Theology Today - Vol 46, No. 4 - January 1990 - BOOK REVIEW - An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent

461 - An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent

An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent
By John Hick
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1989, 412 pp. $35.00.

This important contribution to the theory of religion crowns John Hick's long and distinguished career as one of the most influential philosophers of religion writing in English. The book, an expanded version of Professor Hick's 1986-87 Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, presents "a field theory of religion from a religious point of view." Assuming the religious perspective to be the only alternative to naturalistic reductionism, Hick identifies the decisive question for the interpretation of religion: the validity of the appeal, made by all the great religious traditions, to a transcendent reality or realities. He defines religions accordingly as multiple perspectives on "the Real," his preferred designation for the transcendent focus of all religions.

In the first part of the book ("Phenomenological") Hick argues that all the great post-axial religions share a basic optimism, aiming at "salvation /liberation as the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness." Part two, "The Religious Ambiguity of the Universe," reviews issues in the philosophy of religion, including theistic proofs, with the aim of demonstrating that the world is amenable to both naturalistic and religious interpretations. In part three ("Epistemological") he employs his own earlier notion of "experiencingas" to portray religious traditions as "filters" or "resistances," the imaginative means by which human communities experience "the Real." After a sympathetic review of some naturalistic interpretations, Hick arrives at his central conclusion-"that it is rational to believe in the reality of God" (chap. 13). This qualified justification of religious belief then compels him to address the problem of religious pluralism (part four), the fact that religious beliefs are so various and apparently contradictory. He does so by means of a loosely Kantian distinction between "the Real an sich and the Real as variously experienced-andthought by different human communities."

In the final part ("Criteriological"), Hick wrestles with the question of the truth of the various religions, eventually arriving at some surprisingly definite judgments that will surely prove controversial. After considering various ethical and soteriological criteria within specific traditions, he concludes that the truth or untruth of the religions "consists in the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the practical dispositions which they tend to evoke." The status of this criterion, which evidently lies outside all religious traditions, is never clarified. But it leads Hick to pass some very sweeping judgments indeed. Not only does he maintain the descriptive thesis that the traditions employ "religio-cultural 'lenses' through which the Real is humanly perceived"

462 - An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent

in order to provide a context for human transformation; but he also goes on to make the evaluative judgment that these contexts are "more or less equally effective." Similarly, at the very end of the book, he proffers the judgment that the religious traditions "mediate the Real" to various human communities and "do so, as far as we are able to judge, to about the same extent." How Hick or any philosopher could be in a position to make such a judgment remains unexplained. The evenhandedness of the generalization cannot remove the implicit arrogance of the judgment, which assumes a position outside and above the religions-a privileged position enjoying a culturally unfiltered view of "the Real" against which to compare the filtered versions of the religious traditions.

John Hick's theory Of religion belongs to the venerable modern tradition of apologetic empiricism, which has typified British religious thought since John Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), reaching its zenith in the theology of "evidences" epitomized by William Paley's Natural Theology (1802). Hick's late version of this apologetic no longer argues even that religion is true, only that it is "rational" and has as much to be said for it as the naturalistic alternative. But we must ask whether the central religious thesis has not died the "death of a thousand qualifications": the Real, writes Hick, "cannot be said to be one or many, person or thing, substance or process, good or evil, purposive or non-purposive." Surely, most of the religiously significant questions are implicated in those qualifiers. Of what use is a philosophical defense of religion unable to affirm even that God is one, personal, and good? An apologetics forced to retreat this far inevitably calls into question the viability of the philosophical tradition on which it depends.

It would be wrong to conclude, however, that Hick is unaware of challenges to apologetic empiricism, especially those originating in the later Wittgenstein and in recent philosophy of science. He acknowledges, for example, that all human knowledge is culturally shaped. But his relativism only goes half way. Though he is willing to acknowledge the cultural relativity of the religious traditions, he shows little awareness of the theory-laden nature of the concepts used by philosophy of religion. Thus he can continue to speak of a transcendent Ding an sich out there beyond language, symbol, myth, and paradigm-and to use it as a criterion for passing judgments, for example, about the "more authentic moments" of a religion without justifying the criterion of authenticity being applied.

An Interpretation of Religion is distinguished by its breadth and erudition and by its author's willingness to examine religion as a cross-cultural phenomenon. The critical questions it raises offer an occasion not to dismiss Hick's theory out of hand, but rather to engage him in serious philosophical debate about the nature of religion and the validity of its truth claims.

Garrett Green
Connecticut College
New London, Connecticut