ABSTRACT
This chapter distinguishes between two distinct forms of postmodern theology - the nihilistic postmodern textualism of Don Cupitt and Mark C. Taylor and the theologically conservative postmodern theology or 'Radical Orthodoxy' of John Milbank, Graham Ward and Gerard Loughlin. Rowan Williams has observed that the foremost figures of influence in Cupitt's subversion of liberalism into non-realism were Immanuel Kant and the Buddha. Whereas the Buddha is the authoritative precedent for Cupitt's religious vision, Kant provides that vision with much of its philosophical underpinning. Cupitt, however, rejected Kant's universal categories in favour of culturally-relative ones. Kant, he said, recognised that our empirical knowledge is relative to intellectual programming, but thought he could vindicate the objectivity of knowledge by proving a priori that there is and can be only one programme. So Cupitt posits a clear distinction between the classical negative theology of Aquinas and his own 'modern' negative theology after Kant.
