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Religious Disagreement and Pluralism Matthew A. Benton (Editor)
John Hick’s Religious Pluralism in Global Perspective
Edited by Sharada Sugirtharajah
Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion
Series Editors
Yujin Nagasawa
Department of Philosophy
University of Birmingham Birmingham, UK
Erik J. Wielenberg Department of Philosophy
DePauw University Greencastle, IN, USA
Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion is a long overdue series which will provide a unique platform for the advancement of research in this area. Each book in the series aims to progress a debate in the philosophy of religion by (i) ofering a novel argument to establish a strikingly original thesis, or (ii) approaching an ongoing dispute from a radically new point of view. Each title in the series contributes to this aim by utilising recent developments in empirical sciences or cutting-edge research in foundational areas of philosophy (such as metaphysics, epistemology and ethics).
Sharada Sugirtharajah Editor
John Hick’s Religious Pluralism in Global Perspective
Editor Sharada Sugirtharajah
Teology and Religion
University of Birmingham Birmingham, UK
ISSN 2634-6176
ISSN 2634-6184 (electronic)
Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion
ISBN 978-3-031-11007-8 ISBN 978-3-031-11008-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11008-5
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Cover illustration: Dan-Cohn Sherbok
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John Harwood Hick (1922–2012)
Foreword
Tis volume represents a new development in John Hick’s work. It goes beyond his own attempt to interpret the variety of religions in the world, from his own perspective, to an attempt by scholars from these religions to interpret John Hick. Tey are returning the compliment. And as with John’s own irenic efort, it is a friendly response. He had recognized the limits of any attempt to interpret the divine, because it was always, inevitably, fltered through the particular human beings who perceived it and the particular culture in which they lived. Tat was part of his ‘pluralistic hypothesis.’ So that insight is now being trained on him, and he is shown to be conditioned in many ways by the person he was and the culture he inherited. Tis could be turned into a negative, even cynical, exercise, as has often happened recently with Western scholars, but here it is made a fruitful and positive exercise. John was no imperialist, and his characteristic liberalism as an Englishman was never used (I believe) to downgrade those who thought in a diferent way. He was remarkably open to other understandings of life, especially when they were articulated philosophically. So the unwarranted dominance of Western culture and of Christianity in particular was woven into the narrative. It is wholly in keeping with his project, I would say, that scholars from around the world should point out or even question his reliance on Kant, for example, his over-confdence in reason at the expense of intuition, or indeed his preference for the philosophical interpretation of religion. He would have his
defence, of course, well-honed and formidable, but he was always open to dialogue. I found that to be true in the forty-odd years I worked with him, both at Birmingham University and afterwards. I can’t say I ever ‘won’ an argument with John, but the discussion was always fruitful, and ongoing from year to year. Tis would be true, I think, if John were able now to respond to these essays. He would engage vigorously and warmly with all them, but mostly he would be delighted that his work is being taken this seriously.
More than that, it is being taken into a whole new area of exploration. Tese essays are suggesting, as the editor has brought out more clearly, that the kind of dialogue that John initiated can challenge everyone who enters into it and draw them into a mutual understanding which quite transcends the limits of their own traditions. And it might then take them beyond the diversity they started with to an experience, or at least an intuition, of unity.
It is ftting, too, that this project has been conceived and carried through by one of his own students, who is also, as it happens, both Indian and Hindu.
I hope this will not be the last such venture. John’s work has opened up a new possibility for dialogue between religions, based on respect, attentive listening and profound understanding. It is an opportunity we mustn’t let slip.
Lancashire, UK
Rex Ambler February 2022
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my immense gratitude to Brendan George of Palgrave Macmillan for taking a keen interest in the Hick centenary volume. Also, I am grateful to all the contributors for their insightful chapters and for making this project possible, and particularly to Perry Schmidt-Leukel and Alan Race for being very supportive of this venture right from the start. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Rex Ambler for clarifying my queries, sharing his incisive perspectives on Hick’s thinking and for writing a warm Foreword. I am grateful to Dan Cohn-Sherbok for providing a wonderful sketch of John Hick for the cover page. I am deeply thankful to my long-time friend Lorraine for many hours of stimulating discussion as well her sustained support right from the beginning. Tanks are also due to Sage Publications for the permission to publish a slightly modifed version of my chapter on Radhakrishnan and Hick in this volume. My thanks to Mohammed Saif and Divya for efciently overseeing the manuscript through its various stages. Most of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my husband Sugi for his unfailing intellectual and emotional support for this as well as other projects.
7 Eating Sugar, Becoming Sugar, Both, or Neither? Eschatology and Religious Pluralism in the Tought of John Hick, Sri Ramakrishna, and S. Mark Heim
Swami Medhananda
8 On the Shoulders of a Giant: Te Re-envisioning and Reconstruction of John Hick’s Pluralistic Hypothesis
Jefery D. Long
9 Te Knowable and the Unknowable Real in Radhakrishnan’s and Hick’s Tinking
13 Japanese Responses to Hick’s Religious Pluralism: Hick’s
Naoki Kitta
14 Te Signifcance of John Hick’s Soteriological and Ethical Criteria for a Religiously Pluralistic Nigeria
Olusegun Noah Olawoyin
Notes on Contributors
Dan Cohn-Sherbok is Professor Emeritus of Judaism at the University of Wales Trinity St David, Lampeter, UK. He is the author and editor of over 100 books dealing with the Jewish heritage some of which have been translated into Russian, Greek, Bulgarian, Hebrew, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Swedish, Japanese, Turkish, Persian and German. He taught theology at the University of Kent, served as Director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Society and was Professor of Judaism at the University of Wales. He has served as a visiting professor and visiting fellow at various universities in the UK and abroad. His books include God and the Holocaust, Issues in Contemporary Judaism, Te Jewish Faith, Judaism and Other Faiths, Modern Judaism, Antisemitism and Judaism Today.
Amir Dastmalchian has held research fellowships at the Islamic College (London) and the University of Geneva and has taught at King’s College London and Canterbury Christ Church University. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Shi ‘a Islamic Studies (having previously served as an Assistant Editor) and Open Teology. His research interests cover philosophy of religion, interreligious dialogue, and Islamic studies. His publications include ‘Religious Ambiguity in Hick’s Religious Pluralism’ (2009), ‘Te Epistemology of Religious Diversity in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion’ (2013), ‘Hick’s Teory of Religion and the Traditional Islamic Narrative’ (2014), ‘Lessons for Religious Dialogue for a
Philosophical Disagreement: Alston and Schellenberg on Religious Commitment (2017), and other articles.
Naoki Kitta is an independent researcher in Japan. He received a Ph.D. from Nottingham University in 2016. His dissertation was entitled ‘Reliabilism and Cosmic Optimism: Situating John Hick in the History of Philosophy of Religion’. He has published studies in the area of philosophy of religion. He was an assistant professor at the National Institute of Technology, Tsuyama College. He taught religious studies at Nagoya University of Commerce & Business.
Jefery D. Long is Professor of Religion and Asian Studies at Elizabethtown College, located in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, where he has taught since receiving his doctoral degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School in the year 2000. He is the author of A Vision for Hinduism, Jainism: An Introduction, and the Historical Dictionary of Hinduism, as well as co-editor of the Buddhism and Jainism volumes of the Springer Encyclopedia of Indian Religions, and editor of the volume Perspectives on Reincarnation: Hindu, Christian, and Scientifc. Long is also the editor of the series Explorations in Indic Traditions: Ethical, Philosophical, and Teological, for Lexington Books. In 2018, he received the Hindu American Foundation’s Dharma Seva Award for his ongoing eforts to promote more accurate and sensitive portrayals of Hindu traditions in the American education system and popular media. He has spoken in a wide array of national and international venues, including meetings of the American Academy of Religion; university venues, including Berkeley, Princeton, Yale, and the University of Chicago; and Vedanta societies and Hindu temples; and three times at the United Nations.
Swami Medhananda (also known as Ayon Maharaj) is Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at the Vedanta Society of Southern California in Hollywood. From 2010 to 2021, he was Assistant Professor and Head of Philosophy at the Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute in West Bengal, India. Holding a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, he has published over thirty articles on Indian and German philosophy and global philosophy of religion and mind.He is the author of three books: Swami Vivekananda’s Vedāntic
Cosmopolitanism (2022), Infnite Paths to Infnite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-cultural Philosophy of Religion (2018), and Te Dialectics of Aesthetic Agency: Revaluating German Aesthetics from Kant to Adorno (2013). He is the editor of the Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedānta and co-editor, with Benedikt Paul Göcke, of Panentheism in Indian and Western Tought: Cosmopolitan Interventions (Routledge, forthcoming). He is also the editor of two special issues of the International Journal of Hindu Studies (Springer), one on “Vedāntic Teodicies” (2021) and one on “Swami Vivekananda as a Cosmopolitan Tinker” (forthcoming)
Olusegun Noah Olawoyin is Reader in Philosophy of Religion in the Department of Religious Studies, Ekiti State University, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria. His research interests cover philosophy of religion, religious pluralism, religious epistemology, and John Hick. His publications include articles on John Hick: ‘Religious Epistemology in John Hick’s Philosophy: A Nigerian Approach’ (2016), ‘Varieties of Religious Pluralism’ (2015), and ‘John Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism in the Context of Yoruba Religion’ (2015).
Iljoon Park teaches at Wonkwang University, Korea. Previously he was an adjunct professor at Methodist Teological University and lecturer at Yonsei University in Korea. He earned his Ph.D. from Drew University under Robert S. Corrington and Catherine Keller. His publications include ‘Rereading of the Whiteheadian Understanding of Organism in a trans-human age: a critical review of the “extended mind theory”’ (2015), “Betweenness, the illusory self and the disruptive subject: in evolutionary biology and cognitive science’ (2009).
Alan Race is a priest-theologian in the Anglican tradition of Christianity and the author of numerous texts on the subject of theology of religions and theology of dialogue. His book Christians and Religious Pluralism (1983, 1993) has been called a classic in the feld and shaped the discussion of Christian responses to religious plurality in recent decades. He is Chair both of the interreligious organisation Te World Congress of Faiths (WCF) and of Modern Church, which is the leading liberal theological society within Christian thought. His most recent books are edited with colleagues: Pope Francis and Interreligious Dialogue (Palgrave
Macmillan 2018) with Harold Kasimow and New Paths for Interreligious Teology (Orbis, 2019) with Paul Knitter. He is also editor for the journal of the WCF, Interreligious Insight.
Kenneth Rose is Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Emeritus, at Christopher Newport University, in Newport News, Virginia, USA. His degrees include an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School and an M.A. and Ph.D. in the Study of Religion from Harvard University. At Harvard, he was a Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions. He teaches and publishes in the areas of comparative religion, the theology of religions, comparative mysticism, religious pluralism, and the philosophy of meditation. He developed and led the online course ‘Wisdom from World Religions’, which was funded by a Templeton World Charity Foundation grant (https://wisdomfromworldreligions.com). His publications include Yoga, Meditation, and Mysticism: Contemplative Universals and Meditative Landmarks (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), Pluralism: Te Future of Religion (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), and numerous academic articles, reviews, and popular publications. More information is available at amazon.com/author/kennethrose.
Perry Schmidt-Leukel is Professor of Religious Studies and Intercultural Teology and one of the Principal Investigators of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Religion and Politics’ at the University of Muenster, Germany. He has published widely on Buddhism and religious pluralism.His research focuses on religious pluralism, inter-faith relations, BuddhistChristian dialogue, and interreligious theology. He has published more than 30 books, including Understanding Buddhism (2006); Transformation by Integration. How Inter-faith Encounter Changes Christianity (2009); Buddhism and Religious Diversity, 4 vols. (2013); Religious Diversity in Chinese Tought (2013); and God Beyond Boundaries. A Christian and Pluralistic Teology of Religions (2017). In 2015 he presented the renowned Giford-Lectures at the University of Glasgow, which were published in 2017 as Religious Pluralism and Interreligious Teology. In 2019 he published his voluminous commentary on the Bodhicaryāvatāra as Buddha Mind—Christ Mind in the series Christian Commentaries on NonChristian Sacred Texts. In 2020 he received the Hoefmann Academic Award for Intercultural Competence.
Sharada Sugirtharajah is honorary senior research fellow in the Department of Teology and Religion at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses particularly on the issue of representation of Hinduism in orientalist, missionary, colonial and postcolonial discourses. Her research interests also cover women’s issues, modern Hindu thinkers, religious pluralism interreligious relations, spirituality, happiness and wellbeing, and diasporic Hinduism. She is the author of Imagining of Hinduism: A Postcolonial Perspective (Routledge 2003). She edited Religious Pluralism and the Modern World: An Ongoing Engagement with John Hick (2012), a volume of essays in honour of Professor John Hick on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday. Her current research focuses on John Hick in cross-cultural perspective, as well as on happiness and wellbeing. She has also edited Religious and NonReligious Perspectives on Happiness and Wellbeing (Routledge, 2022).
Zhicheng Wang Professor of Philosophy of Religion, is Director of the Institute of Religious Studies at Zhejiang University, China. He studied philosophy of religion at Hangzhou University. His main areas of research are Philosophy of Religion, Buddhist-Christian Dialogue, and Philosophy of Yoga. Among his publications are Global Philosophy of Religion (Beijing, 2005), Interpretation, Understanding and Religious Peace (Selected Essays, Beijing, 2007), Globalization and Religious Dialogue (2013), A Commentary to Shankara’s Self Knowledge (2008), and A Commentary to Astavakra Samhita (2018). In the past ten years, he translated ten yoga and Vedanta works, including Yoga Sutra, Hatha Yoga Precipice, and Te Bhagavad-Gita into Chinese.
Keith Ward is a fellow of the British Academy, the Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus at the University of Oxford, an ordained priest of the Church of England, and formerly a member of the Council of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. He is the author of more than twenty highly acclaimed books. His recent publications include Religion in the Modern World: Celebrating Pluralism and Diversity (2019), Sharing in the Divine Nature (2020), and Te Priority of Mind (2021). Ward is particularly interested in comparative theology and the interplay between science and religion.
1
John Hick’s Religious Pluralism: Home and Abroad
Sharada Sugirtharajah
Introduction
Tis volume contains fresh scholarly contributions to mark the birth centenary of John Hick, the world-renowned British theologian and philosopher of religion, whose works continue to have signifcant global relevance in today’s religiously diverse and confict-ridden world. Te fact that several of Hick’s works have been translated into various languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Portuguese and Swedish, is strongly indicative of the enormous impact of his writings across various cultures. More importantly, Hick is one of the few philosophers of religion who has dared to ask, with integrity and deep conviction, unnerving questions, that most others have shied away from.1 Needless to say, his pluralistic hypothesis has generated a ton of varying and complex shades of responses ranging from complete appreciation to scepticism to refutation of it. Whether one agrees or disagrees, or partially agrees with Hick’s
S. Sugirtharajah (ed.), John Hick’s Religious Pluralism in Global Perspective, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11008-5_1
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version of religious pluralism, nonetheless it ignited a contentious debate in the West and continues to be appreciated as well as disputed.2
Te volume is distinctive in three respects. First, although there are books on various aspects of John Hick’s writings, they are mostly seen from Western Christian theological and philosophical perspectives. Tis volume includes Western as well as Asian and African perspectives on Hick. Second, it is diferent from the previous two volumes of essays in honour of Hick (Sharma 1993) and (Sugirtharajah 2012) in that it widens the discourse on Hick’s voluminous writings by including Hindu, Daoist, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Korean, Japanese and African perspectives. It brings together contributions by renowned scholars of international standing as well as emerging scholars. Tird, it not only ofers an up-to-date scholarly engagement with his theological and philosophical ideas, but also paves the way for interreligious engagement and crosscultural philosophy of religion.
Up until now, Hick’s religious pluralism and its theological and philosophical implications have to a large extent been mainly seen in relation to the Western context where Christianity is the predominant religion. Tis volume includes Western engagement with religious pluralism, but also moves beyond the Western Christian setting to non-Western contexts such as Japan, China, Korea, Africa and India, where Christianity is a minority religion with little political power, in order to explore how Hick’s philosophy of religious pluralism has been received. Hick’s writings have been welcomed and critiqued in equal measure in his own Western Christian milieu, as well as in non-Western religiously pluralistic cultures which have their own complex histories, varied missiological, religious, theological, philosophical and hermeneutical expectations and orientations. Needless to indicate at this point that the term ‘religion’ itself is problematic and has been defned and interpreted in manifold ways. Tere is no equivalent word for ‘religion’ in most non-western cultures.
Religious diversity is an undeniable fact of human existence, but much has to do with how we understand, approach and interpret it. It has also a lot to do with how scriptures and doctrines are interpreted to validate a particular stance on religious pluralism. All religious traditions are internally diverse and manifest exclusive, inclusive and pluralistic tendencies;
1 John Hick’s Religious Pluralism: Home and Abroad
they might be pluralistic in some respects and exclusive or inclusive in other instances. Tere are varying approaches to religious pluralism within and across diverse cultures, but this volume focuses on Hick’s version of religious pluralism and critically examines its reception in Western as well as Asian and African cultures. While acknowledging the enormous impact of Hick’s pluralistic stance on both his critics and defenders, the chapters go beyond simply reiterating to addressing and developing his ideas in new directions.
Te essays in this volume examine crucial issues ranging from Hick’s concept of the noumenal Real to Kant to the ethical- soteriological criterion, that have been subject to critical scrutiny. Given that Hick himself has responded to criticisms of his pluralistic hypothesis in his writings, it is important to revisit his responses to clarify any doubts or ambiguity that might arise in understanding Hick’s version of religious pluralism. Before revisiting his pluralistic hypothesis, it is important to take a brief look at the background of Hick’s formulation of pluralistic hypothesis.
No theology or philosophy emerges on its own. To a larger extent, it is often a reaction to prevailing theologies or philosophical outlook of the time. Hick’s philosophy of pluralism is no exception. Let me briefy set out the theological context against which it emerged. In the 1970s there were two pre-existing theologies of religions. One emphasised the distinctiveness of Christianity, projecting it as the true religion and dismissing other religions as false and defective. Tis is fairly evident in the faith statements of institutionalised churches and resolutely supported both by evangelical and dialectical theologians. Te roots of this theology go back to Hendrik Kraemer’s Te Christian Message in a Non-Christian World (1938) and exemplifed in earlier statements of the World Council of Churches when it was under the General Secretaryship of Dr Visser’t Hooft. Te other existing theology discerned some truth in world religions but saw Christianity as the ‘fulflment’ and ‘crown’ of all religious quests. Such a thinking has a long history going back to the colonial period and is refected in the works of K.M. Banerjea’s Te Arian Witness (1875), J.N. Farquhar’s Te Crown Hinduism (1913) and much later in Raimundo Panikkar’s Te Unknown Christ of Hinduism (1964), although later Panikkar moved towards pluralism. A similar position was taken by John Mbiti, a Kenyan philosopher, who presented African traditional religions
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as a preparation for the Christian gospel (Heron 1980: 191). Tis stance was condescendingly conceded by Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. It declared that God saves people not as individuals but as peoples who ‘sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will’. Tere are no major diferences between these two stances. One advocates a heavy-handed approach and the other a soft style, but both end in celebrating the exceptionalism of the Christian faith and the supremacy of Jesus Christ as the saviour of the world.
Hick’s philosophy of religious pluralism appeared at the height of secular theological thinking. As popularly perceived, it was not an anti-God movement, or an advocate for non-religious neutrality, but as Charles Taylor put it in A Secular Age (2007), belief in God was one option among others. Secular theology honoured all faiths equally and ofered them equal opportunities. Among other articulations, secular theology saw the Bible and Jesus not in literal but metaphorical terms (Cox 1965). One could see resonances of such ideas in Hick’s own thinking. Although mainstream British theologies at that time, as exemplifed in the works of J. A.T. Robinson, Don Cupitt and David Jenkins, were socially progressive, their theologies were abstract, dense and were largely embraced mostly by white middle class men. Te emerging British Black theological refections and feminist theologies were more concerned with clarifying their racial identity within a white society, as in the case of British blacks, and gender identity in the case of women in a society saturated with toxic patriarchal values. Tese theologies at that time were not focused on issues surrounding interfaith matters. Te newly emerging Latin American Teology of that time, though it opted for the poor remained theologically conservative. Being indebted to Marx and Barth, this praxis-oriented theology was dismissive of religions. Its overly Christocentric approach simply replicated Christian triumphalism of the colonial era.
Social and historical factors played an important role, too. Hick’s advocacy of religious pluralism was very much grounded in practical realities of his time. As Hick himself has reiterated in his writings, it was the infux of immigrants in the early 1970s that prompted the British to realise that they were no more a monocultural but a multi-cultural and multi-religious country. A pluralistic philosophy or theology of religions
1 John Hick’s Religious Pluralism: Home and Abroad
was needed to address the new situation. Since his move to Birmingham in 1967, Hick had been deeply engaged with issues such as the multifaith curriculum, community relations and anti-racist activities at a time when British theologians were debating in abstract language about the implications of secular theology which was dominating the theological discourse at that time.3 Besides Kantian infuence, the formulation of his pluralistic hypothesis had much to do with his exposure to and sustained dialogue with diferent faiths in multicultural Birmingham, India and Sri Lanka. He saw Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Muslims and others who were responding to the Ultimate in their own respective ways in their places of worship, and this led him to challenge Christian claims of the absoluteness and uniqueness of Christianity. Also, Hick was formulating his pluralistic hypothesis to justify the rationality of religious belief/experience at a time when logical positivists were dismissive of religions and most Christocentric theologians were sceptical of a pluralistic vision that would acknowledge the salvifc efcacy of other religious paths.
Having set out the historical and theological background against which Hick’s thinking emerged, I would now like to focus on some of the contentious issues relating to his pluralistic hypothesis such as his reliance on Kant, self-understanding, uniqueness, noumenal Real, ethicalsoteriological criterion, pre-axial and post-axial religions, and the reception of his version of religious pluralism outside the Western hemisphere.
Pluralistic Hypothesis
It is important to note that Hick challenges the notion ‘that religious pluralism is a “Western or Christian” or a post-Enlightenment European invention’. He points out that
this is just historically false. So far from religious pluralism being a recent creation from within Christianity, Christianity is among the last traditions to begin to take it seriously! And so far from it being a modern western invention, it was a familiar and widespread outlook in the East centuries before the eighteenth-century western Enlightenment. (2004: x1)
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Whilst he acknowledges that ‘it was the European Enlightenment that has freed the West to take this insight on board’, he reminds that ‘its origins lie much further back in human history’ (2004: xli). He (2004: x1–xli) furnishes a list of examples to show that religious pluralist insights go back to the Vedas (Rigveda 1, 164, 46), to Ashoka, the Buddhist emperor and many other religious fgures such as the Suf Rumi (thirteenth century CE), Kabir (fourteenth century CE) revered by Hindus and Muslims, Guru Nanak and the Sikh gurus and numerous others. He also draws attention to a pluralistic outlook much later in the West, although there are earlier Christian indications in the teachings of fgures such as the ffteenth-century Nicholas of Cusa and later in the seventeenth- to eighteenth-century Quaker William Penn. Although the European Enlightenment had liberated the West in many ways, this does mean that West is the champion of religious pluralism.
Hick’s version of religious pluralism has been seen as imperialistic. Although he is a product of Western liberalism, he does not subscribe to colonial secular or religious values. He has not hesitated to challenge Western imperialism (1980: 10–17) and he himself has responded to such an unwarranted critique. He cautions about mixing pluralism and capitalism: ‘Contemporary religious pluralism is part of the same world as multinational capitalism; but surely it doesn’t follow that religious pluralism is an ally of international capitalism and its repressive universalizing efects?’ (1995: 39). Global awareness and ‘modern knowledge about the integral character of the human story and the intertwinings of religious history has created an intellectual environment hospitable to religious pluralism’ (1995: 33).
As with Hick’s edited volume Te Myth of God Incarnate (1977) which caused a massive theological upheaval, his pluralistic hypothesis, too, caused huge glitches, although he wasn’t making any theological claims. He is enormously instrumental in initiating the contentious debate on religious pluralism primarily in Western philosophy of religion and theological discourses. Tere are competing versions of pluralism and the aim here is not to reiterate the oft-repeated controversial arguments but to focus on Hick’s version of religious pluralism. In his Preface to the second edition to his An Interpretation of Religion (2004) and Te Rainbow of Faiths (1995) as well as in other writings, Hick addresses criticisms
1 John Hick’s Religious Pluralism: Home and Abroad
levelled at his pluralistic hypothesis. Since there are diferent types of pluralism, he prefers to use the term ‘pluralistic’.
One of the most striking features of his pluralistic hypothesis is that it is not a closed book or a conclusive narrative. It is an explanatory hypothesis that Hick leaves open for others ‘to work out a viable alternative’ if they have issues or concerns with the proposed one (1995: 50–51). His pluralistic hypothesis begins with a view of the religious ambiguity of the universe and that it can be experienced in religious or non-religious ways (2004: xvii–xviii). Hick makes it clear at the outset that his ‘pluralistic hypothesis is arrived at inductively, from ground level’ (1995: 50). He starts with religious experience as the basis of belief, and in order to understand the diverse religious experiences which have their own truthclaims he constructs an explanatory theory or ‘a hypothesis of an ultimate divine reality which is being diferently conceived, and therefore diferently experienced, from within the diferent religio-cultural ways of being human’ (1995: 50). He ofers this hypothesis ‘to explain, from a religious as distinguished from a naturalistic point of view, the facts described by the historians of religion’ (1995: 50). In other words, he starts with the empirical data to formulate his pluralistic hypothesis. His (1995: 52–53) line of argument is that there are difering metaphysical beliefs about the origin of the universe, and ‘we should be very cautious in making knowledge claims in these areas’ as ‘we don’t really know at present, in a strict sense of “know”, whether the physical universe is beginningless or had an absolute beginning a fnite number of years ago’ and the same principle applies to other beliefs as well. Te point is whether absolute answers to such beliefs or ‘undetermined questions’ are necessary for attaining salvation. Hick thinks not, but says this does not imply that we abandon beliefs which ofer ‘genuinely diferent and mutually exclusive possibilities’, although these are not at ‘present obviously true in any objective sense’.
Tere is some ambiguity as to whether Hick is writing as a theologian or a philosopher of religion or both. Hick himself clarifes this problem. As a philosopher of religion, Hick is ofering ‘a religious and not confessional interpretation of religion in its plurality of forms…’ (1989: 1). As has been pointed out in the volume, he is not making any theological claims or proposing an alternative religion or replacement theology, but
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recommending an epistemological approach to understand and interpret religious diversity (Hick 1996: 51).4 He is looking at world religions and conficting truth-claims not from a particular Christian perspective or through the lens of a particular religious category, but within the framework of philosophy of religion (Gillis 2012: 142–143). He (2004: xiii) clarifes the rationale behind his pluralistic hypothesis: ‘Behind this endeavour lies the belief that a philosopher of religion must today take account not only of the thought and experience of the tradition within which he or she happens to work, but in principle of the religious experience and thought of the whole human race’. In Gillis’s view, Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis falls within the domain of ‘philosophy of religion and not theology or specifcally, a theory of religions, as some incorrectly read it’.. He explains:
Hick does not base his hypothesis that the Real exists on theological grounds; rather, he bases his explanation (whether sufcient or not) on epistemological grounds…His epistemological analysis does not suggest that the Real is an absolute truth or a Christian transcendent. Te fact that there is no specifc treatment of christology in this work is evidence that Hick is not writing Christian theology. Tere is extensive treatment of the soteriological aspects of religion and of the process of salvation/liberation/ fulflment, but this is not a study restricted to Christian categories or experience. It is an examination of this phenomenon across the religions. He is proposing a ‘philosophical ground-plan’ as a ‘philosopher of religion’. (Gillis 2012: 147)
Whilst Hick distinguishes between theological and ‘philosophical thinking about religion’ and religious diversity, the boundary between the two gets a bit blurred in some of his works. He moves between these two disciplines with ease, but in regard to religious pluralism Hick approaches it predominantly from the perspective of a philosopher of religion. In other words, it is best understood as fuelled by the philosophy of religion. As Gillis discerns, Hick is speaking as a philosopher of religion in his ground-breaking book An Interpretation of Religion (1989/2004), although in earlier texts such as the Evil and the God of Love (1966) and Te Myth of God of Incarnate (1977) he tends to speak more as a
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When he is writing as a philosopher of religion, Hick is addressing diferent forms of religious absolutism and not from a particular religious perspective, although, in other instances, he writes from a theological perspective. Hick straddles these two disciplines and it is a matter knowing when to see him through a theological or philosophical lens, but not to mix the two indiscriminately.
Moving beyond Self-understanding
Hick’s hypothesis is seen as divesting religions of their distinctiveness and negating or contradicting each religion’s own self-understanding. His contention is that no theory of religious pluralism can fully be in alignment with the self-understanding of the adherents of their faith traditions. Each tradition afrms implicitly or explicitly the unique superiority of its own path and this is the crux of the problem. Each one privileges ‘its own uniquely full salvifc access to the Real’ and can only accommodate other religious traditions by subordinating them to one’s own view (1995: 48). Te notion of uniqueness is so embedded in our ways of thinking about our respective traditions and it is this conditioning that he addresses.
Whilst Hick agrees that ‘religious pluralism challenges some of our traditional dogmas’, there is no requirement to abandon any of the basic Christian ideas, ‘but that they be understood afresh in non-traditional ways’ (1995: 125). Within any given tradition self-understanding is not a monolithic activity—there is a plurality of self-understandings of doctrinal beliefs which are problematic, too. Hick sees his pluralistic hypothesis as ofering ‘a more realistic view because it takes account of a wider range of data than any one of the traditional absolutisms’ (1995: 47). Tis, Hick acknowledges, would require that one would have to move beyond one’s self-understanding in order to arrive at a more realistic understanding of religious diversity. In his view ‘a global interpretation which starts from the rough salvifc parity of the great traditions will not be identical with the belief-system of any one of them. Tat’s why have either to seek a more comprehensive view, or else each return to the absolutism of our own tradition, with Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus,
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Buddhists and so on each afrming the unique superiority of their own path’ (1995: 48).
Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis is seen as ignoring fundamental diferences between religions and domesticating them to ft in with his metatheory. Furthermore, his pluralism is seen as assuming that all religions are attempting to respond to the same question, whereas in fact they are perceived as raising diferent questions. Whilst Hick agrees that ‘it’s true that religions ask diferent questions’, he is keen ‘to suggest that these questions, whilst specifcally diferent, are generically the same. Tey all presuppose a profound present lack, and the possibility of a radically better future; and they are all answers to the question, how to get from one to the other. In traditional Christian language they are all ways of asking, What must I do to be saved? (1995: 41). He emphasises that while he considers great world religions are responses to the Real, it does imply that
they are all the same, or that they all say the same thing, or follow the same spiritual practices, or have identical moral codes and life-styles. On the contrary, religious pluralism sees them as diferent, often very diferent, totalities consisting of distinctive ways of conceiving and experiencing the Real. And the practical outcome is not that there should be a new global religion, the same for everyone, but that the adherents of each of the existing world faiths should respond as fully as possible to the Real, the Ultimate, in their own way by devoutly living out their own tradition. So in this respect religious pluralism leaves the diferent traditions as they are. Tey are recognized, respected, afrmed as authentic contexts of salvation/liberation, each with its own unique character and historical particularities. (1995: 41–42)
To the question of diluting and downgrading of doctrinal beliefs, Hick does not gloss over the matter but explains that ‘on the one hand religious pluralism leaves doctrinal systems intact within their own religious traditions, but on the other hand it proposes the meta-theory that these traditions, as complex totalities, are diferent human responses to the Real’ (1995: 42). He is totally aware that his view of conficting truth-claims as complementary rather than contradictory at the phenomenal level would be perceived as devaluing cherished beliefs: ‘Te difering belief-systems
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are beliefs about diferent manifestations of the Real. Tey’re not mutually conficting beliefs, because they’re beliefs about diferent phenomenal realities. It’s in this sense they are reduced or “downgraded” in their scope’ (1995: 43). His line of reasoning is that such a radical re-interpretation is needed if we are seeking ‘a genuinely pluralistic interpretation of the global religious situation’, and ‘one-tradition absolutism’ will not work (1995: 43). In his view, if religious traditions are measured by their fruits, they would ‘be more or less equally valid response to the Real’ (1995: 43).
Uniqueness
One of the main thorny issues in the pluralism debate has to do with claims to uniqueness. Uniqueness itself is not the problem—each tradition is unique but claims made for uniqueness is the issue. If every religion posits itself as the only true way to achieving salvation, then it implies explicit or implicit superiority. Each religion is unique, but if uniqueness is seen in terms of ‘unique defnitiveness, absoluteness, normativeness’, then we run into problems (Hick and Knitter 1987: vii). Tere is a kind of triumphalism in every religion. Te problem is that the adherents of religions want to claim exclusive universality for their cherished beliefs. Te uniqueness of Jesus or of Gautama does not sufer diminution if both are seen as ofering a way to liberation. What is called into question is that salvifc activity is the privilege of any one religious tradition. A genuine pluralism will not have any place for claims for uniqueness—all paths are distinctive in their own ways and there is no need to claim superiority for one’s own view. One such example is that of a Jewish pluralist, Michael Kogan, who sees chosen-ness in a pluralistic way in that it is not restricted to a particular group of people: ‘Instead of being the chosen people, my people begin to see themselves as a chosen people’ (in Perry Schmidt-Leukel 2017: 37).5 We have an example in the Buddha who did not make any claims for his version of truth. He wanted his followers to verify it before accepting it. Te point is that no revelation or experience can be treated as defnitive. Whether we speak in terms of special revelation or chosen people of God, incarnation or avatars, no one religion can claim that the divine revelation is complete and fnal.
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Noumenal Real
Hick’s concept of the noumenal Real has been subject to much critical scrutiny. Tis volume draws attention to how Hick’s use of Kantian terminology has been misconstrued by his critics. In fact, Hick himself alerts us to how ‘some critics have made heavy weather of this use of Kant, and have assumed that I have been engaged in a controversial exercise in Kantian exegesis… But I have only borrowed from Kant his basic noumenal/phenomenal distinction, and am well aware that his own epistemology of religion is very diferent from that which I am recommending’ (Hick 2001/2010a ), 88–9, n. 35). He (1989: 242) maintains that human religious experience of God is possible, but Kant himself, Hick says, would not have endorsed the notion ‘that we in any way experience God, even as divine phenomena in distinction from divine noumenon. God was not for him a reality encountered in religious experience but an object postulated by reason on the basis of its own practical functioning in moral agency’ (1989: 242). Whilst Hick fnds the Kantian distinction between the noumenon and phenomenon very helpful in formulating his pluralistic hypothesis, he indicates that he could fnd sufcient support as the starting point for his version of pluralism in Tomas Aquinas’ basic principle articulated long before Kant, that ‘Tings known are in the knower according to the mode of the knower’ (Hick 1989: 241).
Te volume also looks at one of the most recurrent pertinent issues concerning the utter inefability of Hick’s ontological Real. While some see Hick’s noumenal Real as creating an immense or insurmountable ontological distance between the Real and the human experience of the Real, others contest such a reading of Hick’s Real. He (1999: 2) speaks of ‘the ffth’ or the transcendent dimension within us responding to the transcendent Real. For him, the transcendent Real is the ground for all genuine religious experience though the Real in itself is indescribable. In fact, he speaks of his own religious experience of oneness: ‘… I was part of a single indivisible whole… It was extraordinarily joyous, liberating and uplifting…’ (2010b: 49). Terefore, one might argue that he is not creating a total discontinuity between the Real and the human experience of it. He draws attention to humans having an innate capacity to experience the
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Real: ‘[T]here is a “spiritual aspect of our nature—the imago Dei, or our capacity to receive divine revelation, or the atman, or the Buddha nature— that ‘resonates’ to the universal presence of the transcendent reality, in virtue of which quality we are religious animals’ (2004: xxix). It is ‘the spiritual nature’ within us that helps us to relate to the transcendent Real, although one cannot experience the Real as it is in itself.
Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis does not confne the Real within a fxed metaphysical system, as the Real is beyond all human conceptualisation. One cannot claim to have known or experienced the Real in all its infnite variations. Hick is more conscious of the mysterious dimension of the Real that cannot be captured through our experience or conceptual categories. As has been pointed out in the volume, Hick’s concept of divine inefability dates back to a period long before he espoused a pluralistic stance. In his Autobiography, Hick himself refers to a 1940 notebook (containing his philosophical refections as an eighteen-year-old) where he speaks of the Real in a non-categorical way:6 ‘Reality is ethical and consists of God, who cannot be regarded as fnite or infnite, or as having any or no form, or by any other analogy from the physical universe, but can only be comprehended ‘mystically’, by reason of the divine spark in each of us’ (2002: 32). Referring to refections in his notebook, Hick remarks that ‘his intellectual development has been surprisingly consistent apart from the interruption of the evangelical years’ (2002: 33).7 Te idea of inefability has been a central feature in diverse religious strands of thought. As has been made clear by Hick and in the volume, his afrmation of the inefability of the Real is in tune with great Christian theologians such as Gregory of Nysa, Tomas Aquinas, Augustine, Meister Eckhart, Paul Tillich and others (Hick 2000). As Guy BennettHunter (2016) remarks: ‘Despite its persistent centrality to religious thought, the concept of inefability has always struggled to gain mainstream acceptance—a situation which persists in contemporary theology and philosophy of religion’—and its theological implications continue to be ‘deeply ambiguous’.
At this point it is important to bring to light the diference in the preKantian and later Hick’s concept of the Real.8 Te volume draws attention to some resonances between the pre-Kantian Hick and Aurobindo (the twentieth-century Indian mystic and poet)
