Christian Apologetics Journal Vol 8 No 2
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Christian Apologetics Journal, 8:2 (Fall 2009) © 2009 Southern Evangelical Seminary THE RELIGIOUS PLU R ALISM OF JOHN HICK : A CR I T ICAL RES P ONSE TO HIS PHILOSO P HICAL AR GUMEN T Douglas E. Potter THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM concerns the question of truth among the great world religions. This at least includes Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Simply put, which reli- gion is true? Or to offer the question on a more personal level, which religion contains true beliefs that will lead one to salvation or libera- tion? Within Christian theology three traditional answers have been offered to answer this question: exclusivism, inclusivism, and plural- ism. Exclusivism answers that Christianity is the only true religion and that salvation is confined to Christians. Inclusivism asserts that one religion is true (i.e., Christianity), or has more truth than the oth- ers, but other belief systems are partially true, and ultimately salvation is achievable outside Christianity, even outside the great world faiths. Pluralism responds that all religions are true, and salvation is achiev- able in their own different approaches. For quite some time Professor John Hick has championed an Douglas E. Potter is the Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program at Southern Evangelical Seminary, Charlotte, NC. 21 22 Christian Apologetics Journal / Fall 2009 argument for religious pluralism. While not escaping criticism,1 he has found popular as well as scholarly acceptance for his position. One defense is presented in his book A Christian Theology of Religion.2 This work offers an introductory argument and then develops a fictional dialogue between a philosopher, a theologian, and the author. In this article some of the main philosophical arguments presented by Hick for religious pluralism are explained and a critical response is offered. JOHN Hick’s PhilosoPHICAL REASON FOR RELIGIOUS PLURALISM John Hick’s philosophical reason for religious pluralism is offered in the form of an observation that reduces all religions to common truth–claiming ground. That is, all religions seem to make an explicit or implicit claim to be true. However, upon observing the central be- liefs of religions, one finds that they contradict each other. Hick be- lieves a solution can emerge that solves the question of religious plu- ralism. In other words, since no religion (including Christianity) has a superior truth claim, then the main difficulty left is to account for their fundamental contradictions. It is worth mentioning that Hick makes two prior points regarding all great religions.3 He attempts to demon- strate that there is no superior moral or salvific ground that establishes one religion over another. These points may be important to Hick’s total argument that attempts to eliminate exclusivism and inclusivism as options. However, since these two areas are not necessary to sup- port the philosophical reasons put forth by Hick for pluralism, we will limit ourselves to his philosophical reasons in this analysis. Truth Claims A student of the world’s great faiths will notice that they have different belief systems. It is not just the case that they have differ- 1. See Norman L. Geisler, “Religious Pluralism: A Christian Response,” Christian Apologetics Journal 4, no. 2 (Fall 2005): 1–27 and Winfried Corduan, A Tapestry of Faiths: The Common Threads Between Christianity & World Religions (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002). 2. John Hick, A Christian Theology of Religions (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995). Another work containing similar arguments by Hick include Dennis L. Okholm and Timothy R. Phillips, eds., More Than One Way? Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995). 3. See Geisler’s “Religious Pluralism” for a critique of Hick in these other areas. THE RELIGIOUS PLURALISM OF JOHN HICK : A CRI T ICAL 23 RESPONSE TO HIS PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMEN T ent versions of the same beliefs, but that they actually teach opposing beliefs on central issues. For example, some beliefs hold that God or the Ultimate is personal, and others believe it is non–personal. Hick reasons that “if any one of these belief–systems is true, in the sense of reflecting reality, must not all the others be false, at least in so far as they differ from it?”4 However, it is at this point that Hick challenges this most fundamental law of logic, the law of non–contradiction. “I now want to question this basic assumption that there can be at most one true religion, in the sense of a religion teaching saving truth about the Ultimate and our relationship to the Ultimate. I want to suggest a different approach altogether.”5 This different approach is offered in three analogies that lead the way to the pluralistic answer. Analogies The first analogy is the famous ambiguous duck–rabbit picture first offered by psychologist Joseph Jastrow and used by philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (Figure 1). The point of the analogy is that if there were a culture of people that only knew of ducks and did not know of rabbits then only a duck would be pictured to them. Hence, such a culture would not only be firmly convinced that the picture is of a duck but that anyone who suggested that it is not a duck (but is a rab- bit) would be considered confused or mistaken. This, Hick suggests, is analogues to a component of religious experience. The contradiction of a personal and impersonal Ultimate is attributed to a different set of human concepts, religious mentalities, and cultures. The second analogy involves the wave–particle complementary nature of light known to physicists. In an experimental situation light can have wave–like features, and if acted upon in another way, it can Figure. 1. Duck–Rabbit 4. Hick, 24. 5. Ibid. 24 Christian Apologetics Journal / Fall 2009 have particle–like features. These features, it is believed, manifest themselves based on how the observer acts in relation to the light. Here the analogy to religion involves spiritual practices (such as prayer or meditation) that cause one to experience the Ultimate as either per- sonal or impersonal. A third analogy is offered from the discipline of cartography. Since the earth is a three dimensional globe, any two dimensional map will tend to distort some features of the earth. Even if certain drawing techniques are employed to compensate for some distorted aspects, a two dimensional map will tend to be inaccurate in places because of the three dimensional nature of the sphere. This analogy applied to religion leads some to say that humanity cannot adequately conceive of the infinite divine reality any more than a two dimensional map can adequately communicate our three dimensional world. The Pluralistic Answer With these analogies in place, Hick suggests the pluralistic answer or hypothesis to the problem of how all the world religions can be contradictory and yet true: The hypothesis to which these analogies point is that of an ultimate ineffable Reality which is the source and ground of everything, and which is such that in so far as the religious traditions are in soteriological alignment with it they are contexts of salvation/liberation. These traditions involve different human concepts of the Real, with correspondingly different forms of experience of the Real, and correspondingly different forms of life in response to the Real.6 By calling the Real ineffable, Hick does not mean to suggest that it cannot be characterized at all. It simply suggests that no intrinsic qualities can properly be attributed to it. Other qualities may be at- tributed to it, but it does mean that its nature cannot be expressed in our human concepts. For if human religious experience is not purely a human projection, then the Real must be responsible for such ex- periences. This Real then is reality that is conceived and experienced “through the ‘lenses’ of the different religions.”7 He further explains 6. Ibid., 27. 7. Ibid., 28. THE RELIGIOUS PLURALISM OF JOHN HICK : A CRI T ICAL 25 RESPONSE TO HIS PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMEN T that since there are several world religions, all with different under- standings of the Ultimate or Real, then the Real cannot be identified with any one of them to the exclusion of the others. Hence, there is a distinction or dichotomy to be made between “the Real as it is in itself and the Real as variously thought and experienced within the different major traditions.”8 The justification for this religious dichotomy is based upon the in- sights of two philosophers. The first is the view that “what is perceived is always partly constructed by the perceivers.”9 This he believes was observed by Thomas Aquinas when he said, “Things known are in the knower according to the mode of the knower.”10 Hick elaborates as follows: This has come to be known as critical realism. In distinction from naive realism, which says that the world is just as it seems to us, critical realism says that there is a real world around us but that we can only know it as it appears to beings with our particular perceptual machinery and conceptual resources. Thus critical realism takes account of the difference made by the act of perception itself.11 In applying this epistemology to religion, Hick believes that it “holds that there is a transcendent reality all around and within and above and below us, but that we can only know it in our own limited human ways.”12 The second view is the dichotomy offered by Immanual Kant, who influentially argued that “perception is not a passive registering of what is there but is always an active process . endowing with meaning by means of our human concepts.”13 This led to Kant’s famous dichotomy between an unknowable noumenal world and a knowable phenomenal world.