(Originally written April 19, 2007 in Book 7)
Philosophy of Religion
John H. Hick
Chapter 8 - The Conflicting Truth Claims of Different Religions
Many Faiths, All claiming to be true
Nearly every religion claims to be true, exclusively.
There cannot be multiple exclusively true religions.
These exclusivity claims of religious has led to widespread skepticism about all religions.
W.A. Christian's Analysis
W.A. Christian differentiates between a proposal for belief and a factual assertion.
Major Belief Proposals:
Jesus is Messiah
Atman is Brahman
Allah is merciful
All the Buddhas are one.
Do these belief proposals really contradict one another?
Christianity claims that Jesus is the Messiah and that the Jews hold that the Messiah is still expected. This appears to be two contrary statements.
But the conception of Messiah is different is Christianity and Judaism. Thus, the Jewish denial that Jesus is the Messiah does not contradict with the Christian assertion that He is the Messiah.
Wittgenstein claimed that each religion was its own unique and distinct language-game. Thus, nothing in Christianity can agree with or disagree with anything in Buddhism, etc.
Critique of the Concept of a "religion"
Wilfred Cantrell Smith challenges the traditional concept of religion. He claims that religion (an empirical entity) can be traced historically and mapped geographically. He holds that religion is a human phenomenon. Cantrell Smith claims that naming religions occurred in the Enlightenment of Europe (except for Islam).
He holds it is inappropriate to speak of religions as true or false. They are merely expressions of the diversity of human types and temperaments and thought forms.
He maintains that the complex religions developed differently because it was impossible to overcome cultural-historical boundaries because of poor communications.
Now that these boundaries are overcome-able, a new form of religious thinking can arise.
Toward a possible solution:
The human being is a naturally religious animal.
The world religions developed gradually as man's religious life evolved.
The multiplicity of religion in ancient times was inevitable because people were locked into geographic regions.
All the world's religions may be rooted in contact with the same ultimate reality, but that the different ways of relating to said reality developed because of geographic-historic-sociocultural circumstances.
The future developments of the World's religions (because of the One Worldedness of today's society) may be headed towards a unification.
There are three main points concerning varying truth claims of religions:
1) Differing modes of experiencing the ultimate reality
2) Differing philosophical and theological theory concerning the ultimate reality and the implications of religious experience
3) differing revelatory experiences that unify religious experience and thought
The most important difference is the experience of a personal deity and an impersonal one.
These personal and impersonal deities are anon-contradictory, but complementary. All religions hold the ultimate reality to be outside the scope of finite human categories.
Theology and philosophy are ever evolving. There is no one reason to deny that in a One World culture that the theological and philosophical differences may dissolve during subsequent development.
The differing revelatory experiences of the World religions is the most difficult difference to dissolve.
Christianity faces a difficulty in asserting the infinite love of God and that only those who have faith in Christ will have everlasting life. These seem incompatible.
"It seems that if the tension at the heart of the traditional Christian attitude to non-Christian faiths is to be resolved, Christian thinkers must give even more radical though to the problem than they have yet done" (Hick, 118).
This is the epitome of arrogant intellectualism. John H. Hick is demanding that a rigorously developed theological philosophical detail be dropped after 2,000 plus years of development!
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