An Introduction to
John Hick's Pluralist Hypothesis
In recent years
John Hick’s name has become synonymous with two issues in Christian theology.
One is theodicy and the other is religious pluralism. It is the latter which
has caused much friction and eyebrow raising within theological circles. The
problem he sees (and addresses) is this: during the European enlightenment a
paradigm shift took place whereby people realised that other world
civilisations and religions existed outside of Christendom. Through the rise of
the travel industry, information networks and immigration these civilisations
have now arrived on our doorsteps. The inevitable question is this: as a
Christian, what is to be the proper relationship between Christianity and other
religions?
The Pluralist
Hypothesis as Presented by John Hick
Religious
Pluralism as Moral Necessity
John Hick did not
begin his Christian life as a pluralist but as an Evangelical fundamentalist
firmly committed to the truth claims of traditional Christian belief. Reviewing
his shift in thinking in God Has Many Names he notes: ‘I have from almost as
early as I can remember had a rather strong sense of the reality of God as the
personal and loving lord of the universe’. The latter was to be the greater
influence in his subsequent theological development. In his book God and the
Universe of Faiths Hick begins to set out his pluralist hypothesis. His initial
basis for it is to explore an inherent tension between the idea of a God of
love and his own Evangelical fundamentalism.
Within
Evangelicalism the possibility of salvation has traditionally been centred
around the belief that it is through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ
alone (the incarnate Son of God) that one can be saved (the ‘gospel’). This has
led to Christian exclusivism expressed as ‘outside Christianity there is no
salvation’ (or ‘extra ecclesiam nulla salas’). Hick’s concern is that if the
Christian God is a God of love and Christian salvation is the only true
salvation then we have a dilemma for the large part of the world has not heard
‘the gospel’ of Jesus Christ. He writes, ‘Can we then accept the conclusion
that the God of love who seeks to save all mankind has nevertheless ordained
that men must be saved in such a way that only a small minority can in fact
receive this salvation?’ It seems to Hick that most of the world is condemned
and, ‘It is the weight of this moral contradiction that has driven Christian
thinkers in modern times to explore other ways of understanding the human
religious situation’.
Hick’s pluralist
hypothesis is developed by his acceptance of the cultural relativity of
religious truth-claims and that one’s religious presuppositions are primarily
set according to where one is born. Using a soteriological comparison it seems
Hick intends that a person born in a ‘Christianised’ country will likely grow
up with the belief that any salvation is Christian salvation (and found via
Jesus). If one was born in say India salvation would be understood as being
released from moksha whilst in Buddhist Thailand it would be understood as
obtaining bodhi (enlightenment). One’s view of salvation (and the subsequent
means to attaining it) depends on where one has been born. With this insight
Hick effects a mortal blow to Christian exclusivism: ‘Can we be so entirely
confident that to have been born in our particular part of the world carries
with it the privilege of knowing the full religious truth?’
From very early on
Hick wants to challenge the need for a response to a specific message in order
to be saved. He also wants to move from orthodoxy into orthopraxis the latter
being required if we want to begin to say, ‘All salvation… is the work of God’.
This is achieved as far as one is in relationship with God. Hick reinterprets the
world’s religions as vales for soul-making and culturally determined points of
contact with God. Hick also wants to remove the idea of mission as converting
crusades. Any contact between members of other religions should be done, ‘Not
to displace but to deepen and enlarge their relationship with God’.
With these early
insights Hick has laid the foundations for a Copernicum revolution to take
place in Christianity whereby instead of seeing Christianity revolving around
Christ each religion (of which Christianity is one) revolves around God and are
effective as long as they are in soteriological alignment with God. ‘Our next
question is this: do we regard the Christian way as the only way, so that
salvation is not to be found outside it; or do we regard the other great
religions of mankind as other ways of life and salvation? The resounding ‘No’
from Hick in response to this question has come via a God of love who wants
none to perish but all to be saved.
Religious Meaning
as Experiencing-As
With the publication
of An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent Hick
revealed a shift in his approach to religious pluralism. Whereas earlier he
showed tendencies to see religions as culturally determined landing-pads for
God now he presents religions as culturally determined responses to God by the
devotee. In other word’s he has shifted from subject to perceiver.
The seeds for this
were sown in his early work (as noted above). However Hick’s subsequent
development owes much to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant from whom he borrowed
and revised the concepts of noumenal and phenomenal and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s
epistemological category of ‘seeing-as’ (which Hick uses to develop a wider
epistemological foundation than the latter originally intended).
In An
Interpretation of Religion Hick speaks of human experience in two ways. There
is the world in itself (the noumenal) and the world as perceived by each person
(the phenomenal). Because one can have no pure experience of the noumenal
(Kant’s critique) each person’s experience of it is always an interpretation
specific to that individual (phenomenal). From this Kant supposed that the
world we think is objective (pure reason) is actually a world partly created by
our mind. When Hick applies this to religious experience he concludes that all
such experience is ‘experiencing-as’. One’s religion is specific to oneself as
much as the truth claims inherent within it. This means there is no revelation
that stands apart from humanity. As we are creators of the world around us so
also are we creators of our religious systems.
In An
Interpretation of Religion Hick also radically revises his earlier concept of
the ultimate One (similar to Tillich’s ‘God above God’) and introduces us
instead to the Real. In theistic traditions God is encountered as a personal
deity. Judaism, Islam and Christianity (for example) all have a personal God.
But what of the non-personal ultimates, for example Brahman? How can a personal
God be experienced as non-personal? The concept of the Real alleviates this
dilemma as for Hick it is a neutral identifier inviting no concrete definition.
Using Kant’s
epistemological concepts of noumenon and phenomenon Hick distinguishes between
the ‘Real an sich and the Real as variously experienced-and-thought by
different human communities’. In light of this he makes this proposition:
I want to explore the pluralistic
hypothesis 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-centredness to Reality-centredness
is taking place.
When we correspond
Hick’s pluralist hypothesis (above) with ‘experiencing-as’ we find that people
in the mode of ‘I-Thou encounter’ experience the Real as personal whereas in
‘nonpersonal awareness they experience it as non-personal’. This also releases
the inherent tension between contradictory expressions of religious awareness.
Religious diversity does not reveal contradictions but the variety of human
experience.
Hick continually
stresses that the noumenal Real is not to be identified with the phenomenal
Real (although there is some relationship between the two). With this he
removes any possibility for an absolute truth claim and as expressed in
exclusivism. Furthermore, the Real is ineffable and unable to be experienced,
understood or expressed. Thus the great world religions are not there to teach
us ‘truths’ about the Real (or however the Real is ‘experienced-as’) but to
evoke in us a soteriological response using mythical language. Therefore, ‘The
‘truthfulness’ of each tradition is shown by its soteriological effectiveness’.
Salvation as Human
Transformation within a Religious Context
In An
Interpretation of Religion (and subsequent works) Hick seems to ground his
pluralist hypothesis more in his own understanding of soteriology. Although
Salvation is something he sees happening in all the great world religions he
does not relate his soteriological vision with the Evangelical one of ‘saving
souls’. He writes, ‘I suggest that these different conceptions of salvation are
specifications of what, in a generic formula, is the transformation of human
existence from self-centredness to a new orientation centred in the divine
reality’. The basis for this is a purely empirical observation in a
multi-cultural and a multi-religious twentieth-century England in that when we
get to know people of other faiths we cannot help but conclude that their own
spiritual fruits are on a par with the fruits of Christianity. Thus there does
not seem to be a radical difference between us and our neighbour.
For any
exclusivist this is disturbing but for Hick this is normal in so far as
religions are in soteriological alignment with the Real. Each of the religious
traditions present what he believes is at the heart of what is meant by
salvation. Throughout all religions there seems to be a common criteria
expressed in the Christian tradition as ‘the Golden Rule’ (‘Love your neighbour
as you love yourself’). The outworking of this is understood as the ‘fruit of
the Spirit’. Now when we compare each of the great world faiths there seems to
be no way of distinguishing between the effectiveness each one has in achieving
this in its adherents. As Hick writes, ‘We have no good reason to believe that
any one of the great religious traditions has shown itself to be more
productive of love/compassion than another’.
The Christian
claim to moral superiority cannot be validated by religious history. In each of
the great world faiths there has been both evil and good performed by its
devotees. In fact it is this very point which Hick uses to validate his
pluralist hypothesis for if the Christian claim, ‘By their fruits you will know
them’ is an acknowledged adjudicator then it should be clear from empirical
evidence alone where this is or is not happening. The fact that it is not clear
denies the exclusivity found within each of the religious traditions concerning
their superiority amongst the others due to their being the ‘ultimate truth’.
As Hick himself comments, ‘I suggest today that the onus of proof or of
argument is upon any who claim that their own tradition produces morally and
spiritually better human beings than all the others’.
Summary
Initially John
Hick presented his pluralistic hypothesis as something required if we are to
hold in tension the idea of a God of love and the need for salvation. However,
in recent years his starting point has shifted to focus on the idea that each
of the religions of the world are various culturally conditioned human
responses to what he calls the Real (and it is this which has received most
critical attention). Because the Real is ineffable the various religions of the
world are not there to pass on ‘truths’ concerning the Real but to act as
contexts in which human salvation (non-egocentricism) can take place. Although
each religious tradition would distinguish itself from the others by seeing
itself as superior to the others (exclusivism) this claim cannot be validated
when we take into consideration that the world is ‘experienced-as’ and that
there is no distinguishable difference between each of them so as to suppose
the moral superiority or salvic effectiveness of one above the others.
