Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T18:53:39.475Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On Grading Religions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

John Hick  and
H. G. Wood
John Hick
Affiliation:
H. G. Wood, Professor of Theology, University of Birmingham and Danforth Professor of Religion, Claremont Graduate School, California
H. G. Wood
Affiliation:
H. G. Wood, Professor of Theology, University of Birmingham and Danforth Professor of Religion, Claremont Graduate School, California
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The idea of grading religions and placing them in an order of merit is to some repugnant, as involving a pretence to a divine perspective, whilst to others it seems entirely natural and proper, at least to the extent of their confidently assessing their own religion more highly than all others. We shall have to consider precisely what it is that might be graded, and in what respects and by what criteria. But if we think for a moment of the entire range of religious phenomena, no one is going to maintain that they are all on the same level of value or validity. Indeed the most significant religious figures, the founders and reformers of great traditions, have invariably been deeply critical of some of the religious ideas and practices around them. Thus Gautama rejected the idea of the eternal atman or soul, which was integral to the religious thought of India in his time; the great Hebrew prophets criticised mere outward observances and sacrifices, proclaiming that what the Lord requires is to ‘let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream’ (Amos 5: 24); Jesus, in the same tradition, attacked the formalism and insincerity of some of the religious leaders of his own time who ‘tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God’ (Luke 11: 42); Muhammad rejected the polytheism of his contemporary Arabian society; Guru Nanak in India and Martin Luther in Europe attacked much in the accumulated traditions into which they were born; and so on. Thus some kind of assessing of religious phenomena seems to be a corollary of deep religious seriousness and openness to the divine.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , December 1981 , pp. 451 - 467
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 452 note 1 Facing the Unfinished Task Percy, J. O. (ed)., (Grand Rapids: Eerdman, 1961), p. 9.Google Scholar

page 454 note 1 ‘The place of Christianity among the World Religions’, in Christianity and Other Religions, ed. Hick, J. H. and Hebblethwaite, B. (London: Collins, 1981), p. 25.Google Scholar

page 455 note 1 Küng, Hans, in Christian Revelation and World Religions ed. Neuner, J. (London: Burns & Oates, 1967), p. 27.Google Scholar

page 455 note 2 Probably numbering several million in the U.S.A. alone, according to Cox, Harvey, Turning East (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977), p. 93.Google Scholar

page 463 note 1 Quoted by Donaldson, Dwight M., Studies in Muslim Ethics (London: SPCK, 1963), p. 255.Google Scholar

page 464 note 1 Sutanta, Maha–Givinda, 59.Google ScholarDigha-Nikaya II, 250.Google ScholarDialogues of the Buddha, trans. , T. W. and Rhys Davids, C. A. F. (4th edn. London: Luzac, 1959), p. 279.Google Scholar