SOURCE: Cupitt, Don. “Scrap of Paper.” The Listener 94, no. 2425 (25 September 1975): 405.

In the following review of Jesus, Cupitt criticizes Muggeridge for failing to present a sustained argument and for indulging in harsh criticism of contemporary moral and religious practices.

‘It is one thing to be crucified: it is quite another thing to be a Professor of the fact that someone else was crucified,’ wrote Kierkegaard, showing that it is possible for a great religious writer to be waspish. But great religious writers are excessively rare. Their mark is a certain perfectly sustained purity and intensity, such as would be destroyed at once by the slightest taint of the borrowed, the self-conscious or the meretricious.

On this count, Mr Muggeridge['s Jesus] cannot be considered successful, for his style and tone are astonishingly uneven. Even in his best passages—those on madness, and on the two great commandments—he strains...