ABSTRACT
The God of radical orthodoxy no doubt seems fairly unreal if one takes Richard Swinburne as exemplary of theological realism. But for radical orthodoxy 'God' does not name a thing or things of any kind, and to someone like Don that can only sound like 'non-realism'. Experiential theology has been criticised for imagining an unmediated experience that is somehow uncontaminated by culture and language, by social imaginaries. Postliberalism'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 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 'mystical experience'. For Cupitt, experience is textual, dependent upon the play of signs in which the world becomes meaningful.
