An Introduction to John Hick's Pluralist Hypothesis (Part 2)

To read part 1 of this article click here

Re-interpreting religion (and religions)

With the publication of An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (1989), Hick introduced the most developed version of his religious pluralism (and the one he is most known for). Whereas in his earlier work he had tended to see religions as culturally determined landing-pads for God, now he presents religions as particular responses to a transcendent Reality. In other words, he has shifted the emphasis from subject (God) to perceiver (humanity). The seeds for this were sown in his early work (as noted above). However, Hick's also acknowledges his indebtedness to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), both of whom examined knowledge as something conditioned by our own (limited) way of perceiving things (as).

In An Interpretation of Religion, Hick (following Kant) argues that there is the world in itself (noumenal), and the world as we understand and perceive it (phenomenal). Support for this view of things can be seen in the fact that people often see and perceive the same things differently. So we all cannot be seeing the world as it really is (otherwise, there would be no disagreement). Each person's experience of the way the world is is, therefore, an interpretation of experience specific to that individual's point-of-view.

Applying this insight to the matter of religious experience, Hick concludes that all religious experience is simply an expression of a particular experience of a transcendent reality by the devotee (what he also calls 'experiencing-as'). Thus we can see how someone born in India is not only going to naturally be a Hindu but also, consider the Hindu-worldview normative (or normal) and all others wrong. For they simply have no way of seeing things any differently!

The Real

In An Interpretation of Religion, Hick radically revised his earlier concept of God, replacing this notion with the idea of an ineffable Real. In theistic traditions (E.g. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) God is encountered as a personal deity, but what of the non-personal encounters such as Brahman in the Hindu tradition? How can a personal God also be experienced as non-personal at the same time? The concept of an ineffable Real alleviates this dilemma. Turning once again to Kant, Hick distinguishes between the Real as it is in itself ('Real an sich') and the Real as it is variously experienced and thought of by the different faith traditions:

“I want to explore the pluralistic hypothesis that the great world faiths embody different perceptions and conceptions of, and correspondingly different responses to, the Real from within the major variant ways of being human; and that within each of them the transformation of human existence from self-centredness to Reality-centredness is taking place.” (John Hick)

The idea that we experience the Real in different ways, and that this is the reason why there are different faith traditions in the world, releases an inherent tension in pluralist theologies. Religious diversity does not try to avoid contradictions. Diversity and difference are the natural results of the varieties of human experience of the Real. People are different. We have been born in different places, into different families, and have been raised in different ways to each other. We should not be surprised that just as we have developed different sorts of music and art, so we are naturally going to develop different expressions of faith, belief and practice.

Now the fact that people are 'experiencing the Real' in different ways also begins to challenge the idea that only one faith-tradition is true (exclusivism). Also, in saying that the Real is ineffable and unable to be experienced, or understood, or expressed by human understanding/language, means Hick can also argue for the various faith-traditions as contexts for moral and spiritual betterment. Overall, the 'truthfulness' of a faith-tradition is not so much to do with whether its beliefs are true, but what sort of believer they are producing.

Re-interpreting salvation

In An Interpretation of Religion (and subsequent writings), Hick grounds his pluralist hypothesis in the idea of salvation as that which is a transformative thing:

“I suggest that these different conceptions of salvation are specifications of what, in a generic formula, is the transformation of human existence from self-centredness to a new orientation centred in the divine reality.” (John Hick)

For example, the Golden Rule can be found in all religions, which in the Christian tradition is expressed as “Treat others as you want them to treat you” (Matthew 7:12). Hick believes the extent to which faith-traditions promote this attitude in its adherents, is the extent to which we can consider it to be a valid (and true) expression of faith. Now this might immediately imply a sense of moral exclusivity, for if one faith tradition is producing more ‘saints’ (or good people) than others then surely we should be seeking to win people over to that faith in order to make the world a better place. However, when we compare each of the great world faiths to each other they all seem to be equally as effective in promoting this attitude in their devotees:

“We have no good reason to believe that any one of the great religious traditions has shown itself to be more productive of love/compassion than another.” (John Hick)

Although members of a faith may want to suggest that they are morally superior to others (and as such they would be suggesting that they are members of the 'true faith'), any claim to moral superiority cannot be validated by religious history. In each of the great world faiths, there have been both good and evil actions performed by its devotees. As Hick himself notes: “I suggest today that the onus of proof or of argument is upon any who claim that their own tradition produces morally and spiritually better human beings than all the others.”

Summary

Initially Hick presented his pluralistic hypothesis as something which held in tension the idea of a God of love and was based on a universal plan of salvation. However, over the course of his research, this shifted to focus more on the idea that each of the religions of the world is a unique and culturally conditioned human response to what he calls the Real. Furthermore, because Hick argues for the Real’s ineffability, the various religions of the world are not there to pass on 'truths' concerning it but to simply act as contexts in which human salvation (the shift from egocentrism to non-egocentrism) can take place. Although each religious tradition would distinguish itself from the others by seeing itself as superior to them (exclusivism), this claim cannot be validated when we observe that religious history reveals no distinguishable difference between each of them, so as to suppose the moral superiority or salvific effectiveness of one of them above the others.

An Introduction to John Hick's Pluralist Hypothesis (Part 1)

John Hick (d.2012) was an English philosopher of religion, who in his early years embraced a more evangelical (and fundamentalist) form of Christian belief; one that was firmly committed to the idea that Christianity was the true faith, and the Bible was God's sole revealed Word. However, due to numerous positive encounters with members of other faith traditions, he began to find great difficulty holding onto the belief that one religion was true, and that friends of his who were not-Christians would be going to hell for not subscribing to a belief in Jesus Christ. Furthermore, on the basis of his extensive reading of the scriptures of other faith traditions, he began to conclude that there was just as much 'good' in them as there was in the Bible.

Reviewing his subsequent shift in thinking in God Has Many Names (1980) he writes: “I have from almost as early as I can remember had a rather strong sense of the reality of God as the personal and loving lord of the universe”. The idea of God being both 'personal' and 'loving' were major influences in his development of a more open understanding of the relationship between faith traditions.

Problems with religious exclusivity

In his book God and the Universe of Faiths (1974), Hick began to lay the foundations of what would become his pluralist hypothesis. His initial interest was to explore what he felt was an inherent tension between the idea of a God of love and the Evangelical Christian attitude towards non-Christians. Within Evangelicalism, the possibility of salvation has traditionally been centred on the belief that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ alone (the incarnate Son of God) has secured salvation for humanity, and that only a personal commitment and belief in this 'fact' would guarantee salvation. This has led to Christian exclusivism, expressed as 'outside Christianity there is no salvation' (aka 'outside the Church there can be no salvation').

However, Hick became concerned that if the Christian God is a God of love, and Christian salvation is the only true salvation, “Can we then accept the conclusion that the God of love who seeks to save all mankind has nevertheless ordained that men must be saved in such a way that only a small minority can, in fact, receive this salvation?”

Taking such a limited approach to the means by which people can be saved (i.e. literally by hearing about Jesus or becoming members of the Christian Church), means that for Hick most of the world would have to be considered damned: 

“It is the weight of this moral contradiction that has driven Christian thinkers in modern times to explore other ways of understanding the human religious situation.” (John Hick)

Accidents of birth 

As far as Hick is concerned a person's religious beliefs are largely determined by where they are born, and as such people cannot be held accountable for 'accidentally' not being born into a Christian environment. Thus, it makes no sense to say that a person born in India into a Hindu family, subsequently leading a good life based on Hindu beliefs, should be condemned by God simply because they were not born in a Christian country, or a Christian family, or because a Christian missionary had failed to reach them in time to tell them about Jesus before they died. In fact, it is obviously going to be the case that a person born in India will most likely grow up with the belief that salvation is achieved through (and by) the many Hindu gods, just as much someone born in Saudi Arabia is most likely going to become a Muslim and follow the teachings of Islam, and therefore will see no reason to convert to another faith tradition.

All this means Hick believes one's view of salvation (and the subsequent means of attaining it), is dependent on (and influenced by) where one has been born, and with this insight he felt he had dealt Christian exclusivism a mortal blow:

“Can we be so entirely confident that to have been born in our particular part of the world carries with it the privilege of knowing the full religious truth?” (John Hick)

Orthopraxis, not orthodoxy

From very early on in his work Hick rejected the Evangelical belief that one needed to hear and respond to a specific message in order to be 'saved'. He also sought to move away from notions of orthodoxy (correct belief) to orthopraxis (correct living); the latter being required if we want to begin to say, “All salvation… is the work of God”. As such, Hick began to interpret the world's religions as culturally-conditioned contexts within which people could grow as moral and spiritual beings, and thus challenged the idea that mission should be about attempting to convert rather than learning from people. Instead, Hick believes contact between members of other religions should only and always be positive and fruitful (“Not to displace but to deepen and enlarge their relationship with God”).

With these early insights, Hick laid the foundation for a revolution to take place in his theology of religion:

“Our next question is this: do we regard the Christian way as the only way, so that salvation is not to be found outside it; or do we regard the other great religions of mankind as other ways of life and salvation?”

An Introduction to John Hick's Pluralist Hypothesis (Part 2)

Notes

*Official website: www.johnhick.org.uk/jsite/