3. John Hick’s Model of Religious Pluralism

Peter Byrne, a contemporary advocate of religious pluralism, states three propositions that are at the heart of religious pluralism:

Pluralism as a theoretical response to religious diversity can now be summarily defined by three propositions. (1) All major forms of religion are equal in respect of making common reference to a single, transcendent sacred reality. (2) All major forms of religion are likewise equal in respect of offering some means or other to human salvation. (3) All religious traditions are to be seen as containing revisable, limited accounts of the nature of the sacred: none is certain enough in its particular dogmatic formulations to provide the norm for interpreting the others.¹²

These points are foundational to the perspective of religious pluralism advanced by theologian and philosopher John Hick, perhaps the most influential religious pluralist today. Hick began his academic career in the 1950s as an able defender of Christian orthodoxy, but by the early 1980s, he had abandoned Christian theism for a thoroughgoing religious pluralism.¹³ Three claims are at the center of his model of religious pluralism: (1) there is a religious ultimate reality—what Hick calls “the Real”—to which the major religions are all legitimate responses; (2) the various religions are historically and culturally conditioned interpretations of this divine reality; and (3) salvation/enlightenment/liberation is to be understood as the moral transformation of people from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness, and it is occurring roughly to the same extent across the major religions. Accordingly, Hick claims that the religions can be regarded as culturally and historically conditioned human responses to

an ultimate ineffable Reality which is the source and ground of everything, and which is such that in so far as the religious traditions are in soteriological alignment with it they are contexts of salvation/liberation. These traditions involve different human conceptions of the Real, with correspondingly different forms of experience of the Real, and correspondingly different forms of life in response to the Real.¹⁴

The various religions, then, are to be accepted as, in principle, equally legitimate religious alternatives with choices among them being largely functions of individual preferences and socio-cultural influences. The religions “constitute different human responses to the ultimate transcendent reality to which they all, in their different ways, bear witness.”¹⁵

But if the religions all are responding to the same divine reality, why is there such bewildering diversity in the ways in which people understand this reality? Why is there not greater agreement among the religions? Hick accounts for diversity in belief and practice by appealing to historical and cultural factors. “[W]e always perceive the transcendent through the lens of a particular religious culture with its distinctive set of concepts, myths, historical exemplars and devotional or meditational techniques.”¹⁶ Although ultimately it is the same divine reality that is encountered in the religions, both the awareness of and response to this reality are shaped by contingent historical and cultural factors.

Now Hick is well aware of the fact that the religions do not all agree on the nature of the religious ultimate. Some religions regard the religious ultimate in personal categories, such as Yahweh in Judaism, or God the Holy Trinity in Christianity, or Allah in Islam, or as Shiva or Krishna in theistic forms of Hinduism. Other religions depict the religious ultimate in non-personal categories, such as Nirguna Brahman in Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, or Sunyata or Emptiness in Buddhism, or the Dao in Daoism. Hick refers to the former as the divine personae and the latter as the divine impersonae. He maintains that what is truly religiously ultimate—the Real—transcends both the personae and impersonae and thus cannot be characterized as either personal or nonpersonal. So the Real cannot be identified with Yahweh or the Holy Trinity or Sunyata or the Dao. These are merely penultimate symbols through which people in various religions understand and respond to what is actually ultimate, the Real. Out of a desire not to privilege either personal or nonpersonal ways of thinking about the religious ultimate, Hick insists that none of the characteristics of the personae or the impersonae can be attributed to the Real.

The distinction between the Real as it is in itself and as it is thought and experienced through our human religious concepts entails . . . that we cannot apply to the Real an sich [as it is in itself] the characteristics encountered in its personae and impersonae. Thus, it cannot be said to be one or many, person or thing, conscious or unconscious, purposive or non-purposive, substance or process, good or evil, loving or hating. None of the descriptive terms that apply within the realm of human experience can apply literally to the unexperienced reality that underlies that realm.¹⁷

Hick thus accepts a strong version of what is called the ineffability thesis, so that none of the terms and concepts that we ordinarily use in religious discourse can be applied to the Real.

Given the clear differences in conceptions of the religious ultimate in the religions, why should we postulate the Real as the common ground of the religions?

My reason to assume that the different world religions are referring, through their specific concepts of the Gods and Absolutes, to the same ultimate Reality is the striking similarity of the transformed human state described within the different traditions as saved, redeemed, enlightened, wise, awakened, liberated. This similarity strongly suggests a common source of salvific transformation.¹⁸

Understood as “the transformation from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness,” salvation is said to be evident in roughly the same degree in all the religions.

It may be that one [religion] facilitates human liberation/salvation more than the others, but if so this is not evident to human vision. So far as we can tell, they are equally productive of that transition from self to Reality which we see in the saints of all traditions.¹⁹

Although a pluralist, Hick stills identifies himself as a Christian, and thus he includes a place for Jesus in his model. Hick, however, clearly rejects the traditional, orthodox view of Jesus as fully God and fully man, the unique Incarnation of God. Rather, he adopts a metaphorical interpretation of the Incarnation and Jesus’ relation to God.

[Jesus] was so powerfully God conscious that his life vibrated, as it were, to the divine life; and as a result his hands could heal the sick, and the “poor in spirit” were kindled to new life in his presence. . . . Thus in Jesus’ presence, we should have felt that we are in the presence of God—not in the sense that the man Jesus literally is God, but in the sense that he was so totally conscious of God that we could catch something of that consciousness by spiritual contagion.²⁰

For Hick, then, the incarnation “is a mythological idea, a figure of speech, a piece of poetic imagery. It is a way of saying that Jesus is our living contact with the transcendent God. In his presence we find that we are brought into the presence of God.”²¹ On this view, could we not think in terms of multiple incarnations? Responding affirmatively, Hick says that, “it becomes entirely natural to say that all the great religious figures have in their different ways ‘incarnated’ the ideal of human life in response to the one divine Reality.”²²

Hick’s proposal is obviously a very different view of Jesus Christ and other religions than what the Church has affirmed throughout the centuries. But it easy to see the enormous attraction that religious pluralism has for many today. For with Hick’s pluralism, all the major religions can be embraced as more or less equally true and effective ways of relating to the divine. Religious disputes can be avoided, and there is no need for evangelism or conversion; Christians can simply cooperate with those from other religions in alleviating the many problems confronting humankind.

But the crucial issue here is not whether religious pluralism is attractive, but whether it is the best way to think about the relation among the religions. Despite its many attractive qualities, religious pluralism faces formidable problems. Before exploring the difficulties with pluralism, however, it will be helpful to consider further the concept of religion and religious beliefs.

4. Religions and Religious Beliefs

Although discussions of religious pluralism typically focus upon the “great religions”—by which is usually meant Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism—it is important to remember also the many other religious traditions that make up the religious mosaic of the world, both past and present. There are, for example, the religions of the ancient world, of the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, the Greeks and Romans, and the Aztecs and Incas. We must also include the many new religious movements of the modern world, some of which—such as Baha’i and Mormonism—have developed into world religions in their own right. There are also the many less clearly defined religious movements, such as “new age” spirituality, as well as modernized versions of ancient traditions, including Celtic Druidry or Maori religion.

While it is easy enough to identify examples of religions (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc.), it is much more difficult to come up with an acceptable definition of religion. Definitions tend to be either too broad, thus applying to things that we do not normally include as religious, or too narrow, excluding things that we do regard as religious. The difficulty here stems from the great diversity we find among religious traditions. Nevertheless, the following definition by Roger Schmidt and his colleagues is adequate for most purposes: “Religions are systems of meaning embodied in a pattern of life, a community of faith, and a worldview that articulate a view of the sacred and of what ultimately matters.”²³

Religions are multi-faceted phenomena and there is some overlap between the concepts of religion and culture. This is made clear in the very helpful suggestion by Ninian Smart that we think in terms of seven dimensions of religion.²⁴ These include the ritual, narrative, experiential, doctrinal, ethical, social, and material dimensions of religion. If we are to understand a particular religion such as Buddhism or Christianity, we must give due attention to all seven dimensions.

Religions, then, include much more than just beliefs or doctrines. Nevertheless, beliefs are central to religion. A religious community is expected to live in a certain way and to regard all of life from a particular perspective. A particular religious tradition can be thought of as expressing a distinctive worldview, or way of understanding reality, and adherents of that tradition are expected to embrace that worldview.

At the heart of each religious worldview are some basic beliefs about the nature of the cosmos, the religious ultimate, and the relation of humankind to this ultimate. Religious beliefs are significant, for as Smart observes, “The world religions owe some of their living power to their success in presenting a total picture of reality, through a coherent system of doctrines.”²⁵ Religious believers are expected to accept the teachings of their tradition and to pattern their lives in accordance with such beliefs. The worldviews of the various religions can be clarified by posing three basic questions to the religions: (1) What is the nature of the religious ultimate? (2) What is the nature of the human predicament? (3) What is the nature of and conditions for attaining salvation/liberation/enlightenment? We will consider briefly how Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam address these questions.