Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion

Transcription

1 Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion

2 Also by John Hick and published by Palgrave Macmillan BETWEEN FAITH AND DOUBT EVIL AND THE GOD OF LOVE THE NEW FRONTIER OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE 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) PROBLEMS OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM AN INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION THREE FAITHS ONE GOD (editor with Edmund Meltzer) GANDHI S SIGNIFICANCE FOR TODAY (editor with Lamont C. Hempel)

3 Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion John Hick

4 Selection and editorial matter John Hick, 2001, 2010 Section 2(i)(b) William Alston 2001 Section 2(iv)(c) George I. Mavrodes 2001 Foreword Perry Schmidt-Leukel 2010 For a note on the original publication of contributed material in this book, Please see the Acknowledgements on p. [xv] Reprint of the original edition 2010 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion 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, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act First published 2001 Reissue with new Preface and new Foreword 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

5 Contents Preface Preface to 2010 Reissue Foreword Acknowledgements vii viii xi xv Introduction: Climbing the Foothills of Understanding An Intellectual Autobiography 1 Part I In Dialogue with Contemporary Philosophers 1. The Epistemological Challenge of Religious Pluralism Responses and Discussion 2(i) William Alston 37 2(i)(a) Hick 38 2(i)(b) Alston 42 2(ii) Alvin Plantinga 52 2(ii)(a) Hick 56 2(iii) Peter van Inwagen 57 2(iii)(a) Hick 61 2(iv) George I. Mavrodes 62 2(iv)(a) Hick 69 2(iv)(b) Mavrodes Ineffability: A Response to William Rowe and Christopher Insole Religious Pluralism and the Divine: A Response to Paul Eddy Transcendence and Truth: A Response to D.Z. Phillips 95 Part II In Dialogue with Evangelicals 6. Religious Pluralism for Evangelicals 115 A response by Clark Pinnock 141 v

6 vi Contents Part III In Dialogue with Catholics 7. Cardinal Ratzinger on Religious Pluralism A Response to Cardinal Ratzinger The Latest Vatican Statement on Religious Pluralism The Possibility of Religious Pluralism: A Reply to Gavin D Costa 169 Part IV In Dialogue with Theologians 11. The Theological Challenge of Religious Pluralism Is Christianity the Only True Religion? Paul Knitter on the Person of Christ 202 A response by Knitter 208 Postscript 213 Index 215

7 Preface In recent years I have been engaged in dialogue, discussion, debate, argument with others on the question, How can we best understand the fact that there is not just one but a plurality of great world religions? All world religions claim to be paths to a supremely good fulfilment in relation to the ultimate transcendent reality. Are none of the religions such paths because there is no such reality and no such fulfilment; or only one s own; or several of them to some extent but not so fully as one s own; or are they all, so far as we can tell, equally such paths? This last is the pluralist view. But what can it mean and, in view of the obvious great differences between the religions, how can it possibly be the case? My project has been to investigate and advocate the pluralist position. And so this book collects journal articles and contributions to composite books, together with new material, in which I try to present it coherently, to persuade others of it and to meet counter-arguments. Because there are such different points of view and such intense debates between them, the book is argumentative. But it is worth adding that most of those with whom I have been arguing are also friends. For over the years, within the international philosophy of religion and theological communities, one comes to know and interact freely with the main contributors to the ongoing debate. This happens at conferences, in lengthy one-to-one discussions, in relaxed conversations over meals, in public debates, in and snail-mail exchanges; and out of all this we have usually come to respect one another and often to become friends. And this despite the fact that we still disagree philosophically or theologically as much as it is possible to disagree. So the book is dedicated to all those friends who are also foes many more than feature in this book some being of my own generation, others younger, including a number of my former students. For as a result of discussions with them I have considerably developed some of my positions, and some of them have likewise developed their positions in response to my own arguments. So let the dialogue continue! JOHN HICK vii

8 Preface to 2010 Reissue The book begins with a chapter of intellectual autobiography. This leads to the central theme of the book, running through all the sections, which is religious pluralism and its implications for Christian doctrine. Clearly, religious pluralism here does not simply refer, uncontroversially, to the fact that there is a plurality of religions but, controversially, to a particular theory to account for this. This is the theory developed and defended in my An Interpretation of Religion (1989, 2nd edn. 2004) and elsewhere. It starts from the fact that the quality of spiritual and moral life produced by the different major world faiths seems to be very much alike; no one stands out as superior to all the others. Christians in general, for example, are not better human beings than the rest of the human race. And likewise with the other religions. How is this to be accounted for? Not by the traditional claim of each religion to be the one and only true faith, superior to all others. For that does not fit the facts; and we have to fit our theories to the facts rather than the other way round. From a naturalistic, or materialist, point of view there is no problem: all religions alike are equally deluded. But from a religious point of view, I suggest that we can best explain the facts by postulating an ultimate transcendent Reality, whose nature is beyond the range of our human understanding transcategorial and which is being differently conceived and experienced from within the different ways of being human that are the great cultures of the earth. This accounts both for the innumerable and profound differences between the religions and also the fact that, so far as we can tell, they all produce fruits in life of equal value. What makes this controversial, so that both the evangelical Protestants and the Roman Catholics represented in this book object to it so strongly, is that it implies a winnowing out of the traditional Christian claim to unique superiority. Within the current dominant analytical school of philosophy, to which I also belong, many of the leading figures happen also to be either highly conservative or highly evangelical Protestant Christians. They are represented here by several distinguished philosophers. The late William Alston (he died in 2009) was conservative rather than evangelical. I knew him well as a good friend with whom I had much in viii

9 Preface to 2010 Reissue ix common, particularly our joint insistence that religious experience is the basic reason for religious belief. Indeed, he is on record as having said that he was set thinking along these lines by my first book, Faith and Knowledge (1st edn. 1957). His own major book on the subject is Perceiving God (1991), following numerous journal articles over the years, defending the rationality of trusting religious experience as genuinely cognitive of reality beyond us. However it had not occurred to Alston as a major problem until I pointed it out, that this principle must apply to religious experience within other religions as well as within Christianity. And this is where the debate reprinted in this book begins. Later others joined in, criticizing my own pluralistic hypothesis. Chief among them is Alvin Plantinga, the leading figure among the American Christian philosophers ; followed by George Mavrodes and Peter van Inwagen. The more moderate William Rowe later also joined in. This book then includes dialogue with the evangelical theologian Clark Pinnock, and then dialogue with Roman Catholics. In 1996 Cardinal Ratzinger, as he then was, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as Holy Inquisition), delivered a public speech in which he attacked religious pluralism, naming me as the chief offender, followed by my Catholic friend the American theologian Paul Knitter. The relevant parts of this speech and my own response to it are printed here. Although disagreeing fundamentally with Catholic orthodoxy, one cannot object to people believing it. We are all entitled to our beliefs, and should all respect others right to their own. But what I find very objectionable is the way in which the Vatican suppresses reasoned dissent and discussion. Many of the leading Catholic theologians have been disciplined by the Church for departing from strict orthodoxy. The case of Hans Küng is well known, and there are many others. Paul Knitter, whom I mentioned above, has had to retire early from Xavier University and is now teaching at the non-denominational Union Theological Seminary in New York. The latest instance is that of the distinguished Jesuit theologian Father Roger Haight, then a professor at Weston Jesuit School of Theology. In 1999 he published (in a Catholic press) a learned and original book, Jesus Symbol of God, which opens up Catholic theology to new ways of understanding Jesus, and also other religions, which can make Catholic doctrine more intelligible and more believable by the modern mind. Roger Haight wrote, for example, that one can no longer claim... Christianity as the superior religion, or Christ as the absolute center to which all other historical mediations are relative... It is impossible in

10 x Preface to 2010 Reissue postmodern culture to think... that one religion can claim the center into which all others are to be drawn (p. 333). But instead of welcoming the new discussion which the book stirs, the Vatican has suppressed it. In 2004 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, still presided over by Cardinal Ratzinger (shortly before be became Pope), decreed that Father Haight could no longer teach as a Catholic theologian. For his book contains serious doctrinal errors regarding certain fundamentals of faith... concerning the pre-existence of the Word, the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, the salvific value of the death of Jesus, the unicity and universality of the salvific mediation of Jesus and of the Church, and the resurrection of Jesus. Haight had in fact not so much denied these doctrines as reinterpreted them in a way which makes them intelligible and believable today. His suggestions ought to be freely discussed, possibly adopted, possibly improved, possibly rejected, but not simply suppressed as not worthy of serious discussion. The result for Father Haight has been that he has moved from the Catholic institution where he worked to the Union Theological Seminary, as a colleague of Paul Knitter. Finally, as an example of the rational discussion of such issues, the book includes a debate between Paul Knitter and myself on the significance of Jesus. This shows that it is possible for religious pluralists to differ among themselves without each denigrating the other.

11 Foreword We pay for the privilege of being right by running the risk of being wrong wrote John Hick in his first major work Faith and Knowledge (1957, p. 166; 1966, p. 122; followed by several reprints). This brief statement captures two of Hick s major concerns: first, his defence of a realist ontology, thus our faith, including religious faith, can be right or wrong. Second, his conviction that, at least as far as religious faith is concerned, we cannot know for sure, under preeschatological conditions, whether we are right or wrong. As Hick showed in his two successive studies Evil and the God of Love (1966) and Arguments for the Existence of God (1970): the universe is religiously ambiguous. We are neither able to establish the non-existence of God nor God s existence. In this situation the relevant philosophical question is whether it can nevertheless be reasonable to rely on God s existence in a realist sense, despite the fact that God may or may not exist. Hick s own answer to this question was, and still is, based on the credibility of experience. Although religious experience could ultimately be illusory, we are under no pressure to assume that this is the case. Those who do experience religiously are entitled to accept their experience as veridical, and those who don t, or only faintly, are rationally entitled to believe on the basis of the experience testified in their religious tradition. However, at this stage of the argument, Hick became aware of a major objection to this position. If one argues for the, in principle, reliability of religious experience: What are we to make of the immense variety of the forms of religious experience, giving rise as they do to apparently incompatible beliefs? (Arguments for the Existence of God, p. 117). Ever since Hick first addressed this objection in 1970 it captured his undivided attention and the effort to find a satisfactory solution engaged all of his extraordinary intellectual capacities. Moreover, with every new step that Hick took in carving out his solution, he reviewed and, when necessary, revised various previous aspects of his philosophical theology in order to maintain consistency. After a series of smaller works, Hick presented the matured form of his pluralist hypothesis in his opus magnum An Interpretation of Religion (1989). By then Hick had ceased talking of God. The various theistic concepts of God were now understood as being on a par with the range of impersonal concepts of transcendence. Both were seen as resulting from different, though xi

12 xii Foreword nevertheless equally valid experiences with an ultimate divine reality that Hick now called the Real. In his book The Metaphor of God Incarnate (1993), Hick pointed out the theological implications that his pluralist position has in relation to some of the central Christian theological beliefs about Jesus Christ, salvation or the Trinity. Hick s writings are always exceptionally clear. He never tried to hide any awkward consequences of his developed views behind obscure and unintelligible sentences. Thereby he made himself vulnerable, an opportunity that his opponents did not let pass by. Yet Hick not only invited these criticisms. His writings give ample evidence that he enjoyed the resultant dialogues and debates. This is certainly in line with the ethos of philosophy, although it is equally certain that not all philosophers display this virtue. Ever since the time of the Platonic Dialogues, dialogue had been regarded as a medium with a particularly strong affinity to philosophy not only in the West. Even in Greek inspired India one of the earliest treatises of Buddhist philosophy, the Milindapañha, was written as a series of dialogues between the Bactrian king Milinda (Menandros) and the Buddhist monk Nagasena. In the West Plato found many emulators: Cicero s dialogues as De oratore, De re publica etc., Justin s Dialogue with Trypho, Augustin s early writings like De ordine or Contra Academicos, Abelard s Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian, or David Hume s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion are just a very few examples of a long list of texts that employ dialogue as the most suitable form for developing philosophical arguments. The problem with the Platonic Dialogues and all its successors is of course that these dialogues are no dialogues at all. Dialogue is just instrumentalized as a rhetorical means to present philosophical monologues in a livelier and more entertaining wrapping. The best among those virtual dialogues are perhaps those which display signs of genuine dialogues or usually controversies that lie indeed behind the forwarded arguments and helped in shaping and sharpening them. Nevertheless, given the strong reputation of dialogue as the particularly adequate form of philosophizing, it is surprising to realize that all these dialogues are not real dialogues. Even the strongest among modern and postmodern eulogists of dialogue usually presented their views as rather monological tracts. If we ask for philosophical texts which provide samples of genuine dialogues, the list becomes considerably shorter. One example that springs to one s mind is Anselm s Proslogion. After Gaunilo had written his critique of Anselm s argument and Anselm his rebuttal of Gaunilo,

13 Foreword xiii Anselm ordered that both texts should be published together with the original Proslogion in future extended editions. Yet cases of publishing a philosophical or theological argument together with a critical response and a reply remained rare. Only in the second half of the twentieth century did the publication of real philosophical dialogues or controversies, in which both of the opponents were present in their own words and not merely through their representation in a fictitious dialogue composed by just one side become more common. John Hick published dialogues of both types. A good example of fictitious dialogues is his The Rainbow of Faiths (1995) staging John in dialogue with Phil, presenting the philosophical objections against John s views, and with Grace producing theological criticisms. Hick, however, took pains to give precise references for the publications of his philosophical and theological opponents where Phil s and Grace s arguments could be traced back to their real sources and their proponents in flesh and blood. His Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion, first published in 2001, is different. It contains genuine dialogues and thus a number of texts written by Hick s critics. It stands more in the tradition of Anselm s dialogue with Gaunilo than that of Plato. Real dialogues are much more difficult. In this regard it is worth looking at Hick s own Postscript where he admits the difficulty of even the most honest debates in these areas. But although he openly acknowledges pessimism as to the outcome he nevertheless speaks about further... dialogue as the only possibility. Why? His pessimism about the outcome of these dialogues in particular stems from the nature of the two differences addressed: the first between religious pluralism holding that no single religious tradition is superior to all the rest and religious absolutism holding the opposite, and the second between religious realism believing in the existence of transcendent reality as making an essential difference to the nature of the world and religious non-realism believing in the idea of transcendence as making an essential difference only to the way of living human lives. These differences are foundational and it would be hard to assume that any argument might be strong enough to convert somebody from one camp to the other. It may be that too many aspects of other than purely rational nature are part of the story. But if this is the source of Hick s pessimism why is he nevertheless dedicated to dialogue as the only possibility? The answer takes us back to the fundamental intuitions underlying Hick s work. Even when the opposites appear to be as fundamental or insurmountable, dialogue is not useless. First of all, it is a crucial tool in correcting

14 xiv Foreword mutual misunderstandings or, positively, in fostering better understanding. The better we see the other s position, the more we will be able to assess our own position in that light. If mutual objections result not from misunderstandings as they all too often do but from a penetrating grasp, they give us the opportunity to understand our own position better than we did before. This will enable us to amend, modify, develop or even change our views as a result of a true process of learning. Through dialogue we can, to a considerable extent, test our hypotheses. This makes dialogue so important to philosophers and philosophically minded theologians. A scientist can test her ideas against empirical experiments and, as Popper taught us, get closer to the truth by eliminating at least some errors. The philosopher/ theologian can test his ideas only against the objections produced in open, sympathetic and critical dialogue. Hick s final reliance on dialogue against all pessimistic under- or overtones results from his realism. It is the realist s confidence that there is a reality, which we can hope to understand at least to some extent, and that dialogue is an important means in making some progress along that way. To the realist, dialogue is not just an indispensable strategy of negotiating complex human relations and softening otherwise harsh power games; it is ultimately about truth. We pay for the privilege of being right by running the risk of being wrong. To the realist, open, critical dialogue carries the promise of minimizing the risk. This is the great tradition in which John Hick s Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion needs to be seen. Any reader who shares Hick s trust in dialogue as a means of knowledge and who shares his view that the debates about religious pluralism and religious realism are of crucial importance to our understanding of the world will, I expect, read the dialogues in this book with considerable gain for her own intellectual quest. PERRY SCHMIDT-LEUKEL

15 Acknowledgements I am grateful to the following publishers and authors for permission to reprint, or to publish for the first time, the material in this book: To the Macmillan Press Ltd of London and St. Martin s Press, Inc. of New York for Transcendence and Truth, which first appeared in D.Z. Phillips and Timothy Tessin (eds.), Religion without Transcendence? (1997), and Climbing the Foothills of Understanding, which first appeared in Jon R. Stone (ed.), The Craft of Religious Studies (1998). Religious Pluralism for Evangelicals first appeared as A Pluralist View, taken together with Clark Pinnock s Response, from Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World, edited by Dennis Ockholm and Timothy R. Phillips. 1995, 1996 by Dennis L. Ockholm, Timothy R. Phillips, John Hick, Clark H. Pinnock, Alister E. McGrath, R. Douglas Geivett and W. Gary Phillips. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. To Faith and Philosophy (Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers, USA) (July 1997) for The Epistemological Challenge of Religious Pluralism and the Responses by William Alston, Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen and George Mavrodes, and to William Alston and George Mavrodes for their further Responses, now published for the first time. To New Blackfriars (November 1997 and December 1998) for Response to Cardinal Ratzinger on Religious Pluralism and The Latest Vatican Statement on Religious Pluralism. To Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, for The Theological Challenge of Religious Pluralism by John. H. Hick. Reproduced from An Introduction to Christian Theology, edited by Roger Badham Roger Badham. Used by permission of Westminster John Knox Press. To Religious Studies, published by the Cambridge University Press, for Religious Pluralism and the Divine: a Response to Paul Eddy (December 1995), The Possibility of Religious Pluralism: a Reply to Gavin D Costa (June 1997) and Ineffability (March 2000). To Theology (September/October 1998) for Is Christianity the Only True Religion?. To Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, for Paul Knitter on the Person of Christ, which first appeared as Five Misgivings, in The Uniqueness of Jesus A Dialogue with Paul F. Knitter, edited by Leonard Swidler and Paul Mojzes (1997), and for part of Paul Knitter s Response to his critics. xv