Interrogating Hick’s View of Religious Pluralism

Christian Apologetics Journal, 8:2 (Fall 2009), 2009

NOTE: This conference paper has been superseded by chapters 3 and 4 of my book, Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2018). Abstract: I will argue that contemporary philosophers of religion have unduly ignored Sri Ramakrishna’s views on religious pluralism. Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886), a nineteenth-century Bengali mystic, taught the harmony of all religions on the basis of his own spiritual experiences and his diverse religious practices, both Hindu and non-Hindu. In Part I, I will reconstruct the main tenets of Sri Ramakrishna’s model of religious pluralism. In Parts II and III, I will demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Sri Ramakrishna’s model of religious pluralism by bringing it into dialogue with John Hick’s early Vedāntic theory of religious pluralism and Hick’s later quasi-Kantian theory.

2016

This study examines the pluralistic hypothesis advanced by the late Professor John Hick viz. that all religious faiths provide equally salvific pathways to God, irrespective of their theological and doctrinal differences. The central focus of the study is a critical examination of (a) the epistemology of religious experience as advanced by Professor Hick, (b) the ontological status of the being he understands to be God, and further asks (c) to what extent can the pluralistic view of religious experience be harmonised with the experience with which the Christian life is understood to begin viz. regeneration. Tracing the theological journey of Professor Hick from fundamentalist Christian to religious pluralist, the study notes the reasons given for Hick’s gradual disengagement from the Christian faith. In addition to his belief that the pre-scientific worldview of the Bible was obsolete and passe, Hick took the view that modern biblical scholarship could not accommodate traditionally ...

This paper critiques John Hick's view of religious pluralism. Hick's view is unpacked and shown to be an incoherent view based on the basic principles of logic and the basic views that each major religion has about reality.

2008

A more developed version of this work has been published in 2023 as a the book: Religious Pluralism: Toward a Comparative Metaphysics of Religion (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2023). "This study examines the plausibility of a genuine religious pluralism in the form of John B. Cobb, Jr.’s Deep Religious Pluralism. Working through a variety of conceptions of religious pluralism in analytic, process, and South Asian philosophies of religion the dissertation argues in favor of the authenticity of a plurality of the world’s major religious traditions. Cobb’s Whiteheadian-based hypothesis is argued to offer a plausible explanation of the compossibile veridicality of different religious traditions because the ontological pluralism he employs functions as a generic schema that serves to inform a sensible narrative of compossible religious ultimates, heretofore thought to be mutually exclusive. By shifting to a process metaphysics our horizons of pluralistic understanding shifts as well, because a Whiteheadian metaphysics allows for a multiplicity of efficacious religious praxes, soteriologies, and ontological cum religious ultimates—such as God, Dao, Brahman, and śūnyatā—to obtain simultaneously. What is more, these ultimates can co-exist in a non-hierarchical relationship, thereby avoiding inclusivist tendencies and enabling the claim that one’s own religion is a true tradition, rather than the true tradition. After arguing that neither ontological nor religious ultimates are axiomatically singular, the dissertation argues for the viability of Cobb’s Whiteheadian religious pluralism as a middle-path between relativist resignations and absolutist “solutions” to the philosophical challenges of religious diversity. Relevant aspects of process philosophy and process theology are then explained in detail in order to demonstrate how a Whiteheadian schema of multiple ultimates can serve as an adequate framework for a genuine religious pluralism. Pluralistic meta-theologies from classical and contemporary South Asian philosophy are also critiqued, and non-dualism is argued to be just as problematic a basis for a genuine religious pluralism as previously discredited Western attempts at formulating a viable pluralistic hypothesis. Within the context of the first English language philosophical critique of Pope Benedict XVI’s writings (as Joseph Ratzinger) in opposition to religious pluralism, an argument against religious absolutism is made by way of the need for faithful adherents of religious absolutisms to engage in open inter-religious dialogue, which, in turn, is argued to necessitate an assumed meta-theological position of religious pluralism."

In the late nineteenth century, European philosophical theologians concerned about the perceived threat of secularity played a crucial role in the construction of the category of ‘religion,’ conceived as a transcultural universal, the genus of which the so-called ‘world religions’ are species. By reading the work of the late John Hick (1922–2012), the most influential contemporary philosophical advocate of religious pluralism, through an historically informed hermeneutic of suspicion, this paper argues that orientalist-derived understandings of religion continue to play a significant (though often unacknowledged) role within the philosophy of religion today. Though couched in the language of pluralism, Hick’s later work in the philosophy of religion functions apologetically to maintain a version of the religious–secular distinction that, while theologically and politically loaded, is, I show, philosophically arbitrary. Moving the philosophy of religion beyond Eurocentrism, I argue, will require freeing it from the logic of the modern understanding of religion.

Religions, 2018

John Hick's theory of religious pluralism has from its birth faced critiques regarding both its conceptual framework and its religious outlook; yet even so, his philosophy continues to challenge us to strive for a greater sense of openness and equality as regards other faiths that conflict with our own. The viability of Hick's teaching today depends on a re-appraisal that enables it to surmount its theoretical difficulties. In this paper, we re-evaluate Hick's philosophy of religion, focusing on the underlying ethical importance of his claim regarding soteriological transformation. Despite the problematic notion of the noumenal Real and its role in religious pluralism, the soteriological transformation claimed by Hick, which goes from self-centredness toward Real-centredness, reveals a commitment to self-opening and compassion towards the others. Yet we will argue that Hick only gives this ethical importance a secondary status in his philosophy of religion, which leaves open the question of the nature of the causality between the ultimate Reality and this ethical commitment. We thereby engage with the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, in search of an ethical dimension with a characteristic of infinity, which can offer religious pluralism a transcendent foundation without disregarding ethical primacy. Following Levinas, we will argue for a further transformation from reality-centredness towards other-centredness, by which messianic peace would take the place of ultimate Reality as the teleological value underpinning religious pluralism.

The Pluralist, 2010

This dissertation attempts to construct a pluralistic approach to religion in the tradition of Raimon Panikkar and John Hick, but with a significant difference. Unlike their theories, my approach is based on a synthesis of Whitehead’s process metaphysics and the Jain “philosophy of relativity.” I claim that a form of religious pluralism can be developed on the basis of this synthesis that expresses the understanding of the relativity of truth central to current versions of this position, without rejecting altogether the notion of an absolute truth as the logical foundation for the relativity of religious claims. The traditional Jain approach to religious and philosophical plurality is the model I use for developing a pluralistic system for the interpretation and evaluation of particular religious claims as relatively true, but I do so on the basis of Whitehead’s metaphysical theism. I claim that this approach improves upon previous theories while yet advancing the same basic position that many religions can be conceived as, in various senses, true.