The Revelation of Being [Paperback]

This is a follow-up to Cupitt's longer book `The Religion of Being'. In it, Cupitt suggested that the world consists of Being, Man (human reality) and language, a sort of secular trinity. In this book he continues to reflect on the fact that each of the three elements in our world are constantly passing away - or at least changing, passing through time - we live in a world of constant change.

Cupitt suggests that originally religion wanted ultimate things to be unchanging - God had to be the same yesterday, today and forever - but that now we are actually happy that all things must pass. Being, Man and Language are like a flowing fountain - everything flows and flows and flows until it flows away and is replaced by something else.

Originally religion was afraid of contingency, vulnerability, weakness, emptiness - particularly as symbolised in Woman and Nature, such things were ruled over by the Father King who provided stability and eternity, but now we are no longer afraid of being part of something that ebbs and flows, that changes and moves on, we no longer need something that overcomes change, because we have discovered we are happy with gentle, sweet, purely-contingent forthcomingness. We prefer the mess and uncertainty of democracy to the regulation of a monarch or totalitarian rule, we have learned to live in a free market and not desire a command economy.

Cupitt seems to be describing a new type of religion. Being - or more exactly Becoming - is light and changing, it is the Way Things Are, and so replaces God, the eternal unchanging ruler. Man (humanity, our human world) is where we live, it is where we are at home, and we don't seek some other world to live in, language is what flows through us, it replaces Spirit, there is no other (spiritual) realm to seek out, the world as it appears is what is real, there is nothing hidden, and it is this world in which we can express ourselves and be ourselves, we don't need anything else.

At the beginning of the book Cupitt describes a religious experience he had in July 1997 in which this revelation of Being and Language coming together in us, this human reality, and being all there is, temporal, finite, all things passing away with the flow of change - this realisation became an experience of intense happiness to him, it was a moment of bliss.

What Cupitt appears to be suggesting is that this religionless world in which many people today live - assuming that all there is is what we see around us - a purely secular world-view, is itself something religious in a way - it satisfies his religious longing. He doesn't need to look elsewhere for meaning and contentment, he is happy with the human reality, the bustle and change of our world.

I remember reading Tom Wright somewhere suggesting that in life there are signposts to God: in our experience of nature, in relationships, in art, in morality and in religion itself. What Cupitt appears to be saying is that these aren't signposts to something better, they are what life is all about - the human world is all there is and that is enough.

'...Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,
Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us,--the place where in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all!'

Wordsworth - French Revolution