Christian Apologetics Journal, 8:2 (Fall 2009) © 2009 Southern Evangelical Seminary

Th e Re l i g i o u s Pl u r a l i s m Of Jo h n Hi c k : A Cr i t i c a l Re s p o n s e To Hi s Ph i l o s o p h i c a l Ar g u m e n t Douglas E. Potter

Th e p r o b l e m o f r e l i g i o u s p l u r a l i s m concerns the question of truth among the great world religions. This at least includes Judaism, , 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.

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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. Th e Re l i g i o u s Pl u r a l i s m Of Jo h n Hi c k : A Cr i t i c a l 23 Re s p o n s e To Hi s Philosophical Ar g u m e n 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. Th e Re l i g i o u s Pl u r a l i s m Of Jo h n Hi c k : A Cr i t i c a l 25 Re s p o n s e To Hi s Philosophical Ar g u m e n 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 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. There is a world as it exists in itself unperceived (noumena) and a world known to the human perceiver (phenomena). Hick points out the obvious application by suggesting that such insights be applied to

8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., 29. 10. Ibid., 29 cf. 68. See original source Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2a2ae. 1, a 2. 11. Hick, 68. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 26 Christian Apologetics Journal / Fall 2009

the Real. A distinction should be made “between the noumenal Real, the Real an sich, and the Real as humanly perceived in different ways as a rage of divine phenomena.”14 This solution to the problem of religious pluralism, as suggested by Hick, offers the knowledgeable adherent to any world religion the insight of staying in one’s tradition realizing that it is one among sev- eral ways of approaching, understanding, and experiencing the inef- fable Real.

A Criticism of John Hick’s Philosophical Argument for Religious Pluralism

A Religious Antithesis Hick’s philosophical argument follows the pattern of argumenta- tion offered by Immanual Kant. Similarly to Kant, Hick offers sup- posed dilemmas (Kant’s Antithesis) in the form of analogies that are suppose to demonstrate how something can be accepted as true (i.e., proved) and not accepted as true (i.e., not provable) to force us to the point of acknowledging a dichotomy between what can be known and not known in religion. However, a fundamental fallacy can be observed in Hick’s three analogies. That is the assumption that a gulf (i.e., gap) exists between what is observed and the observer. Somehow, and for some reason, the thing in itself can never fully be known by the observer because of a mental construct imposed on the thing ob- served by the observers mind. It is claimed by some that Kant knew little of Aquinas, and it seems that the same can be said for Hick.15 His source of Aquinas actually, if understood in the context of Aquinas’ metaphysics and epistemology, provides the solution to Hick’s supposed dilemmas. First, Hick misunderstands or misinterprets Aquinas’s statement that “the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower.”16 This is in the context of answering a question about the object of faith, namely God. The “mode of the knower” is in reference to how God knows, angels know, and humans know. This becomes

14. Ibid. 15. F. C. Copleston, Aquinas (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1970), 20. 16. Aquinas, Summa, 2a2ae. 1, a 2. Th e Re l i g i o u s Pl u r a l i s m Of Jo h n Hi c k : A Cr i t i c a l 27 Re s p o n s e To Hi s Philosophical Ar g u m e n t clear as one reads the next phrase “now the mode proper to the human intellect. . . .” Hence, to truly understand the epistemology of Aquinas, one must understand the different metaphysics of God, angels, and hu- mans. Aquinas references a further question (1a 85, a 5) where he dis- cusses clearly how the knowing occurs in man and is a different mode from that which occurs in God and angels. Since man is imperfect and finite, according to Aquinas, “the intellect passes from potentiality to act.” The angelic and Divine intellect have their perfection and there- fore “have entire knowledge of a thing at once and perfectly.”17 Contrary to Hick’s critical realism, Aquinas explains how a man knows reality. One can observe, with Aquinas, and conclude that ob- jects in reality have two principles of substance: form and matter.18 In popular terms, form is the “whatness” of a thing and matter is the “thatness” of a thing. Hence, things in reality can differ according to what they are (e.g., a duck or rabbit) and according to the fact that they are (e.g., this duck or that rabbit). Since this principle stands for all finite substances, it becomes possible to truly know something be- cause of its form. The process of knowing takes place when the form of the object actually enters the knowing subject. That is, the thing known actually comes to exist in the intellect of the perceiver. Hence, the thing is truly known by the knower as it occurs in itself. While it is beyond the scope of this response to provide a complete Thomistic epistemology, enough has been said to show that Hick has missed the debate with moderate realism.19

17. Ibid., 1a. 85, a 5. 18. Form should not be understood here as the shape of something nor should matter be understood as material. Instead these are principles that describe finite objects in reality. The form is the kind of thing it is, and the matter is the individual thing that it is. In Aquinas’ own terms, “Now in a material thing there is a twofold composition. First there is the composition of form with matter; and to this corresponds that composition of the intellect whereby the universal whole is predicated of its part: for the genus is derived from common matter, while the difference that completes the species is derived from the form and the particular from individual matter” (Ibid., 1a 85, a 5). 19. Moderate Realism asserts that universals really do come to exist in the intellect, but their existence stops there (moderate). This is distinguished from the position of Absolute Realism (universal exists in themselves—Plato), Conceptualism (universal exists as a category in the mind with no relation to things outside the mind—Kant), or Nominalism (denies any universals outside or inside the mind). 28 Christian Apologetics Journal / Fall 2009

I am suggesting that Hick’s epistemological dilemmas only exist if one assumes there is a gulf or dichotomy between the human (knower) and an unknowable real world. Hick’s analogies of the duck–rabbit, wave–particle, and sphere vs. two dimensional maps are all solvable by providing accurate knowledge. The ambiguity present in the draw- ing works only because most of our experience provides us with defi- nite knowledge. In other words, it is because we have exposure to both a real duck and rabbit that we struggle with the ambiguity in the draw- ing. Anyone without exposure to one (duck) and not the other (rabbit) does not struggle with the drawing. Certainly any culture after being shown a real rabbit would see the resemblance in the image. Furthermore, the notion that these dilemmas somehow indicate that our ideas about things create what we want to see is easily negat- ed, as observed by George Couvalis,20 by the fact that we cannot make the duck–rabbit into anything that we want. For example we cannot make it look like the White House or even a real duck. Hence, such analogies do not prove a gulf between perceiver and the perceived object; it simply demonstrates examples where people do not have enough (or accurate) knowledge. The other supposed dilemmas likewise fail by showing the exis- tence of more accurate maps or map making techniques and realizing that more sophisticated instruments may need to be developed that do not interfere with the measurements of wave–particles. Regardless of the solution for more accurate knowledge, there is no dichotomy in knowing or discovering that what we do know is incomplete or inaccurate. Hence, there is no fault in our capacity to know or judge what we do know; it is just in our need for more accurate or complete knowledge.

An Unknowable Real? Now the point remains as to how or if it is possible to know the nature of the Real. Hick asserts,

To say that the Real is ineffable is not to commit the logical indiscretion of saying that we cannot characterize it at all. . . . It means that we cannot properly attribute intrinsic qualities to

20. George Couvalis, The of Science: Science and Objectivity (London: SAGE, 1997). Th e Re l i g i o u s Pl u r a l i s m Of Jo h n Hi c k : A Cr i t i c a l 29 Re s p o n s e To Hi s Philosophical Ar g u m e n t it. . . . It means that its nature, infinitely rich in itself, cannot be expressed in our human concepts. 21 The problem is that Hick has appealed to the wrong discipline to settle the question. Hick appeals to the conflicting knowledge of the great world religions to discover that one cannot advance a truth claim about the Real’s nature that is superior to any other claim. However, as Aquinas would remind us, it is not to the teaching of the world religions that one must appeal, but to the use of natural reason, which is common to all regardless of religious persuasion.22 In the area of philosophy, more specifically metaphysics, this is achieved by offer- ing a proof or argument that the Real exists23 and is capable of com- municating objective truth with humans (and/or that human language is adequately able to express objective forms of meaning). One can then see what such an argument might reveal about the nature of this so called Real being. Similarly to Kant, Hick might suggest that such proofs are irratio- nal, and even if successful, they do not overcome the language prob- lem suggested in his third analogy. It is beyond the scope of this re- sponse to offer such a valid argument for the Real’s existence, nature, and to settle the question of linguistical preconditions.24 Enough has been said that indicates that this is actually where the debate should rage, and if such an argument is true, then Hick has either missed the bridge over the gulf or the fact that there is no gulf to begin with. However, even if Hick is granted the realm of the great world re- ligions to make his case, I do not believe he can escape another basic fact. It is possible to have knowledge that may be applicable to the Real by means of superior revelation, and this revelation may be veri-

21. Hick, 29. 22. Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 2, 3. 23. A true argument generally begins with undeniable first principles (such as “Something Exists”) or is at least reducible to them. See Norman L. Geisler, Christian Apologetic (Grand Rapids, Baker Book House, 1976), 237–59. See also Norman Geisler and Winfried Corduan, , 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1988), 175–207. For defense of natural theology against some reformed objections see Barney H. Corbin, “A Thomistic Reply to the Reformed Objection to Natural Theology,” Christian Apologetics Journal 5, no. 2 (2006): 65–107. 24. For a recent prolegomena that addresses these issues, see part one of Norman L. Geisler, Introduction , vol. 1. of (Eugene, OR: Bethany, 2002). 30 Christian Apologetics Journal / Fall 2009

fied in the form of legitimate supernatural acts of God (e.g., fulfilled prophecies and ). However, this is a point not considered in depth by Hick and would take us beyond philosophical considerations. Hence, it is only mentioned here as another possible hole in a leaky case for religious pluralism.

Phenomena –Noumenal Dichotomy A final philosophical flaw is found in Hick’s dichotomy between the Real as understood in various religions and the Real in sich (in itself). First, Hick’s reasoning and research is not sufficient to make such a dichotomy. Identifying conflicting views in world religions is not enough to discount that one religion may know or not know the nature of the Real.25 One must show that all religions of the world wrongly argue for their perception of the Real. If this is not done, then the door is always left open that one religion may properly justify its understanding (perception) of the Real in itself. This dichotomy is further challenged by the observation that ‘noth- ing but statements’ imply more than knowledge.26 If Hick is going to claim that all religions of the world are unable to know the ‘Real’ in itself, then he must have ‘more knowledge’ of the real to know that none of the religions have the knowledge about it. But this of course is self–defeating according to Hick’s own hypothesis. Namely, that no one (including Hick) can know the Real in itself. Such statements, however, imply that more is known about the Real in itself than to say that no one else knows. In short, he must know more about the Real than any one else in order to claim that no one else knows the Real in itself.27

25. It could be argued that Hick’s understanding of the Real is not different from some Eastern Religions that view the Ultimate as beyond all words, descriptions, and conceptual categories. If so, he has countered his own pluralistic argument, which denies any religion from accurately portraying the Real. 26. This objection (self–defeating claim) is borrowed from Robert Flint who used it in critique of Kant. See Robert Flint, Agnosticism (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903), 176–7. 27. For example, Hick does tell us about the Real’s nature in that he knows it has one, that it is unknowable, and unable to be communicated in human terms. One wonders how Hick came to know this about the Real. Th e Re l i g i o u s Pl u r a l i s m Of Jo h n Hi c k : A Cr i t i c a l 31 Re s p o n s e To Hi s Philosophical Ar g u m e n t In summary, Hick’s philosophical argument fails in two ways. First, it assumes, without justification, an epistemology that separates the known (making it actually unknown in itself) from the knower. Second, it fails to provide sufficient grounds for distancing the hypo- thetical unknown Real from natural reason or even knowledge within the great world religions. Furthermore, such claims of an unknowable Real are diced with self–defeating statements. With such flaws identi- fied, the door remains open for a religion to offer the world a testable case for the Real’s existence and nature. I suggest that the knowledge- able adherent of any religion, instead of resting in the religious agnos- ticism of Hick, should consider the universal ground of natural reason that can construct a case that resolves conflicting religious beliefs. After this, as Thomas Aquinas said, we can call his name God.