Holy Ground: the Spirituality of Matter

This was published by SPCK in 1990 and develops my doctoral thesis into a more accessible work containing some of the core ideas of this site, as well as suggesting its title.

The book was written in sharp opposition to the Christian non-realism of Don Cupitt, but I now regard the invective against Cupitt as marring the book, which actually charts a subtle middle course between his non-realism and the naive literalism of some theistic accounts.  Religious language, I argue, conveys reality, not by making statements which correspond piecemeal with theological facts, but by aligning our lives and our activity towards an ultimate, all embracing level of reality, which is what we call God.

In this, religious language is less different from that of science than we suppose, for science too relies on developing models which align our experimental activity with a reality that presents many aspects.  The unique value of religious language lies in the way it combines the analogical approach of science with the use of metaphor and imagery which we associate with the arts, thereby overcoming the dualist dichotomies between mind and matter, or value and fact.

The book was well reviewed at the time, notably by Andrew Louth in Theology, and its content features among Richard Powell's favourite quotes !  However its semi-popular style  - and maybe the fact that it was written by a parish priest not an academic - meant it never hit the academic world in the way that I had hoped, while its density of content perhaps ruled it out for many non-academic readers.

It is out of print now but still sells at Amazon, $8.75 in the USA - click here - but only £3.75 in the UK - click here !  I hope to revise it and re-publish in some way in the medium term.

Contents

1 Faith's Eclipse

1. The God who must die
2. The new moon - Cupitt's and mine
3. Scrambling up the mountain

2 Dualism and Disenchantment

1. When I look at the waves what am I seeing?
2. Disenchantment
3. The shattered world and the tyrant's birth

3 Significant Matter

1. Interpreted nerves?
2. Reductionist mirrors
3. Life without interpretation
4. Recognition
5. Only the veils

4 Scientific Models

1. Revolution in the understanding of science
2. Theory-ladcn vision
3. Models and laws
4. From interillumination to model
5. Models and mechanism
6. Three marks of modelled reality

5 Material Mind?

1. The mind of a bat?
2. Behaviour and incarnate meaning
3. Games, groups and 'mindfulness'
4. Action and objectivity
5. The art of knowing
6. Transcendental materialism?

6. Bees of the Invisible

1. Models and images
2. Poetic interillumination
3. Unity, harmony and radiance
4. Form, representation and expression: the triangle of creativity
5. Symbolic form Religious symbol?

7. The Dust is Magic

1. Science and value
2. Order from chaos
3. The world as information
4. Evolution and emergence
5. Humanity prefigured?
6. The dust is magic

8. Holy Ground

1. The further awakening
2. The first shift: causality
3. The second shift: faith as tacit knowledge
4. The third shift: focusing God's meaning
5. Trinity?

9. The God who must be Born

1. The bees
2. From the tyranny of the Word discarnate, good Lord deliver us

Index