in saying that there is no merit in “unprovable” things and then setting up in their place something that you say cannot be proved. In doing so you are readmitting what you sought to exclude, which is a faith, call it blind if you like, in value and goodness, that goes beyond the value and goodness that we actually see enacted by the average deluded human being. I think you are right to readmit it and would be better not to exclude it. We have a sense of virtue that lies beyond us. Goodness is something sovereign that we call to from afar. There is actually very little that is provable in this life and insisting that the other fellow conform to a higher standard of validity than one intends to adhere to oneself can easily lead us astray.

So, on that basis, surely, metaphysics is only a problem when people make undue claims for it - but then, that is true of anything. To reject something because some people make such claims would lead to the rejection of all worthwhile things, for they are commonly, and understandably, over-sold. A metaphysic should have descriptive predictive, and normative value. Of course it is man made - it is a human discipline - just as physics is. However, it tries to describe something that is not man made - the moral order of the universe. As we say in Buddhism, the law of karma is not answerable to my personal will.

Then again, as between mysticism and metaphysics, mysticism does not win every time. For instance, saying that X is the same as not-X is of limited utility and has been seriously over-worked in Western Buddhist circles. Similarly, dismantling all structure relating to our appreciation of the moral realm has serious pitfalls. Of course, no particular metaphysic is the ultimate and unsurpassable - any more than any particular physic is. In physics, Einstein is supposedly better than Newton, but his theory is neither ultimate nor self-evident, and the older system does work better for most everyday purposes. Sometimes this is true in metaphysics too.

I must thank you for your efforts. Debate on these things is very clarifying. I do not think we have reached the last word - that is the nature of the subject, but we have turned up some interesting threads.