By Brock Brockway, June 29, 2021
The Western world is becoming increasingly religiously diverse as a result of technological innovations that have increased mobility and communication. Perhaps more than any time in recent history, the West is experiencing mass migration and globalization that places religiously diverse persons in close proximity and continuous engagement with one another. Don Carson has called this development empirical pluralism. In light of this reality, is it really legitimate for any religion to make a claim to particularity? Should any faith be able to assert that it has a corner on spiritual truth? Is it actually possible to differentiate truth and falsehood within spiritual beliefs and determine which position most closely adheres to the nature of reality? Can an intelligent Christian insist on the exclusive claims of the biblical message? John Hick doesn’t think so, or at least that’s what he would tell you as he prepares to present his religious views to you. John Hick is one of the leading thinkers within contemporary religious pluralism and has been verify influential. Pluralists like Hick insist that all, or at least most, religions are equally valid forms of human religious expression that should not be compared or pit against one another in search of spiritual truth.
This article will attempt to engage with the thought of John Hick in order to demonstrate the inconsistency and the erroneous nature of religious pluralism from an evangelical Christian perspective. I will start by outlining the basics of Hick’s view and present four general lines of argumentation that he lays out in support of his position in order to give him a fair and faithful hearing. I will then briefly respond to each of the four lines of argumentation with appropriate rebuttals. Finally, I will attempt to provide a worldview critique of Hick’s pluralist position by setting it over against the biblical Christian worldview. This will demonstrate the inconsistency of Hick’s position, while also demonstrating the consistency and truthfulness of the Christian gospel.
John Hick’s Religious Pluralism
Hick was initially converted to conservative Christianity when he was a young man in England. He was subsequently involved in a variety of evangelical institutions including leadership as a pastor within a Presbyterian church when he began to move away from orthodox Christianity into Protestant liberalism as he began to question Christian doctrine and embrace a modernist mindset. Once he was within this liberal worldview, Hick was exposed to seemingly sincere and ethically upstanding members of other theistic faiths. While in this new experience of working alongside other faiths, he determined to take a more inclusive and pluralistic approach to his understanding of non-Christian theistic religions like Islam. Along the way, he has made room for impersonal, non-theistic religions like Therevada Buddhism within his belief system as well. He claims that all of the post-axial major world religions are essentially responding to the same ultimate reality, or “the Real” on the basis of their religious experiences. He defines the goal of all of these religions in terms of a salvation/liberation concept that centers around ethical transformation, moving from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness.
In order to accomplish his pluralistic goal of uniting all religions into an inclusive category that glosses over their major and mutually exclusive difference, Hick employs a Kantian distinction between the spiritual world as experienced by humans, similar to the phenomenal realm, and the Real as it is in itself, parallel to the noumenal realm. This ultimate reality is the great thing that defies all human categories but explains all human religious longings and experiences. Although Hick employs the Kantian categories, he does not claim to adhere to the rest of Kant’s philosophy, and instead insists that his position is based on a critical realist epistemology. Hick generally puts forth what can be identified as four categories of propositions that support the new belief system he promulgates in his writings. These propositions are the unknowable nature of ultimate reality, the inadequacy of outdated particularism, a comparative ethical pragmatism, and an outright rejection of orthodox Christian theology. I will treat each of these ideas briefly below.
Unknowable Ultimate Reality
In order to justify his claim that there is such a thing as an unknowable Reality, Hick cites religious precedent for this concept. He claims that such a distinction between the positive statements about the Real and claim of ineffability can be perceived in some manner in all major religious traditions. From the Christian tradition, Hick cites theologians as diverse as Gregory of Nyssa, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Karl Barth, and Meister Eckhart expounding the ineffability of the divine nature. He follows this by citing from a variety of non-Christians traditions, including Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism to demonstrate the presence of the concept of the unknowable nature of the ultimate Reality. Thus, he claims, his position is supported by all religions. He then goes even further to insist that nothing meaningful or certain can actually be said about the Real. Thus it is not necessary to debate or even address the obvious differences in assertions and goals of all of the world religions. With his distinction between the Real as it is in itself and the Real as it is perceived by humans, Hick maintains that he has found an effective means of drawing together all of these divergent viewpoints.
Outdated Particularity
Hick realizes that he has to justify his attempts to harmonize all world religions, and he is quick to give his motivation. As a typical Protestant liberal, he analyzes recent history and the development of progressive Western thought through the past couple of centuries and asserts that it is only intelligent and consistent with progress to move from absolutism, through inclusivism, all the way to the ultimate endpoint of religious pluralism. He goes on to proclaim that absolutism in all of its forms, Christian or non-Christian, has not been able to address the problems of the human condition. He identifies Western imperialism and all other Western sins as impervious to Christian absolutism at best, and at worst, the result of Christianity’s perceived superiority. He claims that in light of our new context in a globalized world filled with religiously diverse populations, we must jettison fundamentalist absolutism and embrace religious pluralism in order to move forward in interfaith dialog. Modern travel and communication will not allow for an insistence on knowledge of absolute and exclusive truth. Such views are simply implausible in our modern world. A movement to religious pluralism is not only natural, it is inevitable. Hick seems to view the liberal movement of religious development as being necessary and good. A positive evolutionary view of intellectual progress drives much of his thought.
Ethical Pragmatism
In addition to his view that humans have moved beyond particularism, Hick also employs a form of ethical pragmatism as a defense of his position. He argues that from his perspective, Christianity has not produced more saints per capita than any other religion. In fact, he argues that there are both valuable and harmful elements present in all religious system. Since he is applying a pragmatic test for truth based on ethical outcomes to a pragmatic definition of saintliness, he asserts that there is not sufficient evidence to determine which religion is actually superior on the basis of objective comparison. Therefore, since Christianity does not have a better history of producing positive fruit, we cannot say that it is in any way manifestly superior.
In making this line of argument, Hick refuses to credit Christianity with the progress he cherishes in the Western liberal ideals of human equality and freedom. Rather, he credits these to the Enlightenment and the development of modern thought that is presumably an independent outworking of Western evolution. He also applauds the Western development of technology and increased standards of living, but he credits these to the development of the modern science and the industrial revolution. Neither of which should be considered anything but incidental correlatives to the Christian faith. In both of these areas, he demonstrates that he is a committed modernist, but he also cedes that these technological developments have resulted in other historic and current evils like excessive consumerism, powerful technology employed in brutal warfare, massive urban decay, environmental abuse, and oppressive economics resulting in extreme poverty.
Rejection of Christian Theology
Clearly, in order for Hick to espouse his pluralistic view of world religions, he has to apply major revisions to historical Christian orthodoxy. In order to square some form of Christianity with his shifting liberal ideas and his pluralistic assumptions, he admits that he has to remove any of the exclusive and definitive elements from Christianity. The most basic of these revisions is the elimination of the idea that God can make himself known in any definitive and meaningful way. Hick denies any form of direct divine revelation, and he insists on an experiential, non-authoritative view of inspiration with regard to the Christian Bible.
Having dispatched with the difficulties proposed by the teachings of Scripture, Hick moves on to remove any basis for Christianity’s exclusive claim that God himself taught and established the faith through the incarnation of the Son of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He makes the claim that Jesus did not believe or teach that he himself was divine. He cites a variety of radical liberal biblical scholars to undermine the teachings of the Jesus in John’s gospel, and then cites other scholars who agree that Jesus didn’t explicitly claim divinity in the synoptic tradition. Once the teachings of the gospels and the rest of the New Testament are set aside, Hick proposes a metaphorical incarnation and an inspired view of Christology as more compatible with pluralism. In addition to the benefits of this form of Christology being more compatible with pluralism, Hick also argues that the traditional orthodox view of Christology as articulated at Chalcedon is overly complicated and confusing. A more simplified version is preferred.
Hick’s revised Christology then requires a revision to the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, which Hick is happy to replace with a modal way of relating to God not as three distinct personalities in eternal relationship with one another, but in terms of three distinct ways that God is experienced by humans, as creator, redeemer, and inspirer. He also moves forward with a rejection of any form of atonement that requires anything other than simple forgiveness for sin on God’s part. He then concludes his revision of Christianity by highlighting the importance of the insights uncovered by liberation and feminist theology with regard to God’s concern for the oppressed and his active participation in supporting justice and equality in human life. As is apparent, Hick spends most of his time engaging with the Christian tradition, and he follows typical liberal approaches to dealing with doctrine as he promotes a more panentheistic vision of God than the Scriptures or Christian orthodoxy will allow. This was not a comprehensive treatment of Hick’s arguments, but I hope that it does provide a faithful account of the broad contours of his pluralist system.
Brief Response to Hick’s Points
Space will not allow for a complete and thorough engagement with Hick’s arguments in this article, but I will now attempt to respond to each of them in turn. My responses will briefly critique each of the four categories discussed above in terms of philosophical and theological arguments. I will follow this with a high-level worldview critique of Hick that summarizes some of the individual arguments before presenting a brief presentation of the historic orthodox Christian view.
Unknowable Ultimate Reality
There are many problems with Hick’s insistence on an unknowable ultimate reality that is in some manner adequately perceived and represented by each religion. Hick insists that he is attempting to save religion from the onslaught of secularity, but J. Andrew Kirk argues that Hick is essentially proposing a lot of nothing that can’t be tested, proven, or disproven. Such an ontological being doesn’t have the ability to exist in any form as he describes it. Kirk then insists that he is making the same fatal mistake of many of his predecessor in dividing the empirically verifiable world from the world of belief in God. By trying to protect religions by making them unknowable, Hick is undermining their importance and validity in the world, thus giving way to the secular, atheistic agenda. Kirk goes on to say that it is only a logical step to include atheistic materialism into Hick’s scheme as a potential option for human experience of the Real. At that point the believer is just agreeing that the ineffable, indescribable Real is simply an unexplainable projection of their natural religious consciousness upon a religious category with no substance. Something as conceptually empty as Hick’s Real is not essentially different than nothing. Robert Cooks agrees with Kirk on this point and sees Hick’s omni-acceptance of religious thought with no defining characteristics as logically inclusive of materialism, even if Hick doesn’t think so.
It must also be pointed out that Hick’s citations of Christian theologians and many of the other religious teachers are weak and misrepresentative of their actual belief systems. None of the Christian theologians anywhere close to historic orthodoxy would agree with Hick’s usage of their words in the slightest. A Christian insistence on the ineffability of God does not automatically go hand-in-hand with a denial of all positive assertions or exclusive statements about the nature of God or his relationship to his creation. These citations are deceptive and can easily be seen through if the reader has any exposure to historical theology. In addition to the Christian quotes, no devout Muslim would agree that their conception of God could be squared with a Christian or Hindu definition of the divine, and no religion insistent on the essential need for meditation to properly and fully experience reality would allow for Hick’s insistence that other faiths don’t need to make use of any of these practices. As Cook argues, Hick may be able to tell all other faiths that he agrees with them, but most all of them will be quick to insist that they do not agree with him. Hick is clearly not respectful of the words he hears in his interreligious dialogs, and he is also insensitive to the actual beliefs and devotion of his religious counterparts when he tells them that the particularities of their systems don’t matter.
In reality, Hick’s belief system is only compatible with a very liberal, post-Christian Western mindset that has been infused with some features of pantheistic or panentheistic spirituality. His supposedly inclusive pluralism alienates nearly all faiths and functions as a newly invented religion that effectively denies the truth claims of all other religions. Don Carson points out the irony that in attempting to be inclusive by accepting all faiths, Hick has created his own modern or postmodern “anti-metanarrative metanarrative.” Alister McGrath wisely asserts that Hick should treat other belief systems with integrity rather than attempting to modify them to fit within his framework. Hick’s metanarrative is not as inclusive as it appears at first glance. In attempting to include all religions, he excludes all religions as they are and only accepts them within his own pluralistic terms, as he wishes them to be. We see this clearly in his treatment of Christianity, which is even the religion with which he is most familiar and ethically compatible.
Outdated Particularity
With regard to his insistence that progress is in the direction of pluralism, and absolutism is on the wrong side of history, it’s hard to say that he’s consistent. Hick’s position has developed over time, so it is difficult to pin down which religious systems he finally accepted within his views. At one point, it seemed as though he was only accepting of what he calls post-axial religions, those formed after the 8th century B.C., which means that he is excluding pagan animism and other forms of primal religion. He is most interested in engaging otherworldly types of religions, which also seems to exclude Confucianism with its this-worldly focus. However, it is difficult to say since he made at least one inclusive statement regarding African primal religions. Now, if he is exclusive of these other forms of religious expression in addition to his opposition to materialism, it is hard to see how he has not exercised some small version of his despised and outdated particularity.
Aside from his inconsistencies with accepting all parts of all other religions, his argument that a pluralistic society will not allow for exclusive spiritual truth claims is simply wrong. He has stated that Christians can’t consciously continue to maintain their particularity while effectively engaging a diverse society. This idea ignores most of church history. Christianity is always born as a minority in a society, thrives in a pluralistic society, and converts vast numbers within a pluralistic society. It has done this from its inception in the Roman Empire to our modern day when multitudes are converting to Christianity in East Asian and the Global South. Even in the Middle Ages when Western Christianity was arguably most isolated, the church was actively converting pagan nations to the Christian faith throughout the far reaches of Europe, and Christian writers were engaging with classical Greek thought and the ideas of Jewish and Muslim theologians and philosophers. Further back, the biblical authors are constantly engaging with and decrying the false pagan religions that surrounded and plagued the nation of Israel, all the while insisting in particularity. Eckhard Schabel provides a masterful summary of the Apostle Paul’s effective engagement with his pluralistic society in the New Testament writings. Closer to our day, David Wells references multiple examples of particularity best engaging and retaining adherence in our pluralistic society. He appeals to recent historical evidence to show that churches who maintain cognitive distinction from their cultures generally thrive in contrast to those that harmonizing with their cultures.
Ethical Pragmatism
The weakness of Hick’s comparative ethics argument in favor of pluralism is quite obvious in a number of ways. First, it is clear that the truth of a fact is not objectively proven or disproven by the character of a witness to that fact. As Pinnock states, there are better tests for the truth available to us, but Hick is not interested in historical truth and seems to hold to some form of Lessing’s ugly ditch with regard to historical matters. Geivett and Phillips similarly point out that the comparisons of virtue between faith traditions is irrelevant for determining truth claims in a rational manner, and McGrath agrees that moral superiority is a very different question than determining which theory better fits the data.
It is true in legal matters that a witness’s testimony is often judged by the character of a witness, but the character of the witness is not even applied consistently by Hick. He seems to appeal to the sins of Western civilization in general as evidence against Christianity, but, as mentioned above, he then refuses to credit what he believes to be the great positives of Western culture to Christianity. This is clearly a double standard, and he can’t have it both ways. He doesn’t even bother to consider whether the ills he is condemning are a fruit of the Christian faith he is judging or whether they are the result of human sin or anti-Christian philosophical movements in the West. As Pinnock points out, the substance of one’s faith truly does affect how one acts if one is a devout follower. The teachings of Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity do have substantially different ethical teachings, and they do have an effect in the lives of their devout adherents. Ethical systems must be judged by their essential teachings, not by the highly subjective and anecdotal comparisons between the lives of some of their nominal adherents.
Finally, and most importantly, Hick’s ethical argument absolutely fails when one considers that it is completely arbitrary. He is obviously applying his preferred ethical standard to all belief systems and all world religions to determine how they shape up. What gives him the authority to determine the ethical standard he applies to everyone else? As Hick himself points out, everything that he views as beautiful and right about the world could easily be defined in terms of Western liberal ideals. This is why he is so intent on separating those ideals from orthodox Christian ethics. But, as Cook says, it is not clear how he can apply this ethical standard to all world religions, since he is advocating an unknown Real with no moral categories who is beyond all good and evil such that he contains all religious system. Hick’s choice and application of a pragmatic ethical standard based on his personal cultural preferences is clearly arbitrary and contradicts the pluralism he is espousing.
Rejection of Christian Theology
With regard to Hick’s theology, he clearly rejects nearly all orthodox Christian theology, not on the basis of facts or theological arguments, but because he has to in order to embrace his preferred pluralism. Pinnock points out that Hick admits to changing his theological views to pluralism on the basis of personal experience prior to finalizing his theological revisions. From Hick’s position, the Bible cannot be true, and Jesus cannot be God incarnate. Hick clearly rejects any doctrine of Scripture that allows the Bible to be authoritative truth despite great evidence that this has been the belief of the church since it’s inceptions. Despite Hick’s challenge to Jesus’ personal claims to deity outside of the Gospel of John, Tom Wright argues that Jesus does implicitly make claims to be the God of Israel in the Synoptics with his exertion of personal authority and his use of Old Testament language to describe himself and his ministry. But Hick is not concerned with what the Bible says, and he gives his theological speculations and classic heresies the same weight as historically orthodox and biblical doctrine. His modern, materialist presuppositions will not allow it any other way because they deprive him of all data.
In his system, he strips the Christian faith of any foundation in revelation and proclaims it as an ethical system that adheres to his Western liberal ideology. Jesus is no longer God incarnate. He is just some sort of spiritualized man with insight into the morality of a generic, modal deity that can be experienced in at least three ways. It is ironic that Hick argues against classic Christian doctrines like the hypostatic union and the trinity because they are too mysterious and impossible to understand while insisting on an ineffable Real that defies all categories of human reason and analogy. Geivett and Phillips suggest that the mysteriousness of Christian doctrines like the divinity of Christ should signal the plausibility of the Christian faith for Hick, and Carson sees this as evidence that pluralists are not following the evidence where it leads because of their commitment to pluralism.
Worldview Critique and Theological Response
From a worldview perspective, it is apparent that Hick is intent on embracing an inclusive religious pluralism that stems from his modernist assumptions regarding the positive nature of progress and the autonomy of the human mind to determine and define its own truth apart from divine revelation and authority. The problem is that Hick is borrowing much of the capital of the Christian worldview that has shaped his ethical assumptions. His borrowing is necessary because his modernist and pluralist assumptions do not provide the necessary preconditions for intelligibility.
His arguments for ethical comparisons have no basis in his reality. According to his position all individuals should be able to define their own metanarratives with their embedded goals and regulations based on their own experience of the divine. Any attempt to apply an ethical framework is inconsistent because it contradicts his premise. Hick’s divorce of the spiritual world of the Real from the intelligible material world creates a non-starter that makes all discussion of religious topics meaningless and empty. His selection of acceptable doctrines is arbitrary since they are merely handpicked to support his foregone conclusions. Since Hick’s Real can’t definitively express itself and can’t truly be known in any meaningful way, he is incapable of having any sort of interreligious dialog that doesn’t end up espousing the religion he has created. It seems like Hick has done exactly what he says he set out to avoid.
In contrast, the Christian view embraces a God who speaks. The God of the Bible spoke the world into existence and created humans in his image with the capacity to know him truly, if not comprehensively. He created an orderly world that fit the observational capacities and conceptual abilities of his creatures. Although there is still mystery, the Christian worldview can account for the problems we see in the world and the problems we detect in ourselves. The Christian understands the stain of the heart and the conflict of life to be an outworking of human rebellion against the Creator. According to the Christian position, suffering is the result of this rebellion, and apart from the redeeming work of God, humans actively blind themselves in their sin by misinterpreting reality. The Christian position allows for a loving and personal God who is relational. This God reveals himself through his Son, through the internal testimony of the Spirit, and the external testimony of the Scripture that God breathed out. Apart from this personal and relational God, humans are left with their culturally informed conjectures about the nature of the Real. Fortunately, the Christian doesn’t need to resort to such speculation. God has made himself known. He provides the necessary preconditions for intelligibility. He also provides the meaning for everything.
Conclusion
By rejecting the Christian God who speaks and comes into the world as revealer and redeemer, John Hick places himself and every other human being in the place of the divine authority. He attempts to provide a philosophical and theological framework that is accepting of all religions, but in doing so, he contradicts himself and shuts out nearly all religions as they are. Hick cut’s himself off from divine revelation and any standard for ethical judgment. He also cuts himself off from the grace available in God’s self-expression, his incarnate Son.
The Word was in the beginning. The Word was God. The Word has become flesh. The Word has revealed the glory of the Father, full of grace and truth. Through God’s gracious revelation, the Christian is able to the know God truly and make intelligible statements about him. In turn, the Christian is then able to make intelligible statements about the world that God has created. The Christian can make meaningful progress in living the way that God intended in his world. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.
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