Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion John Hick hick/95361/crc 27/4/01 9:58 am Page 1 Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion hick/95361/crc 27/4/01 9:58 am Page 2 Also by John Hick AN INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER RELIGIONS (co-editor with Brian Hebblethwaite) CLASSICAL AND CONTEMPORARY READINGS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION (editor) CHRISTIANITY AT THE CENTRE DEATH AND ETERNAL LIFE DISPUTED QUESTIONS IN THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION EVIL AND THE GOD OF LOVE FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE FAITH AND THE PHILOSOPHERS (editor) GANDHI’S SIGNIFICANCE FOR TODAY (co-editor with Lamont C. Hempel) GOD AND THE UNIVERSE OF FAITHS GOD HAS MANY NAMES PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION PROBLEMS OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM THE EXISTENCE OF GOD (editor) THE EXPERIENCE OF RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY (co-editor with Hasan Askari) THE FIFTH DIMENSION: An Exploration of the Spiritual Realm THE MANY-FACED ARGUMENT (co-editor with Arthur C. McGill) THE METAPHOR OF GOD INCARNATE THE MYTH OF CHRISTIAN UNIQUENESS (co-editor with Paul F. Knitter) THE MYTH OF GOD INCARNATE (editor) THE RAINBOW OF FAITHS (= A CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY OF RELIGIONS) THE SECOND CHRISTIANITY THREE FAITHS – ONE GOD (co-editor with Edmund S. Meltzer) TRUTH AND DIALOGUE IN WORLD RELIGIONS (editor) hick/95361/crc 27/4/01 9:58 am Page 3 Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion John Hick hick/95361/crc 27/4/01 9:58 am Page 4 Selection and editorial matter © John Hick 2001 Section 2(i)(b) © William Alston 2001 Section 2(iv)(b) © George I. Mavrodes 2001 For a note on the original publication of contributed material in this book, please see the Acknowledgements on p. viii. All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2001 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 0–333–76103–0 hardback ISBN 0–333–76105–7 paperback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hick, John. Dialogues in the philosophy of religion / John Hick. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–333–76103–0 (cloth) 1. Religious pluralism—Christianity. 2. Christianity and other religions. 3. Religion—Philosophy. I. Hick, John. BR127 .D544 2001 210—dc21 00–054521 10987654321 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 Printed in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire Contents Preface vii Acknowledgements viii Introduction: Climbing the Foothills of Understanding – An Intellectual Autobiography 1 Part I In Dialogue with Contemporary Philosophers 1. The Epistemological Challenge of Religious Pluralism 25 2. Responses and Discussion 2(i) William Alston 37 2(i)(a) Hick 38 2(i)(b) Alston 42 2(ii) Alvin Plantinga 52 2(ii)(a) Hick 56 2(iii) Peter van Inwagen 57 2(iii)(a) Hick 61 2(iv) George I. Mavrodes 62 2(iv)(a) Hick 69 2(iv)(b) Mavrodes 72 3. Ineffability: A Response to William Rowe and Christopher Insole 76 4. Religious Pluralism and the Divine: A Response to Paul Eddy 90 5. Transcendence and Truth: A Response to D.Z. Phillips 95 Part II In Dialogue with Evangelicals 6. Religious Pluralism for Evangelicals 115 A response by Clark Pinnock 141 Part III In Dialogue with Catholics 7. Cardinal Ratzinger on Religious Pluralism 149 v vi Contents 8. A Response to Cardinal Ratzinger 157 9. The Latest Vatican Statement on Religious Pluralism 161 10. The Possibility of Religious Pluralism: A Reply to Gavin D’Costa 169 Part IV In Dialogue with Theologians 11. The Theological Challenge of Religious Pluralism 179 12. Is Christianity the Only True Religion? 195 13. Paul Knitter on the Person of Christ 202 A response by Knitter 208 Postscript 213 Index 215 Part I In Dialogue with Contemporary Philosophers This page intentionally left blank 1 The Epistemological Challenge of Religious Pluralism Many of us today who work in the philosophy of religion are in broad agreement with William Alston that the most viable defence of religious belief has to be a defence of the rationality of basing beliefs (with many qualifying provisos which Alston has carefully set forth) on religious experience. From the point of view of a Christian philosopher – as distinguished from a philosopher simply as such – there is, however, an obvious challenge to this in the fact that the same epistemological prin- ciple establishes the rationality of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. in holding beliefs that are at least partly, and sometimes quite radically, incompatible with the Christian belief-system. Belief in the reality of Allah, Vishnu, Shiva and of the non-personal Brahman, Dharmakaya, Tao, seem to be as experientially well based as belief in the reality of the Holy Trinity. Alston himself acknowledges this as ‘the most difficult problem for my position’1 and this view is reflected in the fact that a third of the Festschrift recently published in his honour2 is devoted to this topic. Alston′s solution to the problem is (in briefest summary) that since we have at present no neutral way of establishing which of the world religions is right, and since our own religion is both theoretically and practically satisfactory to us, it is much more reasonable for us to stay with it than to switch to another. On analogy with the rival doxastic practices – Aristotelian, Cartesian, Whiteheadian etc. – in terms of which we construe the physical world, In the absence of any external reason for supposing that one of the competing practices is more accurate than my own, the only rational course for me is to sit tight with the practice of which I am a master and which serves me so well in guiding my activity in the world . 25 26 Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion Hence, by parity of reasoning, the rational thing for a practitioner of CP [Christian doxastic practice] to do is to continue to form Christian M-beliefs [beliefs about God′s self-manifestation to us], and, more generally, to continue to accept, and operate in accordance with, the system of Christian belief.3 Alston is here assuming that there can be at most one ‘true religion’, so that the big question is, which of the competing religious belief-systems is the true one? But this widespread assumption is fatal to Alston′s thesis that it is (with all the proper qualifications and safeguards) rational to base beliefs on religious experience. For if only one of the many belief-systems based upon religious experience can be true, it follows that religious experience generally produces false beliefs, and that it is thus a generally unreliable basis for belief-formation. This is a reversal of the principle, for which Alston has argued so persuasively, that reli- gious experience constitutes as legitimate a ground for belief-formation as does sense experience. Further, whilst it is possible that the doxastic practice of one′s own community constitutes the sole exception to a general rule, the claim that this is so can only appear arbitrary and unjustified unless it is supported by good arguments. And so William Wainwright, in his chapter in the Festschrift, holds that ‘To be fully suc- cessful [Alston′s defence of “sitting tight”] must form part of a persuasive cumulative case argument for the Christian world-view’ (p. 188). The arbitrariness of Alston′s position is highlighted when we remember that if he had been born into a devout Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist family he would, using the same epistemology, be equally arbitrarily claiming that his Muslim, or Hindu, or Buddhist beliefs constitute the sole exception to the general rule that religious experience produces false beliefs! (Strictly speaking, of course, since it would not then be the same Bill Alston, one should say that when someone is born into a devout Muslim etc. family . But this does not affect the point.) However, Alston might at this point retreat to a fall-back position prepared in Perceiving God, where he describes the absence of neutral grounds for preferring the Christian world-view as only a ‘worst case scenario’ (p. 270). A more desirable scenario would be one in which there are compelling metaphysical arguments for theism and in which in addition ‘historical evidences give much stronger support to the claims of Christianity than to those of its theistic rivals – Judaism and Islam’ (p. 270). However, Alston does not suggest that this better scenario actually obtains. ‘Perhaps,’ he says in the end, ‘it is only in God′s good time that a more thorough insight into the truth behind The Epistemological Challenge of Religious Pluralism 27 these divergent perspectives [i.e.