Four Quotes from Don Cupitt

[By] the end of the eighteenth century the leading philosophers were moving outside the Christian tradition, and today it is quite clear that they are not coming back. Similarly, the old grand narrative which Reformed preachers used to call the 'Plan of Salvation' faded away and died on a timeline about fifty years later.

In the modern period, the major Protestant churches have, in varying degrees, distanced themselves from their own classical confessions of faith, which are now regarded as being expressed in the vocabulary of the period or periods when they were written. 'We wouldn't put it quite like that now', it is said, and the offending form of words is 'put on the back burner', in a place where it can quietly fade away. It is not brought to light, but nor is it openly contradicted: it is simply left under wraps, like furniture in the old family home which the old couple have no use for at present.

An old maxim ran: 'The Church to teach, and the Bible to prove', but today no careful student of the New Testament would say that it attests the truth of orthodox Christian doctrine.

In practice the churches now confine themselves to current practical issues and controversies, problems of recruitment, government, corruption and reform, and to treating the major feasts as the occasion for uplifting moral allegorizing.


Don Cupitt in Creative Faith.