AN INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION

By the same author

*PROBLEMS OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM *FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE *EVIL AND THE GOD OF LOVE *ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD *GOD AND THE UNIVERSE OF FAITHS *DEATH AND ETERNAL LIFE *GOD HAS MANY NAMES *FAITH AND THE PHILOSOPHERS (editor) *THE MANY-FACED ARGUMENT (editor with A. C. McGill) *CHRISTIANITY AT THE CENTRE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION THE SECOND CHRISTIANITY WHY BELIEVE IN GOD? (with Michael Caulder) THE EXISTENCE OF GOD (editor) CLASSICAL AND CONTEMPORARY READINGS IN THE

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION (editor) TRUTH AND DIALOGUE (editor) THE MYTH OF GOD INCARNATE (editor) CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER RELIGIONS

(editor with Brian Hebblethwaite) *THREE FAITHS- ONE GOD (editor with EdmundS. Meltzer) *GANDHI'S ELUSIVE LEGACY (editor with Lamont C. Hempel) THE EXPERIENCE OF RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY

(editor with Hasan Askarz) THE MYTH OF CHRISTIAN UNIQUENESS

(editor with Paul F. Knitter)

*Also published by Pa/grave Macmillan

An Interpretation of Religion

Human Responses to the Transcendent

JOHN HICK

©John Hick 1989 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989 978-0-333-39488-5

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WlP 9HE.

Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

First edition 1989 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

1110987654 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97

ISBN 978-0-333-39489-2 ISBN 978-0-230-37128-6 (eBook)DOI 10.1057/9780230371286

Dedicated to Mike

Michael John Hick, 1961-1985

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Contents

Preface

1 Introduction

2

3

4

1 A religious interpretation of religion 2 Religion as a family-resemblance concept 3 Belief in the transcendent 4 Problems of terminology 5 Outline of the argument

PART ONE PHENOMENOLOGICAL

The Soteriological Character of Post-Axial Religion

1 The universality of religion 2 Pre-axial religion 3 The axial age 4 The axial shift to soteriology

Salvation/Liberation as Human Transformation

1 According to the Hindu tradition 2 According to the Buddhist tradition 3 According to the Christian tradition 4 According to the Jewish and Muslim traditions 5 Two possible objections

The Cosmic Optimism of Post-Axial Religion

1 Cosmic optimism 2 The temporal character of experience 3 The eschatological character of the

Semitic traditions 4 The eschatological character of the

Indian traditions 5 Realised eschatology 6 Darkness and light

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xiii

1 3 5 9

12

21 22 29 32

36 41 43 47 51

56 57

61

64 65 67

viii Contents

PART TWO THE RELIGIOUS AMBIGUITY OF THE UNIVERSE

5 Ontological, Cosmological and Design Arguments

1 The issue 2 The ontological argument 3 Cosmological arguments 4 Contemporary scientific theism 5 The anthropic principle

6 Morality, Religious Experience and Overall Probability

1 Moral arguments 2 Religious experience 3 Swinburne's probability argument

7 The Naturalistic Option

1 The needlessness of the theistic hypothesis 2 The challenge of evil to theism 3 Conclusion

PART THREE EPISTEMOLOGICAL

8 Natural Meaning and Experience

1 Meaning 2 Natural meaning 3 Experiencing-as

9 Ethical and Aesthetic Meaning and Experience

1 Socio-ethical meaning 2 Aesthetic meaning

10 Religious Meaning and Experience

1 Religious experience 2 Faith as the interpretive element in

religious experience 3 Faith as the exercise of cognitive freedom 4 Religion as cognitive filter 5 Mystical experience

73 75 79 81 91

96 99

104

111 118 122

129 134 140

144 151

153

158 160 162 165

Contents ix

11 Religion and Reality

1 Religious realism and non-realism 172 2 The realist intention of traditional religion 175 3 Linguistic analysis and religious realism 177 4 Realism and Hindu language 180 5 Realism and Buddhist language 183

12 Contemporary Non-Realist Religion

1 Feuerbach 190 2 Braithwaite and Randall 193 3 Phillips and Cupitt 198 4 Penultimate issues 201 5 The ultimate issue 204

13 The Rationality of Religious Belief

1 Identifying the question 210 2 Theistic belief as a foundational natural belief 213 3 Trusting our experience 214 4 Complications 220 5 The problem of criteria 223 6 The right to believe 227

PART FOUR RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

14 The Pluralistic Hypothesis

1 The need for such an hypothesis 233 2 The Real in itself and as humanly experienced 236 3 Kant's epistemological model 241 4 The relation between the Real an sich

and its personae and impersonae 246

15 The Personae of the Real

1 The need to think-and-experience the Real as personal 252

2 The phenomenological finitude of the gods 257 3 The gods as personae of the Real 264 4 Two divine personae: The Hindu Krishna and

the Jahweh of Israel 267 5 The ontological status of the divine personae 269

X Contents

16 The Impersonae of the Real

1 Extending the hypothesis 2 Brahman 3 Nirvana 4 Sunyata 5 Unmediated mystical experience of the Real?

PART FIVE CRITERIOLOGICAL

17 Soteriology and Ethics

1 The soteriological criterion 2 Saintliness 3 Spiritual and politico-economic liberation 4 The traditions as productive of saints 5 The universality of the Golden Rule

18 The Ethical Criterion

1 The ideal of generous goodwill, love, compassion 2 Agape/Karuna as the ethical criterion 3 Ideals and applications: the examples of

Christianity and Islam 4 Ethics and religious belief

19 Myth, Mystery and the Unanswered Questions

1 Unanswered and unanswerable questions 2 Expository myths 3 The mythological character of language about

the Real 4 The mythological character of religious thought Appendix: Theodicy as mythology

20 The Problem of Conflicting Truth-Claims

1 The problem 2 Conflicting historical truth-claims 3 Conflicting trans-historical truth-claims 4 Conclusions

278 279 283 287 292

299 300 303 307 309

316 325

331 337

343 347

349 353 359

362 363 365 372

Epilogue: The Future

Reference Bibliography

Index of Names

Index of Subjects

Contents xi

377

381

405

410

Preface

This book is an expanded version of my 1986-7 Gifford Lectures, delivered in the University of Edinburgh. I would like to record appreciation to the electors for the opportunity to present a systematic interpretation of religion under such famous auspices; and to Professor Ronald Hepburn of the Philosophy Department and Dean James Mackey of the Faculty of Divinity, and their colleagues, for their hospitality and encouragement while I was in Edinburgh.

The book is intended to contribute to a project which no one person can hope to complete, namely the development of a field theory of religion from a religious point of view. I propose here a philosophical ground-plan and suggest some of the more concrete interpretations to which it points. Behind this endeavour lies the belief that a philosopher of religion must today take account not only of the thought and experience of the tradition within which he or she happens to work, but in principle of the religious experience and thought of the whole human race. In order to contribute to this work philosophers must be prepared to learn from the historians and phenomenologists of religion. I have tried to do this. But the body of knowledge is immense, and growing all the time, so that my acquaintance with it is inevitably selective and second-hand, relying on first-hand experts in the different areas. There are indeed whole regions, such as the religious life of China, that I have had largely (though not entirely) to leave aside. Again, in concentrating on the 'great world religions' I have given primal religion less attention than it ought to have. However the aim has not been to produce something complete and definitive, but to make a preliminary exploration of a range of problems that are only now entering the purview of western philosophy of religion, and to suggest a possible approach to them. Those who find this approach inadequate or misleading will I hope feel under obligation to propose another, so that the various options can be progressively clarified and their merits considered.

The references within the book do not fully reveal the author's indebtedness to co-workers. For example, although I do not discuss his writings here in any detail I have been deeply

xiii

xiv Preface

influenced by the work of Wilfred Cantwell Smith; and I have learned more, in their respective fields, from the publications and conversation of Masao Abe, John Bowker, Ninian Smart and several others than the references to them here might suggest.

The writing of this book has occupied some five years, and I probably could not have written it without moving when I did to the academic environment of the Claremont Graduate School, with its tradition of discussion of the problems of religious pluralism and of East/West interaction. I am grateful not only to colleagues and students here, but also to the administration for a special research leave in the spring of 1986 to enable me to devote my time at a critical point entirely to this book. I am likewise indebted to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for making me a Guggenheim Fellow for the second time, in 1985-6; and to the Rockefeller Foundation for a delightful and productive period of residence at their Study Center at Bellagio on Lake Como in the spring of 1986.

I wish to thank a number of colleagues both in Claremont and elsewhere who have read one or more of these chapters in draft form and have given me their comments, criticisms and suggestions: Rex Ambler, Paul Badham, John Cobb, Stephen Davis, Gavin D'Costa, Chester Gillis, Ariel Glucklich, David Griffin, Peter Heath, James Kellenberger, Gerard Loughlin, Edmund and Tova Meltzer, Dewi Phillips, William Rowe, Joseph Runzo, Norman Solomon, Richard Swinburne, John Vickers. They have saved me from a number of errors and have pointed out difficulties to which I had not been sufficiently alert. I am likewise grateful to a number of graduate students at Claremont who, in seminar discussions of draft chapters and in research assistant and secretarial capacities, have contributed to the development of the book: Dale Breitkreutz, Shawn Burn, Dennis Dirks, Alvin Ethington, Ken and Elizabeth Frank, Cheryl Fields, Gregory Garland, Matthew Hawk, Harold Hewitt, Nancy Howell, Laurie Huff, John Ishihara, Chris Ives, Karl Kime, Kyoung Kae Kim, Joseph Lynch, Melissa Norton, Maura O'Neill, Leena Pullinen, Thandeka, Paul Waldau, James Wallis, Wang Jang. Henry Sun on the ancient near-eastern material and Linda Tessier from a feminist perspective have been particularly helpful; as also has Earlyne Biering in the Religion Department office, in organising and enabling the processing of the numerous successive draft versions, Bruce Hanson in making the Bibilography and Lynn Isaak in

Preface XV

checking quotations. I should also like to thank Gary Chartier for help with proof-reading and Ellen Sun with the indices; Naomi Laredo for very helpful editing; and my wife, Hazel, for the background of happiness which is so conducive to productive work!

My hope is that this book will make it clear that a viable justification of religious belief, showing that it is rational to base our beliefs upon our experience, including religious experience, leads inevitably to the problems of religious pluralism; and that there are resources within the major world traditions themselves that can, when supported by important philosophical distinctions, point to a resolution of these problems. In so far as such a resolution proves acceptable within the different traditions it provides a basis for the mutual respect that is necessary for fruitful inter-faith dialogue and for practical collaboration in face of the common threats- of nuclear destruction, of North-South and East-West confrontations, of irreparable damage to the environment - that face the human family on this small and fragile planet.

John Hick Department of Religion

Claremont Graduate School Claremont, California 91711

June 1987