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Professor Hick on Religious Pluralism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Harold A. Netland
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Extract

The major religious traditions clearly seem to be making very different claims about the nature of the religious ultimate and our relation to this ultimate. For example, orthodox Christians believe in an infinite creator God who has revealed himself definitively in the Incarnation in Jesus. But while affirming that there is one God who is creator and judge, devout Muslims reject as blasphemous any suggestion thatJesus was God incarnate. Theravada Buddhists, on the other hand, do not regard the religious ultimate as an ontologically distinct creator at all. And even within, say, the Buddhist family of traditions sharp differences emerge: followers of Jodo-Shinshu (True Sect of the Pure Land) Buddhism maintain that salvation/enlightenment is attainable simply through exercising faith in the Amida Buddha and the recitation of the nembutsu, whereas Zen monks reject as illusory any worldview which implies dualism and hold that enlightenment or satori (viz, a direct, unmediated apprehension of the ultimate nature of reality which transcends all distinctions) is to be attained only through rigorous self-discipline.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 1986 , pp. 249 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

page 249 note 1 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982). All subsequent parenthetical page numbers in the text refer to this book.

page 250 note 1 To say that a religious tradition makes truth-claims is not to deny that many non-cognitive uses of religious discourse, or to reduce that tradition to a set of beliefs or propositions. It is simply to recognize that in each major tradition at least some assertions about the nature of the world, human beings, God (or the appropriate religious ultimate) are being made.

page 250 note 2 I understand truth to be a quality of propositions such that a proposition is true just in case the state of affairs to which it refers obtains; otherwise it is false. Strictly speaking, of course, it is propositions and not religions which are true or false. But there is an extended sense in which we can speak of religions as true or false. Let us think of a ‘defining belief’ of a given religion R as follows: p is a defining belief of R just in case one cannot be an active participant in good standing within R and not accept p. It seems clear that each tradition has a Set of defining beliefs (there may, of course, be considerable dispute over what is to be included within this set). I suggest that we speak of R as true just in case its defining beliefs are all true, and conversely, R is false just in case they are all false. And in cases of mixed truth value among defining beliefs R will he true to the extent that its defining beliefs are true and false to the extent that its defining beliefs are false.

page 251 note 1 Cf. ‘Theology and Verification’, in Theology Today XVII (1960) and ‘Eschatological Verification Reconsidered’, in Religious Studies XIII (1977).

page 251 note 2 ‘On Conflicting Religious Truth-Claims’, Religious Studies XIX (1983).

page 251 note 3 Ibid p. 487.

page 251 note 4 Ibid. pp. 488–9. See also Hick's, ‘On Grading Religions’, Religious Studies XVII (1982), pp. 461–2.Google Scholar

page 251 note 5 See especially his ‘The Outcome: Dialogue into Truth’ in Truth and Dialogue in World Religions: conflicting Truth-Claims, ed. by Hick, J. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974), pp. 146–8Google Scholar, and ‘On Conflicting Truth-Claims’, pp. 485–8

page 252 note 1 ‘The Outcome: Dialogue into Truth’, p.51.

page 253 note 1 For Hick's, religious epistemology see his Faith and Knowledge, 2nd ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966);Google Scholar‘Religious' Faith as Experiencing-As’ in Talk of God, ed. by Vesey, G. N. A. (New York: Macmillan, 1969);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Goulder, M. and Hick, J., Why Believe in God? (London: SCM Press, 1983).Google Scholar

page 253 note 2 states, Hick, ‘And, in short, we are so formed by the tradition into which we were born and in which we were raised that it is for us unique and absolute and final’ (God Has Many itarnes, p. 57). Cf. pp. 52–3.Google Scholar

page 256 note 1 ‘On grading religions’, p. 453.

page 257 note 1 Perhaps this is the place to note another, relatively minor, matter. Hick has elsewhere argued at length that religious experience in general cannot be dismissed as delusory and that it is indeed rational to believe in God on the basis of such experience (seen. 10). The details of this argument need not concern us here, but what should be noted is a claim which is alleged to follow from this. Hick seems to hold that if a Christian, for example, can justifiably believe in God on the basis of religious experiences within the Christian tradition, then correspondingly, religious experiences from other traditions substantiate the beliefs of these other religions. Speaking of his argument for the reliability of religious experience, Hick asserts, ‘But if such an argument holds for the Christian experience of the divine, it must also hold for the Jewish, the Muslim, the Hindu, the Buddhist, and other experiences of the divine. One must follow the Golden Rule and grant to religious experience within the other great traditions the same presumption of cognitive veridicality that one quite properly claims for one's own’ (God Has Many Names, p. 24). There is a curious ambiguity here. Certainly one must extend to adherents of other faiths the same courtesies that one expects from them. If Hick's point is simply that once it is demonstrated that the veridicality of religious experience in general cannot be ruled out a priori then religious experience from any given tradition can in principle be regarded as veridical (provided, of course, that there are no compelling reasons to suppose otherwise) then his point is well taken. One cannot dismiss classes of experience as delusory simply because they do not come from within one's own tradition. But his comments can also be taken to mean that if it is shown to be reasonable to accept as veridical religious experiences from a particular tradition then the religious experiences of the other great traditions must also be accepted as veridical. But this hardly follows. From the fact that religious experience in general cannot be ruled out as delusory it does not follow that any particular experience is in fact veridical. Nor can we assume that simply because experiences within one tradition have been shown to be veridical that any given experience within any other tradition is veridical. Even if it is granted that religious experience cannot be ruled out a priori as delusory, surely reports of religious experiences should be evaluated on their own merits.

page 260 note 1 Cf. Frege, Gottlob, ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’, trans. by Black, M. as ‘On Sense and Reference’, in Translations From tile Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, ed. by Black, M. and Geach, P. (Oxford University Press, 1952).Google Scholar