Search Results

This chapter examines arguments from nine of the most prominent academic proponents of the idea that religion is peculiarly prone to violence: John Hick, Charles Kimball, Richard Wentz, Martin Marty, Mark Juergensmeyer, David Rapoport, Scott Appleby, Bhikhu Parekh, and Charles Selengut. The chapter argues that all suffer from the inability to find a convincing way to separate religious violence from secular violence. The chapter shows how such distinctions break down in the course of each author’s own analysis. After examining the internal contradictions in these arguments, the chapter proposes that an adequate approach to the problem of violence would ignore arbitrary distinctions between religious and secular. The chapter proposes an empirical test to determine under what conditions beliefs and practices of all kinds contribute to violence.

Stephen Davis criticizes John Hick's recent arguments against orthodox views of the incarnation and the Trinity. He outlines and answers Hick's specific objections to such views, as well as his positive christological and trinitarian proposals. The conclusion is reached that Hick has failed in overturning classical views of incarnation and Trinity, that his own theology of incarnation is flawed, and that his account of the Trinity reveals deep fault lines in his overall theological programme.

Using the methodology for aesthetic theodicy laid out in previous chapters, this chapter begins to examine the predominant “aesthetic theme” (or aesthetic motif) within medieval theodicy: cosmic harmony. It focuses on the work of Augustine and shows how he develops the theme by interweaving his metaphysical, moral, and aesthetic views of reality. It also examines and responds to the critics of Augustine, including the criticisms of John Hick, who offers the fullest critique of Augustine in contemporary philosophy. By putting Augustine’s aesthetic theme of cosmic harmony in conversation with its most strident critics, this chapter offers a defense and partial critique of Augustine, emerging with a modified Augustinian theme that, though it is insufficient to provide a complete picture of aesthetic theodicy, nonetheless offers a helpful starting point.

The main focus in this chapter is on the claim that a number of religions do equally well in terms of truth, though there is also some attention to pluralism about salvation, or salvific pluralism, which is roughly the view that a number of religious traditions provide equally viable means to salvation. Topics discussed include pluralism that is limited to a particular area of inquiry, such as a “religious ultimate” or a “supreme religious reality”; various interpretations of Hick's pluralistic hypothesis; various objections to Hick; and some additional forms of religious pluralism.

Many contemporary theologians hold that there are profound problems in the very idea that we can refer to and think about a being characterized in the way Christians characterize God; in this chapter, I consider the claims of two such thinkers, Gordon Kaufman and John Hick. Roughly, Kaufman's position (in his early work) appears to be the following: the term “God” may or may not have a real referent, but if so this real referent transcends our experience and hence is something to which our concepts don’t apply; the term “God” does, however, have an available referent, which is a human construction. I examine and reject this view, as well as some of Kaufman's claims about the function and utility of religious language. I then examine and attempt to clarify John Hick's position that there is an unlimited and transcendent being, the Real, which is “the noumenal ground of the encountered gods and experienced absolutes witnessed to by the religious traditions,” and which is such that only our formal concepts and our negative concepts apply to it. I argue that although this position (or one close to it) may manage to avoid incoherence, Hick gives us no good reason to think that we cannot predicate of God such positive, nonformal properties as wisdom, knowledge, love, and the rest.

It is often said or assumed that the presence of religion in our society necessarily harbors within itself the threat of coercion and violence. Religion, though it may talk and dream of peace, is a menace to peace. To move toward the elimination of coercion and violence, thus to achieve peace, it is said, we must aspire to a politics of consensus on fundamental principles of justice and social order. Accordingly, all the particular religions must shape up so as to be compatible with such a politics. The central question of this essay is: Which principles of social organisation must an exclusivist religion be willing to affirm if it is to embrace a liberal democratic polity for a society in which there are other such religions?

Chapter 2 offers a structured synopsis of the history of natural theology from Xenophanes to Richard Swinburne. It is argued, for example, that the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas are outdated, and that the decline of natural theology in the nineteenth century was due largely to Kant’s and Hume’s philosophies of science. However, since these philosophies of science have turned out to be problematic, there is no reason for religious believers to stick to some blend of religious irrationalism à la Kierkegaard or William James, or to hold that natural theology must be meaningless. In principle, natural theology can be a perfectly decent intellectual enterprise.

George Mavrodes has argued, on the basis of John Hick’s An Interpretation of Religion, that Hick is ‘probably the most important philosophical defender of polytheism in the history of Western philosophy’. Hick, however, denies that this description pro­per­ly applies to him. This paper concludes that insofar as Hick maintains the Kantian-constructivist view of the divine personae and impersonae that is predominant in the Interpretation, he is able to avoid being classified as a polytheist. That work, however, also contains a realist view of such beings, a view which Hick defends as a viable alternative and at times seems to prefer. Where this realist view is concerned, this paper shows that Hick’s position is straightforwardly polytheistic. In his response, Hick explains his openness to a certain kind of polytheism, which he contends is consistent with his views on religious pluralism.

This chapter focuses on William James' relationship to Blaise Pascal. One of the fiercest critics of James' contentions has gotten considerable mileage out of viewing his lecture through the lens provided by the famous Wager argument from Pascal's Pensées. The chapter shows that the view John Hick takes of Pascal, and the attitude he assumes James had to Pascal's Wager, color his entire criticism. It also aims to point out that a more careful study of the Pensées, combined with a wider and more sensitive appreciation of James' attitude toward that work, warrants scholars' drawing conclusions quite the reverse of those which Hick would urge upon them.

This chapter looks at how William James seemingly provided mankind with neither more nor less than a reckless license for “wishful thinking.” It examines both the grounds that have been offered for that objection and the varied strategies that a number of James' defenders have adopted in answering it. The chapter also demonstrates how John Hick's criticism has succeeded in provoking reams of impassioned discussion. For the moment, though, it should be noted that he arrives at his remarkably economical distillation of James' argument, first, by ignoring a number of refinements that James considered important to making his case, and, secondly, by lifting his proof-quotations out of the refining contexts that lend them their exact point and bearing on the argument.

African American prophetic thinkers shared ideas that God providentially intended freedom and guided history toward justice. These beliefs raise the issue of suffering’s place in God’s purposes (theodicy). Contrary to views emphasizing acceptance of “redemptive suffering,” prophetic thinkers embraced a less theodical idea of withstanding suffering and ultimate compensatory benefit.

This chapter presents a critique of the definitions of and tests for economic efficiency that economists and law and economics scholars use. Economists and law and economics scholars use one or more of four definitions of or tests for economic efficiency which include the Pareto-superior/Pareto-inferior definition, the Kaldor–Hicks test, the Scitovsky test, and the potentially Pareto-superior definition. A choice or policy is said to increase allocative efficiency if and only if it brings the economy to a Pareto-superior position. The Pareto-superior/Pareto-inferior definition of economic efficiency is disfavoured not only by its inconsistency with popular and professional understanding and usage but also by the fact that the concept it creates would be completely or virtually useless. The Kaldor–Hicks test for economic efficiency was designed to overcome the basic deficiency of the Pareto-superior/Pareto-inferior definition.

Jeffery Long, a Hindu theologian, explores the problem of evil as it is raised and addressed by thinkers in the Ramakrishna Vedanta tradition of Hinduism and by two separate schools of thought from contemporary Christianity. The textual sources used from the Ramakrishna tradition consist of the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna as found in the primary sources on his life, as well as the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. From Christianity, Long employs works of John Hick and David Ray Griffin on the topic of theodicy. Despite the fact that the latter two authors hail from the same religious tradition, Long shows that Hick and Ramakrishna are in closer agreement on this topic than either is with Griffin’s process theology. The essay offers a revised version of the Ramakrishna-Hick theodicy that takes Griffin’s objections into account.

This chapter considers the concept of ineffability. Has this concept been monopolized by pluralists who use it to provide an object that is sufficiently mystical and unfathomable to accommodate religious differences? Does the ineffable do any work in their systems other than provide a formal category of ultimacy? The chapter seeks to investigate this by evaluating the use of ineffability, or the transcategorial, by advocates of the pluralist view of religions. In the second part, the chapter seeks to bring the analytic tradition into dialogue with the phenomenological tradition and particularly with the work of Jean-Luc Marion. Marion highlights the given-ness or excess of experiences that do not rely on metaphysical grounds. The chapter suggests an alternative account of ‘the Real’ as an experience of excess (the ‘transcategorial phenomenal’) that takes place in the midst of the event of interreligious encounter. ‘The Real’ from the ground-up.

FDR's election was daunting to Eleanor, who feared giving up her newly acquired independence. Marion and Nancy helped moved her personal belongings into the White House, as they had helped move her to the NY Governor's Mansion. They were frequent visitors, perhaps unaware of the frequency of visits from Eleanor's new friend, Lorena "Hick" Hickok, who had been an AP reporter assigned to cover the First Lady until within a few months Hick realized that her friendship prevented her objectivity and she resigned. Eleanor helped her get a job traveling to report to Harry Hopkins on conditions in the worst of the small towns of America. Eleanor begins her daily "My Day" syndicated column. Eleanor continued to make friends, especially Joe Lash, a young liberal who introduced Eleanor to the Youth Division of the National Democratic Committee. Marion and Nan increasingly were outside the White House circle

Drawing on the Bible, Christians traditionally have insisted that salvation is found only in Jesus Christ and that all people, including sincere followers of other religious ways, must repent of sin and acknowledge Jesus as Lord and Savior. Many contend that this exclusivism, with insistence on the need for conversion, provokes mistreatment of others and religious violence. This chapter looks at two figures who call for basic unity among the religions rather than competition over human souls: the Dalai Lama and John Hick. When such unity comes at the expense of minimizing or distorting the distinctive teachings that have characterized the religions over centuries, then there is failure to take the religions seriously on their own terms. The chapter looks at Christian teaching on salvation and Jesus as the only Savior, with brief observations about conversion and culture. It concludes with a response to the growing popularity of soteriological universalism.

This chapter investigates two broad ways an account of heaven can be structured: static and dynamic. The static view of the afterlife portrays heaven as a perfect or timeless unchanging existence. Such views have been common in popular culture going back at least to Mark Twain, but also appear to be held by influential theologians such as John Hick. In contrast, dynamic views portray heaven as an active place of dynamic change, continuing progress, and growth. Silverman argues that there are numerous philosophical and religious reasons for preferring dynamic accounts of heaven. One important advantage is that dynamic views have resources to show why heaven could be interesting for all eternity. The nature of a dynamic eternal existence would allow that there could always be new things to learn and experience, especially the ongoing contemplation of the infinite God, resulting in the continual transformation of the blessed. Therefore, objections that an eternal existence would be painfully tedious are well met by dynamic views of heaven.