The Body in the Text: Realism and Non-realism, Revelation and Writing-experience

The God of radical orthodoxy no doubt seems fairly unreal if one takes Richard Swinburne as exemplary of theological realism. But for radical orthodoxy &s;God&s; does not name a thing or things of any kind, and to someone like Don that can only sound like &s;non-realism&s;. Experiential theology has been criticised for imagining an unmediated experience that is somehow uncontaminated by culture and language, by social imaginaries. Postliberalism&s;s privileging of writing over experience, of discourse over desire, of texts over bodies and their wants, bespeaks the privilege of dominant speakers, the comfort and complacency of articulate power. Cupitt&s;s commitment to language over against anything more tactile is evident throughout his later work, but it is particularly noticeable when he comes to consider that prime site for a prediscursive, unadorned reality, the so-called &s;mystical experience&s;. For Cupitt, experience is textual, dependent upon the play of signs in which the world becomes meaningful.