John Hick and the Universe of Faiths by Sinkinson Christopher;

Author:Sinkinson, Christopher;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Authentic Media
Published: 2016-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

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The Enlightenment Tradition

In this book we have traced the sources for Hick’s thought on religion. While he was shaped by his own experience of other faiths and concern with anti-Semitism in Birmingham there were already philosophical ideas that compelled him to reinterpret Christianity. The seeds for his pluralist philosophy were already taking root in his early work. Why should this matter in our understanding of Hick? Because his work represents, in the thought of a single theologian, the way Christian theological thought has developed over the past two centuries. By understanding the driving forces behind the development of Hick’s theology we can also see the motivation for wider shifts in contemporary theology.

We have traced two intellectual sources for Hick’s thought. The first was the tradition of scepticism, and the second the philosophy of Kant. These two sources are in fact both parts of a single trad­ition in western thought. Kant himself saw his work as a response to the scepticism of David Hume who had, famously, awoken him from his ‘dogmatic slumbers’. So Hume’s scepticism, and Kant’s Enlightenment response are really two parts of one western approach to religion.

Hick, as he himself protested, may not have been consciously appropriating so much of Kant’s work on religion. Certainly in his phil­osophy of knowledge, Hick distanced himself from many aspects of Kant’s work. But the striking similarities lead us to conclude that Kant’s theological thought naturally leads to something like Hick’s ethical pluralism. The reason why their thought is so similar is that they are both part of the major cultural movement of the West that we call modernism or Enlightenment thought. Once we place Hick’s philosophy of religion in this intellectual and cultural context we will be in a better position to demonstrate why its central claims should not be seen as compatible with orthodox Christianity. It is almost as if Hick’s own personal theological journey away from evangelicalism toward pluralism is a microcosm of the theological shift in western culture over the past three hundred years.

Breaking with Tradition

The Modern Age is often described as beginning with the work of the French thinker, Rene Descartes.1 His philosophical method turned away from the authority of tradition or revelation in favour of the authority of the thinking self. This methodological shift cannot be underplayed. There is no doubt that Descartes provided intellectual ideas that lay the ground for decisive change in the intellectual atmosphere of Western Europe. However, Descartes’ own work remained part of the late medieval world-view rather than truly breaking with the past. After all, his method still relied heavily on a proof for the existence of God as a foundation for philosophy and in many respects he remained a traditional Roman Catholic of the period. The real shift was yet to come.2

Kant does make a decisive break with the past. He calls others to join him in a new era of intellectual thought: ‘Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another.

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