[Eng]John Hick: Rationality and Faith — Questions in Religious Pluralism, translated by Chen Zhiping and Wang Zhicheng, Sichuan People’s Publishing House2003January
pp. 15–16 P14
Religious language expresses our understanding of God in mythic patterns. That these patterns are human in character and culturally conditioned is a fact, and to some people this fact reveals the following possibility: in depicting divine reality, the different mythic systems of the major religious traditions are less in competition with one another than complementary to one another.
However, in such theological work there is a genuinely internal problem or tension. Religious life is practiced primarily on the basis of symbols and myths. The eternal Son of God descended into our human world, was born of a virgin, suffered a painful death on the cross to redeem our sins, and then ascended gloriously into heaven; this myth has a certain imaginative unity, as well as emotional and moral force, and for many centuries it has deeply influenced hundreds of millions of people. We can strip away the mythic outer garment and speak of Jesus as a man who opened himself fully to God, revealed the divine existence to human beings, brought God’s will into people’s lives, and thereby saved humankind, establishing in human history a new way of salvation, namely, becoming a disciple of Jesus through the mediation of the Bible and the Church. Such a non-mythic Christianity has the following advantages: it maintains continuity with Jesus’ own religious teaching and influence; it has historical reliability and authenticity; and it conforms to genuine religious pluralism. But on the other hand it also has its disadvantages: it does not truly need, and thereby does not affirm, magic and mystery, nor the vivid colors, warmth, and deep mystical resonance of Christmas and Easter, all of which are, for most Christians, highly imaginative and emotionally rich elements of their religious life. When Jesus was alive, or, to take a step back, when any saint among his disciples was alive, people directly perceived God and the divine will at work in the present, and thus had no need for a mythic framework to support their faith. But Christianity, as a continuous social entity that provides a framework of meaning for everyone’s life, does indeed need a mythic framework. Unless there is a new myth, the old myth will continue. At the same time, we are compelled to live within a certain tension; at times it is a painful tension, one from which a person can escape only by giving up one side or the other. One can renounce church life and the rituals, festivals, and hymns that shadow it everywhere, even though they express the traditional myth and in fact have become part of one’s own life; or one can renounce the obvious demands of reason and our universal awareness even of presence and activity, both of which transcend our own particular myth. But as for me, I am unwilling to give up either side; I would rather continue living in this tension, waiting for God’s grace and revelation. ////—This passage is very important. Here Hick succinctly states his Christology, and he also clearly articulates one of the greatest problems his religious pluralism will face. I happened to mention this problem just some days ago as well: namely, the abiding tension between the religion of philosophers and the religion of the masses, between rational religion and mystical religion, between pure religion and the religion of the “devil.”
pp. 28–29 P26
What Wittgenstein wants to emphasize, I think, is that the way we experience our environment depends on the conceptual system we employ, and this is handed down from generation to generation in our language according to what we think, say, and do. Hence, for what he sometimes calls language games. Or, as I prefer to call them, cultures, the mode of experience is relative. This helps explain what it means for religion to “be experienced as” something. Why there is not just one form, but many forms, which we call different religions. In a theistic tradition, if one assumes the concept of God—that is, the concept of a personal ultimate reality and mystery—and also assumes a way of spiritual practice, then he or she is very likely to experience life as living in the presence of the invisible God, to experience the world around one as God’s creation, and to experience moral demands as divine commands. Such a person may be a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, a Sikh, or a theistic Hindu. But if one assumes some very different concept of Brahman, or the concepts of dharma, emptiness, or the Dao—that is, the concept of ultimate reality and mystery as an impersonal ground or process of existence—and also assumes the way of spiritual practice in a non-theistic tradition, then such a religious person is very likely to experience life as a karmic process that ultimately leads to enlightenment and the cognition of reality. Such a person may be a non-dualist Hindu, a Theravada Buddhist, or a Mahayana Buddhist. Thus, if someone asks why Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus have such different perceptions of the embodied self, the reason is that they employ different sets of religious concepts, in accordance with which they can experience things in characteristically different ways. This, of course, is a neutral description of the situation. On the one hand, all these experiences may be wrong, merely different illusions projected onto the universe; on the other hand, every religion may be responding to an infinite divine reality that surpasses human concepts. And human beings are able to think about and experience this divine reality in these fascinatingly different ways. ////—This passage expresses Hick’s epistemological view of religion. Drawing on Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language (as well as Kantian agnosticism), he points out that human beings cannot directly know reality-in-itself; all experience of reality is mediated through different cultural, human conceptual frameworks. That is why people can respond to the same ultimate reality in radically different ways. This perspectival epistemology is something I also admire. Still, there are difficult questions here, especially when it comes to “reconciling” so-called theistic religions with non-theistic religions; no matter how one looks at it, it feels somewhat forced…
p. 40 P35
To the extent that a person is willing to accept and respond to God, so that God can work in or through that person, we can say that God’s redemptive activity is manifested in human life. This “paradox of grace”—which Saint Paul expressed when he said, “Yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10)—or the revelation of God’s Holy Spirit reached an astonishing degree in Jesus. However, this paradox or revelation is not confined to Jesus’ life. It can be manifested to different degrees in all those who freely respond to God. ////—This is the so-called “degree Christology” that Hick supports; to put it plainly, this claim is basically that “every believer is Christ to some degree.”
p. 41 P36
Philosophically speaking, pluralism is the view that the world’s major faiths embody, through several major cultural modes of human formation, different perceptions, concepts, and corresponding responses to the real or the ultimate; and within the world’s major faiths, there has clearly occurred a transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to reality-centeredness—indeed, from the standpoint of human observation, this has happened to nearly the same extent in each. Accordingly, the major religious traditions can be regarded as alternative soteriological “spaces” or “paths,” within which, or along which, everyone can attain salvation/liberation/enlightenment/perfection. ////—This really is bona fide pluralism, that is, not mere tolerance but a welcome of diversity—different religions are regarded as complementary to one another. But the problem is that the directions indicated by these different “paths” are often incompatible; the values and hopes they offer are frequently contradictory. How can we be sure that paths pointing in such different directions will ultimately arrive at the same destination?
p. 42 P37
The pluralist hypothesis is obtained inductively. We begin with the fact that many people’s experience of life is connected with an infinitely great transcendent reality—whether the direction of transcendence lies beyond our present existence or in the hidden depths within it.
p. 44 P39
The major religious traditions all affirm, in one way or another, the existence of an infinitely great and exalted reality beyond the social and natural world we human beings ordinarily experience. Our highest good is related to “it” or “him.” ////—This induction is questionable. But the line of thought that employs induction is highly original.
p. 51 P44
There are many themes that I have not had space to discuss in this chapter. I have spoken of the “major traditions of the world”; but what of the other, smaller traditions, including the many new religious movements emerging around us today? What of the enormous secular faiths of Marxism, Maoism, and humanism? What of them? Again, I have discussed salvation/liberation as the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to reality-centeredness; but what about this transformation in the social and political realms? Any complete philosophy of religious pluralism must answer these important questions. But I hope that what I have discussed in this chapter has been enough to foreshadow the rich fruits that this overall position may contain, and that Smith’s work has made a major contribution to this position. ////—Here my perspective again comes close to Hick’s: I too think it may be, and perhaps should be, possible to draw on the perspective of comparative religion to examine the relation of religion to various secular faiths (including science). But I have not yet seen Hick expand on this at any length elsewhere, nor do I yet know which “Smith” the legend refers to…
p. 56 P49 The major religious traditions of the world all affirm their own unique superiority in one way or another. Psychologically, this is very likely nothing more than a need for self-respect.
p. 123 P107
For human experience, to borrow Kant’s words, the world of phenomena is the world of essence. ////—Is this really Kant’s phrase…? The meaning is probably more or less right, but Kantian philosophy is after all not yet phenomenology, so there still seems to be some difference…
p. 124 P106
…If the ultimate divine reality can be known only in various imperfect, culturally limited ways, then on what basis do we claim that behind these different religious phenomena there is an unexperienced divine noumenon? The answer is that we posit the noumenon within the affirmation of a basic belief, namely, that religious experience itself is not our own illusory projection of imagination. Religious experience is caused not only by human factors; it is also the influence of transcendent reality upon human beings. This belief leads to a theory concerning the ultimate divine noumenon, which human beings regard as a series of divine phenomena. ////—This argument is good, but it seems that some religious claims leaning toward “rationalism” would hold that there is in the first place no such thing as “religious experience,” that God’s existence cannot be experienced at all but can only be inferred by pure reason. What then?
pp. 130–131 P111-112
The main idea confirmed by eschatological argument is this: the theistic conception of the universe and of the continuation of human life can be empirically confirmed. Though according to Christianity, the situation to be confirmed lies in the ultimate realization of the transcendent purpose God has established for us beyond this life. Before giving a more explicit account, allow me once again to repeat a parable I once used to illustrate this basic idea.
Two people are traveling together along a road. One believes that this road leads to the City of Heaven, while the other thinks it leads nowhere; but since there is only this one road, both must walk along it. Neither has ever traveled this road before, so neither can say what they will encounter at the next bend. During the journey, they experience both joy and comfort, as well as hardship and suffering. Of the two, one always believes that her journey is a pilgrimage to the City of Heaven, and therefore interprets the joys along the way as encouragement, while regarding the many hardships as a test of her will and a training in endurance. She believes that these difficulties and obstacles have been prepared by the Lord of the City of Heaven so that, when she finally arrives there, she will be a qualified citizen. The other absolutely does not believe any of this; he sees the journey as a pointless wandering that nonetheless cannot be avoided. Since he has no choice in the matter, he can only enjoy the pleasures and endure the pain. But in his view there is no City of Heaven to arrive at, nor was there ever any all-encompassing purpose planning the journey; there is only the road itself and the luck, dependent on weather, that one meets along the way.
The dispute between the two during the journey is not an experimental question. They do not have different expectations about the conditions they will encounter on the road, but rather about the destination. Yet when they turn the final corner, who is right and who is wrong will at last become clear. Thus, although their dispute cannot yet be resolved experimentally, it is a real question from the very beginning. They do not know whether they have different feelings about the road; for one person’s feelings correspond to the actual state of affairs, whereas the other’s do not. Their opposing interpretations of the journey constitute genuinely competing claims, even though such claims have a distinctive status, in that their standing still needs to be vindicated retrospectively by a future निर्णating event. ////—This parable is highly illuminating, and it can also serve as a metaphor for my own claim that religion provides hope.
p. 141 P119
…There are no atheists in heaven. If the theological view that all people will ultimately, without exception, attain full God-consciousness is correct, then the reason there are no atheists in heaven is that in the end there will be no atheists: every original atheist will become a theist on the way to heaven. On the other hand, if this universalist view is mistaken, then the reason there are no atheists in heaven is that so long as a person remains an atheist, he is not in heaven; for heaven is the final state of perfect communion between God and God’s creatures.
p. 146 P123
“Eternal life” is one of the basic requirements for establishing whether Christian theism is affirmed. ////—Indeed, merely emphasizing an ultimate reality that is the highest good is not enough to encompass the core tenets of Christianity. The core of Christianity includes at least two things: God and immortality, both of which Kant postulated. However, this creates trouble for Hick’s pluralism—speaking loosely, even if one can grudgingly say that Eastern religions also have experiences of “ultimate reality,” their views on “immortality” or “eternal life” are much harder to harmonize with Christianity. For example, Buddhism holds that all is suffering; one should not seek eternal life (eternal suffering), but precisely escape eternal life, break out of samsara, and return to nothingness (“emptiness”)—nirvana. Other Eastern religions likewise have no concept corresponding to the Christian heaven. Of course, if eternal life is understood as a pursuit of “eternity,” one can still interpret the various religions as ultimately converging by different routes, though (some forms of) Buddhism rather exceptionally takes eternal nothingness as the ultimate pursuit.
January 20, 2007, 10:26 p.m.
Latest comments
茗
2007-01-21 22:11:05 [回复]
Spoiler! Not HD!
I copied it by hand~ haha~
古
2007-01-21
22:42:02
[回复]
I’ve noticed that a rather large number of Hick’s works have been introduced here. In the series edited by He Guanghu of Sichuan People’s Publishing House, there are three books; in the series edited by Zhang Zhigang of the Renmin University of China Press, there are two; in Jiangsu People’s Publishing House’s “Selected Translations” series, there are two more; and if you add the earlier book *Religion Philosophy*, there are at least eight Chinese translations of Hick’s works. I currently have seven of them on hand (perhaps I have all eight). There isn’t much overlap in the content of these eight books, but taken as a whole they all revolve around pluralism. Any paper on Hick is inevitably a paper on pluralism; if you want to write only about his Christology, you still have to involve his pluralism.
茗
2007-01-24
20:19:44 [回复]
Ah! I also think Sound Christology is inseparable from his universalist bent~ Since Jesus is only openness to ultimate reality, then Christianity is no longer uniquely superior to the other religions~ That’s more or less the logic, right?
古
2007-01-24
20:54:07
[回复]
To discuss Hick’s Christology, one inevitably has to discuss Hick’s religious epistemology, as well as the issue of interpretation in religion (concerning philosophy of language). And Hick’s religious epistemology is precisely the epistemology of pluralism. So besides saying that Hick’s Christology is inseparable from his pluralist bent, it is even more inseparable from the philosophy of pluralism itself. For if pluralism were merely an emotional factor in his Christology, we could completely ignore that factor and offer an objective assessment of it; but since pluralism is the core of his theory, there is no way around it!
Also, “universal” and pluralism still seem to be very different; in fact, one might say they are fundamentally opposed. What pluralism most wants to oppose is precisely universalism. Hick hopes to establish a plural religion, not a universal religion, and this must be made clear.
古
2007-01-24
22:30:49
[回复]
If we say that Hick’s Christology is one of the foundations of his pluralism, then we could first set aside his pluralist studies and examine his Christology; but in fact the reverse seems to be the case—Hick’s Christology is based on the religious epistemology of his pluralism.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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