Free Essays - Theology Essays

Evaluate John Hick's defence of his position in his book, The Rainbow of Faiths

This paper will evaluate John Hick's defence of his position in his book The Rainbow of Faiths (Hick, J. 1995). Beginning with a brief historical and theological background to the debate the paper will then review Hick's book and assess whether or not Hicks is successful in his defence of his version of religious pluralism which holds that:

..the great world religions constitute very different but so far as we can tell more or less equally valid ways of conceiving, experiencing, and responding in life to the ultimate reality with which religion is concerned (Hick, 1995:149).

Background

The debate about the nature and existence of God, and most specifically for Christianity, of the person Christ arose out of the 18^th century debates over reason and religion. Natural theology and its arguments for the existence of God had tended to ignore Christ. With Kant and later Schleiermacher, language about God became closely related to language about Christ-even though there was the tendency to make Jesus a mere example of the moral and religious life. With Barth however, Christ is put at the centre of theology. In Barth's theology it is only in the Incarnation that we have knowledge of God in his transcendence. Subsequent late nineteenth and early twentieth developments, particularly the emergence of the comparative study of religion, demonstrated a fundamental problem between Barth's vision of Christ, and the competing claims of other religious traditions. Barth referred to dialogue between Christianity and other religions as akin to howling with wolves (King, 1995). In spite of Barth's complaint scholars' rising interest in the nature of other religions led to the first Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in 1893. The Parliament has since been described as an effort in Christian Universalism there were however, interesting developments from this, not least the recognition that there was a need for dialogue between the exponents of Christianity and those of other faiths. Eventually this developed into what is now called inter-faith dialogue, and into theologies of world religions. Both D'Costa (1986) and Race (1985) maintain that there are three basic positions in religious dialogue, and in world religions' theologies. These typologies were originally developed in the work of Race (1983) and defended against critics by De Costa (1986) these are, exclusivist, inclusivist and pluralist.

• Eclusivism: In this position there is only one true religion, all other religions are false or misguided.
• Inclusivism: This is the view which holds that while all religions may have a part of the truth only the supreme religion (Christianity) has the whole truth.
• Pluralism: maintains that all and any of the religions have partial versions of the truth and the one Universal Spirit.

What has to be noted here is that all three of these positions are Christian views of dialogue with other religions, and one wonders what views they might hold on this, particularly when other religions have no say in the formulation of such theologies.. As Clooney (1989) questions,

Can other religions have a role in the development of a Christian theology of religions and the dialogue of religions? (Clooney, 1989:201).

Hick and the Rainbow of Faiths

John Hick saw that it would be very difficult to preserve a Christ centered faith when it came to the encounter with other world religions. Thus in his earlier work he maintained that what was needed was a Copernican revolution in Christianity whereby it ceased to be Christ centered and God was restored to the centre. This common centre, he argued, would form the basis of a theology of world religions (Hick, 1977). Hick prefaces The Rainbow of Faiths with reference to (at the time of writing 1995) the deepening theological crisis of Christianity at the end of the twentieth century. This crisis is evident in the intellectual problem that the existence of diverse faiths presents and that, Hick maintains, is evident as both a theological and a philosophical problem. His major concern is with one aspect of the crisis and that is the response of the various religious traditions to the Divine, the Ultimate, or what Hick calls the Real.

The book was developed from the author's Auburn Lectures given at Union Theological Seminary in April 1994. Hick frames the defence of his position as a dialogue with two partners they are a philosopher, whom he calls Phil, and a theologian called Grace. The parts of Hick's dialogue partners Phil and Grace were adopted by two PhD students during the Auburn lectures.

Hick uses the rainbow in the title as a metaphor for the way in which the divine light of God is reflected in the rays of the world's faith traditions. His very choice of title and his explanation of it in the preface is, arguably, representative of his pluralist position. In referring to his choice of a dialogue for framing the intellectual problem that he maintains is evident in theology and philosophy Hick states:

The aim of theological and philosophical dialogue is not necessarily to come to an agreement-though this of course is much to be desired, and sometimes happens-but to locate the differences more precisely, and to see what the pros and cons of a question are (Hick:1995:2).

Hick argues that although the question of pluralism is a controversial one for the churches, who, he maintains, veer from conservative orthodoxy to liberal relativism, his aim nevertheless is to convince his dialogue partners and his readers that a plural approach is permissible within a Christian framework and that it is attracting the interest to an increasing number of people, both Christian and non-Christian. On the appropriateness of a theology of world religions Hick contends that:

theology is a growing and developing organism, so that an appropriate theological framework for today and tomorrow may well differ from what was appropriate a thousand years ago or indeed, as the pace of cultural change has increased, a hundred years ago, or even a generation ago (Hick:1995:12).

Hick discusses what he sees as the fallacy of Christian moral supremacy, which sees Christianity as the only religion that was founded by God and that those who espouse Christianity have a closer relationship with God than do others, because the fruits of being a Christian are said to be evident in a Christian's life. Hick questions whether this can be supported and established empirically or whether it is an a priori claim, or a matter of first and pre-existing principle. He speaks of the multi-faith nature of contemporary society and how Britain in particular has seen a change to its religious landscape since the Second World War and the migration of many former commonwealth citizens. He goes on to say that the appearance of numbers of different places of worship, and the fact that the newcomers are our neighbours has engendered the realization that people from other faiths are not so different from ourselves. He cites St. Paul's list of the fruits of the spirit as equally evident in the lives of those outside the tradition as they are within it. !n biblical theology, Christians are supposed to be recognizable by the fact that their lives evidence the fruits of the spirit, because these fruits, Hick contends, are also evident in the lives of non-Christians. How is it possible, he asks, to demonstrate that the fruits of Christian life are superior to the fruits of any other life. In view of this he argues that:

The bearing of this upon a Christian theology of religions is that the lack of observable moral superiority is at variance with our traditional theology I am led to conclude that this theology is in need of revision. For surely its function is to make sense of the facts, not to be a device for systematically ignoring or contradicting them (Hick, 1995:15-16).

After looking at the problem from the point of view of Christian moral supremacy Hick then goes on to look at things from the point of view of soteriology (salvation history). It is central to Christian theology that God's forgiveness and acceptance of humanity is contingent on the Atonement, the death of Jesus on the cross and his subsequent resurrection. If this is the case, then Hick argues:

it is a tautology that Christianity alone knows and teaches the saving truth that we must take Jesus as our Lord and saviour, plead his atoning death, and enter into the church as the community of the redeemed, in which the fruits of the Spirit abound (Hick, 1995:16).

This of course, Hick contends, is contradictory because he has already demonstrated that the fruits of the spirit are present in faith traditions other than Christianity, and also in non-religious people. Although here it may be argued that he has not so much demonstrated the fact that these fruits can be seen in the lives of people of other faiths (because he names not one specific incidence) as asserted it, that is not to say that the view of Christian moral supremacy that Hick criticizes is any the less an assertion if one does not subscribe to it. Hick maintains that it is the fruits that are important and uses scripture to back up his claim that Jesus was more interested in how men and women lived their lives than in theological propositions. He then goes on to postulate that we look at salvation as a change in human beings-a change which can be identified-when it can be identified-by its moral fruits (1995:17). This he sees as central to all the world's faiths, the transformation of human life, a movement from self-centredness to a grounding in God, or what Hick chooses to call, the Real (1995:18). Whether this grounding could, or should be applied to Buddhism would depend on which Buddhist path one was referring to.

Adherents of all religions, Hick maintains, have their lives transformed by this turning towards the real. He asserts that all the world religions are not really philosophies or theologies but ways of salvation and liberation. While Hick may be right in what he says, this is certainly an assumption that might be criticized by some people in the Judao-Christian and Muslim faiths, who might see their religion as oriented towards glorifying God rather than salvation/liberation. What Hick calls the hybrid term salvation/liberation, is, he states the central concern of all religious traditions. Hick then goes on to speak of typologies of world religion theologies, he refers to the exclusive, inclusive and pluralist positions mentioned earlier. In relation to exclusivity where salvation is confined to Christians. De Costa (1986) who also rejects exclusivism, says of it that its fundamental claim is:

that other religions are marked by humankind's fundamental sinfulness and are therefore erroneous, and that Christ (or Christianity) offers the only valid path (De Costa, 1986:52).

In his own rebuttal of exclusivism, Hick refers specifically to the Roman Catholic Church which used to hold that there was no salvation outside of the church of Rome, a position that was rejected at the Second Vatican Council. The view that salvation is confined to Christians is still however the view of a large number of fundamentalist Protestants. Hick says of this:

if we mean by salvation, actual salvific change in women and men, then it is, as I have been reminding us, an observable fact that this has not been restricted either to any section of Christianity or to Christianity as a whole. Given this very concrete conception of salvation/liberation then Christian exclusivism is not a live option (Hicks, 1995:19-20).

Nowadays, the Catholic church, and the majority of Protestants would (so Hick maintains) hold to an inclusivist viewpoint. This however, can take a variety of forms, the inclusivism of theologians such as De Costa (1986) and Race (1985) is one that:

on the one hand..accepts the spiritual power and depth manifest (in other faiths)..on the other hand it rejects them as not being sufficient for salvation apart from Christ, for Christ alone is saviour (Race, 1985:38).

As Hick notes, there are a number of different variations on the inclusivist position and De Costa take the view of the Roman Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner. People of other faiths can be included in Christian salvation under Rahner's concept of 'anonymous Christian.' Hick also refers to the salvation/liberation model of inclusivism as found in Panniker's (1981) work (the argument is that the transformation evident in the lives of people of other faiths means that they follow Christ but may not realize it) Hick argues that this is not truly a Christian inclusivism, rather, he maintains, this version is closer to his own notion of pluralism.

However Kung (1991) argues against inclusivist theologies of world religions, thus he contends that:

what looks like toleration in practice proves to be a kind of conquest through embrace, a matter of allowing validity through domestication, an integration through a loss of identity (Kung, 1991: 81).

One wonders whether Hick might also be accused of this since while he dismisses it as a Christian inclusivism and argues that it is closer to his own version of pluralism, could he not also be criticized for minimizing the identities of the world's religious traditions? This, it might be argued, is a perfectly valid question, particularly as Hick then goes on to refer to the widely differing truth claims and concepts of God of the various faith traditions in terms of maps of the world,

.if one type of map is accurate the others must be inaccurate. If they are properly made, they are all accurate-and yet in another sense they are all inaccurate, in that they all inevitably distort (Hick, 1995:27).

I would argue that this is an unfortunate analogy as it appears as though, if we took too much note of what Hick is saying here then we might be just as likely to wonder whether any religion has any use at all! Certainly De Costa (1986) when referring to Hicks earlier work, maintains that Hick's attempt to rid the religions of exclusive truth claims may well mean that there is nothing left of religion.

Hick's position is that all of the world religions are grounded in the same reality::

the Ultimate ineffable Reality is capable of being authentically experienced in terms of different sets of human concepts, as Jaweh, as the Holy Trinity, as Allah.occurring at the interface between the Real and our differing religious mentalities and cultures (Hick, 1995:23).

Hick uses Kant's distinction between the noumena (what something is in itself) and the phenomena (our perception of it) thus, while Hick would have us believe in transformation by the real, the real, at least in the terms Hick presents it, is not really accessible to human beings. That is to say (as Hick does) that what is ineffable is beyond human conceptualization. Which takes us back to Anselm and the ontological argument that God is that of which nothing greater can be conceived. Thus neither individuals nor the religions themselves can claim to have knowledge of what the Real is. Hick has argued in The Philosophy of Religion (1990) that:

the different religions are different streams of religious experience, each having started at a different point within human history and each having formed its own conceptual self-consciousness within a different cultural milieu (Hick 1990:114).

Hick relies on Phillips (1965) notion of expressivism in that what religious believers experience of the Real that cannot be known or conceptualized by human beings. is expressed in their lives. Hick maintains that while Phillips is a non-realist (the denial of an objective ultimate reality) he himself claims to be a realist but it could be argued that he undermines this claim by adopting an expressivist approach. This I would argue points to a contradiction in Hick's work. This internal contradiction concerning his claim to adopt a realist position is also evident in his earlier work The Myth of God Incarnate (1977) where he criticises the early community and the later early church for taking the statements regarding Jesus' divinity as objective truth. While it has to be acknowledged that this is logically problematic, as Wittgenstein's work has shown most religious language is of that nature, and so can only be understood in the context in which it is used. It has to be said that the most obvious weakness of Hick's position is that it is internally contradictory.

Conclusion

What motivates a pluralist theology of religions is what Hick defines as a deep respect for the human family (1995:118). Numerous commentators, however, have questioned the view of a common human history, recognizing that such a view stems from the ideology of the Enlightenment and the mindset that accompanied colonial imperialism. Feminist commentators in particular have highlighted how the discourses of the Enlightenment, that claimed to speak for all, actually oppressed at least half the human race by assuming a common historical experience. Such discourses feminists contend violate the most basic right, that of the human person to be 'other' than the norm. It is this assumption of commonality that I would argue poses a serious threat to Hick's position. Hick dismisses the idea that differences of opinion over the Real or Ultimate Reality might exist as negligible but because he is not in dialogue here with adherents of other faith traditions this has to be regarded as an assumption. While Hick puts up a good defence in his book, I do not think that it is sufficient. In trying to establish a way of dealing with conflicting and exclusive truth claims he negates them all in his refusal to accept their differences. His proposal of a common ground i.e. the 'Real'might have been more convincing had he dialogued with theologians and philosophers from faith traditions other than Chrisitianity.

Bibliography

D'Costa, G. 1986 Theology and Religious Pluralism Blackwell, Oxford

D'Costa, G. 1996 The Impossibility of a Pluralist View of Religions Religious Studies 32, June 1996

Hick, J 1990 Philosophy of Religion (4^th Edition), Prentice Hall.

Hick, J 1995 The Rainbow of Faiths London, SCM

Hick, J.1977 The Myth of God Incarnate SCM Press, London

http://www.faithnet.org.uk/A2%20Subjects/Philosophyofreligion/language.htm

King, U (ed.) 1995 Religion and Gender Oxford, Blackwell

Kung, H. 1991 Global Responsibility New York, Crossroads

Phillips, D Z (1965) The Concept of Prayer, Routledge, Kegan and Paul, London

Race, A.1985 Christians and Religious Pluralism:Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions New York, Orbis

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