Theology's Strange Return

For two centuries and more our culture has been secular, and no religious doctrine now plays a constitutive part in any established branch of knowledge. Yet if God is dead, he won't lie down, and reminders of the old faith still pervade our language, the built environment, our art and our literature. Most important, themes of the old theology are currently returning to us in new and strange guises. Thus God, the strict Judge who searches our hearts and demands inner integrity, returns in the critical thinking which makes everyone trained in it 'his own hardest taskmaster'. Again, the biblical idea that the world is made by the utterance of language returns in modern poetry and linguistic philosophy. By assembling such reminders, Don Cupitt shows that a surprising amount of traditional Christian belief - including a new Grand Narrative, and a non-metaphysical theology - is currently returning to us in secular form. Don Cupitt is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.