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D. Z. Phillips1 on God and evil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2007

JOHN HICK
JOHN HICK
Affiliation:
144 Oak Tree Lane, Selly Oak, Birmingham B29 6HU
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Abstract

This a response to D. Z. Phillips's stringent critique of theodicies, including that suggested by myself. I offer counters to his array of arguments, and point to what I see as a fundamental flaw in his philosophy of religion. He appealed to religious language as used by ordinary religious persons. But his account of the meaning of this language was not that of the ordinary religious believer. He thus claimed, by implication, to know better than they did what they really meant. I conclude that he was a non-realist concerning both religious language and the reality of God.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , December 2007 , pp. 433 - 441
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

Notes

2. D. Z. Phillips The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God (London: SCM Press, 2004).

3. In Marilyn McCord Adams Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1999).

4. In my Evil and the God of Love (London: PalgraveMacmillan and Louisville KY: Westminster Press, 2nd edn, 1985), 365–371.

5. Stephen Davis (ed.) Encountering Evil (Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1981, 2nd edn, 2001), but with the original articles unchanged.

6. In Stuart Brown (ed.) Reason and Religion (Ithaca NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1977).

7. John Hick Philosophy of Religion (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 3rd edn, 1983).

8. Hick Evil and the God of Love 1st edn, 1966, 2nd edn 1977, reissued 1985, 3rd edn 2007; Barry Whitney Theodicy: An Annotated Bibliography on the Problem of Evil, 1960–1990 (New York NY and London: Garland, 1993) lists forty-five critical discussions of it, and there have been quite a number since.

9. Hick Evil and the God of Love. My quotations are from the 2nd edn. The text is the same but the page numbering different in the 1st edn.

10. D. Z. Phillips God and Immortality (London: Macmillan and New York NY: St Martin's Press, 1970).

11. Hick ‘Remarks’, in Brown Reason and Religion, 122.

12. H. D. Lewis The Elusive Mind (London: Allen & Unwin, and New York NY: Humanities Press, 1969), ch. 16.

13. H. H. Price in Frank Dilley (ed.) Philosophical Interactions with Parapsychology (London: Macmillan and New York NY: St. Martin's Press, 1995), ch. 12.

14. Richard Swinburne The Evolution of the Soul (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), ch. 8.

15. Hick ‘Critique of D. Z. Phillips’, in Davis Encountering Evil, 162.

16. Don Cupitt Taking Leave of God (London: SCM Press, 1980).

17. John Hick An Interpretation of Religion (London: Macmillan, and New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1st edn 1989, 2nd edn, with a response to critics, 2004).

18. Readers may also be interested to look at Hasker's, William ‘D. Z. Phillips' problems with evil and with God’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 61 (2007), pp. 151–160CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Phillips's, D. Z. response, ‘William Hasker's avoidance of the problems of evil and God (or: on looking outside the igloo)’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 62 (2007), 33–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.