see attached

Chapter Three

THE SECOND STAGE OF HICK’S PLURALISM

Stage one of Hick’s evolving pluralism was his move from a Christ-centered approach to religion to a God-centered model. During the 1980s Hick moved from this theocentric theory to a salvation-centered model. One way to approach these changes in Hick’s thinking is to notice some elements that he borrowed from the eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant.

HICK AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF IMMANUEL KANT

Hick came under the influence of Kant’s philosophy during graduate studies at the University of Edinburgh. Interestingly, Kant had described his own theory of knowledge as a Copernican Revolution in philosophy. Kant’s “revolution” attacked the usual way philosophers had thought about human knowledge before he came along. 1 In Kant’s terms, the prevailing picture of human knowledge had placed reality at the center of the knowing process. 2 Humans attained knowledge when their thinking accommodated itself to the structure of reality. In this pre-Kantian theorizing, reality was paramount and human knowledge was derivative or dependent.

Kant changed all this by theorizing that the human mind was at the center of the knowing process. Knowledge of the world depended on the fundamental structure of the human mind. Once the real world that lies beyond human consciousness begins feeding us sensory information such as colors, sounds, tastes, and smells, the mind organizes and relates this information in various ways. Our knowledge of the world is therefore a product of two factors, information received through the senses and the organizing powers of the human mind.

This new way of looking at things required Kant to distinguish between the way the world appears to us (the phenomenal world) and the way the world really is (the noumenal world). 3 The so-called phenomenal world is the world as it appears to human consciousness; these appearances necessarily reflect the organizing powers of the human mind. The world that appears to us is not necessarily the way the world really is; it is more correct to think of the phenomenal world as a product of the ways our mind forces us to conceive it. All this points to another world “behind” the world of appearance; this is, for Kant, the real world or, in his phrase, the noumenal world.

This noumenal world exists independently of our consciousness. A little reflection reveals why, for Kant, the noumenal world must be both unknown and unknowable. After all, the only way we can attain knowledge of the real or noumenal world is if we can somehow free ourselves from the controlling influence that our minds have on knowledge. Of course, that is impossible.

Basic to Hick’s move to a second stage of pluralism is his distinction between the phenomenal God and the noumenal God. In Hick’s words, “This is the familiar distinction, classically drawn by Immanuel Kant, between something as it is in itself, a Ding an sich, and that same thing as humanly perceived, with all that the human mind contributes in the process of perception.” 4 Hick believes the distinction is justified because of the many different and sometimes conflicting ways that the real God (the noumenal God) appears to people in the different religions (the phenomenal God). All of the phenomenal concepts of God we encounter in the religions of the world are misleading and inadequate. What we should be seeking is God as it, he, or she is in itself.

THE UNKNOWN GOD OF JOHN HICK

Hick also suggests that we drop the word “God” from our religious language. The old term is simply too loaded with connotations that remind people of specific religions. Instead of “God,” Hick talks of Reality or the Real or Ultimate Reality. Hick defines “the Ultimate” as

that putative reality which transcends everything other than itself but is not transcended by anything other than itself. The Ultimate, so conceived, is related to the universe as its ground or creator, and to us human beings, as conscious parts of the universe as the source both of our existence and of the value or meaning of that existence. 5

It should be obvious that with this approach Hick is attempting to get away from the mistakes he made in the first stage of his pluralism, which often found him operating with elements of an older, more theistic, even Christian concept of God. A serious pluralist does not want to do that.

The earlier Hick was admired for his ability to talk about complex philosophical and theological theories in a clear way. The older Hick seems to have lost some of that skill. He summarizes his newer way of thinking about God as follows: “The divine presence is the presence of the Eternal One to our finite human consciousness, and the human projects are the culturally conditioned images and symbols in terms of which we concretize the basic concepts of deity.” 6

This is a rather tortured way of saying that human beings need finite anthropomorphic images or pictures that will help direct their minds toward the infinite unknowable divine reality. Different religions provide us with different images and symbols. Even though all these pictures are culturally conditioned (and thus distorted), they nonetheless help followers of these religions to reach a more definite understanding of God. Moreover, Hick thinks, these culturally conditioned images have the Ultimate Reality as their source.

We are never aware of God as God really is, Hick advises, since “that would be equivalent to perceiving the world as it is unperceived.” 7 Rather, we are aware of God

as God is thought of and experienced through the conceptual “lens” of our own tradition. For each tradition functions as a kind of mental “lens”—consisting of concepts, stories (both historical and mythical), religious practices, artistic styles, forms of life—through which we perceive the divine. And because there is a plurality of such “lenses” there is a plurality of ways in which God is concretely thought and experienced. 8

We should note here that Hick is precluded from saying that he knows any of these points. After all, it would be an obvious contradiction to say, as Hick does, that God is unknowable and then proceed to describe God as “the Eternal One.” Hick evades this contradiction by treating all his comments about the Ultimate as hypotheses. Even if God is unknowable, he contends, it is nevertheless plausible to believe that something Real stands behind the various religious experiences, and that the Real is essentially the same thing experienced in different, even conflicting, ways. 9 However, one observes that Hick’s confident assertions about God lack any thing resembling the tentativeness that usually accompanies hypothetical musings.

Hick’s earlier pluralism saw him wrestling with a God who was both personal and impersonal. Hick’s distinction between the phenomenal God and the noumenal God helped him escape his dilemma. He began to make the quite different claim that the Real or Ultimate could be authentically thought of and experienced as both personal and nonpersonal. 10

Believers in religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam perceive the Real as personal, whereas believers in some other religions perceive the Ultimate as impersonal. None of these concepts gives us the Real as it really is. Instead, each results from the Real affecting different people within the contexts of differing religious traditions. But, Hick continues, we cannot say that the Real

is personal or impersonal, one or many, active or passive, substance or process, good or evil, just or unjust, purposive or purposeless. No such categories can be applied, either positively or negatively, to the noumenal. Thus, whilst it is not correct to say, for example, that the Real is personal, it is also not correct to say that it is impersonal—nor that it is both personal and impersonal, or neither personal nor impersonal. All that one can say is that these concepts, which have their use in relation to human experience, do not apply, even analogically, to the Real an sich [in itself]. 11

In other words, Hick states that among the things we cannot know is whether God is good or evil. Such a disclaimer is inevitable, given Hick’s necessary skepticism about the Real as it is in itself. But we should remember this claim when Hick talks about how the Real is involved in all the authentic religions that bring men and women to salvation. The test of salvation turns out to be Hick’s major device in eliminating inauthentic religions, such as the cults of Jim Jones and David Koresh. But once it becomes clear that we lack all awareness of whether the Real is good or evil, who is to say that an evil cult may not function as an authentic response to the Ultimate?

Hick’s claim that we may “authentically” think of the Real as both personal and nonpersonal is puzzling. Hick’s adverb implies that these personal and nonpersonal conceptions and experiences are true in some way. One has the nagging feeling that Hick really thinks he can figure out what the Unknowable Real is really like, even if no one else can. Furthermore, all this knowledge about the unknowable God functions as the basis for his rejection of the knowledge claims of Christianity. Each reader will have to decide if Hick really is operating on two different levels—sometimes acting as though he is simply setting forth hypotheses, and at other times as though he has a confidence about these things that borders on what we usually call knowledge.

Hick goes a step further when he writes that “the very plurality and variety of human experiences of the Real provide a wider basis for theology than can the experience of any one religious tradition taken by itself.” 12 This seems like an odd thing to say. Hick is claiming that a large number of conflicting experiences, all of an unknown God whom we shouldn’t even call “God,” are somehow supposed to bring us closer to a more accurate understanding of that which is essentially unknowable.

Hick tells us that no predicates can be applied to the Real. This means that we cannot say that God is loving or all-knowing or all-powerful or holy or a spirit or a person. We cannot say that God is good or evil. Is it not natural, then, to suppose that Hick’s words for God have no significant content? Once we have unpacked the ramifications of Hick’s radical theological skepticism in this way, David Basinger wonders why we should not hold instead “that there is no higher Reality beyond us and thus all religious claims are false—i.e., why not opt for naturalism? Or why not adopt the exclusivistic contention that the religious claims of only one perspective are true?” 13 When you begin by stating that point A in your system is the recognition that humans cannot know anything about God, how can you rationally get from point A to point B—or anywhere, for that matter?

HICK’S CRITERION FOR GRADING RELIGIONS

Another question arises in connection with the second stage of Hick’s pluralism: Does Hick’s position mean that we are stuck with every religion humans have followed—no matter how evil or absurd—or are there criteria by which religious systems can be graded? Some religions have practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism. The pivotal sacrament in the Jim Jones cult involved drinking Kool-Aid laced with strychnine. Does an acceptance of pluralism require us to treat every religion as equally valid? Hick responds no and proposes that religions be graded in terms of how they measure up to the criterion of “salvation.”

Two observations are in order here. First, Hick’s move clearly indicates that he does not believe that all religions are equal. Some religions are better than others, and some “religions” may be unworthy of support. Second, Hick’s insistence on a test to grade religions does not mean that the followers of inadequate religions will be lost. Hick is not only a pluralist, but also a universalist. Ultimately and eventually, every member of the human race will be saved. This salvation will encompass even the worst moral monsters of history, including Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, Joseph Stalin and his secret police, and the entire gamut of serial killers, rapists, child molesters, and the like.

In his book An Interpretation of Religion, published in 1989, Hick states 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-centeredness to Reality-centeredness is taking place. These traditions are accordingly to be regarded as alternative soteriological “spaces” within which, or “ways” along which, men and women find salvation/liberation/ultimate fulfillment. 14

The threefold expansion of “salvation” into “salvation/liberation/ultimate fulfillment” suggests that Hick is going to explain salvation in a very broad way.

Hick maintains that the great world religions share a common concern with salvation “which identifies the misery, unreality, triviality, and perversity of ordinary human life, affirms an ultimate unity of reality and value in which or in relation to which a limitlessly better quality of existence is possible, and shows the way to realise that radically better possibility.” 15 The differences between what one finds in Christianity and other religions “are variations within different conceptual schemes on a single fundamental theme: the sudden or gradual change of the individual from an absorbing self-concern to a new centering in the supposed unity-of-reality-and-value that is thought of as God, Brahman, the Dharma, Sunyata or the Tao.” 16

What Hick calls “salvation” assumes different forms in the different major religions. Within Christianity, for example,

the concrete reality of salvation is the transformation of human existence from a sinful and alienated self-centeredness to a new centering in God, revealed in Christ as both limitless claim and limitless grace. The [Christian] experience of salvation is the experience of being an object of God’s gratuitous forgiveness and love, freeing the believer to love his and her neighbour. 17

Once we turn from Christianity to consider the other major religions, it quickly becomes apparent how elastic the notion of “salvation” is as a criterion for grading religions. For example, in Buddhism Hick explains, “the salvific human transformation is understood as liberation from the powerful illusion of ‘me’ or ‘self.’” 18 The many varieties of the family of Indian religions that Western scholars came to call Hinduism offer three paths to liberation: (1) a path of spiritual insight by which I realize that I am identical with the Universal Self; 19 (2) salvation by action or doing or living a particular kind of life; 20 and (3) the way known as bhakti, which Hick explains as “self-giving devotion to the Real encountered as the divine Thou,” which takes the form “of loving devotion to a divine Lord and Saviour.” 21

Islam creates a few problems in Hick’s search for some view of salvation/liberation/ultimate fulfillment in each of the major religions. As Hick explains,

Islam does not use the concept of “salvation” and does not think of the human condition in terms of a “fall” involving a guilt and alienation from God that can only be cancelled by a divine act of atonement. However, the Qur’an does distinguish radically between the state of islam—a self-surrender leading to peace with God—and the contrary state of those who have not yielded themselves to their Maker and who are therefore in the last resort enemies of God. 22

We must keep in mind that this rapidly expanding set of examples of salvation/liberation/ultimate fulfillment constitutes the test by which Hick will discriminate between authentic and inauthentic religions.

An Initial Critique of Hick’s Use of Salvation

It is reassuring to see that Hick realized his need for some criterion to grade religious systems. Without it, his pluralism would appear a bit ridiculous, since he would end up endorsing a host of foolish or evil systems as equals with the major world religions. But his criterion is too elastic and vague.

Once one identifies salvation as the ultimate test of a genuine religion, everything begins to turn on how “salvation” is defined. Consider the options:

If salvation is the attainment of illumination, then Buddhism can save.

If salvation is union with a Universal Self, then Hinduism can save.

If salvation is forgiveness and justification, then Christianity can save.

f salvation is maintaining a proper relation to one’s ancestors, then Shintoism can save.

But if salvation is defined as overthrowing an oppressor class and establishing a classless society, why can’t we say that communism can save as well? Did not those systems that practiced child-sacrifice or mutilation or cannibalism also offer what they thought was salvation? Did not Jim Jones offer his followers salvation? Is not Hick’s appeal to salvation so vague and general that he ends up offering a kind of religious supermarket with countless paths to salvation? Of course, Hick tries to avoid this kind of chaos by insisting that all legitimate forms of salvation exhibit one common trait, namely, a movement from a state of self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness. But how does Hick arrive at this particular concept of salvation? He claims that he derives it from a careful investigation of the major religions. As we will see later, this is questionable in that his procedure requires him to ignore anything that weakens his thesis and obliges him to introduce considerable distortion into almost every religion he discusses.

Hick’s propensity to oversimplify becomes apparent once we remember that the world’s religions not only understand the Ultimate differently (for some of these religions, there is no Ultimate), but also differ in their understanding of the basic human predicament and the means by which humans are delivered (saved) from this predicament. Harold Netland asks,

Is the human predicament brought on by sin against a righteous and holy God, or is it due to maya (illusion) and avidya (ignorance)? Is salvation to be thought of in terms of justification before God or in terms of liberation from samsara? It is highly misleading to speak as if all religions share a common soteriological goal and simply differ on the means to reach it. 23

Hick’s criterion simply will not work until it becomes possible to determine the truth or falsehood of assorted major beliefs taught by each religion. According to Netland,

Christianity can only be considered effective in providing salvation as justification if the human predicament is in fact characterized by alienation from God due to human sin and if God has in fact made possible through Jesus Christ justification of sinful humanity. Similarly, Theravada Buddhism can only be said to be effective in providing liberation if the human condition is in fact one of ignorance concerning the true nature of reality combined with a bondage to craving and desire, and if strictly following the Noble Eightfold Path will indeed bring the elimination of craving and thus nirvana. In other words, a given religion can be regarded as soteriologically effective only if its diagnosis of the human condition is accurate and if its proposed way for achieving the intended soteriological goal will indeed bring about the desired effect. 24

As much as he might like to try, Hick cannot escape the pivotal question of truth. This important issue will be the subject of the next chapter.

An Exception to Hick’s Transformation of Self-Centeredness

On pages 52 – 55 of his Interpretation of Religion, Hick admits to a bizarre exception to his previous statements about salvation. To fully appreciate what happens on these pages, one must see Hick’s move against the backdrop of several contemporary developments in theology, in Western society, and in many centers of American higher education. These developments include what is called liberation theology, whose advocates reduce Christianity to a movement to eradicate poverty and oppression. What is problematic is the tendency of liberation theologians to care only about the poor and oppressed people who interest them and to seek to address the issues of poverty from an unabashed and unrepentant Marxist perspective. 25

What is called feminist theology (or even better, feminist liberation theology) often links up with powerful segments of the liberationist movement and what still passes for Marxism these days. 26 Feminist theology contends that the historic Christian faith must be repudiated as a haven for patriarchal sexism that oppresses women even as “capitalism” according to the Marxist view oppresses the poor. 27 Both liberationist Marxism and feminist Marxism extend their power in American society through the political correctness movement that now holds captive many American institutions of higher learning.

Hick shows that he passes the political correctness test, but in the process raises doubts about his analysis of salvation and the consistency of his thought. Hick begins his discussion by noting how many feminist theologians object to his analysis of salvation as a repudiation of self-centeredness. Hick assures us that these feminist thinkers “are today contributing major and sometimes startling insights which it would be a serious mistake for others to ignore.” 28 One such “insight” from the feminists turns out to be their challenge to Hick’s thesis that salvation is a movement away from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness. Hick cites St. Augustine (and Augustine’s analysis of sin as pride or self-assertion) as one ancient source for his understanding of salvation.

Hick explains the source of the feminist’s discomfort with all this: “The feminist critique of this strand of Christian thought is that self-assertion is not the basic human temptation but rather the characteristic male temptation; and that its female counterpart, within the existing patriarchal world cultures, is different.” 29

In the politically correct world of the radical feminist, the attitudes of pride and self-assertiveness define what feminists think is good, at least for feminists. While pride and self-assertiveness are basic sins for men, the proper female analogue to male pride (man’s defining sin) is female timidity, sentimentality, triviality—in short, all the attributes that radical feminists associate with passive women in a male-dominated society.

To reduce a long, incredible concession to political correctness to its bottom line, Hick admits that female salvation may well be the opposite of male salvation. Female salvation, at least for oppressed and male-dominated women, is the transformation from weakness to self-centeredness!

So Hick, who, I contend, sometimes misrepresents the content of major religions when it advances his thesis, is now willing to redefine the central concept of his later system (salvation) when faced with the risk of offending militant, radical feminists.

Perhaps out of embarrassment, Hick attempts to put his glaring inconsistency in a better light by suggesting that not all women have weak egos. So perhaps for them, his more usual analysis of “sin” might still hold. In Hick’s own words,

In so far as anyone, female or male, lacks the ego-development and fulfillment necessary for a voluntary self-transcendence, the prior achievement of self-fulfilled ego may well be necessary for a true relationship to the Real. For in order to move beyond the self one has first to be a self. This means that the contemporary woman’s liberation movement, as a part of the larger movement for human liberation, is in the front line of salvific change in our world today. 30

CONCLUSION

It is evident that John Hick saw the need to move beyond the serious inadequacies of his first version of pluralism, even if he has refused to acknowledge these defects. The problems that afflict his second version are more difficult to uncover. Simply put, this is because, like the Ptolemaic astronomers of old, every time Hick is confronted by a difficulty, he takes another step backward into an epicycle. His distinction between the phenomenal gods and the noumenal God only serves to plunge him into serious conceptual difficulties. His appeal to salvation as the essential core of the major religions works only when he oversimplifies or distorts his data from these religions.

In all of this, we must remember that this collection of confusions is Hick’s alternative to historic Christian theism. Hick’s reasoning obviously has appeal for many people in the academic world, most notably those who are already biased against an exclusivist religion. It may also appeal to people with a sentimental bent whose emotions are affected by what they can understand from Hick’s contemporary prose. But some will conclude that what Hick does best is show the power that an anti-Christian ideology can have.