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{{About|the philosopher and theologian|the UK member of parliament|John Hick (politician)|the English lawn bowler|John Hick (bowls)}}
Professor '''John Hick''' (born ]) is an important and influential ] and ]. In ], he has made major contributions to ], ], and ], while in the philosophy of religion he has had great influence on ] of religion and ].
{{Short description|English philosopher of religion and theologian}}
{{Lead too short|date=November 2023}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2014}}
{{Infobox philosopher
| region = ]
| era = ]
| name = John Hick
| image = John_Hick_philosopher.png
| birth_date = {{birth date|df=y|1922|01|20}}
| birth_place = ], ], ]
| death_date = {{Death date and age|df=y|2012|2|9|1922|1|20}}<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.johnhick.org.uk/jsite/|title=Home|website=www.johnhick.org.uk}}</ref>
| death_place = ], ], England<ref>, Birmingham Post, 23 February 2012.Leading Birmingham philosopher of religion John Hick dies at the age of 90</ref>
| school_tradition = ]
| main_interests = ], ]
| influences = <!--], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ] -->
| influenced =
| notable_ideas =
}}


'''John Harwood Hick''' (20 January 1922 – 9 February 2012) was an English-born ] and ] who taught in the United States for the larger part of his career. In ], he made contributions in the areas of ], ], and ], and in the philosophy of religion he contributed to the areas of ] of religion and ].<ref name=peters>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Peters |first=Richard |encyclopedia=Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology |title=John Hick: Man of Many Mysticisms }}</ref>
His various academic positions include Emeritus Danforth Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the ], California; Emeritus H.G. Wood Professor of Theology at the ]; and Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Arts and Social Sciences at the ]. He is also the Vice-President of the ], and Vice-President of ].


==Life==
Professor Hick has written hundreds of books and papers on his research subjects. His books have been translated, between them, into 16 other languages. He is probably the only philosopher of religion to have produced a landmark book in each decade of the second half of the 20th century (see "Major works," below), each of which prompted numerous spirited responses by other scholars.
John Hick was born on 20 January 1922 to a middle-class family in ], ], England. In his teens, he developed an interest in philosophy and religion, being encouraged by his uncle, who was an author and teacher at the ]. Hick initially went to ] in ] which is ], and then pursued a ] at the ], but, having converted to ], he decided to change his career and he enrolled at the ] in 1941.


During his studies, he became liable for ] in ], but, as a ] on moral grounds, he enrolled in the ].
Hick delivered the 1986-7 ] and in 1991 was awarded the prestigious ] for Religion.


After the war, he returned to Edinburgh and became attracted to the philosophy of ], and began to question his fundamentalism. In 1948 he completed his MA thesis, which formed the basis of his book ''Faith and Knowledge''.<ref name=peters/> He went on to complete a ] at ], ] in 1950<ref name="Profile">{{cite web|url=https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/philosophyofreligion/john-hick.aspx|title=John Hick|website=University of Birmingham|accessdate=1 July 2021}}</ref> and a ] from Edinburgh in 1975.<ref name=dict>'']''. Ed. Walter A. Elwell. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001.) 552.</ref> In 1977 he received an ] from the Faculty of Theology at ], ].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.uu.se/en/about-uu/traditions/prizes/honorary-doctorates/|title=Honorary doctorates - Uppsala University, Sweden|first=David|last=Naylor|website=www.uu.se|date=9 June 2023 }}</ref> In 1953 he married Joan Hazel Bowers, and the couple had four children. After many years as a member of the ], in October 2009 he was accepted into membership of the ] in Britain. He died in 2012.<ref name="Profile"/><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/religion-obituaries/9087324/Professor-John-Hick.html |title=Professor John Hick|work= The Telegraph|date= 16 February 2012}}</ref>
==Hick's Most Widely Known Ideas==
John Hick is best known today for his advocacy of ]. Previously a traditional ], he was pushed towards ] by the problem of reconciling God’s love with the facts of cultural and religious diversity, and also by his earlier work in the epistemology of religion, wherein he determined that religious knowledge is no different from the rest of human knowledge in respect of its being thoroughly perspectival.


==Career==
Hick aligns himself with those who maintain that religious belief is, in large part, a product of culture. Hick has taught that if Jesus truly was God incarnate, and if it is only by his death that humans can be saved, then one must conclude that it is only through Christian faith that anyone can be saved. This view accords with Christians of the exclusivist pursuasion, long the dominant position within Christendom, who argue that although other religions might contain truth, salvation is provided only in Jesus Christ. Hick protests that since much of the human race is raised in regions where the name of Jesus and the Christian gospel are not heard, it would then follow that the large majority of the human race remains unsaved. A second position, that of inclusivism, maintains that the core beliefs of Christianity are true, but argues for a more positive view of other religions. An inclusivist maintains that God has revealed Himself definitively in Jesus Christ and that Jesus is somehow central to God's provision of salvation for humankind; but inclusivism also allows that God's salvation is available through non-Christian religions, provided one is truly seeking truth and follows whatever light God gives. Neither of these positions is acceptable to Hick, since in either position, there will still be many who will remain unsaved, whether that is because of not hearing the gospel at all, or for resisting God's truth revealed in whatever form or manner. The Christ-centeredness of either of these positions is, for Hick, still too narrow a view to represent his perception of a God of love. Hick's solution is to hold out a third way: that of pluralism, rejecting the suggestion that Jesus is unique, or that the Christian faith is in any way superior to other religious traditions. Hick's response is to view religious truth as relative to cultures and to individuals. For him, different religions are appropriate, if culturally conditioned, responses to 'the Real'.
Hick's academic positions included Danforth Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the ], California (where he taught from 1979 to 1992); H.G. Wood Professor of Theology at the ]; and Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.theology.bham.ac.uk/emeritistaff/hick.htm |title=University of Birmingham |access-date=25 February 2008 |archive-date=4 May 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090504233008/http://www.theology.bham.ac.uk/emeritistaff/hick.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref>
While at the University of Birmingham Hick played important roles in a number of organisations centred on community relations. Non-Christian communities, mostly Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh, had begun to form in this central England community as immigration from the Caribbean Islands and Indian subcontinent increased. Due to the influx of peoples with different religious traditions, organizations focused on integrating the community became necessary. During his fifteen years at the University of Birmingham, Hick became a founder, as well as the first chair, for the group All Faiths for One Race (AFFOR); he served as a chair on the Religious and Cultural Panel, which was a division of the Birmingham Community Relations Committee; and he also chaired the coordinating committee for a 1944 conference convened under the new Education Act with the aim of creating a new syllabus for religious instruction in city schools.<ref>Hick, John. "A Pluralist View." ''More Than One Way? Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World''. Eds. Dennis L. Okholm and Timothy R. Phillips. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995. 27–59. Print.</ref>


It is not widely known that between 1970 and 1974, the early Hick championed a substantially different theory of religious pluralism based not on Kant but on the twentieth-century Indian mystic Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950).{{citation needed|date=June 2024}}
While Hick is a staunch defender of religious faith against atheism, his works are frequently attacked by Christian thinkers, including the current Pope, for his rejection of the traditional doctrine of Hell, and for his insistence that the doctrine of Jesus' being "God Incarnate" must be taken metaphorically and not literally.


He also held teaching positions at ], ], and ].<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080216032902/http://www.giffordlectures.org/Author.asp?AuthorID=219 |date=16 February 2008 }} – Biography – John Hick</ref> During his teaching stay at Princeton Seminary, Hick began to depart from his conservative religious standings as he began to question "whether belief in the Incarnation required one to believe in the literal historicity of the Virgin Birth".<ref>Hick, John. "A Pluralist View." "More Than One Way? Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World". Eds. Dennis L. Okholm and Timothy R. Phillips. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995. 27–59. Print.</ref> This questioning would open the door for further examination of his own Christology, which would contribute to Hick's understanding of religious pluralism. He was the Vice-President of ], and Vice-President of The World Congress of Faiths.<ref name="giffordlectures"> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080216032902/http://www.giffordlectures.org/Author.asp?AuthorID=219 |date=16 February 2008 }}: ''Gifford Lecture Series'' website. Retrieved on 5 March 2008.</ref>
==Major works==
===''Faith and Knowledge'', 1957===
Prior to the publiciation of this book, most theologians defined faith as an act of the will, wherein one chooses to believe in certain propositions despite lacking adequate proof of them. Hick calls this the "voluntarist" notion of faith, and against it he proposed an epistemological conception of faith. On Hick's construal, faith is a total interpreration (or reinterpretation) of one's ongoing experience. For example, Old Testament prophets experienced a painful war as the just retribution of God on their people for their past indulgences. Hick analyzes this along the lines of Kant's theory of distinguishing our individual perceptions from the "apperceiving" of certain overarching qualities, and of Wittgenstein's concept of all perception as an interpretive "Seeing-As". The prophet did not just decide one day to accept the idea that the war was divine retribution, but rather, he actually *experienced* it that way, as it was happening. Thus faith (regardless whether it be mistaken or not) is a cognitive act, rather than an act of the will. While many of Hick's peers have criticized his use of Kant and Wittgenstein in this book, most of them nonetheless have let go of a voluntarist conception of faith in favor of something that comes closer to Hick's conception (with a noteworthy exception being ]).
===''Evil and the God of Love'', 1966, rev. ed., 1978===
This is Hick's major work on ] (that is, an explanation of why God would allow there to be evil and suffering in the world). Its primary contribution is to distinguish an Irenaean theodicy from an Augustinian one and to argue strongly for the former over the latter. An Augustinian theodicy (the more widely adopted and familiar theodicy of ]) assigns blame for the human suffering to sin and holds such blame to be an adequate justification of God's allowing human suffering to persist. An Irenaean theodicy (first expounded by ]) sees the evil of humanity as foreseeable by an all-knowing God, who therefore could not have created the conditions for its possibility unless all evil would eventually be utilized for a larger good -- such as challenging persons in the course of their soul-making process to face the consequences of sin and thereby develop, over time, a more robust set of virtues. The upshot of the Irenaean theodicy is that God is not "off the hook" for human evil, but must find a way to use it as an instrument for good, within a process that ultimately will redeem all humanity. Thus, in drawing out the ramifications of the Irenaean theodicy, Hick is led to a form of universalism -- holding that in Christian faith and hope all humanity will ultimately be saved (1978, p. 345).


Hick delivered the 1986–87 ]<ref name="giffordlectures" /> and in 1991 was awarded the prestigious ] from the ] and the ] for Religion.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.zondervan.com/Cultures/en-US/Authors/Author.htm?ContributorID=HickJ&QueryStringSite |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130105141035/http://www.zondervan.com/Cultures/en-US/Authors/Author.htm?ContributorID=HickJ&QueryStringSite |url-status=dead |archive-date=5 January 2013 |title=Zondervan |access-date=25 February 2008 }}</ref>
]
This argument challenges the traditional notion of an everlasting Hell. Hick denies that such an notion can safely be ascribed to Jesus because of:
* New Testament ambiguity relating to eternity (αιωνιος) and uncertainty as to Aramaic resources for expressing the notion
* evidence of Jewish apocalyptic themes intruding into the Gospel tradition
* its inconsistency with the Jesus's broader message of God's sovereign love.
Instead, Hick appeals to a Biblical notion of sorrow, grace, and sanctification after death, akin to the Catholic teaching on purgatorial experience. (pp. 346-49)


Hick was twice the subject of ] proceedings. In 1961 or 1962, he was asked whether he took exception to anything in the ] and answered that several points were open to question. Because of this, some of the local ministers appealed against his reception into the presbytery. Their appeal was sustained by the Synod. A year later, a counter-appeal was sustained by the Judicial Committee of the General Assembly, and Hick became a member of the presbytery.{{citation needed|date=September 2016}}
Aside from evangelicals and Catholics, most leading theologians have not found a way to defeat Hick's argument, with the possible exception of one of Hick's own former students, Stephen Davis, who argues for Hell as simply a place for some souls to voluntarily separate themselves from God permanently. This kinder, gentler Hell might be able to cohere with Anselm's definition and thus escape Hick's criticism. Nonetheless, Davis agrees with Hick's motto that there can be "no theodicy without eschatology", meaning that the only way to reconcile an all-loving, all-powerful God with the existence of evil in our world is to suppose that a post-mortem paradise will redeem any evil and suffering we would have previously experienced.{{citation needed}}


==Hick's philosophy==
Note: this book is soon to be re-issued with a new preface by ] and ].
Robert Smid states that Hick is regularly cited as "one of the most – if not simply the most – significant philosopher of religion in the twentieth century".<ref name=smid/> ] once described him as "the greatest living philosopher of global religion."<ref>, Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Oxford</ref> He is best known for his advocacy of ],<ref name=peters/> which is radically different from the traditional Christian teachings that he held when he was younger.<ref name=dict/> Perhaps because of his heavy involvement with the inter-faith groups and his interaction with people of non-Christian faiths through those groups, Hick began to move toward a pluralistic outlook. He notes in both ''More Than One Way?'' and ''God and the Universe of Faiths'' that, as he came to know these people who belonged to non-Christian faiths, he saw in them the same values and moral actions that he recognized in fellow Christians. This observation led him to begin questioning how a completely loving God could possibly sentence non-Christians who clearly espouse values that are revered in Christianity to an eternity in hell. Hick then began to attempt to uncover the means by which all those devoted to a theistic religion might receive salvation.


Hick has notably been criticized by then-Cardinal ], later Pope between 2005 and 2013, when he was head of the ]. Ratzinger had examined the works of several theologians accused of ], such as ] and ], and found that many, if not all, were philosophically inspired by Hick. Therefore, the declaration '']'' was seen by many at the time as a condemnation of Hick's ideas and theories.
===''Death and Eternal Life'', 1976===
]
Since Hick had concluded in ''Evil and the God of Love'' (above) that there is no theodicy without eschatology, it is natural that his next major work would seek to prove that certain escatological requirements are satisfiable. This means that life after death, though not provable, is nonetheless a possibility that a rational person could accept. Hick's most famous arguments include his pointing out, against the Freudian idea that the afterlife originated as "wishful thinking," that historical records indicate to the contrary that the afterlife was dreaded by primitive man, and not thought of in positive terms until much later. Another bit of evidence presented by Hick is the finding by Soviet scientists, during their attempts to refute mediumship in the early 20th century, of such compelling cases that they had to resort to holding telepathy to be true, in order to construct an alternative explanation for the medium's ability to discover hard-to-guess facts concerning the deceased. While Hick found this and other examples to fall far short of proving the afterlife, he nonetheless concluded there was enough support to render the belief reasonable. Thus, the theodicy started in Hick's previous work was completed (in respect of its eschatological requirements) only with this volume.


===Kantian influences===
===''An Interpretation of Religion'', 1989, rev. ed., 2004===
Having begun his career as an evangelical, he moved towards pluralism as a way of reconciling God's love with the facts of cultural and religious diversity. He was primarily influenced by Immanuel Kant in this regard, who argued that human minds obscure actual reality in favor of comprehension (see ]). According to Richard Peters, for Hick, " construal of the relationship of the human mind to God...is much like the relationship that Kant supposed exists between the human mind and the world".<ref name=peters/>
]
Picking up again on his epistemological notion of faith as "Experiencing-As", Hick propounds the view that the various major religions of the world are all equally valid ways of experiencing the ultimate transcendent Reality in variant forms, be it God, the Tao, the Dharma-Kaya, etc. Often considered Hick's ''magnum opus'', this work became an instant classic in religious pluralism, and drew immediate criticism from those whom Hick calls inclusivists and exclusivists. The inclusivists believe that some other religions should be seen as partly included in the overall scheme of salvation that is more perfectly represented by their own religion; exclusivists believe that salvation (or liberation) cannot be had in any religious tradition besides their own.


Despite this, Hick was not strictly Kantian. Peters notes "the divide between the ']' and ']' realms (so far as nature is concerned) is not nearly so severe for Hick as it was for Kant".<ref name=peters/> Hick also declares that the ] is what he calls 'transcategorial', where one can experience God through categories, but God Himself obscures them by his very nature.
Hick argues that exclusivism is irreconcilable with an all-loving God who would have surely sent his message in some form, over the long course of past history, to all major cultures, each in its own manner and form. He then argues that inclusivism is a half-hearted move toward pluralism. Saying one's faith can partly include the truths of another is arbitrary, in that, if true, then it could just as well be said that the other faith partly includes the truths of one's own. Once one accepts inclusivism but acknowledges that, logically, any inclusivism must be bi-directional, then one has finally arrived at Hick's pluralist position, that multiple faiths are equally valid. This conclusion drew him the dubious distinction of being negatively criticized by (at the time) Cardinal Ratzinger, who is today the ] of the Roman Catholic Church. On the other hand, it was chiefly on the strength of this book that Hick was awarded the coveted ].


===Pluralism===
===''The Metaphor of God Incarnate'', 1993===
In light of his Kantian influences, Hick claims that knowledge of the Real (his generic term for Transcendent Reality) can only be known as it is being perceived. For that reason, absolute truth claims about God (to use Christian language) are really truth claims about perceptions of God; that is, claims about the phenomenal God and not the noumenal God. Furthermore, because all knowledge is rooted in experience, which is then perceived and interpreted into human categories of conception, cultural and historical contexts which inevitably influence human perception are necessarily components of knowledge of the Real. This means that knowledge of God and religious truth claims pertaining thereof are culturally and historically influenced; and for that reason should not be considered absolute. This is a significant aspect of Hick's argument against Christian ], which holds that although other religions might contain partial goodness and truth, ] is provided only in Jesus Christ, and the complete truth of God is contained only in Christianity.
A few years prior to this book, Hick had edited an anthology entitled ''The Myth of God Incarnate'', which included contributions from a wide variety of scholars, ranging from biblical exegetes and church historians to philosophers and theologians. The point of that book had been to dispel the notion that Jesus literally was God incarnate. The controversy that immediately erupted upon its publication went far beyond what the book's contributors had generally expected, and contributed in no small way to Hick's being excluded from joining the Presbytery of San Gabriel, California in the Presbyterian Church of the U.S., despite several of his fellow scholars (and Presbyterians) coming to his defense. Since the book had been an anthology to which Hick made just a partial contribution, his position was, when addressed by his critics, often oversimplified or confused with that of others. Therefore, it seems fitting that Hick would finally publish a book-length work of his own on the subject, to further develop and clarify his christology.


Perhaps the simplest manner in which to understand Hick's theory of pluralism of religions is to share the comparison he makes between his own understanding of religion and the Copernican view of the Solar System. Before ] disseminated his views of the solar-centred universe, the ] ruled in which the stars were painted in the sky, and the Sun rose and set around the Earth. In short, the rest of the universe existed for and was centred on Earth. On the other hand, Copernicus asserted that the Earth, and other planets as well, circled the Sun, which in fact, did not move, but only appeared to move due to the revolution of Earth. Copernicus introduced the understanding that other planets took similar paths around the Sun; while each path differed, all served the same purpose and generated the same result: every planet makes a full path around the Solar System's central star. Rotation of a planet about its axis creates day and night for that planet, just as day and night occur on Earth. Although the time frames for a full trip around the Sun and for a full day-night cycle differs on a planet-by-planet basis, the concept remains constant throughout the Solar System.
]

In ''The Methaphor of God Incarnate'', Hick argues that the idea of Jesus being unequivocally both God and man falls to several parallel objections: (1) on the face of it, humans and God have opposite characteristics (such as having the possibility of sinning vs. lacking that possibility) that in 2000 years, have not been shown to be reconcilable unequivocally; (2) meanwhile the idea that Jesus was literally God has been used to justify the alleged superiority of Christianity to all other faiths, which has only worsened the extent of religious conflict between people around the globe; (3) while non-Christian religions appear to have more or less the same efficacy in producing profound mystics and saints (consider the ] or ]) as Christianity does, Christianity has been associated with terrible crimes and indulgences. Therefore, it does not appear that Christianity exhibits the superior qualities which one would expect of having been the only faith founded by God in person; rather it seems more tenable that Christianity is, like all the other major faiths, a valuable yet fallible tradition, inspired by a profound mystic, prophet and saint (Jesus) who metaphorically was called the Son of God, and only later was elevated mistakenly from a metaphorical ] to a metaphysical ].
Similarly, Hick draws the metaphor that the Ptolemaic view of religion would be that Christianity is the only way to true salvation and knowledge of the one true God. Ptolemaic Christianity would assert that everything exists and all of history has played out in specific patterns for the glory of the Christian God, and that there is no other possible path that will lead to salvation. Hick appears as Copernicus, offering the belief that perhaps all theistic religions are focused toward the one true God and simply take different paths to achieve the same goal.<ref>Hick, John. ''God and the Universe of Faiths''. Oxford: OneWorld Publications Ltd., 1973</ref>

A speaker on religious pluralism, Keith E. Johnson, compares Hick's pluralistic theology to a ], one touching the leg, the second touching the trunk, the third feeling the elephant's side. Each man describes the elephant differently, and, although each is accurate, each is also convinced of their own correctness and the mistakenness of the other two.<ref>Johnson, Keith E. . Retrieved 25 April 2010.</ref>

Robert Smid states that Hick believes that the tenets of Christianity are "no longer feasible in the present age, and must be effectively 'lowered'".<ref name=smid>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Smid |first=Robert |encyclopedia=Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology |title=John Harwood Hick |url=http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/WeirdWildWeb/courses/mwt/dictionary/mwt_themes_875_hick.htm#John%20Harwood%20Hick |access-date= 27 February 2008 |year=1998 }}</ref>

Moreover, Mark Mann notes that Hick argues that there have been people throughout history "who have been exemplars of the Real".<ref name=mann>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Mann |first=Mark |encyclopedia=Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology |title=John Hick: Mann's Quick Notes |url=http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/WeirdWildWeb/courses/mwt/dictionary/mwt_themes_875_hick.htm#John%20Hick:%20Mann's%20Quick%20Notes |access-date= 27 February 2008 |year=1996–1997 }}</ref><ref>Here the author uses "Real" in the sense of how Hick defined it: "the referent of the world religion." See Smid, reference 2.</ref>

Hick's position is "not an exclusively Christian inclusivism ] and his ‘Anonymous Christian’], but a plurality of mutually inclusive inclusivism."<ref>John Hick, ''A Christian Theology of Religion'' (KY: Westminster John Knox press, 1995), 23.</ref> Hick contends that the diverse religious expressions (religions) are the result of diverse historically and culturally influenced responses to diverse perceptions of the Real. He states that "the different religious traditions, with their complex internal differentiations, have developed to meet the needs of the range of mentalities expressed in the different human cultures."<ref>John Hick, ''God Has Many Names'' (PA: Westminster Press, 1980), 21.</ref>

There have been many rebuttals to Hick's pluralism.<ref>Keith Ward, "Truth and the Diversity of Religions." Philip L. Quinn and Kevin Meeker, eds. The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Pluralism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 110.</ref>

===Hick's Christology===
In his ''God and the Universe of Faiths'' (1973), Hick attempts to pinpoint the essence of Christianity. He first cites the ] as being the basic Christian teaching, as it provides a practical way of living out the Christian faith. He says that "Christian essence is not to be found in beliefs about God...but in living as the disciples who in his name feed the hungry, heal the sick and create justice in the world."<ref>Hick, John. ''God and the Universe of Faiths''. Oxford: Oneworld Publications Ltd., 1973, pp.109–110</ref> However, all of the teachings, including the Sermon on the Mount, that form what Hick calls the essence of Christianity, flow directly from Jesus' ministry. In turn, this means that the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus form the permanent basis of the Christian tradition. Hick continues in this work to examine the manner in which the deification of Jesus took place in corporate Christianity following his crucifixion and questions whether or not Jesus actually thought of himself as the ] and the literal Son of God.

In several places (e.g. his contributions to '']'', and his book ''The Metaphor of God Incarnate'') Hick proposes a reinterpretation of traditional Christology—particularly the doctrine of the ]. Hick contends "that the historical Jesus of Nazareth did not teach or apparently believe that he was God, or God the Son, Second Person of a Holy Trinity, incarnate, or the son of God in a unique sense."<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170418193453/http://www.johnhick.org.uk/article16.html |date=18 April 2017 }}: A lecture in the annual October series on Radical Christian Faith at Carrs Lane United Reformed Church, Birmingham, 5 October 2006</ref> It is for that reason, and perhaps for the sake of religious pluralism and peace, Hick proposes a metaphorical approach to incarnation. That is, Jesus (for example) was not literally God in the flesh (incarnate), but was metaphorically speaking, the presence of God. "Jesus was so open to divine inspiration, so responsive to the divine spirit, so obedient to God's will, that God was able to act on earth in and through him. This, I (Hick) believe, is the true Christian doctrine of the incarnation."<ref>John Hick, "A Pluralist View" in ''Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World'' eds. Dennis Ockholm and Timothy Phillips (MI: Zondervan, 1995), p.58.</ref> Hick believes that a metaphorical view of the incarnation avoids the need for faulty Christian paradoxes such as the duality of Christ (fully God and fully human) and even the ] (God is simultaneously one and three).

<blockquote>Neither the intense christological debates of the centuries leading up to the Council of Chalcedon, nor the renewed christological debates of the 19th and 20th Centuries, have succeeded in squaring the circle by making intelligible the claim that one who was genuinely and unambiguously a man was also genuinely and unambiguously God.<ref> from N. F. Gier, ''God, Reason, and the Evangelicals'' (University Press of America, 1987), chapter 3.</ref></blockquote>

==Problem of evil==
Hick has identified with a branch of theodicy that he calls "]" or the "Soul-Making Defense".<ref>Stephen T. Davis, ed. ''Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy'' (KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 38–72.</ref> A simplification of this view states that suffering exists as a means of spiritual development. In other words, God allows suffering so that human souls might grow or develop towards maturation. For Hick, God is ultimately responsible for pain and suffering, but such things are not truly bad. Perhaps with a greater degree of perception, one can see that the "evil" we experience through suffering is not ultimately evil but good, as such is used to "make our souls" better.

Therefore, Hick sees the evils of pain and suffering as serving God's good purpose of bringing "imperfect and immature" humanity to itself "in uncompelled faith and love."<ref>John Hick, "D. Z. Phillips on God and Evil," ''Religious Studies '', Vol. 43, No. 2, posted on http://www.johnhick.org.uk/article18.html (accessed 3 September 2012).</ref> At the same time, Hick acknowledges that this process often fails in our world.<ref>John Hick, ''Evil and the God of Love '', (Palgrave Macmillan, 2nd edition 1977, 2010 reissue), 325, 336.</ref> However, in the after-life, Hick asserts that "God will eventually succeed in His purpose of winning all men to Himself."<ref>John Hick, ''Evil and the God of Love '', Palgrave Macmillan, (2nd edition), 1977, p.342.</ref>

The discussion of evil in Hick has been challenged by a number of theologians and moral philosophers including ] and ]. Using Hick's own words, Roth has stated, "Hick's theodicy is implausible to me because I am convinced that his claims about God's goodness cannot stand the onslaught of what he calls the principal threat to his own perspective: 'the sheer amount and intensity of both moral and natural evil.'"<ref>Roth, John. ''Encountering Evil'', p. 61.</ref> In the book ''Encountering Evil'', Stephen Davis has stated his four criticisms of Hick, "First, while no theodicy is free of difficulties, I believe Hick's is not entirely convincing in its handling of the amount of evil that exists in the world... Second, I am dubious about Hick's hope of a gradual spiritual evolution till human beings reach a full state of God-consciousness... Third, I believe Hick also faces what I call the 'cost-effective' criticism of the free will defense... My final and most serious criticism of Hick concerns his commitment to universalism."<ref>''Encountering Evil'', p. 58-59.</ref>

==Major works==
For a list of his books see the referenced footnote.<ref name=inprint>{{cite web |url=http://www.johnhick.org.uk/jsite/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=71&Itemid=54 |title=John Hick's books in print |access-date=21 February 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120321150208/http://www.johnhick.org.uk/jsite/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=71&Itemid=54 |archive-date=21 March 2012 |df=dmy-all }}</ref>
*''Faith and Knowledge'', (1st ed. 1957, 2nd ed. 1966)
*''The Existence of God'', (ed.) (1st ed. 1964), ]
*''Evil and the God of Love'', (1966, 1985, reissued 2007)
*''The Many Faced Argument'' with ] (1967, 2009).
*''Philosophy of Religion'' (1970, 4th ed. 1990)
*''Death and the Eternal Life'' (1st ed. 1976);
*(Editor) '']'' (1977)
*(Editor with ]) ''The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions'' (1987)<ref name="Carmody2014">{{cite journal|last1=Carmody|first1=John|title=Review of ''The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions''. Edited by John Hick and Paul F. Knitter|journal=Horizons|volume=16|issue=1|year=2014|pages=176|issn=0360-9669|doi=10.1017/S0360966900040226|s2cid=171124334 }}</ref>
*''A Christian Theology of Religions'' (1995)
*''An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent'' (1989, reissued 2004)
*''The Metaphor of God Incarnate'' (1993, 2nd ed. 2005)
*''The New Frontier of Religion and Science: Religious Experience, Neuroscience and the Transcendent'' (2006)


==See also==
==Additional Selected Works==
*]
*''Philosophy of Religion'', 1963
*]
*''Arguments for the Existence of God'', 1970
*''God and the Universe of Faiths'',1973
*''God Has Many Names'', 1980
*''The Rainbow of Faiths'',1995
*''John Hick: An Autobiography, 2003
*''The Fifth Dimension: An Exploration of the Spiritual Realm'', 2004
*''The New Frontier of Religion and Science, , Nov 2006


==Footnotes and references==
Additional Biographical Source: John Hick. "Climbing the Foothills of Understanding." Pp. 76-97 in The Craft of Religious Studies, edited by ]. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
{{Reflist|30em}}


==External links==
Some of John Hick's recent articles and talks are downloadable from his .
*
* Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
* {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120206220545/http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/philosophyofreligion/index.aspx |date=6 February 2012 }}


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Latest revision as of 22:52, 22 November 2024

This article is about the philosopher and theologian. For the UK member of parliament, see John Hick (politician). For the English lawn bowler, see John Hick (bowls). English philosopher of religion and theologian
This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. (November 2023)

John Hick
Born(1922-01-20)20 January 1922
Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire, England
Died9 February 2012(2012-02-09) (aged 90)
Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
Era20th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolAnalytic philosophy
Main interestsPhilosophy of religion, theology

John Harwood Hick (20 January 1922 – 9 February 2012) was an English-born philosopher of religion and theologian who taught in the United States for the larger part of his career. In philosophical theology, he made contributions in the areas of theodicy, eschatology, and Christology, and in the philosophy of religion he contributed to the areas of epistemology of religion and religious pluralism.

Life

John Hick was born on 20 January 1922 to a middle-class family in Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire, England. In his teens, he developed an interest in philosophy and religion, being encouraged by his uncle, who was an author and teacher at the University of Manchester. Hick initially went to Bootham School in York which is Quaker, and then pursued a law degree at the University of Hull, but, having converted to Evangelical Christianity, he decided to change his career and he enrolled at the University of Edinburgh in 1941.

During his studies, he became liable for military service in World War II, but, as a conscientious objector on moral grounds, he enrolled in the Friends' Ambulance Unit.

After the war, he returned to Edinburgh and became attracted to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and began to question his fundamentalism. In 1948 he completed his MA thesis, which formed the basis of his book Faith and Knowledge. He went on to complete a D. Phil at Oriel College, Oxford University in 1950 and a DLitt from Edinburgh in 1975. In 1977 he received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Theology at Uppsala University, Sweden. In 1953 he married Joan Hazel Bowers, and the couple had four children. After many years as a member of the United Reformed Church, in October 2009 he was accepted into membership of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain. He died in 2012.

Career

Hick's academic positions included Danforth Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the Claremont Graduate University, California (where he taught from 1979 to 1992); H.G. Wood Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham; and Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham. While at the University of Birmingham Hick played important roles in a number of organisations centred on community relations. Non-Christian communities, mostly Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh, had begun to form in this central England community as immigration from the Caribbean Islands and Indian subcontinent increased. Due to the influx of peoples with different religious traditions, organizations focused on integrating the community became necessary. During his fifteen years at the University of Birmingham, Hick became a founder, as well as the first chair, for the group All Faiths for One Race (AFFOR); he served as a chair on the Religious and Cultural Panel, which was a division of the Birmingham Community Relations Committee; and he also chaired the coordinating committee for a 1944 conference convened under the new Education Act with the aim of creating a new syllabus for religious instruction in city schools.

It is not widely known that between 1970 and 1974, the early Hick championed a substantially different theory of religious pluralism based not on Kant but on the twentieth-century Indian mystic Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950).

He also held teaching positions at Cornell University, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Cambridge University. During his teaching stay at Princeton Seminary, Hick began to depart from his conservative religious standings as he began to question "whether belief in the Incarnation required one to believe in the literal historicity of the Virgin Birth". This questioning would open the door for further examination of his own Christology, which would contribute to Hick's understanding of religious pluralism. He was the Vice-President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion, and Vice-President of The World Congress of Faiths.

Hick delivered the 1986–87 Gifford lectures and in 1991 was awarded the prestigious Grawemeyer Award from the University of Louisville and the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary for Religion.

Hick was twice the subject of heresy proceedings. In 1961 or 1962, he was asked whether he took exception to anything in the Westminster Confession of 1647 and answered that several points were open to question. Because of this, some of the local ministers appealed against his reception into the presbytery. Their appeal was sustained by the Synod. A year later, a counter-appeal was sustained by the Judicial Committee of the General Assembly, and Hick became a member of the presbytery.

Hick's philosophy

Robert Smid states that Hick is regularly cited as "one of the most – if not simply the most – significant philosopher of religion in the twentieth century". Keith Ward once described him as "the greatest living philosopher of global religion." He is best known for his advocacy of religious pluralism, which is radically different from the traditional Christian teachings that he held when he was younger. Perhaps because of his heavy involvement with the inter-faith groups and his interaction with people of non-Christian faiths through those groups, Hick began to move toward a pluralistic outlook. He notes in both More Than One Way? and God and the Universe of Faiths that, as he came to know these people who belonged to non-Christian faiths, he saw in them the same values and moral actions that he recognized in fellow Christians. This observation led him to begin questioning how a completely loving God could possibly sentence non-Christians who clearly espouse values that are revered in Christianity to an eternity in hell. Hick then began to attempt to uncover the means by which all those devoted to a theistic religion might receive salvation.

Hick has notably been criticized by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope between 2005 and 2013, when he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Ratzinger had examined the works of several theologians accused of relativism, such as Jacques Dupuis and Roger Haight, and found that many, if not all, were philosophically inspired by Hick. Therefore, the declaration Dominus Iesus was seen by many at the time as a condemnation of Hick's ideas and theories.

Kantian influences

Having begun his career as an evangelical, he moved towards pluralism as a way of reconciling God's love with the facts of cultural and religious diversity. He was primarily influenced by Immanuel Kant in this regard, who argued that human minds obscure actual reality in favor of comprehension (see Kant's theory of perception). According to Richard Peters, for Hick, " construal of the relationship of the human mind to God...is much like the relationship that Kant supposed exists between the human mind and the world".

Despite this, Hick was not strictly Kantian. Peters notes "the divide between the 'noumenal' and 'phenomenal' realms (so far as nature is concerned) is not nearly so severe for Hick as it was for Kant". Hick also declares that the Divine Being is what he calls 'transcategorial', where one can experience God through categories, but God Himself obscures them by his very nature.

Pluralism

In light of his Kantian influences, Hick claims that knowledge of the Real (his generic term for Transcendent Reality) can only be known as it is being perceived. For that reason, absolute truth claims about God (to use Christian language) are really truth claims about perceptions of God; that is, claims about the phenomenal God and not the noumenal God. Furthermore, because all knowledge is rooted in experience, which is then perceived and interpreted into human categories of conception, cultural and historical contexts which inevitably influence human perception are necessarily components of knowledge of the Real. This means that knowledge of God and religious truth claims pertaining thereof are culturally and historically influenced; and for that reason should not be considered absolute. This is a significant aspect of Hick's argument against Christian exclusivism, which holds that although other religions might contain partial goodness and truth, salvation is provided only in Jesus Christ, and the complete truth of God is contained only in Christianity.

Perhaps the simplest manner in which to understand Hick's theory of pluralism of religions is to share the comparison he makes between his own understanding of religion and the Copernican view of the Solar System. Before Copernicus disseminated his views of the solar-centred universe, the Ptolemaic system ruled in which the stars were painted in the sky, and the Sun rose and set around the Earth. In short, the rest of the universe existed for and was centred on Earth. On the other hand, Copernicus asserted that the Earth, and other planets as well, circled the Sun, which in fact, did not move, but only appeared to move due to the revolution of Earth. Copernicus introduced the understanding that other planets took similar paths around the Sun; while each path differed, all served the same purpose and generated the same result: every planet makes a full path around the Solar System's central star. Rotation of a planet about its axis creates day and night for that planet, just as day and night occur on Earth. Although the time frames for a full trip around the Sun and for a full day-night cycle differs on a planet-by-planet basis, the concept remains constant throughout the Solar System.

Similarly, Hick draws the metaphor that the Ptolemaic view of religion would be that Christianity is the only way to true salvation and knowledge of the one true God. Ptolemaic Christianity would assert that everything exists and all of history has played out in specific patterns for the glory of the Christian God, and that there is no other possible path that will lead to salvation. Hick appears as Copernicus, offering the belief that perhaps all theistic religions are focused toward the one true God and simply take different paths to achieve the same goal.

A speaker on religious pluralism, Keith E. Johnson, compares Hick's pluralistic theology to a tale of three blind men attempting to describe an elephant, one touching the leg, the second touching the trunk, the third feeling the elephant's side. Each man describes the elephant differently, and, although each is accurate, each is also convinced of their own correctness and the mistakenness of the other two.

Robert Smid states that Hick believes that the tenets of Christianity are "no longer feasible in the present age, and must be effectively 'lowered'".

Moreover, Mark Mann notes that Hick argues that there have been people throughout history "who have been exemplars of the Real".

Hick's position is "not an exclusively Christian inclusivism , but a plurality of mutually inclusive inclusivism." Hick contends that the diverse religious expressions (religions) are the result of diverse historically and culturally influenced responses to diverse perceptions of the Real. He states that "the different religious traditions, with their complex internal differentiations, have developed to meet the needs of the range of mentalities expressed in the different human cultures."

There have been many rebuttals to Hick's pluralism.

Hick's Christology

In his God and the Universe of Faiths (1973), Hick attempts to pinpoint the essence of Christianity. He first cites the Sermon on the Mount as being the basic Christian teaching, as it provides a practical way of living out the Christian faith. He says that "Christian essence is not to be found in beliefs about God...but in living as the disciples who in his name feed the hungry, heal the sick and create justice in the world." However, all of the teachings, including the Sermon on the Mount, that form what Hick calls the essence of Christianity, flow directly from Jesus' ministry. In turn, this means that the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus form the permanent basis of the Christian tradition. Hick continues in this work to examine the manner in which the deification of Jesus took place in corporate Christianity following his crucifixion and questions whether or not Jesus actually thought of himself as the Messiah and the literal Son of God.

In several places (e.g. his contributions to The Myth of God Incarnate, and his book The Metaphor of God Incarnate) Hick proposes a reinterpretation of traditional Christology—particularly the doctrine of the Incarnation. Hick contends "that the historical Jesus of Nazareth did not teach or apparently believe that he was God, or God the Son, Second Person of a Holy Trinity, incarnate, or the son of God in a unique sense." It is for that reason, and perhaps for the sake of religious pluralism and peace, Hick proposes a metaphorical approach to incarnation. That is, Jesus (for example) was not literally God in the flesh (incarnate), but was metaphorically speaking, the presence of God. "Jesus was so open to divine inspiration, so responsive to the divine spirit, so obedient to God's will, that God was able to act on earth in and through him. This, I (Hick) believe, is the true Christian doctrine of the incarnation." Hick believes that a metaphorical view of the incarnation avoids the need for faulty Christian paradoxes such as the duality of Christ (fully God and fully human) and even the Trinity (God is simultaneously one and three).

Neither the intense christological debates of the centuries leading up to the Council of Chalcedon, nor the renewed christological debates of the 19th and 20th Centuries, have succeeded in squaring the circle by making intelligible the claim that one who was genuinely and unambiguously a man was also genuinely and unambiguously God.

Problem of evil

Hick has identified with a branch of theodicy that he calls "Irenaean theodicy" or the "Soul-Making Defense". A simplification of this view states that suffering exists as a means of spiritual development. In other words, God allows suffering so that human souls might grow or develop towards maturation. For Hick, God is ultimately responsible for pain and suffering, but such things are not truly bad. Perhaps with a greater degree of perception, one can see that the "evil" we experience through suffering is not ultimately evil but good, as such is used to "make our souls" better.

Therefore, Hick sees the evils of pain and suffering as serving God's good purpose of bringing "imperfect and immature" humanity to itself "in uncompelled faith and love." At the same time, Hick acknowledges that this process often fails in our world. However, in the after-life, Hick asserts that "God will eventually succeed in His purpose of winning all men to Himself."

The discussion of evil in Hick has been challenged by a number of theologians and moral philosophers including David Griffin and John K. Roth. Using Hick's own words, Roth has stated, "Hick's theodicy is implausible to me because I am convinced that his claims about God's goodness cannot stand the onslaught of what he calls the principal threat to his own perspective: 'the sheer amount and intensity of both moral and natural evil.'" In the book Encountering Evil, Stephen Davis has stated his four criticisms of Hick, "First, while no theodicy is free of difficulties, I believe Hick's is not entirely convincing in its handling of the amount of evil that exists in the world... Second, I am dubious about Hick's hope of a gradual spiritual evolution till human beings reach a full state of God-consciousness... Third, I believe Hick also faces what I call the 'cost-effective' criticism of the free will defense... My final and most serious criticism of Hick concerns his commitment to universalism."

Major works

For a list of his books see the referenced footnote.

  • Faith and Knowledge, (1st ed. 1957, 2nd ed. 1966)
  • The Existence of God, (ed.) (1st ed. 1964), Macmillan
  • Evil and the God of Love, (1966, 1985, reissued 2007)
  • The Many Faced Argument with Arthur C. McGill (1967, 2009).
  • Philosophy of Religion (1970, 4th ed. 1990)
  • Death and the Eternal Life (1st ed. 1976); 1994 pbk edition
  • (Editor) The Myth of God Incarnate (1977)
  • (Editor with Paul F. Knitter) The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (1987) 2005 pbk edition
  • A Christian Theology of Religions (1995)
  • An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (1989, reissued 2004)
  • The Metaphor of God Incarnate (1993, 2nd ed. 2005)
  • The New Frontier of Religion and Science: Religious Experience, Neuroscience and the Transcendent (2006)

See also

Footnotes and references

  1. "Home". www.johnhick.org.uk.
  2. , Birmingham Post, 23 February 2012.Leading Birmingham philosopher of religion John Hick dies at the age of 90
  3. ^ Peters, Richard. "John Hick: Man of Many Mysticisms". Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology.
  4. ^ "John Hick". University of Birmingham. Retrieved 1 July 2021.
  5. ^ Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Ed. Walter A. Elwell. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001.) 552.
  6. Naylor, David (9 June 2023). "Honorary doctorates - Uppsala University, Sweden". www.uu.se.
  7. "Professor John Hick". The Telegraph. 16 February 2012.
  8. "University of Birmingham". Archived from the original on 4 May 2009. Retrieved 25 February 2008.
  9. Hick, John. "A Pluralist View." More Than One Way? Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World. Eds. Dennis L. Okholm and Timothy R. Phillips. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995. 27–59. Print.
  10. Gifford Lecture Series Archived 16 February 2008 at the Wayback Machine – Biography – John Hick
  11. Hick, John. "A Pluralist View." "More Than One Way? Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World". Eds. Dennis L. Okholm and Timothy R. Phillips. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995. 27–59. Print.
  12. ^ Full name, year of birth and other biography Archived 16 February 2008 at the Wayback Machine: Gifford Lecture Series website. Retrieved on 5 March 2008.
  13. "Zondervan". Archived from the original on 5 January 2013. Retrieved 25 February 2008.
  14. ^ Smid, Robert (1998). "John Harwood Hick". Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology. Retrieved 27 February 2008.
  15. Keith Ward, Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Oxford
  16. Hick, John. God and the Universe of Faiths. Oxford: OneWorld Publications Ltd., 1973
  17. Johnson, Keith E. "John Hick's Pluralistic Hypothesis and the Problem of Conflicting Truth-Claims". Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  18. Mann, Mark (1996–1997). "John Hick: Mann's Quick Notes". Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology. Retrieved 27 February 2008.
  19. Here the author uses "Real" in the sense of how Hick defined it: "the referent of the world religion." See Smid, reference 2.
  20. John Hick, A Christian Theology of Religion (KY: Westminster John Knox press, 1995), 23.
  21. John Hick, God Has Many Names (PA: Westminster Press, 1980), 21.
  22. Keith Ward, "Truth and the Diversity of Religions." Philip L. Quinn and Kevin Meeker, eds. The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Pluralism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 110.
  23. Hick, John. God and the Universe of Faiths. Oxford: Oneworld Publications Ltd., 1973, pp.109–110
  24. Believable Christianity Archived 18 April 2017 at the Wayback Machine: A lecture in the annual October series on Radical Christian Faith at Carrs Lane United Reformed Church, Birmingham, 5 October 2006
  25. John Hick, "A Pluralist View" in Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World eds. Dennis Ockholm and Timothy Phillips (MI: Zondervan, 1995), p.58.
  26. "The Myth of God Incarnate" from N. F. Gier, God, Reason, and the Evangelicals (University Press of America, 1987), chapter 3.
  27. Stephen T. Davis, ed. Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy (KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 38–72.
  28. John Hick, "D. Z. Phillips on God and Evil," Religious Studies , Vol. 43, No. 2, posted on http://www.johnhick.org.uk/article18.html (accessed 3 September 2012).
  29. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love , (Palgrave Macmillan, 2nd edition 1977, 2010 reissue), 325, 336.
  30. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love , Palgrave Macmillan, (2nd edition), 1977, p.342.
  31. Roth, John. Encountering Evil, p. 61.
  32. Encountering Evil, p. 58-59.
  33. "John Hick's books in print". Archived from the original on 21 March 2012. Retrieved 21 February 2012.
  34. Carmody, John (2014). "Review of The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions. Edited by John Hick and Paul F. Knitter". Horizons. 16 (1): 176. doi:10.1017/S0360966900040226. ISSN 0360-9669. S2CID 171124334.

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