The Beyond Within. A Commentary on Through a Glass Darkly, David Boulton’s response to my A Man that Looks on Glass

96 Pages·2017·0.266 MB·English

by  Derek Guiton

The Beyond Within

The Beyond Within
A Commentary on
Through a Glass Darkly,
David Boulton’s response to my
A Man that Looks on Glass
Derek Guiton
Published in 2017 by FeedARead Publishing
Copyright © Derek Guiton
The author(s) assert the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988 to be identified as the author(s) of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior
written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
British Library C.I.P.
A C.I.P. catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Design and layout by David Botwinik
Cover illustration: LSF F 234 Centring Down, 2000 by John Perkin (1927–2012),
Copyright © Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain
‘You can only see things clearly with your heart.
What is essential is invisible to the eye.’
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Life’s splendour forever lies in wait about each one of us
in all its fullness, but veiled from view . . .
If you summon it by the right word,
by its right name, it will come.
— Franz Kafka

contents
opening remarks
viii
my personal journey
1
‘errors and misrepresentation’
9
‘dark’ forebodings
19
inclusivity
28
total inclusivity
39
tolerance and inclusivity
44
the passage of time
49
‘hitched to a lie’
53
transcendence
55
language
73
language and renewal
82
closing remarks
85
vii
opening remarks
When i first read David Boulton’s Open Letter, Through a
Glass Darkly, his response to my book, A Man that Looks on
Glass, I felt it enough to leave Friends to make up their own minds
about its contents. But then, after reading Ian Kirk-Smith’s review
of David’s book in The Friend, it became clear that a reply of some
kind was necessary.1 I was partly concerned by the continuing mis-
understanding of the nature and focus of my book, and I also felt
there were wider and more significant issues than those raised in
Ian’s review that urgently needed to be addressed.
My concern centred largely around three important themes,
each with a strong bearing on discussions among Friends in relation
to our current Book of Discipline and its impending (or probable)
revision. They are:
1. Inclusivity
2. Transcendence
3. Religious Language
In this short work I hope to explore these themes in a way that
will be helpful to Friends generally, and also to examine their impli-
cations for the Society’s immediate and long-term future. As the
book is intended as a commentary on David’s Through a Glass
Darkly, I will follow the thread of his argument as presented, while
also making occasional reference to the writings of other Friends in
the non-theist network who advocate a future for the Society based
on the form of atheism known as ‘radical religious humanism’.
Such an open exchange should be seen as a sign of health: our
understanding of the issues around the current state of our Religious
Society can only benefit from the ‘to and fro’ of critical analysis
and evaluation. Some will say that disputing each other’s theologies
is divisive, but divisiveness is not the issue when the future of the
1 See The Friend 174, 51 (16th Dec., 2016), p. 13.
viii
opening remarks
Society itself is what is at stake. The issue then is how to discern
what has gone wrong and what can be done to fix it.
Criticism, whilst incisive, should not, of course, be hurtful. At
the same time, writers who make it their business to challenge the
foundations of another’s faith must expect their own positions to be
challenged in turn. It is no use objecting (once they have been made
public) that the more forthright passages in which they present their
arguments have been unfairly ‘selected’ for comment.2 Unfair bias
would ignore other passages which give an alternative or opposite
view. I don’t believe I have ignored these other passages, here or in A
Man that Looks on Glass, but where I have found them to contradict
one another I have raised questions.
nothing personal intended
In Through a Glass Darkly, David assumes that the ‘man’ in A
Man that Looks on Glass specifically refers to him.3 Not at all, it is
employed generically just as it is in George Herbert’s original poem.
Nor, despite my describing it at one point as a “rejoinder to Boulton”,
is the book concerned with David’s personal viewpoint or personal
faith position, any more than it is with the personal views or faith of
others whose ideas I explore at length—Don Cupitt, Charles Taylor,
Janet Scott etc. However, where I disagree with a perspective which
is more than personal to the writer, especially one which I feel
undermines and destabilises the Society at its core—as I believe is
the case with humanism—I cannot but express my opposition, while
emphasising that this implies neither intolerance nor disrespect.
My concern throughout in A Man that Looks on Glass was to
provide a critique of some aspects of the present state and direction
of the Society, and to dismantle, so far as I was able, certain philo-
sophical barriers to faith. The non-realist and anti-transcendentalist
ideas underpinning so-called ‘religious’ humanism and some—not
all—Quaker non-theism are by no means the sole cause of the
2 The Friend 174, 51 (16th Dec., 2016), p. 13.
3 David’s booklet, hereafter Open Letter; my book, hereafter Looks on Glass.
ix
The Beyond Within
problems we are now facing, but most would recognise that they
have had a considerable disruptive impact. It is a difficult balance to
maintain, but where I have focused my attention on David’s ideas
specifically, it is as a propagator of these ideas within the Society, not
as an individual Friend or seeker.
x