Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism: A Critical Evaluation of John Hick [Paperback ed.] 0227680154, 9780227680155

Table of contents :
David Nah demonstrates that Hick was unwarranted in breaking away from the church's incarnational Christology that has been at the core of Christianity for almost two thousand years.,Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Religious Pluralism and John Hick 2 Hick's Philosophy of Religious Pluralism 3 Hick's Theology of Religious Pluralism 4 An Evaluation of Hick's Historical Arguments 5 An Evaluation of Hick's Conceptual Arguments Conclusions Bibliography

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism

Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism A Critical Evaluation of John Hick

David S. Nah

C James Clarke & Co

James Clarke & Co P.O. Box 60 Cambridge CB1 2NT United Kingdom www.jamesclarke.co [email protected]

ISBN: 978 0 227 68015 5

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A record is available from the British Library First published by James Clarke & Co, 2013 Copyright © David S. Nah, 2012 Published by arrangement with Pickwick Publications

All rights reserved. No part of this edition may be reproduced, stored electronically or in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Publisher ([email protected]).

Contents Acknowledgments / vii introduction / 1 1

Religious Pluralism and John hick / 7

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hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism / 30

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hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism / 75

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an evaluation of hick’s historical arguments / 130

5

an evaluation of hick’s Conceptual arguments / 188 Conclusions / 218 Bibliography / 223

acknowledgments

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ost of the research for this book was originally done as a doctoral dissertation written at Claremont graduate university. i remain grateful to Professors anselm min, Jack Verheyden, and Stephen Davis for their careful scrutiny, dialogue, and support throughout the course of my work at Claremont. Their heedful reading of my manuscript at its various stages and comments they provided significantly contributed to the improvement of the final product. They are not responsible, of course, for any inadequacies of this book. i also wish to express my deep gratitude to Professor John hick (1922–2012). as a former student of Dr. hick, i have a deep respect for his high quality of scholarship, breadth of understanding of diverse religious traditions, and the generosity with which he was always willing to dialogue with those who differ from his views. The critical stance that i take against his theology in this book is not meant to diminish such deep respect that i hold for him both as a person and scholar of the highest caliber. he will be much missed. i owe a special debt of gratitude to my teaching assistant, Shane moe. he spent many hours on my behalf carefully proofreading the manuscript and considerably improving my style. There is no doubt in my mind that this book is stronger due in no small part to his caring and detailed editing and attention to grammar and syntax. he also helped to format my manuscript according to the style specified by the publisher. most of all, i want to express my deepest appreciation for the sacrificial, prayerful, and loving support of my dear parents, Rev. yoon tae Nah and mrs. Bok hi Nah, and my lovely wife, Katelyn. They have supported this project with remarkable patience and furnished me with continuous spiritual and moral encouragement. i truly could not have completed this work without their help. So it is to each of them that i dedicate this book. Soli Deo Gloria! vii

introduction

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n today’s postmodern age of religious diversity, John hick, the former Danforth Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the Claremont graduate university,1 is widely recognized as one of the most important, if not the most influential and prolific, thinkers on religious pluralism. as possibly the most significant philosopher of religion in the second half of twentieth century, hick’s contributions to the field of philosophy of religion in general, and in religious epistemology, theistic proofs, theodicy, death and eternal life, and mysticism, in particular, have widely been recognized. it is in the area of religious pluralism, however, that hick will long be remembered as having made his greatest and lasting contribution. Prior to hick’s influence, most discussions in philosophy of religion in the West took place almost entirely in a Judeo-Christian, if not exclusively Christian, perspective. owing greatly to hick’s voluminous writings since the early seventies, it is now the case that no serious discussion can consciously take place outside the purview of pluralism. hick’s magnum opus, An Interpretation of Religion, an elaboration of his 1986 gifford lectures, has already become a classic in the field that no student of philosophy of religion can afford to ignore. it is an unfortunate fact, however, that hick’s stature as the philosopher of religion par excellence has tended to overshadow his important theological contributions to religious pluralism. although, to many, he is known primarily as a philosopher of religion, the field of theology has never been a completely separate discipline for hick himself. as his writings clearly indicate, hick sees himself as not only a philosopher but also a theologian.2 in particular, hick’s contributions in Christology 1. until his death in 2012, hick was the emeritus professor of both the university of Birmingham and the Claremont graduate university. he is also a Fellow of the institute for advanced Research in arts and Social Sciences, university of Birmingham. 2. For example, hick writes: “i now no longer find it possible to proceed as a Christian theologian as though Christianity were the only religion in the world.” hick,

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism are of special importance from a Christian perspective since the heart of the problem of religious pluralism is, for a Christian, essentially and ultimately christological. Pluralism represents a profound challenge to the very core of Christian belief that Jesus is the unique Son of god and the only savior of all humanity. it is no accident that the development of hick’s own philosophical thoughts on pluralism closely parallels, or is even preceded by, a critical shift in the development of his own Christology. in a 1966 article written in honor of h. h. Farmer, for example, we can clearly see a glimpse of how hick’s demand for a Copernican revolution from a Christianity-centered picture to a godcentered universe of faiths was preceded by a critical move away from the traditional understanding of Christ’s two natures in one person. in what was to provide the basis of his Christology for pluralism, hick had already argued in this article for a new understanding of Jesus as homoagape instead of homoousia.3 Such a move was to have clear implications for a Christian theology of world religions. From the very beginning of his academic career, hick had always shown a strong interest in the area of Christology. in what may now seem, in retrospect, to be an incredible twist of irony, an article written as early as 1958 had hick actually criticizing D. m. Baillie’s Christology in God Was in Christ for undermining the deity of Christ in an attempt to preserve his humanity. in this article, hick accused Baillie of embracing an unorthodox, adoptionist Christology.4 however, such an orthodox form of Christology is nowhere to be found by the early seventies when hick proposed his Copernican revolution in theology. Nevertheless, in this new and revolutionary paradigm, there emerged a clear sense in hick’s understanding that the question of the place of Christ and the Christian affirmations about him is “the most difficult of all issues” for a Copernican theology of religions.5 it is precisely in this regard that hick’s contribution to the theological understanding of religious pluralism is to be valued so highly. For more than any other theologian, hick has attempted to tackle this “most important issue” of Christology head Universe of Faiths, x (emphasis added). also he says: “i realize more fully in the course of writing this book that the kind of theology at which I was arriving has a long and respectable ancestry.” hick, Many Names, 17 (emphasis added). 3. hick, “Christology.” Reprinted in hick, God and Universe, 148–64. 4. See hick, “Christology of D. m. Baillie,” 1–12. 5. hick, Universe of Faiths, 148–49.

Introduction on. among hick’s earlier writings dealing with this issue, perhaps his best-known contributions were his controversial editing of The Myth of God Incarnate6 and his contributing article in the important book, Encountering Jesus.7 John hick’s 1993 book, The Metaphor of God Incarnate,8 marks an important milestone in Christian theology of religious pluralism. This book is, without doubt, hick’s most important contribution to Christology from the standpoint of religious pluralism. to date, no other theologian has come close to articulating in such comprehensive and sustained manner the detailed relationship between Christology and pluralism as hick has done in this book. as the most systematic attack on the traditional understanding of the incarnation to have emerged from the realm of mainstream academic theology in recent years, this book is a lucid development and extension of the central thesis of his earlier edited book, The Myth of God Incarnate. in this book, hick sets out to criticize the traditional Christian understanding of Jesus that “he was god incarnate, who became a man to die for the sins of the world and who founded the church to proclaim this.”9 For hick: “if he [Jesus] was indeed god incarnate, Christianity is the only religion founded by god in person, and must be uniquely superior to all other religions.”10 as the title of the book suggests, however, his central thesis is that the incarnation of Christ is better understood as a metaphor than as literal truth. more specifically, hick has helpfully set forth his entire arguments in terms of six theses. hick argues: (1) that Jesus himself did not teach what was to become the orthodox Christian understanding of him; (2) that the dogma of Jesus’ two natures, one human and the other divine, has proved to be incapable of being explicated in any satisfactory way; (3) that historically the traditional dogma has been used to justify great human evils; (4) that the idea of divine incarnation is better understood as metaphorical than as literal—Jesus embodied, or incarnated, the ideal of human life lived in faithful response to god, so that god was able to act through him, and he accordingly embodied a love which is a human reflection of the divine 6. hick, ed. Myth of God Incarnate. 7. hick, “inspirational Christology,” 5–22. 8. hick, Metaphor. 9. ibid., ix. 10. ibid.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism love; (5) that we can rightly take Jesus, so understood, as our lord, the one who has made god real to us and whose life and teachings challenge us to live in god’s presence; and (6) that a non-traditional Christianity based upon this understanding of Jesus can see itself as one among a number of different human responses to the ultimate transcendent Reality that we call god, and can better serve the development of world community and world peace than a Christianity which continues to see itself as the locus of final revelation and purveyor of the only salvation possible for all human beings.11

given these clear and lucid arguments, the purpose of this book is to present in greater detail hick’s overall formulation of a Christology for a pluralistic age, and then to critically evaluate his foundational arguments (theses 1 and 2) as they bear upon his views of religious pluralism. a careful examination of the structure of the above arguments indicates that hick’s metaphorical Christology (theses 4 and 5) and his insistence that Christianity see itself as only one among a number of plural responses to the ultimate Reality (thesis 6) are based upon his arguments that attempt to deconstruct the literal understanding of the idea of divine incarnation (theses 1–3). in other words, hick’s first three arguments serve as the foundation upon which his last three theses are predicated. The first two theses are especially crucial, for if it is indeed true that what the church came to believe about Jesus was not ultimately rooted in his own self-understanding, and if the church’s two-natures doctrine of Christ is indeed incapable of satisfactory explanation, then hick’s move towards metaphorical Christology has much justification. on the other hand, if these two theses prove unconvincing, as i will be arguing in this book, then hick is without much warrant in breaking away from the literal form of incarnational Christology that has been at the very core of Christianity for almost two thousand years. my thesis then is simple and straightforward: While hick is to be applauded for clearly and rigorously articulating an alternative position on Christology for a pluralistic age, his impressive attempts to reconstruct a metaphorical Christology must ultimately be judged a failure because his foundational attempts to deconstruct the church’s literal understanding of the incarnation are mainly untenable. in other words, because he is not able to convincingly demonstrate “(1) that Jesus himself 11. ibid., ix.

Introduction did not teach what was to become the orthodox Christian understanding of him” and “(2) that the dogma of Jesus’ two natures, one human and the other divine, has proved to be incapable of being explicated in any satisfactory way,” hick does not succeed in developing a strong enough case against the church’s orthodox and historical understanding of Jesus Christ to justify relinquishing it. having failed to tear down the old, hick lacks a proper foundation for his alternative Christology. i will demonstrate my thesis by showing the ways in which hick’s arguments fail. as to his thesis “(3) that historically the traditional dogma has been used to justify great human evils,” i will not consider it as a matter of detailed evaluation due to the limited scope of this book and the overly pragmatic nature of such an argument. i perceive this book as making a contribution to the field of religious studies to two important ways. First, as already mentioned, John hick is one of the most significant religious thinkers of our time whose theological contributions in the area of pluralism need greater examination. Past studies of hick’s thought on pluralism have tended to disproportionately focus on his philosophy to the neglect of his theology. Such lopsidedness is not surprising given hick’s reputation as a philosopher, but given the crucial importance of hick’s christological contributions in relation to pluralism, this book fills a gap. Secondly, many of the significant monographs that have been written on hick’s theology of pluralism are of limited value to us today simply because they were done prior to the publication of The Metaphor of God Incarnate. gavin D’Costa’s John Hick’s Theology of Religions12 and g. h. Carruthers’ The Uniqueness of Jesus Christ in the Theocentric Model of the Christian Theology of Religions13 are two cases in point. gerald o’Collins’ article, “The incarnation under Fire” in Gregorianum,14 and Stephen Davis’ chapter, “John hick on incarnation and trinity,” in The Trinity,15 are two significant evaluations of hick’s Christology that do critically engage hick’s The Metaphor of God Incarnate, but, as far as i am aware, no book- or a dissertation-length examination of hick’s recent theology of pluralism is available as yet. i attempt to fill this gap with this book. 12. D’Costa, John Hick’s Theology of Religions. 13. Carruthers, Uniqueness. 14. o’Collins, “incarnation under Fire,” 263–80. 15. Kendall and o’Collins, eds., Trinity.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism i shall proceed, then, as follows. in chapter 1, i shall begin by situating hick’s place within the world of religious pluralism. here, i shall describe the pluralistic context in which we find ourselves today, the various problems such pluralism imposes on us, and the types of theological answers Christians have given in response. By briefly exploring his biography, i shall also attempt to locate hick within this world of pluralism and his significance within it. in chapter 2, i will explore hick’s philosophy of pluralism, including his epistemology, metaphysical ontology, and ethical soteriology, in order to gain a general understanding of the philosophical framework from which hick approaches his theology of religions. a brief evaluation of hick’s philosophy of pluralism will provide us with some preliminary foundation from which to assess his theology. Then in chapter 3, i shall present in some detail hick’s overall Christology, including his systematic attempts to deconstruct the church’s traditional understanding of Christ, as well as his alternative reconstruction of a new Christology for a pluralistic age. in chapter 4, i shall begin my evaluation of hick’s theology of pluralism by first assessing his argument that Jesus himself did not teach what was to become the orthodox Christian understanding of him. i shall demonstrate how hick’s methodology, claims about Jesus’ filial consciousness, account of the resurrection, and claims about the church’s creative role in the deification of Jesus fall short. Finally, in chapter 5, i shall evaluate hick’s thesis that the dogma of Jesus’ two natures, one human and the other divine, has proved to be incapable of being explicated in any satisfactory way. By examining hick’s criticism of morris’ two-minds Christology and the various kenotic theories, i shall show the extent to which hick’s argument succeeds and fails.

1 Religious Pluralism and John hick

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the PluRaliStiC SituatioN

ore than any other time in the history of Western civilization, we are living today in a period of increasing religious plurality. it is becoming more common for persons living in many of the urban and suburban cities in the united States and around the world to have neighbors and acquaintances that are Jews, muslims, hindus, or Buddhists. in addition to familiar church buildings, it is now commonplace to find synagogues, mosques, and temples in many cities and even rural areas. The estimated muslim population in the united States is now five million and growing.1 already by September of 2000, there were over twelve hundred islamic centers of worship throughout the united States serving muslims from egypt, Syria, lebanon, Jordan, turkey, iraq, iran, Pakistan, india, and afghanistan, as well as other parts of africa and asia.2 With the help of some highly publicized films and numerous celebrity endorsements, Buddhism has also been in the midst of an awakening in american culture.3 The yellow pages of any telephone book in the united States now list enough alternatives under churches to counter anyone who feels uneasy referring to pluralism as merely the plurality of churches. in any given bookstore throughout united States, one can now find as many books on non-Christian religions as on Christian ones in its religion section. 1. The World Almanac, 682. 2. Bagby, Perl, and Froele, The Mosque in America, 1. 3. There were over 2.8 million americans practicing one of several streams of Buddhist faith by 2007 according to The World Almanac 2009, 681.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism Diversities of religions are, of course, nothing new in the history of humankind. in the east, especially, the world has always been characterized by religious pluralism. in China, Korea, and Japan, for example, many of the world’s major religious traditions, including Confucianism, taoism, and Buddhism, have coexisted side by side in relative harmony with indigenous folk religions.4 in these Far eastern countries, the great religious traditions have been so interrelated and integrated that they are often treated as a unified system. in india, Sri lanka, and Pakistan, hinduism and Buddhism, as well as Jain, Sikh, and islamic traditions, have coexisted for hundreds—in some cases many hundreds—of years. hinduism is, in particular, perhaps the most variegated phenomenon in the world of religions. in fact, hinduism may legitimately be viewed as a collection of religious traditions, not only in the sense of embracing its own diverse religious roots, which have gone through many drastic changes, but also in its willingness to accept members of the other faiths of especially indian origin, namely, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs.5 in this sense, hinduism may be viewed not so much as a single religious system as a plurality of systems, not all of which are always consistent with one another. From its inception, Christianity was set within a richly pluralistic context of rival religions and competing intellectual convictions.6 The emergence of the gospel within the matrix of Judaism, the expansion of the gospel in a hellenistic milieu, and the early Christian expansion in pagan Rome meant that the early church had to find its own place among the plurality of existing religions. Not only was Christianity forced to interact with the various schools of philosophical thought, including Platonism, epicureanism, Stoicism, Cynicism, Skepticism, and gnosticism; it had to contend with greek and Roman polytheism 4. Folk religions in these Far eastern countries include the worship of various deities of native origin, reverence of ancestors, propitiation of ghosts and demons, astrology, geomancy, and spirit mediums, all of which are eclectically mixed together with the so-called “Three teachings.” Chinese folk religion includes an understanding of the spiritual dimensions operated by beings resembling earthly rulers and officials. in Korea, Shamanism (and in Japan, Shintoism) is the most popular expression of folk religion. See Jochim, Chinese Religions, 12–16, and lewis and travis, Traditions, 328–36. 5. Sharma, “hinduism,” 4. 6. W. C. Smith, who insists that the early church had to deal with only two spiritual movements, namely, greek philosophy and the Roman empire, rejects this point. See Smith, “mission,” 361.

Religious Pluralism and John Hick and myths, as well as Roman state religion and emperor worship. in addition, the various mystery religions of greek, egyptian, and oriental origins,7 as well as syncretistic cults and local superstitious practices, all contributed to the early Christian environment of multifaceted and vigorous religious pluralism. after Constantine and licinius made Christianity a legally sanctioned religion in 313 Ce, however, Christianity emerged from being a minor movement fighting for its place in society to becoming a dominant and exclusive religion of the empire. elements of other religions were either absorbed into Christianity or marginalized to the point of gradually disappearing altogether. During the middle ages, the Christian church became increasingly exclusive as it became ever more isolated from other religious traditions. Barring a few deviations in the unfortunate and regrettable skirmishes with muslims, and the outlandish tales of the east told by adventurous travelers and missionaries, the West paced along much of its history in insulated obliviousness to other major world traditions. even in the age of the Roman Catholic missions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the age of Protestant missions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the absoluteness of Christianity was essentially undisputed in the Western world. The substantial majority of the people in the West lived much of their lives with little, if any, direct exposure to other religions until well into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.8 in contrast to much of Western history, the twentieth century has been a period of greatly increased awareness of other cultures and religious traditions in the West, both in europe and in the united States. From the 1920s to the 1960s, the united States had already become, in Will herberg’s words, a “Protestant-Catholic-Jewish” country. Since the 1960s, the growth of eastern and other non-Christian religions in the West has been both unprecedented and unparalleled. especially following World War ii, a large percentage of the West’s population has had 7. These include the mystery cults of eleusis originating from greece, the cult of mithra from Persia, that of isis and osiris or Serapis from egypt, Cybele from asia, and many local cults. 8. in america, the Constitution of 1789 legally disestablishing religion on a national level allowed for “Protestant pluralism,” that is, a type of pluralism among the different Protestant groups. early Catholics and Jews experienced prejudice despite the law’s protection. although religious diversity was on the increase during the nineteenth century, such pluralism had little impact on american culture until the twentieth century.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism direct and personal contact with persons from other religious faiths due to increased international travel and massive immigrations from asia, the middle east, africa, and latin america.9 indirectly, developments in new and modern methods of electronic communication, especially television and computers, have exposed various religious traditions to the West, making it impossible today to live in religious isolation. The twentieth century has also been a period of rapidly accelerated sharing of theological and religious scholarship. in the last hundred years or so, the study of world religions in the West has made possible a relatively accurate appreciation of the different faiths and religious claims. Religious literature is now widely available to everyone at local bookstores. as one commentator has astutely observed concerning these developments, the twentieth century which began in the united States as a much heralded “Christian Century” appears at its conclusion to have been the “Century of Religious Pluralism.”10

the PRoBlem oF ReligiouS PluRality having entered into a new century, indeed a new millennium, we have every reason to expect an increased and accelerated process of globalization and pluralization of the world communities. Without doubt, such developments will only serve to further heighten the various and exasperating problems connected with religious pluralism. in particular, Christianity will have to fundamentally reconsider its theology and its practical relationships to other religious traditions. Why does such contemporary awareness of religious plurality pose serious questions for Christianity? and what exactly are the theological problems associated with pluralism? if Paul tillich was at all correct in describing religion as a matter of ultimate concern, it is not at all difficult to imagine why today’s unprecedented situation of plurality is posing such serious theo9. to be sure, the growth in religious pluralism was more characteristic of the last third of the century than the first two-thirds, due largely to the influx of non-Western immigrants resulting from changes in the immigration law in 1965 eliminating rigid quotas against non-european immigrants. many of today’s twenty to thirty-year-old muslims, for example, are the children of parents who immigrated in the 1960s and 1970s. approximately 24 percent of the muslim population in the united States is of South asian descent; arabs make up another 12 percent; 42 percent are africanamerican converts; 21 percent come from other backgrounds. Power, “The New islam,” Time, 34–37. 10. lindner, “trends.”

Religious Pluralism and John Hick logical problems for Christianity, given its increasing awareness of other ultimate claims in conflict with its own. For Christian communities, the problem of religious pluralism involves nothing less than a foundational and sometimes very painful reexamination of the core doctrines of Christology and soteriology. a great number of factors could be mentioned as to why the heightened consciousness of plurality is causing Christians to reexamine their christological and soteriological doctrines. here i shall restrict myself, however, to three main reasons.11 to begin with, there is a growing awareness, produced by the increased contact with non-Christian cultures, that the Christian faith is held today by a minority of the human race.12 as we approach the beginning of the twenty-first century, Christians still constitute only about one-third of the world’s population. Complicating this picture is the renewed awareness of fact that the vast majority of the human race has died without ever hearing about Jesus Christ. it is estimated that in 100 Ce there were 181 million people, of whom one million were Christians.13 By the year 1000 there were 270 million people, 50 million of whom were Christians. in 1989 there were 5.2 billion people, with 1.7 billion Christians. By the year 2000, there were 2.2 billion people who identify themselves as members of the Christian church, but one billion people in the world who still have not come into contact with Christianity, let alone become its converts.14 another problem concerns the fact that the majority of the world’s population is not simply non-Christian; they are followers of the other major religious faiths. in the year 2007, for example, it was estimated that there were 1.4 billion followers of islam in the world, muslims being the fastest growing major religious group due largely to a high birth rate.15 There were also 876 million hindus, largely in india, and 386 million people who were Buddhists.16 in the great majority of these cases, as hick points out, the religion to which a person adheres depend upon 11. i am indebted to John hick for citing a number of factors that may cause contemporary Christians to be troubled by the current situation of religious plurality. 12. John hick makes this point in his book, Many Names, 60–61. 13. These figures are taken from World Christian Encyclopedia, cited in Sanders, What About Those, 9. 14. Barrett and Johnson, A.D. 2000 Monitor. 15. The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2009, 682. 16. ibid.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism the time, location, and accident of birth.17 When someone is born to Buddhist parents in a Buddhist culture, for example, that person is very likely to be a Buddhist, as someone born to muslim parents in egypt or Pakistan would very likely be a muslim. Furthermore, there seems to be an additional complication to this picture in the fact that conversions from one great religious tradition to another seem to be marginal. The most successful missionary efforts of the great faiths continue to be “downwards” into relative primitive religions rather than “sideways” into territories dominated by another world faith.18 a third problem emerges from the fact that we can readily observe many striking similarities among the various great religions of the world. although there may be great differences, the many religions are all agreed in affirming an existence of a higher reality, however diversely conceived. among the monotheistic religions, there is a common belief in a supreme god who, as the personal creator of the universe, makes moral demands upon the lives of men and women. There is furthermore a certain recognizable familiarity in the various forms of worship, prayers, and hymns.19 The various traditions all teach the principles of moral goodness, including kindness, generosity, forgiveness, love, and compassion. The golden Rule, in its positive and negative forms, is likewise taught in many of the major religions. and finally, all the major religious traditions have evidence of saints, prophets, martyrs, and mystics whose lives demonstrate a deep sense of the divine as expressed in spiritual and moral fruits.20 What theological questions are raised by such problems posed by our heightened awareness of plurality? First and foremost, the central theological issue of religious pluralism is the christological one—“Who do you say that i am?” Christianity has traditionally affirmed that Jesus Christ is god incarnate, the only savior and the sole mediator between god and human beings. as personal contact with adherents of other religions increases, however, this belief is increasingly being questioned. Paul Knitter has described the underlying question of Jesus’ uniqueness as the “gadfly-question.”21 is Jesus unique among the religious 17. hick, Many Names, 61. 18. hick, Universe of Faiths, 138. 19. hick, Many Names, 62–66. 20. hick, Interpretation, 309–15. 21. Knitter, No Other Name, 171.

Religious Pluralism and John Hick figures of history? if so how? in other words, is Jesus Christ as the absolute and final revelation of god, uniquely different from gautama the Buddha, Confucius, lao-tzu, abraham, moses, or muhammad? Should Christians continue to believe in Jesus Christ as the only savior, and not just one among many saviors? and, perhaps most importantly, in what sense are we to understand Jesus Christ as the incarnation of god who is fully human and fully divine, if any? These are extremely important christological issues raised by religious pluralism because the basic creedal affirmation that “the lord Jesus Christ is god and Savior” has always been, and continues to be, foundational to the Christian self identity.22 Religious pluralism, however, questions this foundational essence, the inner core and, indeed, the very self-identity of the Christian faith. Closely related to the problems of Christology, religious pluralism also raises important series of soteriological questions about the eternal destiny of those who adhere to other religious traditions. how can Christian theology reconcile the notion of there being one, and only one, savior with a belief in god’s universal saving activity? if only one-third of the world’s population professes faith in Christ, what is Christ’s relationship to the other two-thirds? What is the fate of those who have not, through no fault of their own, ever heard the gospel? Will god allow the majority of the human race to be excluded from salvation? is Christianity simply one religion among others, the one that we happened to be born into? is there hope of salvation for the followers of other religions? if there isn’t, why not? if there is, are members of other religious traditions saved through their religions or in spite of them? is there only “one way” to salvation, as traditional Christian theology has always affirmed, or are there many divergent paths? are different religions different paths to a common salvific goal? are the concepts of salvation the same for different religions? are these paths convergent, complementary, or divergent? given the fact that the vast majority of the human race has died without ever hearing the gospel of Christ and that a large proportion of today’s world population adheres to other religious traditions, are not 22. For example, the World Council of Churches understands its identity as “a fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior according to the Scriptures and therefore seek to fulfill together their common calling to the glory of god, Father, Son, and holy Spirit” (emphasis added), in lihat, “ecumenical Foundations,” 11.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism Christians bound to ask whether there is only “one way” to salvation, as Christian theology has traditionally affirmed, or whether there are many divergent paths? and given the fact that what religion one holds is largely a consequence of where one was born, and the fact that the quality of moral and spiritual life among adherents of other religions is often exemplary, must we not believe that god will provide saviors in other cultures? Should Christian theology continue to maintain that there is no salvation outside of Christianity? in the past, Christians have firmly maintained that those who reject Christ are eternally lost and that other religions do not offer salvation in Christ. as personal contact and relationships with adherents of other religions increases, however, this belief is increasingly becoming a painful subject. it is no longer simply a theoretical issue requiring a theoretical answer; it has today become a deeply personal issue concerning the eternal destiny of people with whom we now have personal relationships. The seriousness of the growing awareness of religious plurality is hard to overestimate. The world’s other religions present a challenge to Christianity not only because their worldviews and ultimate commitments conflict with our own, but also because their visible influence is growing in the united States and throughout the world. Canon max Warren, the former general secretary of the Church missionary Society in london, was absolutely right when he prophetically argued in 1958 that “the impact of agnostic science will turn out to have been as child’s play compared to the challenge to Christian theology of the faith of other men.”23 as we have now entered into the twenty-first century, very few theological issues have become as important as religious pluralism. Carl e. Braaten is surely correct when he observes: “The question whether there is the promise of salvation in the name of Jesus, and in no other name, is fast becoming a life-and-death issue facing contemporary Christianity. in the churches this issue will become the test of fidelity to the gospel, a matter of status confessionis more urgent than any other.”24

tyPeS oF theologiCal ReSPoNSeS in response to the problems and questions posed by religious diversity, Christians have tended to respond in one of several ways. ever since 23. as quoted in Smith, “The Christian,” 91. 24. Braaten, No Other Gospel, 89.

Religious Pluralism and John Hick theologian alan Race adopted the terms exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism, it has become commonplace to situate the current theologies of religion within one of these three broad types.25 as with any simple typology, however, these terms are not without problems due to the many variations of use within each of the categories. a certain degree of ambiguity is bound to exist as different philosophers and theologians use each of these terms with different shades of meaning in mind. Some have used these typologies primarily in relation to truth claims these religions make, while others have used them in reference to the closely related claims about revelation, salvation, and praxis. Despite the various problems associated with the broad typologies, these three paradigms have become so fundamental to the current Christian discussion of religious pluralism that it would be fruitless to try to avoid or replace them. in the following, i will attempt to offer a brief description and comparison of each of the three positions.

Religious Exclusivism traditionally, the most common Christian response to the problem of religious plurality has been exclusivism. in terms of the question of truth, this position maintains that the central claims of Christianity are true, and that the truth claims of non-Christian religions must be rejected as false when in conflict with the claims of Christianity.26 This is simply based on the law of non-contradiction: if two religions make logically contradictory claims, these claims cannot both be true. in reference to the category of revelation, exclusivism counts Jesus Christ as the sole criterion by which all religions, including Christianity, can and must be understood.27 god has been revealed in a full and definitive way in Jesus Christ as the unique incarnation of god. as such, the revelation in Jesus is absolute and unsurpassable. as to salvation, Christ is the only savior of the world, and therefore Christianity offers the only valid means of salvation; or even more narrowly, in the traditional Catholic dogma, that extra ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside the church there is no salvation”). other religions are largely zones of darkness. in some theological 25. Race, Christians. 26. according to harold Netland, Christian exclusivism does not entail that all of the claims of other religions must be false or that they are completely without value. See Netland, Dissonant Voices, 9, 35. 27. Race, Christians, 11.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism circles, the terms restrictivism and particularism are sometimes used almost interchangeably with exclusivism. Though related, these terms are not synonymous, however. Restrictivism emphasizes that salvation is limited to those who hear about and come to faith in Christ before they die.28 Particularists argue, on the other hand, that salvation is available only though faith in god’s special acts in history culminating in Jesus Christ?29 historically, the roots of Christian exclusivism can be traced all the way back to the hebrew Scriptures. in the Pentateuch, the foundational narratives of the hebrews, yahweh’s self-revelation to israel critiques all other gods and religion because truth and salvation are understood to come from yahweh alone. When yahweh delivered israel out of egypt and lead the people to Canaan, yahweh was recognized not only as radically different from other gods but as the only true god (Deut 4:35, 39). The salvation of israel was seen as belonging to yahweh alone, and gods or idols of the surrounding nations incapable of saving them. indeed, the ten Commandments, the first two in particular, were premised on and pertained to yahweh’s exclusive claims against other gods and religions: i am the lord your god, who brought you out of egypt, out of the land of slavery. you shall have no other gods before me. you shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. you shall not bow down to them or worship them; for i, the lord your god, am a jealous god. (exod 20:2–5)

Whatever pluralism may have existed in their past, it was no longer to be tolerated in light of yahweh’s acts of redemption, and the israelites were called to put away the gods of egypt, Canaan, and mesopotamia and constantly renew their covenant relationship with god as unique among the nations (Job 24:14–28). Throughout her history, pagan idolatrous beliefs and practices were explicitly and repeatedly denounced (Ps 115, isa 40:18–20, Jer 10:1–16). The New testament also perpetuates this strict monotheism in the belief that one eternal god was decisively revealed to humankind through Jesus of Nazareth. The gospel of John testifies to Jesus’ claim that “i am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father 28. Sanders, No Other Name, 37. 29. okholm and Phillips, More Than One Way, 17.

Religious Pluralism and John Hick except through me” (John 14:6). The apostle Peter’s proclamation is also that “salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (acts 4:12). as with the earliest Jewish Christians who inherited the attitude of Second temple Judaism toward pagan religions, Christians in the second and third centuries largely shared similar negative dispositions toward non-Christian religions as having demonic origins, causing evil to humanity, and bringing about god’s judgment.30 Concerning the eternal destiny of the unevangelized, the exclusivist stance of the early church was best expressed in the famous dictum of origen and Cyprian (c. 200– 58), repeated down through the centuries: Extra ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside the church there is no salvation”). This exclusivist idea found further affirmation in augustine, the athanasian Creed, innocent iii, and the Fourth lateran Council (1215), but perhaps its clearest Roman Catholic statement comes from the Council of Florence (1438–45): it firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart “into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels” [matt 25:41] unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock; and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the sacraments of the Church of benefit for salvation, and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward, and that no one, whatever almsgiving he practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.31

The Council of trent (1545–63), gregory XVi (1831–46), and Pius iX (1846–48) represent further developments of the dogma.32 in contrast to Roman Catholics, Protestants have tended to downplay the exclusive role of the church while emphasizing that there is no salvation outside of the Christian faith and belief in Jesus Christ. Thus, it has tended to be more christocentric in form. martin luther, John Calvin, and Philip melanchthon among the Reformers; and Karl 30. Sigountos, “Did early Christians Believe,” 231–35. 31. Denzinger, The Sources, 39, 40. 32. See erickson, How, 34–41.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism Barth, emil Brunner, hendrik Kraemer, lesslie Newbigin, and Carl F. h. henry—more recent Protestant theologians—have defended the various christocentric forms of the exclusivist doctrine.33 in the last several decades, the exclusivist position has come under severe criticisms. John hick has criticized exclusivism for radically casting doubt on the Christian conception of god as gracious and holy love, and on Christ as the divine love incarnate. hick has insisted, furthermore, on a correlation between the exclusivist’s entirely negative attitude of other faiths to the average Christian’s ignorance and distorted conceptions of them.34 alan Race has charged exclusivism with depending on purely Christian theological principles, such as a Christian understanding of revelation, and not on empirical facts based on broader religious history. exclusivists have relied on the Bible, according to Race, in an over-simplistic and naive fashion, ignoring not only the higher-critical views of Scripture but also the theological and conditioned character of biblical knowledge.35 Paul Knitter has accused exclusivists of confusing the language of medium as used in the New testament with its essential message. according to Knitter, the New testament language about Jesus is confessional in nature, and to be understood within its historicalcultural context reflecting a classicist culture, Jewish eschatologicalapocalyptic mentality, and a minority status.36 Finally, S. J. Samartha has reproached exclusivism with breeding divisiveness and isolation, making cooperation among different religious communities difficult if not impossible, creating tension and conflict in society, and raising irresolvable theological questions.37 33. There are some questions as to whether Karl Barth and lesslie Newbigin rightly belong in this category. Despite alan Race’s assessment that Barth represents the most extreme form of the exclusivist theory due to his unusually negative evaluation of religions, Barth may be viewed as a universalist—the logical consequence of his doctrine that all human beings have been elected in Christ. See Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 2, 145–48. likewise, though Newbigin explicitly accepts the term exclusivism to describe his thought, he hesitates to condemn to hell those who have never known about Christ or are outside the church. like Barth, who refused to pronounce on the final salvation of the non-Christian, Newbigin believes that god alone has the right to this judgment. See Newbigin, The Gospel, 176–80. Thus, if Barth and Newbigin are to be considered exclusivists, they are certainly not so in the restrictivist sense of the term. 34. hick, Many Names, 30–31. 35. Race, Christians, 24–37. 36. Knitter, No Other Name, 92–93, 182–86. 37. Samartha, One Christ, 102.

Religious Pluralism and John Hick

Religious Inclusivism Inclusivism is a mediating position between exclusivism and pluralism. according to the Roman Catholic theologian gavin D. Costa, inclusivism is that position which “affirms the salvific presence of god in non-Christian religions while still maintaining that Christ is the definitive and authoritative revelation of god.”38 like exclusivism, inclusivism views the central claims of Christianity to be supremely true and maintains that god’s revelation in Jesus Christ is unique, definite, and normative. in contrast to the exclusivists, however, inclusivists tend to be much more generous in their affirmation of god’s revelational presence in non-Christian religions. as such, inclusivists tend to be much more opened to dialogue and learning from other traditions. inclusivists believe, furthermore, that the appropriation of salvific grace can be mediated through general revelation as god makes salvation universally accessible within each of the great world faiths and also outside them. although salvation is always the work of Christ when and wherever it occurs, inclusivists deny that an explicit knowledge of the person and the work of Christ is necessary for salvation. That is, the work of Jesus is ontologically but not epistemologically necessary, for Christ’s atonement is seen as applying even to those who have not consciously placed their trust in him. in short, inclusivism is an attempt to hold together two central axioms—the particularity axiom that Jesus is the only mediator of salvation, and the universality axiom that god intends salvation to be available to all.39 historically, inclusivism can be traced to the early church Fathers who espoused logos-theology (including Justin martyr, irenaeus, and Clement of alexandria) and to abelard during the middle ages. Saint 38. D’Costa, Theology and Pluralism, 80. 39. an interesting variation of inclusivism is a position called “eschatological evangelization” held by a growing number of conservative theologians. This theory, that those who die unevangelized are given an opportunity for redemption after or at the point of death, departs from the mainstream inclusivism in its view that one must personally accept Jesus Christ as one’s lord and Savior. That is, the work of Christ is both ontologically and epistemologically necessary. however, it shares with the mainstream inclusivism the belief that god’s salvific grace is universally accessible. and since it upholds both the particularity axiom that Jesus Christ is the only mediator of salvation and the universality axiom that god intends his salvation to be available to all, it is my opinion that this position properly belongs closest to the inclusivist category. Proponents of this view include george lindbeck, gabriel Fackre, Donald Bloesch, Richard Swinburne, and Father J. a. DiNoia.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism Justin (ca. 100–65) was particularly important for developing the doctrine of logos spermatikos according to which every human being possesses a seed of the logos. according to Justin, the revelation of god through the logos is not limited to Christians but is manifested to everyone and everywhere: Those who have lived in accordance with the logos are Christians, even though they were called godless, such as, among the greeks, Socrates and heraclitus and others like them; among the barbarians, abraham, ananias, azarias, misael, and elijah, and many others, whose deeds and names i forbear to list, knowing that this would be lengthy. So also those who lived contrary to the logos were ungracious and enemies to Christ, and murderers of those who lived by the logos. But those who live by the logos, and those who live so now, are Christians, fearless and unperturbed. (1 apology 46:1–4)40

like the greek Fathers, John Wesley, the founder of the methodist tradition in the eighteenth century, allowed for the universal possibility of salvation through the supernatural gift of god’s prevenient grace. Wesley maintained that the unevangelized can be reached through what “light” they have through god’s general revelation: “god never, in any age or nation, ‘left himself ’ quite ‘without a witness’ in the heart of men; but while he ‘gave them rain and fruitful seasons,’ imparted some imperfect knowledge of the giver. ‘he is the true light that’ still, in some degree, ‘enlightens every man that cometh into the world.’”41 in the Roman Catholic Church, the movement toward inclusivism was one of the major legacies of Vatican ii (1962–65). The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church declared: “Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the gospel of Christ or his church, but who nevertheless seek god with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation.”42 40. This quotation is from Danielou’s Gospel Message, 40. Contrary to Paul Knitter and other pluralistically oriented interpretations, this passage should not be taken out of its context as an argument that pagans can be saved through their own religions. Justin saw a great gulf fixed between Christianity and non-Christian religions. See Sigountos, “Did early Christians Believe.” 41. Wesley, “Walking by Sight,” 258. 42. Flannery, Documents, 367–68.

Religious Pluralism and John Hick although inclusivism is not exclusively a Roman Catholic phenomenon, its best-known spokesman was undoubtedly the Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner. if the Second Vatican Council was a watershed for Christian attitudes towards other religions, Karl Rahner was its chief engineer, distinguishing himself as one of the most influential Catholic theologians in the years before and after Vatican ii. Rahner’s starting point is his emphasis on the absolute universal validity and superiority of Christianity over other religions, given god’s absolute self-revelation and manifestation in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.43 at the same time, Rahner fully acknowledges the legitimacy of non-Christian religions, at least up to the point when Christianity can have a historical claim on their members, since even non-Christian religions contain both natural and supernatural elements of knowledge arising out of god’s grace available to all humanity. accordingly, “Christianity does not simply confront the members of an extra-Christian religion as a mere non-Christian but as someone who can and must already be regarded in this or that respect as an anonymous Christian.”44 For Rahner, missionary activity is nevertheless legitimate because the Christian gospel makes explicit what was already implicitly present in other religions bringing about thereby a greater possibility of salvation. Since Rahner, other prominent Catholic inclusivists have included the likes of hans Küng, Jaques Dupuis, and gavin D’Costa. among Protestants, Wolfhart Pannenberg and the early John Cobb among the ecumenical theologians, and Sir Norman anderson, Clark Pinnock, and John Sanders, among evangelicals have been its notable advocates.45 although somewhat fading in favor, inclusivism probably represents the majority view of both Catholic and Protestant theologians. John hick and others have criticized this doctrine for it’s a priori assumption that Christ and his teachings are normative. hick has, in particular, dismissed inclusivist theories as supplementary epicycles that were added to the Christian Ptolemaic theology whose exclusive fixed point is the principle that outside the church, or outside of Christianity, 43. Rahner, “Christianity and Non-Christian Religions,” 131. 44. ibid., 133. 45. in general, evangelical Protestant versions of inclusivism tend to differ from other Catholic and mainline inclusivists in the more cautious attitude they display toward non-Christian religions and in the possibility that these traditions may serve as positive vehicles in human salvation. See, for example, Pinnock, A Wideness in God’s Mercy, 81–113.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism there is no salvation. Such epicycles only obscure its incompatibility with the observed set of facts that do not easily fit into the inclusivist theory, namely salvific transformation of human existence within other religious traditions. Thus, says hick of Rahner’s anonymous Christian doctrine, “When salvation is acknowledged to be taking place without any connection with the Christian church or gospel, in people who are living on the basis of quite other faiths, is it not a somewhat empty gesture to insist upon affixing a Christian label to them?”46 hick therefore dismisses inclusivism as an inherently vague, burdensome, and transitional theory that, when pressed for clarity, moves toward pluralism. other theologians have variously criticized inclusivism on grounds that it is paternalistic, presumptuous, imperialistic, and damaging to the dialogue process.47

Religious Pluralism as an alternative to both exclusivism and inclusivism, pluralism has been rapidly growing in acceptance among Catholic and Protestant theologians alike in recent decades. There are now numerous varieties of competing positions making it difficult if not impossible to arrive at a single and unified definition of pluralism. in the most general terms, pluralists hold that Christianity is not the one true religion or even superior in any significant way to other religions. according to Paul Knitter, a leading advocate, pluralism represents “a move away from insistence on the superiority or finality of Christ and Christianity toward recognition of the independent validity of other ways.”48 Pluralists insist that modern historical consciousness requires us to abandon the claim to Christ’s uniqueness, and to recognize that the biblical view of things, like all other human views, is culturally conditioned. Thus, all religious knowledge is historically and culturally limited, making it impossible to evaluate the truth claims of another religion on the basis of any one religion. Pluralism diminishes the uniqueness of Jesus Christ by repudiating the view that god has been revealed fully, definitively, and unsurpassably in Jesus Christ. Rather, the Divine is revealed in all major religions. Jesus was simply one of the many great religious 46. hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism (hereafter cited as Problems), 33–34. 47. See, for example, Knitter’s evaluation of inclusivism in No Other Name, 141–44. 48. Knitter, “Preface,” in No Other Name, viii.

Religious Pluralism and John Hick leaders who were used by god to teach divine truths and provide salvation for humankind. all major traditions contain truths and are, therefore, valid ways to salvation. Some recent pluralists have insisted that the uniqueness of Christ no longer means “one and only,” but “the only one of its kind.”49 in this sense, all religious traditions may be considered unique. Compared to exclusive and even inclusive viewpoints, the Christian version of religious pluralism seems to be a relatively recent twentiethcentury phenomenon.50 The beginnings of Christian pluralism may be related to the rise of so-called historical consciousness and the crisis in theology associated with it. ernst troeltsch (1865–1923) was among the first theologians to come to a clear realization that Christianity’s claim to absolute validity stood in sharp conflict with the historically relative and culturally conditioned nature of all religious claims. The earlier troeltsch had argued for the absolute validity of Christianity in the history of religions.51 toward the end of his life, troeltsch was led to modify his earlier inclusive views in favor of a pluralistic understanding that acknowledged the genuine validity of major non-Christian traditions, especially hinduism and Buddhism.52 troeltsch came to realize, on the one hand, the extent to which claims of Christianity were historically and culturally conditioned and, on the other, how other great religious claims to absolute validity are just as genuine under different historical conditions and for different racial groups. Thus, troeltsch came to the conclusion that, just as the claims of Christianity are final and unconditional in the context of european and Western groups, so are other major world religions final and unconditional relative to their followers. english historian arnold toynbee (1889–1975) also demonstrated similar historical and pluralistic consciousness. after studying seven major religions, he became extremely critical of the intolerant, oppres49. This is true of such pluralists as, for example, John Cobb Jr., gabriel moran, and more recently, Paul Knitter. 50. in many parts of the east, however, many cultures have long been characterized not only by the plurality of religions as an objective phenomenon, but also by religious pluralism as an ideology. many hindus believe, for example, that all paths lead to god in the end. in the Bhagavad-gita, Krishna proclaims, “Whatever path men travel is my path; No matter where they walk it leads to me” (4.11). 51. in his Absoluteness, troeltsch dealt with the means by which Christianity may possibly defend itself against the difficulties of historical methodology. 52. troeltsch, “The Place,” This essay was written as a lecture to be delivered before the university of oxford in 1923, but troeltsch died before it could be given.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism sive, and monolithic religions that demand exclusive allegiance and penalize those who adhere to other religions.53 For toynbee, “absolute Reality is a mystery to which there is more than one approach [and] pilgrims exploring different approaches are fellow seekers of the same goal.”54 Besides troeltsch and toynbee, other significant contributors to the twentieth century’s development of religious pluralism include William hocking (1873–1966), Paul tillich (1886–1965), and the contributors of the landmark volume, The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (1988).55 today there are many different types of religious pluralism. anselm min has helpfully proposed a tentative typology of the many fascinating varieties of competing positions currently in vogue.56 These include the phenomenalist pluralism of John hick and Paul Knitter; the universalist pluralism of leonard Swindler, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Ninian Smart, Keith Ward, and David Krieger; the ethical or soteriological pluralism of Rosemary Ruether, marjorie Suchocki, tom Driver, and Paul Knitter; the ontological pluralism advocated by Raimundo Panikkar; and the confessionalist pluralism held by hans Küng, John Cobb, Jürgen moltmann, J. a. DiNoia, John milbank, Kenneth Surin, and mark heim. min himself subscribes to a type of pluralism that he calls dialectical pluralism, which he characterizes as confessionalist, pluralist, dialectical, and a pluralism of solidarity.57 out of these many prominent pluralists, John hick, formerly Danforth Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Claremont graduate 53. according to Paul Knitter, toynbee’s brand of historical consciousness may be said to be different from troeltsch’s in that the latter represents the position that “all are relative,” whereas the former emphasizes that “all are essentially the same.” Says Knitter concerning toynbee: “he argues for the unity behind all religions and . . . that all religions must join ranks in order to improve the world.” No Other Name, 38. The latter part of this analysis seems easily supported by toynbee’s work, but the former part is somewhat questionable. however, toynbee’s tendency to seek common elements within the “higher” religions is undeniable. 54. toynbee, An Historian’s Approach, xiii. 55. John hick and Paul Knitter, eds. Some of the prominent theologians contributing to this significant volume include William Cantwell Smith, John hick, gordon Kaufman, landon gilkey, Raimundo Panikkar, Stanley Samartha, aloysius Pieris, Rosemary Ruether, marjorie Suchocki, and Paul Knitter. This volume was based on papers presented at a conference at Claremont graduate university, march 7–8, 1986. 56. min, “Dialectical Pluralism,” 587–88. 57. ibid., 588–90.

Religious Pluralism and John Hick university, towers as the most comprehensive and persuasive advocate. Considered one of the most important thinkers of the second half of the twentieth century, hick has made many significant contributions in areas of religious epistemology,58 theistic proofs,59 theodicy,60 death and eternal life,61 and religious pluralism.62 undoubtedly, it is in the area of religious pluralism that hick has made his most significant and lasting contribution. in recent decades, his theory of religious pluralism has exerted a considerable amount of influence over philosophers, theologians and students of religion alike.

hiCK’S PeRSoNal BaCKgRouND John hick was born in 1922 and raised in the Church of england but found Christianity “utterly lifeless and uninteresting” and Sunday services “a matter of infinite boredom.”63 however, as a law student at university College, hull, at the age of eighteen, hick underwent a powerful spiritual conversion after a period of several days of intense mental and emotional turmoil, becoming “a Christian of a strongly evangelical and indeed fundamentalist kind.”64 Strongly influenced by fellow students of the interVarsity Fellowship, hick came to accept a very conservative theology including “the verbal inspiration of the Bible; creation and fall; Jesus as god the Son incarnate, born of a virgin, conscious of his divine nature, and performing miracles of divine power; redemption by his blood from sin and guilt; his bodily resurrection and ascension and future return in glory; heaven and hell.”65 intending to enter the Christian ministry, he joined the Presbyterian Church of england and went to the university of edinburgh eventually to take an m.a. with honors in philosophy. There he became very actively involved with the Christian union, attending virtually all its 58. hick, Faith and Knowledge. 59. hick, The Existence of God. See also hick, Arguments. 60. hick, Evil. 61. hick, Death and Eternal Life. 62. hick, Universe of Faiths; hick, Many Names; hick, Problem; hick, Interpretation; hick, Metaphor; hick, A Christian Theology. 63. hick gives a personal account of his spiritual pilgrimage in hick, Many Names, 13–19, and also hick, “a Pluralist View.” 64. hick, Many Names, 14. 65. ibid., 15.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism Bible studies and prayer meetings and engaging in evangelistic activities. hick then attended oxford university as the first Campbell Fraser scholar, and after completing his D.Phil. in 1950, he went to study for three years at Presbyterian Seminary, Westminster College, Cambridge. at the end of the seminary courses he was ordained to the ministry of the Presbyterian Church of england, serving the next three years as a pastor of a rural congregation just south of the Scottish border where the congregation flourished. as a result of an unexpected invitation to become an assistant professor of philosophy at Cornell university, hick arrived at Cornell in 1957 and remained there for the next three years. it was at this time that he published his first book, Faith and Knowledge, based on his original doctoral thesis at oxford. During this time, he was still theologically conservative, holding on to the Chalcedonian orthodoxy. indeed one of the first articles that he published, in 1958, was a criticism of the Christology of D. m. Baillie’s paradox of grace Christology for failing to express the full orthodox faith. The first noticeable departure from conservative theology occurred in 1961 while teaching at Princeton Theological Seminary (1959–64), when he questioned whether belief in the incarnation required one to believe in the literal historicity of the Virgin Birth. hick did not deny the doctrine but was agnostic about its historical truth, maintaining that it was secondary to the essential Christian faith in the incarnation. Such a view brought hick into sharp controversy with the local presbytery of the united Presbyterian Church when attempting to transfer his ministerial membership from the Presbytery of Berwick in england to the Presbytery of New Brunswick. in 1962, the Judicial Commission of the Synod of New Jersey upheld the complaint of eighteen ministers and elders against hick’s reception into the Presbytery, and hick was no longer a Presbyterian minister or eligible to hold the office of Stuart Professor of Christian Philosophy at the seminary. Several months later, however, the Synod’s decision was overturned by the general assembly and hick was reinstated to the Presbytery.66 having taught for almost ten years in the united States, hick returned to england in 1964 to a lectureship in philosophy of religion at Cambridge university. in 1966, hick published his second book, Evil and 66. hick’s own account of this controversy is recounted to us in his essay “Three Controversies,” in hick, Problems, 1–4.

Religious Pluralism and John Hick the God of Love, which has since become one of the classic texts dealing with the theodicy issue. From Cambridge, he moved to the university of Birmingham in 1967 as Professor of Philosophy. it was there, during his fifteen years at Birmingham, that hick began to develop his philosophy and theology of religious pluralism. in the years since World War ii, Birmingham had become a multiracial, multicultural, and multireligious city. about one tenth of its one million inhabitants were immigrants or the children of immigrants from the indian subcontinent and the Caribbean islands. There were muslim, Sikh, and hindu communities, as well as a long-established Jewish community, and a small number of Buddhists. hick became deeply involved in a variety of racial and community-relations organizations and befriended many in these non-Christian communities. he was one of the founders and the first chairman of a voluntary group called all Faiths for one Race (aFFoR) that, over the years, has done an enormous amount of social work for minority groups. as he occasionally attended worship in mosques, synagogues, and temples, he began to philosophize that although language, concepts, liturgical actions, and cultural ethos differ widely from one another, from a religious point of view basically same thing is going on in all of them, “namely, human beings opening their minds to a higher divine Reality, known as personal and good and as demanding righteousness and love between man and man.”67 hick’s early thoughts on religious pluralism were developed in a series of essays published in his book, God and the Universe of Faiths (1973). here he argued for the idea of a “Copernican revolution” consisting in a paradigm shift from a Christian-centered or Jesus-centered to a god-centered model of the universe of faiths.68 The great world religions were seen as different human responses to the one divine Reality, embodying different perceptions that formed in different historical and cultural circumstances.69 in 1976, he published Death and Eternal Life, intended as a project of a global theology of death exploring both the differences and the similarities of insight between Christianity, hinduism, and Buddhism. in 1977, stirred by the problem of religious pluralism to consider the logical character of incarnational language, hick edited the contro67. ibid., 5. 68. hick, Universe of Faiths, 120–33. 69. ibid., 133–47.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism versial The Myth of God Incarnate.70 The contributing authors argued that the historical Jesus did not teach that he was god incarnate or have any conception of himself as the Second Person of the trinity, that it is possible to trace a development of Christology from that of an eschatological prophet decades after Jesus’ death to the incarnational doctrine at the Council of Nicaea (325 Ce), and that the metaphorical or mythic language of divine incarnation allows for a genuine acceptance of religious pluralism. This book struck a very sensitive nerve in the British church and resulted in considerable reactions, discussions, and heated debates.71 in the spring of 1979, hick accepted his appointment as the Danforth Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the Claremont graduate School. While at Claremont, he published God Has Many Names (1980) and Problems of Religious Pluralism (1985). in 1987, hick co-edited with Paul Knitter The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, based on papers presented by distinguished participants at a conference at Claremont graduate School during march of 1986. The contributors of this landmark volume called for a new paradigm shift, a crossing of the theological Rubicon from exclusivism and inclusivism to the pluralist position. it was also during this time that he wrote his magnum opus, An Interpretation of Religion, based upon his 1986–87 gifford lectures, where he presented a bold and sophisticated theory of religious pluralism by appealing to a comprehensive understanding of the nature of religious experience. This book received the 1991 grawemeyer award for the most significant new thinking in religion. This highly acclaimed masterpiece is undoubtedly one of the most important and comprehensive books advocating religious pluralism. having retired from Claremont graduate university in 1992, he was a Fellow of the institute for advanced Research in the humanities at the university of Birmingham until his death in 2012. his more recent books include The Fifth Dimension (1999), John Hick: An Autobiography (2003), and The New Frontier of Religion and Science (2010). 70. hick, Myth of God Incarnate. Besides hick, some of the other contributors to the volume included maurice Wiles, Dennis Nineham, Don Cupitt, and leslie houlden. 71. in reaction to the book, for example, The Truth of God Incarnate, edited by michael green, was rapidly produced by evangelical scholars. also, Incarnation and Myth, edited by michael goulder, was published two years later, based on a conference between the Myth of God Incarnate authors and their critics.

Religious Pluralism and John Hick The purpose of the present chapter has been to locate hick’s importance within the increasingly pluralistic context we find ourselves today, the thorny theological problems this imposes on the Christian church, and the various competing responses that have been offered by the Christian community, including the various forms of pluralistic theologies. in the following chapter, i will explore the different aspects of hick’s philosophy of pluralism in order to identity and sketch the broader philosophical framework from which he approaches his pluralistic theology of religions.

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2 hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism

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efore i begin examining and evaluating the specifics of hick’s Christology in the next chapter, it is important for the purposes of this study to obtain a general understanding of hick’s philosophy of religious pluralism. more so than the other pluralist theologians i mentioned in the last chapter, hick’s theology of pluralism is fundamentally dependent on his philosophical insights. as has already been mentioned, hick began his academic career not as a theologian but, significantly, as a philosopher of religion. Throughout the course of his distinguished career, hick has been widely recognized for his important contributions in the field of philosophy. true to his reputation as one of the foremost philosophers of religion in the latter half of the twentieth century, hick’s philosophical system serves as a foundational framework from which he approaches his theology of religions. The purpose of the present chapter is therefore to examine and to provide a preliminary evaluation of hick’s philosophy of religious pluralism. in this regard, it is important to recognize the earlier and the later stages in the evolution of hick’s philosophy. Thus, i shall proceed by beginning with a very brief sketch of the several stages of the development of hick’s philosophy of pluralism. i will then move on to the major part of this chapter where we examine hick’s philosophical epistemology, metaphysical ontology, and soteriological ethics that together constitute the core content of his philosophy of religious pluralism. afterwards, i will present in some detail a preliminary philosophical critique of hick’s pluralism in anticipation of the theological evaluation to come. 30

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism

the eVolutioN oF hiCK’S PluRaliStiC PhiloSoPhy i will begin with a brief sketch of the progressive development of hick’s theory of religious pluralism. Depending on which aspects are highlighted, the evolution of hick’s philosophy of pluralism can be equally divided into two or three stages.1 although most reviewers of hick have tended to divide the development of his theory of pluralism into two stages, for the purposes of our study, i shall divide it into three periods. in the earliest stage of his pluralism, beginning in the early 1970s and continuing until the remainder of his Birmingham years, hick argued for a Copernican Revolution in the relation of religions from Ecclesio-centrism and Christo-centrism to Theo-centrism. his earliest views of religious pluralism can be found in his important groundbreaking book God and the Universe of Faiths, published in 1973, where he suggested a revolutionary thesis whereby Christians should “shift from the dogma that Christianity is at the center to the realization that it is god who is at the centre, and that all religions . . . including our own, serve and revolve around him.”2 Claudius Ptolemy, an astronomer and mathematician who lived in alexandria, egypt, from around 100 to 170 Ce, had taught what is commonly called the geocentric theory of the solar system that pictured the sun and the planets as revolving around the earth.3 The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) who proposed the so-called heliocentric, or sun-centered, theory of the universe later challenged Ptolemy’s view.4 hick found in this Copernican 1. i have chosen to divide hick’s work into three stages rather than two in order to highlight the major developments and transitions in his thought, which came to emphasize the soteriological concerns of various religions. 2. hick, Universe of Faiths, 131. 3. Ptolemy described his observations in an impressive thirteen volume work entitled Mathematike Syntaxis, better known as the Almagest (its arabic title). although wholly discredited, the Ptolemaic system is regarded as one of the great ideas in the history of science. For nearly fifteen centuries, everyone accepted Ptolemy’s description of the solar system, and any denial of it was looked upon as heresy. according to Ptolemy, the sun an all the planets revolved around the earth, each planet revolving in a small epicycle. as it turned within its epicycle, each planet also traveled around the earth in a circular path known as a deferent, the center of which was near the center of the earth. as Ptolemy saw things, the earth remained stationary as the center of the universe. Ptolemy supported his theory with mathematical explanations of how the planets varied their speeds as they circled their epicycles. 4. in 1543, the year of his death, Copernicus published his new theory entitled Concerning the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres where he came forth with the idea

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism Revolution an appropriate metaphor for his own new understanding of the relation between the religions of the world. Just as Copernicus replaced the earth-centered paradigm with a sun-centered model, so hick proposed to replace the historic view that the Christian church or Jesus Christ is the center of the religious world with the claim that god is at the center.5 in the next stage of hick’s pluralism, beginning roughly with his move to Claremont, hick’s Copernican revolution took yet another turn from that of Theo-centrism to Reality-centrism.6 as hick’s Theo-centric view of religious relations gained recognition, its obvious vulnerability also became increasingly apparent. The choice of the term God as the center of his Copernican paradigm was heavily in favor of the theistic religions and, despite all disclaimers, it appeared either demeaning or at least suggested a lack of attentiveness to non-theistic traditions.7 in response to such criticisms, hick’s solution was to drop the loaded word God and shift the terminology to emphasize the notion of the transcendent or the absolute. after experimenting with such terms as “the eternal one,” “the infinite,” “the absolute,” “the transcendent,” “the Divine,” and “the ultimate,” hick finally settled with “Reality,” or “the Real,” as the term that broadly encompasses both the personal and the non-personal concepts of the divine in various religious traditions. in making this move, hick was heavily indebted to immanuel Kant’s distinction between noumenon and phenomenon, but transposed from the problem of sense perception to that of awareness of the divine. Just as that the earth and all the other planets revolve around the sun. in working out his own system, Copernicus borrowed many ideas from Ptolemy who was not altogether wrong in some of his mathematical calculations. to justify his observation, Copernicus also proposed that the planets move in separate epicycles, a theory which astronomers now reject. Nevertheless, the Copernican system laid the ground rules for future astronomers, including galileo (1564–1642) and Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), which became the basis of our present understanding of the solar system. 5. See especially the chapters entitled “The Copernican Revolution in Theology” and “The New map of the universe of Faith” in hick’s Universe of Faiths, 120–32, 133–47. 6. This second stage, or what may be alternatively thought of as a transitional stage to hick’s more fully mature philosophy of pluralism, is best exemplified in his book, Many Names. The transitional nature of his philosophy of pluralism is seen in his vacillation between the use of “god” and “eternal one,” but the substance of his Realitycentrism, which he develops more elaborately in Problems, is fully there. 7. See, for example, John Cobb’s criticism of the theocentric model in his book, Beyond Dialogue, 86–90, 110–14. See also his articles “Buddhist emptiness,” 11–25, and “The meaning of Pluralism,” 172.

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism Kant had made the familiar distinction between something as it is in itself, Ding an sich, and that same thing as humanly perceived, “god as humanly known is not god an sich but god in relation to mankind, thought of and experienced in terms of some particular limited tradition of religious awareness and response.”8 hick’s most mature philosophy of pluralism should be seen, however, as going even beyond Reality-centrism to what may best be described as soteriocentrism.9 hick’s hypothesis of the Real as the common source of all major religious traditions left open the question of the relative adequacy or value of the different religious images, both theistic and non-theistic. That is, are the images of the Real operative within different religious traditions equally adequate, or are some images more adequate than others in mediating the Real? By what criteria do we assess and evaluate such images, and how do we establish such criteria? a major development in the evolution of hick’s overall philosophy of pluralism can be seen in his book, Problems of Religious Pluralism (1985). here, hick proposes an important thesis that the many different perceptions of the Real, both theistic and non-theistic, can only establish themselves as authentic by their soteriological effectiveness.10 according to hick, major world religions exhibit a common structure which is soteriological, in the broad sense that they offer a transition from a radically unsatisfactory state to a limitlessly better one. Says hick: “The great world traditions have in fact all proved to be realms within which or routes along which people are enabled to advance in the transition from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness.”11 however, while religious traditions have greater or less value, accordingly as they promote or hinder the salvific transformation, hick does not believe that it is possible to rank religions according to their soteriological effectiveness among the major religions. it is important to point out that the above three stages in hick’s philosophy of pluralism should not necessarily be seen as overly radical 8. hick, Many Names, 106. 9. The term “soteriocentrism” has most often been associated with the shift in Paul Knitter’s theology of pluralism from his earlier theocentrism. i contend that this term is also a most appropriate description of the continuous and important development in the mature stage of hick’s philosophical thinking. hick has, however, rejected this term as an appropriate categorization of his thought. See hick’s Rainbow of Faiths. 10. hick, Problems, 44. 11. ibid.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism and discontinuous shifts so much as relatively continuous, if not awkward, developments within a single pluralistic paradigm. We may even describe each progressive addition as a kind of epicycle within hick’s singular theory of religious pluralism.12 Thus, hick’s soteriocentrism should not be seen as being in radical discontinuity with his Realitycentrism, but simply as an additional advance in the evolutionary development of his philosophy. even his earlier Theo-centrism should not be seen as too radically different from his move toward Reality-centrism since, even then, hick clearly recognized the ultimate divine reality as being infinite and, as such, transcending particular religious traditions, both theistic and non-theistic.13 There are thus great overlaps within each of the stages, and it is precisely for this reason that hick’s progressive evolution can legitimately be seen as having developed in both two or in three stages. Furthermore, it is also important to understand that hick’s mature philosophy of pluralism shares much in common with even his pre-pluralistic philosophy of religion extending all the way to his earliest monographs, especially in the area of religious epistemology.14 in the following section, i shall attempt to give a more comprehensive description of hick’s overall philosophy of pluralism including his epistemology, ontology, and soteriology. i shall do so from the perspective of his mature thought, but necessarily with a degree of dependence and continuity with his earlier philosophy of religion.

12. Some would disagree with this characterization. gavin D’Costa, for example, interprets hick’s pluralism in terms of two stages and sees such a revolutionary paradigm shift between the stages making it inappropriate to describe this development as an epicycle. See his essay, “John hick and Religious Pluralism,” 4–5. See also Ronald Nash’s discussion in chapter 3 of his book, Is Jesus the Only Savior? 13. hick, Universe of Faiths, 139–45. 14. however, it must also be pointed out that some aspects of his early epistemology are clearly incompatible with his later thought. especially true here is hick’s literalism in his early concept of eschatological verification which is incompatible with his latest version of religious pluralism and is therefore all but missing in his later work. Thus, there is justification for arguing that some considerable distance exists between his earlier theocentrism and his later soteriocentrism, since the former relies heavily on the pre-pluralistic ideas. Nevertheless, great overall continuity can still be traced to his early thought in the general areas of epistemology, theistic proofs, and theodicy.

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism

hiCK’S PhiloSoPhy oF ReligiouS PluRaliSm The best way to present hick’s most comprehensive and mature understanding of his philosophy of religious pluralism is to turn to his magnum opus, An Interpretation of Religion (1989), which is an expansion of his gifford lectures given in 1986–87. in this book, hick brings together his reflections on the many areas of philosophy of religion to which he has made significant contributions over the years in order to present a systematic interpretation of religion that takes into account the thoughts and experiences not merely of a single tradition but, in principle, of the whole human race. Based on a sophisticated epistemology that appeals to a comprehensive understanding of the nature of religious experience, hick insists that there are philosophical resources within major world traditions that can provide the resolution to the problem of religious pluralism and thus provide a basis for mutual respect and practical collaboration. What hick offers, then, is a religious, but not a confessional, interpretation of religion. he presents his major thesis in the form of what he calls a pluralistic hypothesis, which proposes that the great world faiths embody different perceptions and conceptions of, and correspondingly different responses to, the Real from within the major variant ways of being human; and that within each of them the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness is taking place. These traditions are accordingly to be regarded as alternative soteriological “spaces” within which, or “ways” along which, men and women can find salvation/liberation/ultimate fulfillment.15

Such a thesis is certainly imaginative and audacious, if not provocative and generally appealing. Since this thesis has served as the point of departure for much of the vast literature on religious pluralism, it requires our careful attention and scrutiny in the context of the overall exposition of hick’s philosophy of pluralism.

Philosophical Epistemology The place to begin is with hick’s religious epistemology. given hick’s pluralistic hypothesis of the great world faiths, how can the Real be known to us? What grounds are there for believing that any such Reality does in fact exist? For hick, the traditional theistic proofs, including 15. hick, Interpretation, 240.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism ontological, cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments, do not constitute such a ground.16 as an a priori theistic proof, hick argues that the ontological argument fails to provide the proper epistemological foundation for belief on account that it is impossible to tell from the inspection of a concept alone whether or not there is an extra-mental entity answering to it. on the other hand, the cosmological arguments, as strict apodictic demonstrations or “knock-out arguments,” necessarily beg the question in requiring a premise that is not granted by those to whom the argument is primarily directed. That is to say, a person who accepts their premises already acknowledges the reality of god. The teleological and moral arguments, which are by nature probability arguments, are also insufficient according to hick, for there are no agreed upon and objectively adequate ways of weighing and accounting for the data as a whole in relation to the other. The term probability lacks a precise meaning in this context, for there is no objective sense in which one consistent and comprehensive worldview can be described as inherently more probable than another. given that all of the above theistic proofs have failed to be fully convincing to hick, he insists that the universe is religiously ambiguous in that it is capable of being interpreted equally in religious as well as in naturalistic ways. according to hick, the grounds for naturalistic interpretations and for disbelief in god may be as compelling as grounds for belief in god, but in both cases, they are inconclusive. hick cites emil Durkheim’s sociological theory and Sigmund Freud’s psychological theory as examples of the naturalistic explanations of the origin of religions. hick thinks, however, that the age-old problem of evil constitutes the greatest challenge to theistic faith, in response to which he has developed a sophisticated and now well-known irenaean Theodicy.17 Concerning the situation of the systematic ambiguity of the universe, hick says the following: it is difficult to the point of impossibility to assign comparative values on any objective basis to different items on the same side of the ledger, it is even harder to evaluate comparatively items drawn from opposite sides. By what criterion can we assert that 16. For hick’s detailed discussion of theistic proofs, see hick, Existence, 1–20; hick, Interpretation, 73–110; and hick, Philosophy of Religion, 15–30. 17. See hick, Evil.

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism the orderliness of nature tells more strongly, or less strongly, in favour of theism than human and animal suffering tells against it? or that the explanatory superfluousness of the theistic hypothesis tells more strongly, or less strongly, in favour of atheism than reported divine revelations tell against it? and yet the differences between the theist and the atheist are precisely differences about such comparative weighing.18

if philosophical arguments and logical proofs do not constitute the proper ground for religious knowledge, what does? instead of assimilating religious faith to propositional beliefs, hick has incorporated it into a theory of perception that integrates awareness of the Divine Reality by means of the relevant senses cooperating as a single complex. in taking this approach, hick is certainly not a naive empiricist who holds that reality is just as we perceive it to be. hick recognizes that perception is not a simple straightforward matter of physical objects registering themselves on our sense organs and then in our consciousness. Rather, hick is a critical realist who holds that there is an important subjective contribution to our perceiving, so that the world as we experience it is distinctively a human construction arising from the impact of a real environment upon our sense organs, but conceptualized in consciousness and language in culturally developed forms. hick has used the term experiencing-as to refer to the end product of his theory of perception in consciousness. in developing his theory of experiencing-as, hick readily acknowledges his indebtedness to Wittgenstein’s discussion of seeing-as in the second part of the Philosophical Investigations.19 Pointing to the puzzle picture’s ambiguous diagrams, such as the Duck-Rabbit, ludwig Wittgenstein spoke of seeing-as as when that which is objectively there, in the sense of that which affects the retina, can be consciously perceived in two different ways, as having two different characters or natures of meaning. We not only see what is physically on paper (the lines), but we also interpret it as having particular kinds of meaning (seeing it as a duck or as a rabbit). That is, the interpretive activity is integral to seeingas as opposed to simply seeing. hick has expanded this Wittgensteinian concept, based simply on sight, into a more comprehensive notion of 18. hick, Interpretation, 123–24. 19. See especially hick’s essay, “Seeing-as and Religious experience,” in hick, Problems, 16–27.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism experiencing-as on two accounts. First, hick’s theory of experiencing-as includes not only the visual sense of sight, but all other relevant human senses cooperating comprehensively as a single complex means of perception. Secondly, whereas Wittgenstein seems to have limited his notion to manifestly ambiguous cases, hick wants to insist that all experiencing is conceptual and interpretive in nature. Says hick: “Perhaps in very early infancy there is entirely unconceptualized experience. and perhaps there are kinds of aesthetic experience which are not forms of experiencing-as. But i think it is safe to say that ordinary human experiencing is always experiencing-as.”20 hick’s theory of experiencing-as involves not only conceptuality in the form of interpretation, but also the awareness of entities and situations as having particular significance and meaning. By meaning, hick is not referring to semantic meaning, concerned with the significance of words and sentences, as much as a non-linguistic sense of the meaning of events, situation, or indeed of life as a whole. hick defines the concept of meaning as follows: meaning is the most general characteristic of conscious experience as such. For to be conscious is, normally, to be discriminatingly aware of various features of our surroundings in such a way that we can act appropriately (or at any rate in ways that we assume to be appropriate) in relation to them . . . in other words, we experience things and situations as having this or that recognizable character such that it is appropriate for us to behave in relation to them in this rather than in that way.21

meaning is always in relation to a practical and dispositional aspect. Thus understood, meaning is both a relational and a practical concept. Says hick: We can accordingly define meaning as the perceived (or misperceived) character of an object or situation such that to perceive it as having that character is to be in a distinctive dispositional state in relation to it. to find the world, or some aspect of it, meaningful is thus to find it intelligible—not in the intellectual sense of understanding it but in the practical sense that one is able to behave appropriately (or in a way that one takes to be appropriate) in relation to it.22 20. hick, Problems, 19. 21. hick, Interpretation, 130–31. 22. ibid., 131

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism according to hick, there are also various levels or orders of meaning and significance: physical, socio-ethical, and religious. The physical level of meanings is all the ways in which we experience material objects, events, and situations as being appropriate for us to behave in relation to them. a correct dispositional response toward our natural environment is necessary for our moment to moment survival, the basic aim in relation to our physical environment being survival and self-preservation. at this level, our cognitive and perceptual freedom is minimal as the physical world compels us to interpret its signals correctly on the threat of death. in addition to the physical level of significance, we also experience our environment as having socio-ethical meanings as we interact with people as persons and beings who impose moral claims upon us. hick refers to Kant as having identified the basic nature of the distinctively moral aim—that of treating oneself and others equally as ends in ourselves.23 This ethical principle of mutuality, or acceptance of others as persons of the same nature as oneself, is expressed in the golden Rule as found in all of the major religions of the world. at the level of the socioethical, according to hick, there is a much greater degree of cognitive and perceptual freedom than at the physical level. The highest level in the order of significance is the level of religious meanings. The religious realm presupposes both the natural and the ethical patterns of meaning while adding a new dimension that transcends them both. uniquely, the primary locus of religious significance is the believers’ experience as a whole, that is, what hick calls the total interpretation.24 Faith is, for hick, precisely this interpretive element within religious experience, and not propositional beliefs that are either unevidenced or inadequately evidenced, as has been maintained traditionally. Says hick: “Religious faith then, as i propose to use the term, is that uncompelled subjective contribution to conscious experience which is responsible for its distinctively religious character. This is continuous with the subjective contribution to our ordinary awareness of our environment as having this or that kind of physical meaning, and of interpersonal situations as having this or that kind of ethical meaning. But 23. hick, Disputed Questions, 20. hick also refers to martin Buber’s important book, I and Thou, for emphasizing that which distinguishes the personal “thou” from the impersonal “it.” See hick, Interpretation, 145f. 24. hick, Faith and Knowledge, 113f.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism we have the special word ‘faith’ for the operation of cognitive freedom at the religious level because its exercise is so much more evident here.”25 more so than at the physical and the socio-ethical levels, human beings have a much greater comprehensive freedom to shut out their consciousness to exclude the entire dimension of the religious, experiencing only such forms of meaning as filtered through the naturalistic worldviews. hick gives two reasons for this. For one, god is not part of the material world and, therefore, his presence is less manifest to us. in addition, and perhaps more importantly, the infinite nature of god requires a veiling in order to protect our finite freedom and autonomy. “only when we ourselves voluntarily recognize god, desiring to enter into relationship with him, can our knowledge of him be compatible with our freedom, and so with our existence as personal beings. if god were to reveal himself to us in the coercive way in which the physical world is disclosed to us, he would thereby annihilate us as free and responsible persons.”26 For hick, then, both the religious and the naturalistic ways of construing the world arise from a fundamental cognitive freedom— which hick calls faith—that is continuous with the interpretive element within our experience. Since religious believing and disbelieving take place in situations of equal ambiguity, and the universe is empirically experienced in both religious and naturalistic ways, it is entirely rational to form beliefs and to behave on the basis of each mode of experience either religiously or nonreligiously. in making such basic cognitive choices, however, both believers and nonbelievers run a risk of being profoundly mistaken; believers risking the possibility of delusion and self-deception, nonbelievers the possibility of shutting out the most valuable of all realities. if the universe is indeed structured religiously, as believers insist, this fact will be subject to eschatological verification.27 That is to say, if after the date of one’s bodily death one continues to experience conscious existence, including the experience of remembering that death, the religious beliefs will have been confirmed. “however,” says hick, “there can at this stage be no confirmation of the final appropriateness 25. ibid., 160–61. 26. hick, Faith and Knowledge, 134. 27. For hick’s extended discussion on this topic, see hick, Faith and Knowledge, 169–99, and hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism, 110–28.

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism of either response. Furthermore, if the religious response is correct, it may be that it is only by living it out that one can progressively relate oneself to and thus be changed by the divine reality.”28 Borrowing and modifying William James’ right to believe argument, hick insists that, with the stakes so high, it is entirely rational to follow the prompting of “compelling religious experience” in the current situation of ambiguity.29 Says hick: i suggest that in these circumstances it is wholly reasonable for the religious person to trust his or her experience of which it is part. Such a person will, if a philosopher, be conscious of the ever-present theoretical possibility that it is delusory; but will, i suggest, rightly feel that it would be irrational to base life upon this theoretical possibility. Why should one forego entry into a larger universe of meaning, which claims and seems to represent the actual structure of reality, simply because there is always the general possibility of delusion.30

Metaphysical Ontology31 From hick’s epistemology i now turn to his religious ontology. although hick has insisted that essentially the same arguments could be formulated for non-theistic experiences and beliefs, much of hick’s episte28. hick, Interpretation, 227. 29. Concerning James’ basic thesis that we have the right to choose based on the prompting of “passional” or “willing” nature within an ambiguous situation in which the choice is unavoidable and yet of momentous importance to ourselves, hick criticizes it for authorizing us to believe, at our own risk, anything that we may have a strong enough propensity to believe, which amounts to wishful thinking. hick modifies what he perceives to be the weakness of James’ position in the following ways: “i suggest, however, that we can retain James’ central insight, whilst avoiding this unacceptable consequence, if we substitute compelling religious experience for the mere desire to believe an unproved proposition. James’ basic argument then becomes an argument for our right to trust our own religious experience and to be prompted by it to trust that of the great religious figures,” hick, Interpretation, 227–28. For a detailed account of James’ argument, and a defense of his original position against hick’s criticisms, see Stephen Davis, Faith, 89–187; and Davis, God, Reason, and Theistic Proofs, 166–75. 30. ibid., 228. 31. metaphysics has traditionally been understood as the rational analysis of the necessary and universal aspects of being. ontology, which is concerned with being as its subject matter, has therefore been central to metaphysics. The term metaphysical ontology is not found in hick’s own usage but is used here to emphasize hick’s fundamental, speculative, and post-Kantian inquiry into the ultimate nature of reality.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism mology and the arguments for the rationality of religious beliefs have thus far taken place in theistic terms. Based on the same principle that Christian experience entitles those who participate in it to hold distinctively Christian beliefs, however, it follows from hick’s point of view that Jewish, islamic, hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, and taoist religious experiences would also entitle respective adherents to hold their own distinctive beliefs. if so, a very significant issue arises in hick’s interpretation of religion. if people are justified in holding beliefs that are grounded in their own religious experience, how do we account for religious experiences within different traditions producing different and often incompatible descriptions of the divine? in line with David hume’s principle that in matters of religion whatever is different is contrary, hick asks, “if the different kinds of religious experience justify people in holding the incompatible sets of beliefs developed within the different traditions, has not our justification for religious belief thereby undermined itself?”32 From a naturalistic standpoint, obviously, the fact of conflicting truth claims presents no particular problems, since all forms of religion are projections of human hopes, fears, and ideals upon the universe. From a religious point of view, on the other hand, the problem is critical, demanding a metaphysical solution concerning the ultimate divine reality. Rather than opting for the view that only a single religious truth claim is valid, in which case there would only be but one ultimate reality, or the view that all major truth claims are equally veridical, in which case there would be a plurality of ultimates, hick explores yet another possibility—“that the great post-axial faiths constitute different ways of experiencing, conceiving, and living in relation to an ultimate divine Reality which transcends all our varied visions of it.”33 more specifically, hick states: “We now have to distinguish between the Real an sich and the Real as variously experienced-and-thought by different human communities. in each of the great traditions a distinction has been drawn, though with varying degrees of emphasis, between the Real (thought of as god, Brahman, the Dharmakaya . . . ) in itself and the Real as manifested within the intellectual and experiential purview of that tradition.”34 32. hick, Interpretation, 228. 33. ibid., 235–36. 34. ibid., 236.

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism in developing this important distinction between the Real an sich, the religious ultimate as it is in itself, and the Real as humanly experienced by historically and culturally conditioned persons, hick’s chief philosophical resource is the basic theoretical insight of immanuel Kant. it was to Kant that hick owed his central epistemological idea that the mind actively interprets sensory information in terms of concepts so that all human awareness of reality transcending ourselves involves the use of interpretive categories. Now, hick also draws upon Kant’s famous distinction between the thing as it is in itself, the noumenon, and the thing as humanly perceived, the phenomenon. Kant had distinguished between the noumenal world, Ding an sich, which existed independently of and outside human perception of it, and the phenomenal world, which is that world as it appears to our human consciousness. according to Kant, the noumenal world is the unknown reality whose informational input produces, in collaboration with the human mind, the phenomenal world of our experience, through the medium of certain concepts which Kant called the categories of the understanding. in developing his own pluralistic hypothesis, hick has applied this structural model to the sphere of the religious experience of the Real. hick describes his application of Kant’s basic model as follows: “analogously, i want to say that the noumenal Real is experienced and thought by different human mentalities, forming and formed by different religious traditions, as the range of gods and absolutes which the phenomenology of religion reports. and these divine personae and metaphysical impersonae, as i shall call them, are not illusory but are empirically, that is experientially, real as authentic manifestations of the Real.”35 as clearly as hick is indebted to Kant’s general model, it is also important to indicate his innovative departures from Kant at two specific points.36 First, for hick, god is experienced and not merely postulated. hick points out the following: 35. ibid., 242. 36. For a possible criticism that hick is here misinterpreting and misapplying Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, the following passage may be offered in hick’s defense. Says hick: “in using something analogous to Kant’s phenomenon/noumenon distinction i am not opting for any view of the place of distinction in the Critique of Pure Reason. I am in fact not concerned at all with questions of Kantian interpretation or of the general assessment of Kant’s critical philosophy. i am, rather, taking a structural model from his system and using it in a sphere—the epistemology of religion—which Kant treated in a very different way, and using it in relation to a problem within that sphere which had hardly begun to be recognized in his time.” hick, Many Names, 104 (emphasis original).

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism it should also be stressed that Kant himself would not have sanctioned the idea that we in any way experience god, even as divine phenomenon in distinction from divine noumenon. god was not for him a reality encountered in religious experience, but an object postulated by reason on the basis of its own practical functioning as moral agent . . . however, i am exploring here the different and very non-Kantian hypothesis that god is experienced by human beings, but experienced in a manner analogous to that in which, according to Kant, we experience the world.37

Secondly, whereas Kant was solely preoccupied with the construction of the physical world in sense perception, hick’s interest in the construction of the divine within religious experience gives him the option of rejecting Kant’s universal categories. hick states his differences as follows: “The main difference is that the categories . . . of religious experience are not universal and invariable but are on the contrary culture-relative. it is possible to live without them; and when they are employed they tend to change and develop through time as different historical influences affect the development of human consciousness.”38 modifying Kant’s basic model, what hick offers us is a pluralistic hypothesis based on the fundamental claim concerning the postulated presence of the Real as the ground of all religious experiencing; and the categorical structure of our consciousness which interprets the religious meaning or character of our environment either as personal or as nonpersonal. in hick’s own words: The pluralistic hypothesis, offered as a religious understanding of religion around the world and across the centuries, is based on this distinction, together with the epistemological principle that there is an interpretive contribution to all human cognition. The hypothesis is that in order to account for the existence of the different religio-cultural totalities . . . we have to postulate an ultimate transcendent reality, the source and ground of everything, that is in itself beyond the scope of human conceptuality but is variously conceived, therefore variously experienced, and therefore variously responded to in life, from within these different religious totalities.39

37. ibid., 104–5 (emphasis original). 38. hick, Interpretation, 244. 39. hick, “a Pluralist View,” 49–50.

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism here, it is important to note hick’s reference to the Real in itself as “beyond the scope of human conceptuality.” For hick, we cannot attribute to the Real an sich any substantial or intrinsic attributes that different traditions concretely ascribe as being personal or nonpersonal, good or evil, purposive or nonpurposive, substance or process, even one or many. We cannot even refer to the Real as a thing or an entity. This does not mean that nothing at all can be said about it. in hick’s view, it is possible to make formal statements about the Real as, for example, that than which nothing greater can be conceived, or that it is ineffable. Beyond such purely formal attributions, however, none of the concrete description that normally apply within the realm of human experience can apply literally or even analogically to the unexperiencable ground of that realm, for the phenomenal world is structured by our own conceptual frameworks, whereas its noumenal ground is not. For hick, then, different religious traditions do not worship the noumenal Real in itself but always one or the other of its personae or its impersonae. in itself, the ultimate transcendent Reality is not identical with any of the particular images or conceptions, but is that which is manifested in different ways to different human conceptions and historical cultures. accordingly, there is a plurality of impersonae and personae of the Real that are partly manifestations of the divine Reality to human consciousness, and partly projections of the human consciousness itself as it has been formed by particular historical traditions. From the human end, these constitute different images of the Real, but from the divine end, they are manifestations of the Real in relation to the different human histories of faith. in our actual religious experiences, however, we do not encounter god or the absolute in general, but always in specific forms in which each of the general concepts of personae and impersonae are made concrete, that is, schematized.40 Thus, the personae of the Real is ex40. here again, hick acknowledges his indebtedness to the Kantian notion of general concepts being schematized. however, hick distinguishes his own position from Kant as follows: “in Kant’s own analysis of sense-experience, the schematization of the basic categories is in terms of time; but religious experience occurs at a much higher level of meaning, presupposing and going beyond physical meaning and involving much more complex and variable modes of dispositional response. Schematization or concretization here is in terms of ‘filled’ human time, or history, as diversified into the different cultures and civilizations of the earth. For there are different concrete ways of being human and of participating in human history, and within these different ways the

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism perienced variously as the holy trinity, god of israel, Krishna, Shiva, allah, or as Vishnu in different theistic traditions. likewise, the Real is apprehended through the concept of the absolute as Brahman, Nirvana, Dharmakaya, Sunyata, tathata, or the tao in non-theistic traditions. These images are, nevertheless, all language and reference concerning the Real as humanly experienced; that is, they are phenomenal experiences, and not in any direct reference to Reality an sich.

Ethical Soteriology Next, we move from the question of ontology to the problem of criteria. That is, given the many different perceptions and conceptions of the Real, how can the various theistic and nontheistic religions of the world establish themselves as veridical? how are we to discriminate between what is and what is not an authentic response to the Real? hick’s answer to these questions can be found in his understanding of the soteriological structure common to post-axial world religions.41 according to hick, the function of post-axial religion is to create contexts within which the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to Realitycenteredness can take place. in hick’s view, the structure of pre-axial religion was characterized by a cyclical view of time, concern for restoring mythical and primordial time, and a view of the rulers as the vital link between earth and the gods. The function of such a religion was to prevent a slippage from the existing cosmic and social order and to avoid chaos and disaster. The axial age was characterized, on the other hand, by an emergence of individuality, discovery of transcendence, and, above all, “a soteriological structure which stands in marked contrast to the relatively simple worldacceptance of pre-axial religion.”42 Post-axial religions have, according to hick, been centrally concerned with the quest for salvation or liberation as the realization of a limitlessly better quality of existence which comes about in the transition from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness. presence of the divine Reality is experienced in characteristically different ways.” hick, Problems, 41. See also hick, Interpretation, 245. 41. according to hick, “post-axial” religions, in contrast to “pre-axial” religions, have their roots in the “axial period,” or “axial age,” in the mid-first millennium BCe, when “all the major religious options, constituting the major possible ways of conceiving the ultimate, were identified and established and that nothing of comparably novel significance has happened in the religious life of humanity since.” Interpretation, 31. 42. hick, Interpretation, 32.

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism Their religious authenticity consists in their soteriological power, their capacity to mediate the transforming presence of the Real to human life. hick contends, therefore, that religious traditions “have greater or less value according as they promote or hinder the salvific transformation.”43 hick insists, “The basic criterion must be soteriological.”44 according to hick’s interpretation of each of the major world religions, there are common ethical and moral requirements that serve as a basis for a common criterion for the moral assessment of religious phenomena. hick describes these ideals of the basic moral values common to each world religion as follows: From a religious point of view we must . . . assume the rooting of moral norms in the structure of our human nature and the rooting of that nature in our relationship to the Real. The central moral claim upon us is accordingly to behave in accordance with our true nature, from which we have fallen into sin or into the darkness and confusion of avidya. The ethical insights of the great teachers are visions of human life lived in earthly alignment with the Real, insights either heard as divine commands or intuited as the truth of the eternal Dharma or tao or logos. implicit within these we can discern the utterly basic principle that it is evil to cause suffering to others and good to benefit others and to alleviate or prevent their sufferings. This is so fundamental and universally accepted a principle that it is seldom formulated. and yet if all human beings lived in accordance with it there would be no wars, no injustice, no crime, no needless suffering.45

according to hick, the golden Rule in its positive or negative forms is a widespread expression of this principle that it is good to benefit others and evil to harm them. all the great traditions teach the moral ideals of generous goodwill, love, and compassion, which are epitomized in the golden Rule. always expressed in terms of a particular historical form and location, “it begins on the common ground of fair dealing and respect for others’ lives and property and leads on towards the higher ground of positive generosity, forgiveness, kindness, love, compassion, where we find the ethical evidence of the transformation of human existence from self-centredness to Reality-centredness.”46 This basic ideal 43. ibid., 300. 44. ibid. 45. ibid., 312. 46. ibid., 314.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism of love and concern for others and of treating them as you would wish them to treat you is taught by all the great traditions. But how do we know when transformation based on such ideals has in fact taken place? according to hick, this requires a criterion drawn from within each of the world religions. hick finds such a criterion in the idea of the spiritual and moral fruits as they are embodied in individuals widely recognized within their traditions as saints. hick describes them in the following ways: “Presumably those who have already been recognized within their own traditions as individuals in whom the signs of salvation or liberation are strikingly visible and who are accordingly known as bodhisattvas, gurus, mahatmas, masters, saints. For the sake of simplicity i shall use the concept of the ‘saint’ generically to cover all of these. a saint, then, is one in whom the transformation of human existence from self-centredness to Reality-centredness is so much more advanced than in the generality of us that it is readily noticed and acknowledged.”47 While saints from each of the religious traditions inevitably reflect their unique differences and particularities, hick believes that there is also an important characteristic common to all saints everywhere. hick describes it as “a transcendence of the ego point of view and its replacement by devotion to or centered concentration upon some manifestation of the Real, response to which produces compassion/love toward other human beings or toward all life.”48 in hick’s view, this shift from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness expresses itself in various forms of life, some involving withdrawal from the world in prayer and meditation, others involving practical engagement in social and political action, and yet others involving the mixture or some alternation of these. Thus, for hick, the production of saints, both contemplative and practical, individualistic and political, is one valid criterion by which to identify whether salvific human response to the Real is in fact taking place. in light of the above criterion, hick is of the opinion that each of the great world faiths has produced its own share of saints. The question is, however, can any single great religio-cultural stream claim to be decisively greater in moral goodness and uphold itself as ethically superior to others? Can a relative valuation be undertaken to determine 47. ibid., 301. 48. ibid.

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism which tradition as a whole has produced more saints, or has been more effective in putting its moral ideals into practice? here hick’s answer is twofold: “i want to suggest that it is entirely possible that there is an ethical ranking of religious civilization, with one rightly appearing at the top of the list. But i also want to suggest that we are not in fact able to make the comparative assessment which might lead to such a result.”49 according to hick, we do not have sufficient information for ranking religions. We do not yet possess a precise method of documenting the private actions of hundreds of millions of people within the great world religions over the centuries. it is possible, of course, to fix upon some palpable cases of great wrongdoing or brutality within some non-Christian religions and contrast it with the best examples of moral excellence within Christianity, but such a methodology could easily be reversed. For each of the traditions exhibits its own distinctive mixture of good and evil, and it is therefore virtually impossible to weigh the overall moral value of one tradition as compared with another. From our limited human point of view, grading virtues and vices in different world traditions are largely incommensurable. hick states: “it may be the case that, from the point of view of omniscience, one tradition stands out as morally superior to all others. But if so this is not evident from our partial human perspective. it is not possible, as an unbiased judgment with which all rational persons could be expected to agree, to assert the overall moral superiority of any one of the great religious traditions of the world.”50 although the soteriological criterion cannot be used to rank religions according to the overall moral goodness, its central position of importance in hick’s overall philosophy of pluralism must not be missed. Borrowing from the Buddhist doctrine of avyakata, hick insists that salvation/liberation depends neither upon the unanswered questions, which are questions that are in principle answerable but concerning which we lack definitive information, nor upon unanswerable questions, which point to realities that cannot be expressed in human terms. For hick, neither religious theories and dogmas nor myths are necessary for salvation. Consequently, the ethical criterion not only becomes the key for gauging the veridicality of the diverse experiences of the Real, it is also elevated to a central position in hick’s philosophy of pluralism, that 49. hick, Problems, 84. 50. hick, Interpretation, 337.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism is, the soteriological principle for systematically defining, evaluating, and criticizing various forms of religious truth claims—be they mythical, trans-historical, or historical truth claims. in this light, the relevance of hick’s understanding of myths can readily be seen: “i define a myth as a story or statement which is not literally true but which tends to evoke an appropriate dispositional attitude to its subject-matter. Thus, the truth of a myth is a practical truthfulness: a true myth is one which rightly relates us to a reality about which we cannot speak in non-mythological terms.”51 Defined in such practical and soteriological terms, it is easy to see how hick attempts to neutralize, or at least significantly minimize, the annoying problem of conflicting truth claims among different religions. hick says: if such mythologies were construed as literal discourse, offering factual hypotheses, they would conflict with one another. But understood mythologically the truthfulness of each consists in its aptness, as part of a unique complex of life, thought and imagination, to forward the soteriological process. They belong to different universes of discourse, or operate within different mythic spaces, and their capacity to promote the salvific human transformation can only be measured in the context of the religious totalities to which they belong. instead of then asking which myth, taken in isolation, is true, or whether this myth is truer than that, we should look at the religious effectiveness of the vast many-sided forms of life of which they are aspects and to which they contribute.52

51. ibid., 248. hick understands there to be two kinds of myths. expository myths “say something that can also be said non-mythologically, though generally with markedly less imaginative impact.” ibid., 348. hick seems to be more interested, however, in the other use of myth related to the “unanswerable questions” or what hick calls “mysteries.” of this latter type are various myths in different traditions concerning the ultimate mystery of the Real that cannot be spoken of in substantial terms, neither literally nor analogically, but only mythologically. however, because the objects of religious worship or meditation in each of the traditions are always intended to be about the Real itself, hick says, “we speak mythologically about the noumenal Real by speaking literally or analogically about its phenomenal manifestations.” ibid., 351. also belonging to the second type of myths are the various responses to the mystery of human existence specified in the ancient traditions by the questions: Where do we come from? Why are we here? and Where are we going? 52. ibid., 359.

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism Similarly, hick radically minimizes the significance of conflicting historical and trans-historical truth claims among world religions. Disagreements concerning historical questions are in principle answerable by an unbiased assessment of historical evidence, but hick insists that most of the disputed events in question are usually so remote in time and lacking in sufficient evidence to definitely settle the issue. trans-historical truth claims, such as whether the universe is eternal or has a beginning, or concerning the fate of human individuals after death, are also about facts that are in principle answerable but which humanity does not at present definitively know. in both cases, hick’s advice is that we simply learn to live with the differences, tolerating contrary convictions even if we suspect them to be wrong. Why? For hick, lack of definitive knowledge and the differences of convictions concerning such matters do not hinder in any way the process of human salvation/ liberation. Still, what about the trans-historical religious doctrines that claim to be directly related to salvation, such as the Catholic dogma Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, or the Christian belief that Jesus Christ was god incarnate as a human being, or the related doctrine that Christ is the only savior? Faced with such exclusive truth claims, hick’s solution is to resort to one of two options. The first is simply to reject such exclusive claims as false: “Clearly such a dogma is incompatible with the observation that the salvific transformation of human existence is going on, and so far as we can tell going on to a more or less equal extent, within all the great traditions. in so far, then, as we accept that salvation is not confined to Christianity, we must reject the old exclusive dogma.”53 hick’s second option is to relegate all exclusivist trans-historical claims from the realm of literal truth to that of mythological truth. Thus, hick says concerning the Christian doctrine of divine incarnation: it is also possible to understand the idea of divine incarnation in the life of Jesus Christ mythologically, as indicating an extraordinary openness to the divine presence in virtue of which Jesus’ life and teaching have mediated the reality and love of god to millions of people in successive centuries. Thus, whereas understood literally the doctrine of a unique divine incarnation in Christ has divided humanity and has shrunk the image of god to that of the tribal deity of the West, understood mythologically it can 53. hick, Metaphor, 147.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism continue to draw people to god through Christ without thereby sundering them from the rest of the human family.54

Consequently, seemingly contradictory truth claims, even exclusive ones, can turn out to be, on deeper analysis, expressions of the more basic soteriological idea—the realization of a limitlessly better possibility of human existence. given such reasoning, hick’s following comments are a fitting conclusion to our exposition of hick’s soteriocentric philosophy of religious pluralism. my conclusion, then, is that the differences between the root concepts and experiences of the different religions, their different and often conflicting historical and trans-historical beliefs, their incommensurable mythologies, and the diverse and ramifying belief-systems into which all these are built, are compatible with the pluralistic hypothesis that the great world traditions constitute different conceptions and perceptions of, and responses to, the Real from within the different cultural ways of being human.55

aN eValuatioN oF hiCK’S PhiloSoPhy oF ReligiouS PluRaliSm in the remainder of this chapter, i shall offer several critical evaluation of hick’s philosophy of pluralism. While the main purpose of our study is to offer a theological rather than a philosophical evaluation of hick’s pluralism, a preliminary assessment of hick’s philosophy will provide some necessary foundations for our main task. We might begin by acknowledging the immense contribution that hick’s work represents to the field of philosophy of religion. Prior to hick, with the exception of a few thinkers here and there, most of the major discussions in the philosophy of religion in the West took place in a theistic, if not in an exclusively Christian theistic, context.56 Since hick’s contributions, 54. Interpretation, 372. 55. ibid., 375–76. 56. Clear exceptions to this general tendency are the works of Ninian Smart and John hutchison who, as early as the 1970s, recognized the importance of including non-Christian religions in any genuine discussion of philosophy of religion. For example, Ninian Smart states in the preface of his book, The Philosophy of Religion: “it happens, however, that the philosophy of religion is largely a Western creation, and the assumption has often therefore been that the major themes are the concepts of god, freedom, and immortality. This selection of major ideas reveals the fact that Western

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism however, it is now the case that any serious discussion in the field of religion must take place in the milieu of pluralistic awareness. The very contours of the philosophy of religion have been permanently altered. hick’s philosophical accomplishments, culminating in An Interpretation of Religion, have been described by one reviewer as, “carefully crafted, tightly written, coherent, provocative, readable and scholarly.”57 They are also clear, nuanced, comprehensive, and most of all, pluralistically and cross-culturally informed—a truly rare accomplishment in the field. Despite these and many other impressive qualities we could mention, hick’s philosophy has come under close scrutiny over the past several decades, and even his most mature advancements in recent years have revealed some serious difficulties. it is to these criticisms that i now turn our attention.

Epistemological Methodology i will begin with an evaluation of hick’s epistemology. There are several areas of hick’s epistemology that lend themselves to criticism, but the first area of focus is a methodological criticism advanced especially by Paul Badham.58 in essence, Badham accuses hick of a kind of positivism that shies away from drawing justifiable conclusions on important issues because alternative views are possible. more specifically, Badham laments hick’s implicit assumption “that authentic knowledge must be restricted to what all would recognize as indisputably true.”59 Badham points to three crucial areas in hick’s philosophy of pluralism where hick has resorted to such overly narrow and ill-founded criteria as the only epistemological basis of genuine knowledge: the ambiguity of the universe, ungradability of moral superiority between traditions, and the impossibility of adjudicating between conflicting truth claims. Conceding to hick that unanimity of judgment on such culture has mainly understood religion in terms of the Judeo-Christian tradition. But religion of course, has a wider and a deeper spread. it ill befits the philosopher to attend merely to the concepts of his own culture. So in this book i shall not only consider questions arising out of theism as understood in the West, but also questions arising out of eastern and other religions beyond the contemporary West.” See also hutchison’s Living Options. 57. gillis, “an interpretation,” 28. 58. Badham, “John hick’s An Interpretation.” 59. ibid., 92.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism controversial matters is obviously unattainable, and completely realistic about the practical dilemma of appraising such difficult issues, Badham nevertheless insists that even in these areas well argued assessments and warranted judgments should be deemed possible at least in principle. in making such an argument, Badham admittedly relies heavily on Basil mitchell’s application of the work of historicist philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn in arguing for a theistic interpretation of experience comparable to that of a new paradigm of science.60 according to mitchell, we should not expect to reach agreements on fundamental issues so easily whether in the realm of politics, philosophy, or religion. mitchell demonstrates that most academic disciplines commonly make use of rational arguments that fall short of proof or strict probability and yet arrive at conclusions that we believe to be rationally defensible even though no universal agreement exists and refutation of alternative views is impossible. in character, theological arguments are also of this type. While mitchell is in basic agreement with hick that theism can neither be proved nor shown to be logically incoherent, he nevertheless insists that a case for theism can be made on a cumulative basis by relying on a set of converging arguments that cannot be entirely formalized. accordingly, mitchell rejects the notion, advanced by hick, that there could be no rational choice between rival paradigms. mitchell is not alone in advocating such a position. influenced by neo-positivist and post-positivist philosophers of science (including Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, imre lakatos, and larry lauden), epistemological methodologies similar to mitchell’s are increasingly being accepted by contemporary theologians and philosophers of science. Wolfhart Pannenberg, for example, has proposed a methodology for testing the Christian tradition’s doctrine of god against most comprehensive theories of other religious traditions on the basis of their capacity to make intelligible everything that is known today about the course of history, and for judging whether the tradition’s understanding is the best available account of the whole of experience.61 Similarly, drawing upon lakatos’ historicist account of science, Nancy murphy has argued for 60. See mitchell, Justification. 61. although Pannenberg consistently reveals links with Popper’s thought, it is Kuhn’s paradigm theory, in particular, that has guided his inquiry. Pannenberg’s justification of the Christian concept of god is on the basis of the superior coherence and accuracy of the account for all available data. See his Theology.

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism the construction of theological research programs analogous to patterns of reasoning used in science.62 more recently, J. Wentzel van huyssteen has advocated a postfoundationalist epistemology as a modified form of critical realism for the justification of theological faith as well as scientific knowledge.63 although they differ in their specific approaches, the above thinkers are united in their application of contemporary philosophy of science to theology and philosophy of religion, and in their rejection of foundationalist epistemologies. in fairness to hick, however, it must be stated that he too claims to reject all strong forms of foundationless epistemology or what is commonly known as “classical” foundationalism.64 62. in light of lakatos’ methodology of scientific research program, murphy has criticized Pannenberg’s program as inadequate and incapable of meeting the challenge of hume’s skepticism. While both offer comprehensive systems of thought in which content and method are intimately related, the two systems are incommensurable. While Pannenberg has offered an alternative to hume, there is no neutral method or criteria for settling his dispute with hume. however, if lakatos’ scientific methodology is applied to Pannenberg’s system, murphy believes that it can be reconstructed as a most promising scientific research program. See murphy, Theology. 63. according to van huyssteen, postfoundationalism represents a viable third epistemological option beyond the alleged objectivism of foundationalism and the extreme relativism of most forms of nonfoundationalism. he describes foundationalism as “the thesis that all our beliefs can be justified by appealing to some item of knowledge that is self-evident or indubitable.” Forms of nonfoundationalism, on the other hand, “deny that we have any of those alleged strong foundations for our belief-systems and argue instead that all of our beliefs together form part of a groundless web of interrelated beliefs.” over against foundationalism and nonfoundationalism, postfoundationalism fully acknowledges contextuality, the epistemically crucial role of interpreted experience, and the way that tradition shapes the epistemic and nonepistemic values that inform our reflection about god and what some of us believe to be god’s presence in this world. at the same time, however, a postfoundationalist notion of rationality in theological reflection claims to point creatively beyond the confines of the local community, group, or culture towards a plausible form of interdisciplinary conversation. Recognizing the importance of murphy’s book, van huyssteen nevertheless criticizes her for remaining within the nonfoundationalist paradigm due to a lack of a well-developed theory of experience and transcommunal or intersubjective coherence. What van huyssteen advocates then is a type of postmodernism that is also postfoundationalist. See van huyssteen, Essays, 3–5, 78–90. 64. in classical foundationalism, all rational beliefs will be either properly basic beliefs (that are either self-evident, evident to the senses, or incorrigible) or beliefs properly inferred from such basic beliefs. importantly, belief in divine reality does not qualify as a properly basic belief. in response, hick makes use of alvin Plantinga and William alston to weave together his own version of a more modest foundationalist epistemology that tries to account for various religious beliefs as being properly basic. hick describes basic or foundational beliefs as “arising in us directly and not as a result of inference.” These include perceptual beliefs, self-evident propositions, ana-

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism and as Badham points out, hick’s “An Interpretation of Religion is for the most part a model of how to present rational arguments which fall short of proof, but which nevertheless develop a sustained and cumulative rational case for the position being defended while always being aware of, and fair to, the factors which count against his position.”65 Nevertheless, it is also true that at various important points in the overall development of his arguments, hick relapses into foundationalist criteriology by restricting authentic knowledge solely to what rational people everywhere would recognize as indisputably true. For example, in response to Badham’s criticism concerning a lack of definite commitment on the issue of the ambiguity of the universe, hick has given the following reply: By “undecidable” here i mean of course “objectively undecidable,” or undecidable by methods or criteria that are generally accepted by reasonable persons. Badham, on the other hand, evidently thinks that it is possible to show by the kind of cumulative argument advocated by Basil mitchell that a religious interpretation of the universe is probable, or more rationally believable, than a naturalistic interpretation. But, if that is the case, why do not all reasonable people who apply their minds to the question agree about this?66

here, hick is correct to insist on objectivity as a prerequisite to valid knowledge. however, objectivity can no longer be understood in the foundationalistic or positivistic sense of absolute universal validity as hick seems to understand the term. The fact that we lack a clear and objective method or criterion by which to bring into a complete agreement “all reasonable people who apply their minds” need not leave us in the state of agnostic undecidability, for as contemporary theologians and philosophers of science have been teaching us, it is possible to compare comprehensive worldviews as competing paradigms or research programs.67 and as Badham has pointed out, when comparing any conlytic truths, uncontroversial reports of your own memory, and incorrigible beliefs. See hick’s essay, “evidentialism, Foundationalism, and Rational Belief,” in chapter 6 of his Philosophy of Religion. 65. Badham, “John Hick’s An Interpretation,” 93. 66. hick, “Reply,” in Problems in Philosophy, 104–5. 67. against the logical positivists who distinguished between science and metaphysics (the problem of demarcation), Karl Popper’s method of falsifiability rather than verifiability opened a way for metaphysical claims to be considered on the basis of sci-

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism troversial issues concerning political systems, ideologies, morality, or whether or not there is a god; it is reasonable to do precisely what hick says cannot be done, that is, to seek to evaluate the relative weight of the various factors. Says Badham: “There is no other area of human concern where all rational people would not admit the duty to attempt to make an informed judgment on the pros and cons . . . They are controversial precisely because there is no consensus about how to quantify or weigh the considerations put forward in argument on either side.”68 William Wainwright has eloquently summed up hick’s methodological weakness as it relates to hick’s ambiguity thesis of the universe as follows: The world is genuinely ambiguous only if religious and naturalistic interpretations are equally plausible. hick shows that the case for both religious and naturalistic interpretations of the facts aren’t fully conclusive and that other interpretations are possible. it doesn’t follow that religious interpretations aren’t more plausible than their rivals . . . But isn’t the fact that we are more impressed by the arguments on one side of the issue an expression of a strong disposition to construct the world in a certain way? and don’t we also have a need to interpret the world religiously? The “virtual universality throughout human life of ideas and practices that are recognizably religious” suggest that we do.69

Nonpropositional Epistemology in addition to the question of methodology, there is one other problematic area of hick’s epistemology worthy of criticism—his extreme downplaying of the propositional element of religious language. Religious faith is not, claims hick, “a body of truth about god, but god coming within entific knowledge. That is, Popper defined science according to its method rather than its content. Building on Popper and Kuhn, lakatos and laudan have articulated postpositivistic scientific methodologies that may be used to evaluate different paradigms in science and, by extension, in philosophy of religion and theology. Nancy murphy has applied lakatos’ methodology to arbitrate two seemingly incommensurate worldviews, those of hume’s agnosticism and Pannenberg’s theological program, to demonstrate how comprehensive and competing worldviews can be evaluated scientifically, albeit in a nonfoundationalistic and nonpositivistic fashion. See murphy’s Theology, 19–50, 176–78. 68. Badham, “John Hick’s An Interpretation,” 94. 69. Wainwright, “Review,” 260–61 (emphasis original).

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism the orbit of human experience by acting in history.”70 From this point of view, theological propositions, as such, are not revealed but represent human attempts to understand the significance of revelatory events.”71 Propositions are relatively unimportant for hick given the general inappropriateness of using the category of propositional truth in religious contexts when evaluating religious doctrines. What is important is not, for hick, the truth of propositions, but mythical and soteriological truths. accordingly, hick is able to insist that, from a cognitive standpoint, much of the conflicts between religious beliefs are only apparent. The background for such a nonpropositional understanding of religious language can readily be traced to two prevalent sources of influence on hick’s epistemology during the late fifties when he was beginning to write and publish on the subject. Philosophically, on the one hand, there were the logical positivists, who came into prominence in the 1920s as a group of philosophers meeting in Vienna, who came to be known as the Vienna Circle. Perhaps its most celebrated spokesman was the english philosopher a. J. ayer, who in 1936 wrote Language, Truth, and Logic, in which he set forth the basic thesis of logical positivism, the so-called verifiability principle of meaning.72 according to this principle, a proposition is literally meaningful only if it is either analytically true or empirically verifiable. analytical statements are those whose truth or falsehood follows from the meaning of the words used, whereas empirical verification involves sense experience in the determination of truth or falsity. Since religious and metaphysical propositions are neither, so the logical positivists insisted, they are nonsense, that is, literally meaningless.73

70. hick, Philosophy of Religion, 68. 71. ibid., 68. 72. ayer, Language. 73. lacking a cognitive function, some logical positivists allowed for religious statements to have an expressive function. Rudolf Carnap states, for example, that “metaphysical statements—like lyrical verses—have only an expressive function, but no representative function. metaphysical statements are neither true nor false, because they assert nothing, they contain neither knowledge nor error, they lie completely outside the field of knowledge, of theory, outside the discussion of truth or falsehood. But they are, like laughing, lyrics, and music, expressive. They express not so much temporary feelings as permanent emotional or volitional dispositions.” Carnap, Logical Syntax, part 1.

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism in response to the challenge of logical positivists, hick’s proposal was to show that religious beliefs are in fact cognitively meaningful because they are in principle verifiable. hick argued that everyone will eventually come to have a postmortem awareness of a divine reality, an awareness which will verify at least some religious assertions, for example, the claim that god exists. according to hick, the logical possibility that such religious assertions are capable of being framed as true or false accords to such statements’ cognitive or factual status. Thus, from his earliest monographs on epistemology, hick has forcefully made the case for religious language being understood cognitively, that is, factually.74 at the same time, however, hick has curiously played down the propositional side of religion by understanding divine revelation primarily as heilsgeschichte (holy history) that is, the self-revealing actions of god within human history. accordingly, hick says: “The theological propositions formulated on the basis of revelation have a secondary status. They do not constitute the content of god’s self-revelation but are human and therefore fallible verbalizations, constructed to aid both the integration of our religious experience into our own minds and the communication of religious experience to others. The formulation and approval of doctrine is thus a work not of faith but of reason—reason operating upon the data of revelation.”75 Theologically, hick’s strong separation of propositions from the very content of divine revelation is also reflective of the powerful influence of the so-called dialectical theologians that was still dominant in the fifties when hick was writing his religious epistemology. although Karl Barth, emil Brunner, and Rudolf Bultmann had differences in their particular conceptions of revelation, they were all agreed in their emphasis on the divine self-disclosure as personal and nonpropositional. For hick, such nonpropositional views of faith as represented by the dialectical theologians are in direct continuity with the Reformed, in distinction from the Catholic, point of view. hick states the following concerning luther’s view of faith: “For luther, faith was not primarily acceptance of the Church’s dogmas but a wholehearted response of trust and gratitude toward the divine grace revealed in Jesus Christ. indirectly it included 74. hick’s early writings on the subject can be found in his book Faith and Knowledge, especially in part 3 of the second edition. See also his article, “Theology and Verification.” 75. hick, Faith and Knowledge, 29.

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acceptance of all the fundamental Christian beliefs; but luther’s primary emphasis was upon faith as a total reliance upon the omnipotent goodness of god. in a distinction that luther himself drew, faith is not belief that but belief in.”76 hick does acknowledge, however, that the Reformed view of revelation and faith is much more diverse than luther’s alone. he points to Calvin’s view as an intermediate position where faith is defined as “a firm and certain knowledge of god’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the holy Spirit.”77 Despite hick’s decry of the relapse after Calvin “into a Protestant scholasticism as narrowly intellectualist as that of the Thomist-Catholic tradition,”78 it must be strongly insisted, contrary to hick, that while faith is more than a mere set of propositions, neither can it be divorced from propositions. after all, in a logically basic sense, truth is a property or quality of propositions, at least in part. a proposition is true if and only if the state of affairs to which it refers is as the proposition asserts it to be; otherwise it is false. For faith to be true in this sense, belief in god must not logically exclude beliefs about god. Despite luther’s emphasis that “faith is not belief that but belief in,” it is vitally important to see that faith presupposes acceptance of certain beliefs expressed propositionally, at least in part. it is necessary that belief in god be expressed in terms of a concretized determination of god, for otherwise it will become indeterminate and abstract rather than concrete and specific. Therefore, faith as personal trust and commitment must not be seen as mutually exclusive with faith understood propositionally.79 it is most unfortunate that hick has attempted to establish the validity of our knowledge of god at the great price of divorcing faith from propositions. For the undesirable consequence is that faith, as the principle of interpretation, cannot be employed to say anything propositionally about god, the Real, or, for that matter, the world conceived as a totality. For hick, the typical function of propositions is to harmonize 76. ibid., 29–30. 30.

77. Calvin, Institutes, bk. iii, ch. 2, par. 7, as quoted by hick in Faith and Knowledge, 78. hick, Faith and Knowledge, 30.

79. For a more detailed criticism along this line of thought, see Netland, Dissonant Voices, 125–33.

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism the data that comes to the person through the five senses, or, in religious terms, “the integration of our religious experience into our own minds and the communication of religious experience to others.” They do not extend to the metaphysical realm. at this point, hick’s Kantian epistemology comes across loud and clear. like Kant, hick sharply limits the reality perceptible by theoretical reason.80 Restriction of the content of knowledge to sense experience of the phenomenal world in principle deprives hick of propositional knowledge about metaphysical realities. Divine revelation (manifestation) on this basis can neither be connected with cognitive propositions nor have an external and objective grounding since in a Kantian epistemology the form of knowledge derives solely from the innate forms and categories of reason, stripping from external nature and history, as well as from Scripture, any objective foundation of knowledge in god. The interpretation of the external world of experience results from the subjective forms of knowing which the autonomous mind supplies.81 hence, for hick, as for Kant, the only real basis for evaluating religious experience is internal to the mind, that is, subjective. like Kant, the only way hick keeps faith’s connection with god, or to the Real as such, is at the cost of sacrificing the cognitive and objective content. Whereas divorcing propositions from religious faiths has been disastrous to claims of the cognitivity of religious language, it has obviously been enormously beneficial to the development of hick’s own version of religious pluralism. By minimizing propositional content, oppositions between religious beliefs are conveniently dismissed as either only apparent or otherwise relatively unimportant for serious evaluation. if objective discriminations can be made, and if doctrinal schemes of some religions are found to be more adequate than others, conflict would obviously emerge, thereby seriously weakening hick’s pluralistic thesis. Thus, a nonpropositional view of religious language turns out to be very advantageous indeed for hick’s philosophy of pluralism. 80. even hick’s earlier epistemology, which does not overtly utilize Kantian categories and ontology, is nevertheless basically Kantian in its dualistic structure. implicitly assuming the Kantian bifurcation between phenomena and noumena, our phenomenal experience cannot give us propositional knowledge of metaphysical realities, i.e., god or the Real. 81. Kant maintained that reason supplies the forms of knowledge while sensation furnishes the content of knowledge. Since by definition the content is limited to the sense world, knowledge does not extend to the metaphysical realm.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism on the other hand, by sacrificing the propositional aspect of truth, hick ultimately undermines his own epistemological project of attempting to establish the cognitive meaningfulness of religious language that he had undertaken from the beginning of his philosophical career. This point can well be demonstrated with reference to his notion of eschatological verification. Since eschatological verification depends upon the possibility of articulating, in terms of language and experience, some set of propositions as possible candidates of verification in the eschaton, hick’s nonpropositional view of revelation and faith does not in principle allow for any literal meaning to be applied to god in the eschaton. That is, how can verification of religious beliefs be possible even in the eschaton without propositional content concerning the object of our beliefs? and if hick’s thesis of eschatological verification was vulnerable to such criticism even before his Copernican revolution,82 the idea becomes all but impossible to maintain after the development of his pluralistic paradigm. Whereas hick’s earlier views of factuality, or cognitivity, had been directed towards particular religious doctrines, the impulse of the diversity and mutual incompatibility of the ultimate claims of religious pluralism impelled hick to all but reject the verificationist identification of cognitivity with factuality in favor of a mythological and pragmatic orientation. Despite his desperate attempts to salvage the concept through a more complex, indirect, and progressive idea of verification,83 hick’s pluralistic view explicitly dispensed with the notion of a cognitive or a factual verificandum, since the ineffable Real cannot be represented in factual or literalistic propositions, but only by myths and metaphors.84

82. a detailed bibliography of such criticisms is listed in hick’s book, Problems, 125–26. 83. See hick’s essay “eschatological Verification Reconsidered,” in hick, Problems, 110–28. 84. in the end, ironically, hick’s move away from truth values of specific truth claims in the direction of mythology has moved him closer and closer to the logical positivists, whose claims about the factual meaninglessness of religious language he had so vigorously attempted to oppose. Compare, for example, hick’s move away from the cognitive function of religious language towards a mythological or pragmatic one with Rudolf Carnap’s statement, quoted in footnote 70, on metaphysics having an expressive rather than a cognitive function.

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism

Transcendental Agnosticism Related to the above criticism is another area of difficulty focused more specifically on the metaphysical status of the Real and its ontological relationship to the various religious traditions of the world. This set of criticisms is fundamentally connected to hick’s understanding of the transcendent Real as ineffable, wherein it is claimed that human terms cannot be applied to the Real an sich (with the exception of purely formal statements that attribute no concrete qualities). according to hick: “our language can have no purchase on a postulated noumenal reality which is not even partly formed by human concept. This lies outside the scope of our cognitive capacities . . . Thus, it cannot be said to be one or many, person or thing, conscious or unconscious, purposive or non-purposive, substance or process, good or evil, loving or hating.”85 as opposed to a more modest doctrine of ineffability that retains some positive aspects of the divine attributes, hick’s stronger version insists on the idea that no concepts can apply to the noumenal Real. Nothing at all is known or can be truly said of god. Clearly, hick’s version of ineffability is much more radical than the dominant understanding of ineffability that has existed at least in the Christian tradition. For this reason, gavin D’Costa has aptly characterized hick’s position as transcendental agnosticism, for while hick affirms the transcendent divine Reality over against naturalistic options, he prefers to remain agnostic as to the ultimate nature of the transcendent Reality.86 Keith Ward has pointed to several serious metaphysical problems posed by hick’s ineffability thesis.87 First, according to Ward, if the Real is ineffable in the strong sense in which hick understands it, how can one even know that it in fact exists? here it must be pointed out that even hick himself does not claim to know that the Real exists except as a hypothetical postulation. Says hick: “So the Real is that which there must be if human religious experience, in its diversity of forms, is not purely imaginary projection. it is, in Kantian terms, a necessary postulate of religious experience in its diversity of forms.”88

85. hick, Interpretation, 350. 86. D’Costa, “John hick and Religious Pluralism,” 7–8. 87. in Ward, “truth”; and Ward, Religion and Revelation, 310–17. 88. hick, A Christian Theology, 68.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism Secondly, while many traditions do speak of ineffability, it has also been pointed out that many others do not. as a former follower of tibetan Buddhism, Paul Williams states, for example, in this tradition “there is no Being, no absolute, at all.”89 Ward further adds: “There are religious traditions which deny any transcendent Real; others which assert more than one; and yet others which explicitly deny the unknowability of the Real. Thus, it does not seem possible to find any non-vacuous concept of ‘the Real’ which all traditions could accept as the substratum of their belief.”90 Thirdly, even among religious traditions that do adhere to some doctrine of ineffability, are their respective ideas referring to the same Reality, as hick supposes? Ward points out the fallacy of hick’s assumption in this regard: if X is indescribable to me, and y is indescribable by me, it does not follow that X is identical with y, since there is no way in which X could be identified with y, since there are no criteria of identity to apply. it is rather like saying, “i do not know what X is; and i do not know what y is; therefore X must be the same as y.” if i do not know what either is, i naturally do not know whether they are the same or different. to assert identity is thus to commit the quantifier-shift fallacy, of moving from “many religions believe in ineffable Real” to “There is an ineffable Real in which many religions believe.”91

hick has rejected this criticism on grounds that his theory does not rest on the different religious claims of ineffability but on “the striking similarity of the transformed human state described within the different tradition” that “strongly suggests a common source of salvific transformation.”92 a close examination of hick’s work reveals, however, that this claim is not entirely true.93 But even if it was, hick must admit that this does not constitute a strong enough basis for dogmatically insisting that there must be only one such Reality, or in assuming that 89. Quotation from Ward, Religion and Revelation, 312. Williams is now a Catholic. 90. ibid. While it would be possible for hick to say that some of them are wrong at this point, then hick would be guilty of other criticisms, for example, reductionism. 91. ibid., 313. 92. hick, A Christian Theology, 69. 93. For example, the whole thrust of hick’s argument in part four of his Interpretation presupposes an understanding of the Real an sich based on claims of various religious traditions. ibid., 236–40.

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism all claims concerning the ineffable are equally valid, especially since the Real an sich is absolutely unknowable and nothing substantial can be said about it. Fourthly, Ward has put his finger on a fundamental problem concerning hick’s distinction between formal and substantial properties. That is, how can hick escape the problem of designating a substantial attribute to the Real? Says Ward: Now if i say, “X is to be used as a noun” that could be called a formal property of X; it tells me what sort of term X is, without telling me what real thing X might be. But if i say “X is the referent of some noun,” i am talking about some actual object, not a term. and i am saying what sort of thing it is; a thing which could be referred to by description, by someone with human conceptual equipment. i am saying, “this object is such that it can be identified by some human language user.” That may not tell me much about it but it does have content; it is a synthetic proposition . . . We must conclude that the statement “X is an identifiable object” attributes a substantial property to X, the property of being identifiable; and the more one spells out the manner of identifying it, the more one will say about it.94

Contrary to hick, who considers anselm’s description of god (“that than which none greater can be conceived”) as a purely formal property, Ward argues that anselm’s description entails substantial properties of perfect greatness and goodness together with whatever other properties belong to a supremely perfect being. This illustrates the truth that without the aid of substantial properties, there is no way to identify that to which logical properties supposedly apply. in my opinion, Ward and D’Costa are correct to assume that if indeed the Real is the ground of our being then we need not remain completely agnostic about its nature. Certainly in the case of Christianity, while it is true that god is not fully and finally comprehended, Christian tradition has overwhelmingly affirmed that god is at least partially and veridically apprehended. to the extent that god is known at all, it is believed that he is known truly. after all, one of the most profound dimensions of the trinitarian doctrine is that the god we experience is a god “for us.” That is to say, the economic trinity is the imminent trinity.

94. Ward, “truth,” 10.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism What hick does, on the other hand, is to separate the Real itself from the phenomenon. hick is being thoroughly dualistic here. if the manifestation for us is itself the manifestation of the Real, however, then how can we say that it is ineffable? For an entity to be manifested is for some or all of its properties to be revealed. But the Real as undifferentiated has no distinguishable properties. if the Real has an objective nature as hick affirms, and the Real is strictly inaccessible to us noetically, then we can never know what any of its properties are. Thus, it cannot be manifested at all through experience as hick insists. Finally, hick’s transcendental agnosticism also causes difficulties in the relation of the Real an sich to its various personae and impersonae. Simply put, the problem concerns whether the relation between the Real in itself and its personae and impersonae is transcendental or causal. Kenneth Rose addresses the question to hick in the following way: “Does he intend that the noumenal Real should be understood as simply an entity necessitated by the transcendental logic of his quasiKantian reliance upon the noumenon/phenomenon distinction, which then serves as the sole guarantor of the cognitivity of religions? or does he intend that the noumenal Real be understood as a partial cause, along with the biological processes of cognition and also of culture, of religious experience?”95 as several authors have pointed out, hick’s position on this matter has been inconsistent if not ambiguous.96 in his later works, including An Interpretation of Religion, it is clear that the dominant thrust of hick’s understanding of the Real is as a transcendental concept, as when he says: “if the Real in itself is not and cannot be humanly experienced, why postulate such an unknown and unknowable Ding an sich? The answer is that the divine noumenon is a necessary postulate of the pluralistic life of humanity . . . We are led to postulate the Real an sich as the presupposition of the veridical character of this range of forms of religious experience.”97 This passage reflects a Kantian conceptualization of the Real as never the direct object of experience but a necessary postulate and a presupposition posited to make sense of the plurality of religious experi95. Rose, Knowing the Real, 109. 96. among them Kenneth Rose in Knowing the Real, 106–10; and harold Netland in Dissonant Voices, 210–21. 97. hick, Interpretation, 249.

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism ences. on the other hand, other passages seem to indicate that hick also wants to maintain a causal relationship between the Real in itself and its personae and impersonae, as when he states: “i want to say that the noumenal Real is experienced and thought by different human mentalities, forming and formed by different religious traditions, as the range of gods and absolute which the phenomenology of religions report. and these divine personae and metaphysical impersonae, as i shall call them, are not illusory but are empirically, that is experientially, real as authentic manifestations of the Real.”98 The above passages clearly indicate an inconsistency in hick’s understanding of the relation between the Real and its personae and impersonae. Within hick’s Kantian scheme, causality cannot be predicated of a transcendental postulate since its existence as the cause of the phenomenal applies the categories beyond the permissible range of cognitive meaning. if the noumenal Real is a causal agent, it cannot at the same time be a transcendental postulate. it is not consistent to claim with respect to a supposedly transcendental entity such as the Real an sich that it has manifestations, or that the postulate of the divine noumenon is empirically induced from the various impacts producing the range of phenomenal expressions of the Real. on the other hand, hick no doubt recognizes that such an entity necessitated purely by transcendental logic is completely vacuous if indeed absolutely no element of continuity can be traced from the Real to its personae and impersonae. hick is thus bound to speak of personae and impersonae as manifestations of the Real in order to preserve at least a minimal appearance of continuity and to avoid complete skepticism concerning the Real. otherwise, how can hick hope to claim any correspondence between the Real and any particular personae and impersonae? how can he avoid the charge that the noumenal Real is so empty and otiose as to be ontologically unnecessary,99 especially since he claims that religions are to be evaluated by the ethical and spiritual fruits alone? Therefore, hick has found himself in a serious dilemma in which he is forced to slide back and forth between two contrary positions, regardless of how inconsistent they may be. Renouncing his Kantian un98. ibid., 242. 99. The criticism that hick’s postulation of the Real is empty and otiose have been made by many writers, including gavin D’Costa, Keith Ward, S. mark heim, and Kenneth Rose.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism derstanding of the noumenal Real and thereby abandoning his radical claims of ineffability could easily avoid such inconsistency, of course. But perhaps this is too much to ask of hick given the investments he has made in this doctrine and its central importance in his system. at any rate, hick has shown no sign or willingness to move in this direction.

Doctrinal Reductionism For our final criticism, we move to what is undoubtedly the greatest weakness of the pluralistic theory—its reductionism. in one form or another, many reviewers have expressed their uneasiness about hick’s tendency to reinterpret major religious themes by reducing important differences to an abstract universal sameness. on one level, such accusation does not seem to do justice to hick’s apparent and genuine attempts to construct a multidimensional perspective that affirms the irreducible cultural differences and irreconcilable diversity among religious traditions. There are definite and irreducible differences between theistic and nontheistic religions, for example, and each tradition’s experience and conceptualization of them. on the other hand, hick’s basic standpoint is that religions are culturally and irreducibly diverse significations of an ultimate divine Reality that transcends all significations. Seeing them as an accidental product of history, furthermore, hick unquestionably minimizes the rich doctrinal and narrative differences between religions. Despite their virtual differences, hick implies that there is not only a common source underlying each of the major world religions, but also a common goal: “yes, it’s true that the religions ask different questions. But i want to suggest that these questions, whilst specifically different, are generically the same. They all presuppose a profound present lack, and the possibility of a radically better future; and they are all answers to the question, how to get from one to the other. in traditional Christian language they are all ways of asking, What must i do to be saved?”100 given such a generic understanding of religious diversity, hick’s pluralistic theory is reductionistic at several points. By claiming that the Real has a nature, and yet that this nature cannot be expressed within any human conceptual system, hick reduces all claims of knowledge about the ultimate within the various religious traditions to a penultimate 100. hick, A Christian Theology, 41 (emphasis original).

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism status. They become claims about the various personae and impersonae of the Real that are merely penultimate images or manifestations of the Real, rather than assertions about the ultimate Real itself. harold Netland has pointed out the problem with such a view: hick’s theory fails to account satisfactorily for the fact that each tradition ascribes ultimacy to its own particular conception of the religious ultimate . . . orthodox followers of each of these traditions would vigorously resist the suggestion that their particular conception of the religious ultimate is in fact not ultimate but merely a penultimate manifestation of what is truly ultimate— the Real. Nevertheless, this is precisely what hick suggests . . . it would be inconceivable for an orthodox Jew or Christian to concede that there is something ontologically more ultimate than yahweh; similarly, an advaita Vedantin hindu would reject the suggestion that something more ultimate than Brahman exists.101

Secondly, hick’s theory is reductionistic because much of the metaphysical, trans-historical, and historical doctrines and beliefs held by the various religious traditions are reduced to mere myths or metaphors, the function of which is to evoke certain dispositional attitudes and to orient believers to the Real, rather than making objective truth-claims. This is true on several levels. at the highest level of religious discourse, when believers speak about god or the absolute using literal and analogical attributions, hick claims that those forms of address are really mythological language about the Real itself. hick states his position in the following way: in relation to these experienced personae and impersonae language has either literal or analogical meaning. it generally has literal meaning in relation to divine actions on earth and analogical meaning in relation to a divine persona considered in him or herself or to a metaphysical impersona considered in itself . . . But nevertheless such literal and analogical language about the objects of religious worship or meditation always intends to be about the Real itself. and as such it functions mythologically: we speak mythologically about the noumenal Real by speaking literally or analogically about its phenomenal manifestations.102

101. Netland, Dissonant Voices, 222–23. 102. hick, Interpretation, 351.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism in so far as such language is about the Real itself, hick’s use of mythology here is not that of expository myths, or that which can also be expressed non-mythologically, but in reference to what he calls the ultimate mystery for which our language can have no purchase. Thus, not only are claims about the ultimate reduced to penultimate status, the literal and the analogical statements about what believers perceive to be the ultimate object of worship are reinterpreted and reduced to mythologies concerning the Real, despite the intent and protest of believers. in effect, hick is not content to let analogical and literal statements stand as they are, or as they were intended to be; he claims to have a superior vantage point that allows him to mythologize literal and analogical truth claims that are of the utmost importance to adherents and theologians alike. at the levels of trans-historical and historical beliefs, hick’s reductionism is also evident in his reinterpretations of a great deal of factual claims as expository myths and significant diminishing of their importance. By trans-historical beliefs, hick has in mind “questions to which there is in principle a true answer, but one which cannot be established by historical or other empirical evidence.”103 They include such questions as whether the universe is eternal or has a beginning, the fate of human individuals after death, and the existence of heaven and hell and angels. historical beliefs are, on the other hand, straightforward matters of historical facts, such as whether or not Jesus came physically back to life on the third day after his death. at the level of both historical and trans-historical beliefs, hick grants that some truth-claims may indeed be true or false factual assertions. however, hick suggests that “a number of trans-historical beliefs, which are at present unverifiable and unfalsifiable, may well be true or false myths rather than true or false factual assertions.”104 The Christian belief that Jesus Christ was the second person of the trinity incarnate as a human being is a case in point. “understood literally, and taken in conjunction with traditional conviction that this has been and will be the only occasion of divine incarnation, the doctrine entails that Christ is the sole savior . . . But on the other hand, it is also possible to understand the idea of divine incarnation in the life of Jesus Christ mythologically, as indicating an extraordinary openness to the divine presence in virtue 103. ibid., 365. 104. ibid., 371.

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism of which Jesus’ life and teaching have mediated the reality and love of god to millions of people in successive centuries.”105 likewise, the hindu doctrine of the vedas and idea of reincarnation, the Jewish idea of god’s chosen people, the Buddhist notion of rebirth, and the Christian doctrine of the holy trinity are all mythical trans-historical beliefs for hick. and to no one’s surprise, hick relegates some tradition-specific historical claims, such as the Buddha’s flight through the sky to Sri lanka, to mythology. even if some trans-historical and historical beliefs are to be considered in the category of factual truth-claims or potential facts, they are never essential or necessary for salvation/ liberation regardless of the functional importance they may have within a belief system. Thus, hick says the following about transhistorical beliefs: “Such beliefs concerning matters of trans-historical fact vary in importance within the belief-system to which they belong; and at the top end of the scale they may be indispensable to a given doctrinal structure. it does not however follow that that structure is itself indispensable for salvation/liberation.”106 and concerning historical beliefs hick says: “evidently, then, it is not necessary for salvation that we should have correct historical information.”107 For hick to make such sweeping claims is clearly to reinterpret those religious traditions for which trans-historical and historical doctrinal structures are intimately related to and indispensable for salvation. lastly, and most significantly, hick has been greatly criticized for having a reductionistic soteriology. given the central place that soteriology has in hick’s philosophy of pluralism, the importance of this criticism is obvious. according to hick, the common soteriological function of all religion is “to provide contexts for salvation/liberation which consists in various forms of the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness.”108 Similarly, hick has insisted that a common ethical and moral ideal of love or compassion, as epitomized by the golden Rule, is taught by all world religions. This being the case, the various differences of doctrine and practice among religions are seen as historically and culturally conditioned variations of a com105. hick, Interpretation, 371–72. 106. ibid., 369. 107. hick, Metaphor, 146. 108. hick, Interpretation, 14.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism mon soteriological theme. however, by treating major world religions as if they all share a common salvific goal, structure, and understanding of the nature of salvation, hick greatly minimizes important distinctions and significant variations in the conceptions of salvation. in this connection, Netland asks: “Can the great Pauline theme of justification by faith, or the hindu understanding of moksha, or the Zen notion of satori be reduced to ‘the transition from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness’?”109 William J. Wainwright expresses a similar doubt: “are hick’s premises true? are John Wesley’s and D. t. Suzuki’s transformations, for example, essentially the same? only if the specifically Christian or Buddhist content of their religious lives are accidental to them. it is difficult to believe that they are.” Wainwright continues: “one can raise similar questions about the agape/karuna ideal. The golden rule is (as hick argues) a common denominator in post-axial religion, but how this is fleshed out varies. even when ideals of saintliness are most alike, the content of flavor or love and compassion seems different. it isn’t clear, for example, that the love of St. Francis, who believes that others are made in god’s image, and the compassion of a bodhisattva who believes that people are ‘empty,’ is in all important aspects the same.”110 What is so questionable about hick’s soteriocentrism is his assumption that there is only one great religious aim of salvation/liberation common to all religions, whereas, in reality, major religions seem to offer very different answers to their own specific analysis of the human predicament. hick’s underlying assumption is that the many different religions have a common core or a soteriological essence, an abstract universal sameness that transcends their quite obvious dissimilarity. in this sense, both the nature and the purpose of all religions are the same for hick. in making such an assumption, however, he greatly relegates the particularity and uniqueness of each religious tradition to a place of abstract essence, or to a common soteriological structure separated from each of the traditions’ specific and meaningful contexts. While superficial variations are acknowledged, hick does not seem to appreciate deeply enough the radical differences and the autonomy of various religious forms of life, or what Wittgenstein might call language games. as D. Z. Phillips points out, religious traditions as distinct lan109. Netland, Dissonant Voices, 226. 110. Wainwright, “Review,” 264.

Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism guage games have their own rules and internal criteria determining what is true and false within the universe of discourse and therefore cannot be evaluated on the basis of general criteria external to that language game. in short, they are incommensurable.111 to ignore or obscure particular contexts, and the many glaring doctrinal differences and religious incompatibilities, is therefore thoroughly reductionistic. John Cobb is thus perfectly correct in challenging hick and other such essentialist approaches to religious pluralism: “i see no a priori reason to assume that religion has an essence or that the great religious traditions are well understood as religions, that is, as traditions for which being religious is the central goal. i certainly see no empirical evidence in favor of this view. i see only scholarly habit and the power of language to mislead. i call for a pluralism that allows each religious tradition to define its own nature and purpose and the role of religious elements within it.”112

CoNCluSioN in this chapter, i have examined hick’s philosophy of religious pluralism in some detail. Through my exposition of hick’s epistemology, ontology, and soteriology, i have tried to demonstrate, if all too briefly, the richness and thoughtfulness of hick’s philosophy as a comprehensive solution to the problem of religious pluralism. Without doubt, hick’s work represents the most ambitious, complete, and exhaustive interpretation of religious pluralism to date, and his reputation as the most important philosopher of pluralism is well deserved. Despite its completeness, sophistication, and many other impressive and appealing qualities, i have also tried to point out in this chapter some serious problems and deficiencies. First of all, hick’s unwillingness to abandon a foundationalist methodology at some crucial points has resulted in a kind of positivism that prevents, even in principle, any attempt to make justifiable judgments on matters of crucial importance including questions of the religious or naturalistic character of the universe and conflicting truth claims. Secondly, hick’s downplaying of the propositional elements of faith has resulted in the cognitive divorce of the subjective religious ex111. Phillips, The Concept of Prayer, 22; and Phillips, Religion Without Explanation, 143, 145ff.; also Phillips, Faith, 108. 112. Cobb, “Beyond Pluralism,” 84.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism perience from its objective ground, depriving, or at least minimizing, hick’s epistemology of an objective ground and cognitive connection to the Real. Thirdly, his post-Kantian ontology and its related thesis of radical ineffability of the Real has resulted in a form of agnosticism in which we cannot meaningfully talk about the Real, even analogically, and no real basis is left for saying the Real is veridically experienced. Finally, hick’s soteriology has resulted in a kind of reductionism that, in the final analysis, deprives each religious tradition of the absolute uniqueness and crucial differences in their understanding and practice of salvation. hick has radically reinterpreted and redefined the unique particularities of each tradition to fit his meta-philosophy of religions. Perhaps nowhere is this last point more apparent than in the case of Christianity, and in no other doctrine is this more evident as in the Christian dogma of Christ.

3 hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism

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aving considered hick’s philosophy of pluralism in the last chapter, i am now ready to examine hick’s theology of pluralism, concentrating especially on his Christology for a pluralistic age. as one of the leading philosophers of religion of our time, hick has not only been active in the contemporary theological scene, his contributions, particularly in the area of Christology, have been very significant. Specifically, hick has attempted to advance the limits of the traditional boundaries of Christology beyond the understanding of Christ and Christianity to the world of religions. traditionally, Christianity has always confessed Jesus of Nazareth as god incarnate, the only way to salvation for humankind. Throughout the centuries, furthermore, the church has placed its belief in him as the highest divine revelation and its fullest expression, based on the conviction that god was in Christ. While it is true that the majority of Christians still hold to this view today, the accelerated situation of plurality is making it impossible for contemporary Christology to ignore the attitudes and influences of other major world religions upon this claim. Within Christianity itself, an increasing number of theologians have begun to challenge the church’s traditional doctrine in the last several decades, calling for a radically new, if not a relativized, understanding of Christ. hick has been one of the most vocal of the voices at the forefront of this pluralistic movement, his christological proposal being the most comprehensive and systematic of the attacks against the traditional doctrine of the incarnation to emerge in recent years. 75

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism The starting point of hick’s Christology is a new sense of global consciousness and a new Christian self-understanding that is aware of Christianity as but one among many responses to the infinite transcendent reality. in hick’s view, this new public awareness has not only undermined the plausibility of the traditional Christian sense of superiority, it has also raised a question mark against the theological core of the dogma that Jesus of Nazareth was god incarnate. What is precisely at issue is not, for hick, incarnation as such, but a particular conception of it adopted by the church at the Councils of Nicaea (325 Ce) and Chalcedon (451 Ce). adopting the six different senses of incarnation as distinguished by Sarah Coakley, hick is fully prepared to accept a type of incarnational theology “that affirms god’s involvement in human life” and “that in the life of Jesus god was involved in a particular and specifically powerful and effective way” such that “Jesus was not an ordinary man but one whose relationship to god has a universal significance.”1 What hick vehemently opposes is the view of incarnation as belief in the personal pre-existence of Jesus before his earthly birth, and the belief in the total interaction of the divine and the human in Christ. he also rejects the claim that Jesus was the exclusive and final revelation of god, as well as the substance language of physis, hypostasis, and ousia used in classical Christian theology.2 accordingly, hick’s main christological thesis is this: That the idea of divine incarnation in its standard Christian form, in which both genuine humanity and genuine deity are insisted upon, has never been given a satisfactory literal sense; but that on the other hand it makes excellent metaphorical sense . . . What i shall recommend is acceptance of the idea of divine incarnation as a metaphorical idea. We see in Jesus a human being extraordinarily open to god’s influence and thus living to an extraordinary extent as god’s agent on earth, “incarnating” the divine purpose for human life. he thus embodied within the circumstances of his time and place the ideal of humanity living in openness and response to god, and in doing so he “incarnated” a love that reflects the divine love.3

1. hick, Metaphor, 9. 2. ibid., 10. 3. ibid., 12.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism given the core importance of the doctrine of the incarnation for Christianity, and the significance of his contributions in this area, hick’s Christology demands both a thorough investigation and an evaluation. The purpose of this present chapter is therefore to give a careful and sufficiently detailed exposition of hick’s mature Christology as it relates to religious pluralism. i will proceed by first inquiring into hick’s deconstructive attempts to systematically demolish the church’s traditional doctrines concerning Christ. afterwards, i will probe his reconstructive efforts at a revisionist Christology that purports to be more appropriate for a pluralistic age.

hiCK’S DeCoNStRuCtioN oF tRaDitioNal ChRiStology in this section, i shall first consider hick’s attempts to demolish the traditional incarnational Christology. hick’s attacks on the church’s dogma of Christ manifest in four major categories: historical, conceptual, soteriological, and pragmatic. Briefly, hick’s main historical argument is that Jesus himself did not teach or believe that he was god incarnate and that this momentous idea was a creation of the church. his conceptual argument is that the doctrine of the two natures of Christ—one human and the other divine—has never been explicated coherently and therefore must be dismissed. The soteriological argument is that the church’s transactional understanding of the doctrine of the atonement of Jesus’ crucifixion, as making up for human sin and guilt, has become totally outdated and unbelievable for the modern mind and must therefore be abandoned. Finally, hick’s pragmatic argument is that the dogma of Christ’s incarnation has resulted in negative historical side effects. Specifically, it has been used to justify the church’s participation in antiSemitism, imperialism, patriarchalism, and the Christian superiority complex. in the following sections, i shall attempt to summarize each of these arguments in greater detail.

The Jesus of History and the Origins of Christology i begin with hick’s historical argument. to understand hick’s claim that Jesus did not teach what was to become the orthodox dogma concerning him, we must inquire into hick’s views of the historic Jesus and the origins of Christology, beginning with his methodology. in this regard,

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perhaps one of the best ways to characterize the contemporary milieu in which discussions of Christology often take place is in terms of the distinction that has been made by Wolfhart Pannenberg between Christology from above and Christology from below.4 according to Pannenberg, a Christology from above begins with the divinity of Jesus in which the concept of incarnation is central. That is, it presupposes the doctrine of the trinity and concentrates on the logos becoming incarnate, assuming a human nature. a Christology from below starts, on the other hand, with the message and the fate of the historical person of Jesus, and arrives at his divinity only at the end. as such, the concept of incarnation emerges only as a conclusion. as with many contemporary Christologies, hick himself struggles with the predicament of whether to begin with the man Jesus of Nazareth or the Christ figure of developed Christian theology and faith. Says hick: There is a dilemma here. on the one hand, it would seem that an incarnational faith, rooted in history, must go back to the historical Jesus; yet the modern study of the New testament document has shown how relatively little certain knowledge we have of him. The idealized Christ, on the other hand, is unaffected by the defects of historical evidence, so that we can glorify him without limit. The result is an absolute figure who is the one and only way, truth, and life for the whole human race and whose totalitarian claim thus clashes with our contemporary awareness of god’s saving grace within other streams of religious life.5

like Pannenberg, hick’s choice is to begin with the historical Jesus of Nazareth rather than the idealized Christ of the dogmas.6 having made this initial decision, hick’s immediate problem concerns the reliability of the New testament documents for yielding accurate historical information about the historical man Jesus, since no other source takes us as far back to the historical Jesus and the origins of Christianity. intensely studied through methods of critical research in the last two centuries, the New testament has come under considerable scrutiny at the hands of critical scholars, yielding widely divergent and conflicting conclusions. yet it is hick’s claim that there is a “modest but significant consensus” and “a sufficient overlap of conclusions” among the experts 4. Pannenberg, Jesus, 33–37. 5. hick, Disputed Questions, 35. 6. ibid.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism “to have something reasonably solid to start from.”7 Says hick: “The identifiable consensus begins with a distinction between the historical Jesus of Nazareth and the post-easter development of the church’s mingled memories and interpretations of him. and it is a basic premise of modern New testament scholarship that we have access to the former only through the latter.”8 however, having access to the historical Jesus of Nazareth through the New testament as the only source of information is problematic for hick for several reasons. to begin with, these documents we must rely on were written forty to sixty or seventy years after the death of Jesus. Whereas the earliest New testament documents, including Thessalonians and other early letters of Paul, were written starting around 50 Ce, the gospels, through which we have the most access to the historical Christ, were written much later. hick dates the earliest gospel, that of mark, to about 70 Ce with the remaining gospels moving toward the end of the century. Secondly, hick claims that none of the writers was an eyewitness of the life of Jesus that they describe, their depictions being only secondary and tertiary portraits dependent on oral and written traditions developed over a number of decades. Furthermore, says hick, these documents are all recorded from the standpoint of faith, inspired by the spirit of the glorified lord, and composed in cultural milieus quite different from the original events that they describe. Beginning with the post-easter Christian communities and their memories of the original events, the New testament documents reflect developing and diversifying layers of memories upon memories of Jesus. he appears at first as the eschatological prophet who was to return as god’s agent to inaugurate the kingdom, but later, as this expectation gradually faded from the communities, the exalted one having a divine status. The New testament documents thus contain the mingled memories of original first-hand accounts that have been, in hick’s own words, “preserved, winnowed, developed, distorted, magnified, and overlaid through the interplay of many factors.”9 given the limitations of the New testament documents when it comes to producing reliable historical information, how does hick hope to build his Christology based on the historical person of Jesus? hick 7. hick, Metaphor, 15. 8. ibid. 9. ibid., 16.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism proposes to resolve this methodological dilemma by beginning with what we know about the historical Jesus and using our imagination as if we were first-century persons encountering him. Says hick: “Imagine is the right word, even though it must be imagination under the broad control of historical evidence.”10 This last sentence reveals that hick’s proposed methodology of imaginative reconstruction has both objective and subjective elements. objectively, hick wants to bring the use of imagination under the broad control of historical evidence, as limited as this may be. hick’s understanding of historical evidence is very broadly conceived, however, going beyond the limits of the New testament to encompass several additional sources, including our knowledge of other religious figures: “This evidence is drawn from the New testament, from other documents of the same period, and from wider information concerning the ancient world. Because we are trying to imagine a distinctively religious personality we shall, in interpreting the evidence, also use our knowledge of other religiously impressive people of whom we have read or whom we have encountered.”11 in addition to the control of historical evidence, hick also acknowledges a subjective aspect of his methodology involving projections of communal and individual ideals upon the historical data: For those of us who are Christians, the figure of Jesus has profoundly affected us by meeting our own spiritual needs, so that the pattern of those needs has inevitably influenced our perception of him. accordingly, imaginative reconstructions of the historical Jesus are bound to differ because we use partially different ranges and selections of historical information and also because we bring to that information different experiences of religiously impressive humanity and our own varying spiritual needs. indeed because of this last element our respective pictures of Jesus will say something about us as well as something, hopefully something that is historically well-founded, about the Jesus who was a part of public human history.12

given his methodology of imaginative reconstruction, what can hick actually claim to know about the historical Jesus with any degree of certainty? here, hick begins with the most assured knowledge of Jesus 10. hick, Disputed Questions, 35 (emphasis original). 11. ibid., 35–36. 12. ibid., 36.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism available through historical evidence: “although our assured information about him is very limited, the New testament obviously reflects the existence of a real person, who was critically important to many who encountered him and whose existence has been of ultimate significance for hundreds of millions since.”13 to such a bare minimum, hick adds the following historical accounts alleging additional conclusive knowledge of Jesus: Scholars have listed such generally agreed points as that Jesus was a galilean Jew, son of a woman called mary; that he was baptized by John the Baptist; that he preached and healed and exorcized; that he called disciples and spoke of there being twelve; that he largely confined his activity to israel; that he was crucified outside Jerusalem by the Roman authorities; and that after his death the followers continued as an identifiable movement. Beyond this an unavoidable element of conjectural interpretation goes into our mental pictures of Jesus.14

From this it is quite evident how little we actually know about the historical figure, according to hick, and how large and diverse must have been the contribution of the imagination to our “mental pictures of Jesus” throughout the centuries, for behind this gallery of ideal portraits lies the largely unknown man of Nazareth. Based on such fragmentary and ambiguous data, what type of a figure does hick himself then imagine Jesus of Nazareth to have been? What is hick’s own mental picture of this historical Jesus? he admits that his “own picture falls within the tradition of ‘liberal’ interpretation established by Schleiermacher, Strauss, harnack, and others.”15 Central to hick’s image of the Nazarene is a first-century Palestinian Jew who was intensely and overwhelmingly conscious of the reality of god: as i see it, religiously the most important fact about Jesus must have been his strong and continuous awareness of god as abba, “father.” From the point of view of psychology of religion we can say that only an extremely intense god-consciousness could have sustained Jesus’ firm prophetic assurance and charismatic power. it is evident that in his own consciousness god was the great over-arching reality in relation to whom he lived. The heavenly 13. ibid., 35. 14. hick, Metaphor, 18. 15. ibid.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism Father was utterly real to him—as real as the men and women with whom he interacted every day or the galilean hills among which they lived. When Jesus declared god’s gracious and yet demanding love, and god’s judgment upon hypocrisy, and pronounced god’s forgiveness for sinners, he was speaking out of a direct sense of supernatural loving, judging, forgiving presence, so that his words had the powerful ring of authenticity. god was evidently so real to Jesus that in his presence the heavenly Father became a living reality to many of his hearers.16

hick surmises how such powerful god consciousness must have had a tremendous impact on those who encountered him in both gracious and challenging ways. Jesus’ spirit was so continuously open to god “that his life vibrated, as it were, to the divine life.”17 The presence of god was thus mediated through the presence of Jesus—”not in the sense that the man Jesus literally is god, but in the sense that the he was totally conscious of god that we could catch something of that consciousness by spiritual contagion.”18 For hick, the transforming effects of such power were that of the sick being healed, the “poor in the spirit” being kindled to new life, a sense of dynamic joy in harmony with the divine life, and a breakthrough into a new and better quality of existence. There were deeply disturbing and demanding effects as well, according to hick. Due to the “immense contrast between Jesus’ powerful and pervasive sense of the divine Thou, with his consequent absolute certainty of god’s reality, and our own feeble and intermittent godconsciousness,”19 to encounter Jesus was to be profoundly challenged. hick imagines such encounters to have embodied a response to the absolute claims of the divine reality: We would have felt the absolute claim of god confronting us, summoning us to give ourselves wholly to him and to be born again as his children and as agents of his purposes on earth. to respond with our whole being might have involved danger, poverty, and ridicule. and such is the interaction of body and mind that in deciding to give ourselves to god, in response to his claim mediated through Jesus, we might have found ourselves trem16. ibid. 17. hick, Myth of God Incarnate, 172. 18. ibid. 19. hick, Disputed Questions, 37.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism bling or in tears or uttering the strange sounds that are called speaking with tongues.20

in addition to such varieties of affirmative responses, hick is also cognizant of the possibility of an unwillingness to recognize god’s presence by closing oneself to Jesus and thereby rejecting god’s claim upon one’s life. according to hick, Jesus was so intensely conscious of god’s presence and power that he expected god’s immanent reign on earth to become publicly manifest in the immediate future. “his sense of the kingdom knocking on the door of the present moment reflected,” hick suggests, “his own vivid sense of god’s immanent presence.”21 hick also suggests that Jesus’ unique self-awareness among his contemporaries due to his unusual intensity of god-consciousness must have resulted in a unique sense of calling and prophetic responsibility to communicate the reality of god and the immanent coming of the divine kingdom. Such self-understanding was structured in terms of the apocalyptic expectations within first-century Judaism. here hick endorses e. P. Sanders’ view that “Jesus saw himself as god’s last messenger before the establishment of the Kingdom.”22 hick elaborates this view as follows: Jesus’ intense god-consciousness was, of course, inevitably structured in terms of the religious ideas of his own culture. The basic concept with which to understand his own existence in relation to god was that of a prophet. But it seems that Jesus was conscious, not just of being a prophet, but probably of being the last prophet . . . he came as the eschatological prophet, urgently proclaiming the imminent approach of the Day of the lord. he and those who responded to him were living consciously in the last months or years before the great Day when the present world order would be swept away and god’s Kingdom established on earth.23

Vividly conscious that the end was close at hand, hick thinks that Jesus self-consciously understood his mission as that of urgently summoning israel to repentance so as to be ready for the great day. 20. hick, Myth of God Incarnate, 172. 21. hick, Disputed Questions, 39. 22. hick, Metaphor, 19. 23. ibid., 19.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism in light of Jesus’ role as the last prophet, hick believes that there were two main images within the Jewish tradition that may have expressed his self-understanding and mission. The first of these was that of the Son of man, the apocalyptic savior figure to appear from the sky in the Danielic prophecy (Dan 7:13–14). While scholars have raised doubts about Jesus’ own use of the idea, hick’s opinion is that Jesus clearly used this term “though possibly not as a title but simply as an accepted way in which a man could refer to himself.”24 here hick leaves open the possibility that Jesus himself, and not simply the developing mind of the church, might have believed in his own return on the great Day as the Son of man appearing in the clouds. The other image was that of the messiah, the descendent of David who was to reign from Jerusalem as king in the new age. hick thinks it is far from certain that Jesus applied this title to himself but that “others sought to thrust the title of messiah upon him, though it does not seem that he himself accepted it.”25 Not only is it probable that the early church rather than Jesus himself made the identification, the images of the Son of man and the messiah were fused together by the time the gospels were being written.26 in support, hick sites the markan passion story in which, when asked before the Sanhedrin if he is the messiah, Jesus replies, “i am; and you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (mark 14:62). although hick, echoing Schillebeeckx and others, claims that these words are not in fact historical, he notes that it would have been natural for the early church to identify him as god’s messiah and the Son of man, who was to come again with the clouds of heaven, when seen in the context of general apocalyptic expectation which “must surely go back to Jesus himself.”27 hick is emphatic, however, in denying that both of these images were divine images in Jewish thinking, as the later Christian doctrine of the incarnation would have it. hick states, “each was human, or perhaps even superhuman, figure that was to be god’s servant and instrument

24. hick, Disputed Questions, 40. 25. ibid. 26. hick speculates that these two images “were probably adopted initially in different places, perhaps the messiah image in Jerusalem and the Son of man image elsewhere in Palestine or Syria.” ibid. 27. hick, Metaphor, 20.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism in ushering in the kingdom. This role was clearly very special, indeed unique, but it was emphatically not equivalent to being god incarnate.”28 although the notion that the righteous sufferer will be vindicated in the end by means of bodily resurrection was fairly common during Jesus’ time, the specific facts surrounding Jesus’ own resurrection are shrouded, according to hick, in the conflicting and fragmentary accounts of the New testament. Due to the under-determined nature of New testament evidences, the speculative reconstruction of Jesus’ resurrection that hick offers is admittedly based on his “own preferred conjecture” that the resurrection was not a miraculous physical event but more likely in the realm of the disciples’ inner spiritual experience. according to hick, the New testament stories of the empty tomb that highlight the physical resurrection of Jesus belong to the later strata of tradition. When we trace the thread of tradition back through the successive layers, from the gospel of John to luke and mathew to mark all the way back to Paul’s experience of the blinding light, “we find less and less of the physically miraculous and more of the spiritually transforming.”29 hick therefore dismisses all of the empty tomb accounts as later elaborations developed “from the remembrance of a numinous and transforming experience into a story of miraculous physical event.”30 The earliest account that we have of the “appearances” of the risen lord, and the only first-person account found in the New testament, is that of Paul’s report of a bright light and a voice (but no bodily presence) on the Damascus road some two or three years after the crucifixion. hick conjectures that other resurrection appearances were also experiences of a “supernatural light” similar to Paul’s report, where the disciples were conscious of the presence of Christ, though not in bodily form. in hick’s opinion, these visions would have been similar to the accounts of bright light experienced by resuscitated “clinically dead” patients and to other recorded resurrection encounters with religiously significant individuals.31

28. hick, Disputed Questions, 40. 29. hick, Metaphor, 25. 30. ibid. 31. hick gives the example of Paramahansa yogananda’s recorded resurrection encounter with his guru, Sri yukteswar, and the latter’s resurrection account with his own guru, lahiri mahasaya. hick, Disputed Questions, 42–43.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism although the nature of Jesus’ resurrection is inaccessible to us, hick frankly admits that it was this event that launched the Christian church, as we know it. hick says in this regard, “For it was in fact the conviction of Jesus’ continued life as their glorified lord that inspired his disciples to form a faith-community that was able to capture the Roman empire and has come to constitute one of the great religious traditions of the world.”32 however, in light of the popular Jewish practice of exalting the death of martyrs, as well as Schillebeeckx’ argument that “when John the Baptist had been beheaded, his movement was able to simply continue on Jewish ground,”33 hick rejects the popular apologetic argument that only a physical resurrection could have saved the Jesus’ movement from collapse. hick also dismisses the type of apologetics that have come to see Jesus’ resurrection as proof of his deity since, for hick, the connection between the two is far from obvious: if we argue that anyone who, being dead, returns to life, is divine; Jesus returned to life; therefore, Jesus is divine, the difficulty will be that according to the Christian Scriptures many other people have also returned to life . . . if we then argue that among those who have return to life Jesus was unique in that he was raised directly by god, we shall be faced with the fact that the early church, who believed that Jesus was indeed raised directly by god, did not infer that he was divine (“a man attested to you by god with mighty works and wonders and signs,” acts 2:22). if we now move to what happened to Jesus after his resurrection and argue that he was unique in that, whereas others who had risen from the dead had resumed an ordinary life and eventually died, Jesus did not die but was raised bodily into heaven, we must consider elijah, who was not divine but who was also taken up bodily into heaven (2 Kgs 2:11–12), and the post-biblical story of the bodily assumption of moses into heaven. Can we then argue that although neither having been raised by god from the dead nor being taken up bodily into heaven indicates divinity, the combination of the two does? Perhaps, but perhaps not. The connection is by no means beyond question.34

although statements about the historical Jesus cannot be made with certainty, hick is clear at this point that Christology did not origi32. ibid., 12. 33. as quoted by hick in Metaphor, 26. 34. hick, Disputed Questions, 44 (emphasis original).

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism nate with the historical Jesus himself but was the result of post-resurrection developments. according to hick, that “the historical Jesus did not make the claim to deity that later Christian thought was to make for him” and that “he did not understand himself to be god, or god the Son, incarnate” is a point of impressive unanimous agreement among New testament scholars.35 hick observes: “Divine incarnation, in the sense in which Christian theology has used the idea, requires that an eternally pre-existent element of the godhead, god the Son or the divine logos, became incarnate as a human being. But it is extremely unlikely that the historical Jesus thought of himself in any such way. indeed he would probably have rejected the idea as blasphemous.”36 Citing michael Ramsey, C. F. D. moule, James D. g. Dunn, Brian hebblethwaite, David Brown, and adrian Thatcher, hick observes that today even orthodox scholars agree with this conclusion with an impressive degree of unanimity. however, a large majority of church members are still ignorant of the magnitude of such changes in the New testament scholarship that are the result of critical developments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Not only would traditional church members find such developments inexpressibly shocking, according to hick, it also “rules out the once popular form of apologetic which argues that someone claiming to be god must be either mad, or bad, or god; and since Jesus was evidently not mad or bad he must have been god.”37 given the collapse of the centuries-old foundation upon which traditional Christology had been based, hick’s claim is that the church has had to find a new basis for justifying an incarnational Christology. The focus of inquiry has now shifted to the new question, “how is it possible for the church to know something so important about Jesus that he himself did not know?”38 hick discerns four strands of responses that have often been used in various combinations. The first type of response, held by such scholars as C. F. D. moule, gerald o’Collins, and James D. g. Dunn, is to argue that Jesus was implicitly aware of his unique filial relationship with the heavenly Father, and that he implicitly taught it by his actions, particularly in abrogating the law of moses, in forgiving sins, 35. hick, Metaphor, 27. 36. ibid. 37. ibid., 29. hick attributes this argument to C. S. lewis in his popular book Mere Christianity, 51–52. 38. ibid., 30.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism and by his use of the name abba for god. The “church was only making explicit what had been implicitly there from the beginning.”39 Citing works of e. P. Sanders and others, however, hick offers alternative interpretations for each of Jesus’ actions, and concludes that such responses are circular arguments based on prior orthodox commitments rather than legitimate explanations based on clear historical evidence. The other three lines of responses to the dilemma include the following: 1) the employment of the vague notion of Christ-event as an inclusive concept encompassing the growth of the church’s faith in Jesus’ deity rather than simply a concept describing Jesus’ life and his teachings; 2) the claim that the church’s theological development was guided by the holy Spirit; and 3) the shift of focus from the earthly Jesus to the cosmic Christ (in the Catholic tradition) or the present experience of the risen Jesus (in evangelical Protestantism) as a new ground for incarnational Christology.40 hick argues against the notion of Christ-event on grounds of its arbitrary stretching of the highly flexible concept of event way beyond what is warranted, and for presupposing a claim that the church is somehow divine. he also rejects the argument that the incarnational dogma was guided by the holy Spirit on grounds of obvious circularity and deceptive redundancy by “simply shifting the point of debate from a first-order belief to the second-order belief that the first-order belief is divinely guaranteed.”41 For hick, there can be no escape from the question of the first-order grounds for the dogma. likewise, hick dismisses both the Catholic and evangelical shifts of focus to experiences with the cosmic and risen Christ as the new basis of Christology on grounds that comparable phenomena exist in other religions for which a variety of religious and even naturalistic explanations are possible. accordingly, hick’s conclusion to all of these responses is that “none of these ways can relieve upholders of Jesus’ deification of the task of justifying that momentous move.”42 if Christology did not have its roots in the words and the deeds of the historical Jesus, how did belief in his deity become the confession of the Christian church? how did a mere human person whom the earliest church initially described as “a man attested to you by god 39. ibid. 40. ibid., 33–38. 41. ibid., 37. 42. ibid., 39.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism with mighty works and wonders and signs” (acts 2:22) become the Son of god in mark’s gospel, the logos in the gospel of John, and finally god the Son, the second person of the trinity, incarnate? While hick thinks there is no single comprehensive answer, he offers at least four contributing factors. to begin with, the deification process began with the disciples’ search for an adequate language in which to speak about their master which was commensurate with his “tremendous spiritual power and authority and his efficacy as lord and as giver of new life.”43 although, in the beginning, the focus was on Jesus as messiah and lord, the search progressed toward a more adequate title. hick describes the development as follows: But before long pressures must have developed to use titles which would more explicitly present the challenge of Jesus’ saving power, first within the Jewish community and then within the gentile world of the Roman empire. and these could only be highest titles available. once men and women had been transformed by their encounter with Jesus, he was for them the religious center of their existence, the object of their devotion and loyalty, the lord in following whom they were both giving their lives to god and receiving their lives renewed from god. and so it was natural that they should express this lordship in the most exalted terms which their culture offered.44

For hick, there can be no doubt that this deification process came about partly, if not mainly, as a result of the Christian experience of reconciliation with god. Says hick: The new life into which Jesus had brought his disciples, and into which they had drawn others, was pervaded by a glorious sense of the divine forgiveness and love. The early Christian community loved and rejoiced in the knowledge of god’s accepting grace. and it was axiomatic to them, as Jews influenced by a long tradition of priestly sacrifice, that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin” (heb 9.22). There was thus a natural transition in their minds from the experience of reconciliation with god as Jesus’ disciples, to the thought of his death as an atoning sacrifice, and from this to the conclusion that in order for Jesus’ death to have been a sufficient atonement for human sin he must himself have been divine.45 43. hick, Myth of God Incarnate, 173. 44. ibid., 174. 45. ibid., 176.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism hick thinks that there is nothing surprising or remarkable about the deification process of Jesus when we take into account another contributing factor, the religious and cultural environment of the early church. For one thing, hick suggests that as a persecuted minority, the deification of Jesus was a helpful survival mechanism for the early Christian community during periods of intermittent persecutions. That is, “in that religious-cultural milieu it provided a natural way of expressing the legitimate lordship of Jesus over against the ‘many gods’ and many ‘lords’ (1 Corinthians 8:5) of the Roman empire.”46 Furthermore, in both the greco-Roman and Jewish cultural milieus, concepts of divinity were much more widespread and elastic than they are today, and its definition and conditions as embodied in human life were much less clear. Following James D. g. Dunn, hick points out, “in the Roman world of the New testament period ‘divine’ and ‘son of god’ and even ‘god’ were used more or less interchangeably.”47 in the New testament Jewish culture, also, the title Son of God already had a long tradition behind it. “The messiah was to be an earthly king of the line of David, and the ancient kings of David’s line had been adopted as son of god in being anointed to their office.”48 This idea of divine sonship was naturally applied to Jesus after his death and resurrection event in belief that Jesus as the messiah was of the royal line of David. however, such divine sonship was understood in terms of divine adoption, as the account of Jesus’ baptism in which the ancient adoption formulae used at the coronation of the king, “Thou art my son” (Ps 2:7), is spoken from the sky, illustrates. Therefore, even though the religious cultural milieu contributed to the deification process, hick insists that the idea of divine sonship was understood metaphorically and honorifically and not literally. as an exception to this last point, and a third contributing factor to the deification process, hick points to St. Paul as one “whose way of thinking was distinctively Jewish but who nevertheless arrived at the idea of Jesus as the unique Son of god incarnate.”49 Conceding that the Son of god language in Paul’s letter to the Colossians is already moving in the direction of deification, hick nevertheless points to Rom 1:3–4 as 46. hick, Disputed Questions, 49. 47. hick, Metaphor, 40–41. 48. hick, Myth of God Incarnate, 174. 49. hick, Metaphor, 43.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism demonstrating that, for Paul, Jesus was simply a “man” who was raised by god, and to 1 Cor 15:23–28 to show that Paul’s father and son imagery suggests the subordination of the son to the father. he says, “in Paul’s writing god and god’s Son cannot be said to be co-equal, as the Persons of the holy trinity were later declared to be. The notion of Jesus as god’s Son is indeed pre-trinitarian.”50 however, hick recognizes the existence of certain Pauline passages, such as Phil 2:5–11 (he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man) and gal 4:4 (god sent forth his Son, born of a woman), that seem to suggest a pre-existent being whom god sent into the world. hick thinks that the controversy surrounding these passages is an “objectively undecidable issue in the New testament exegesis that is likely to go on nurturing conflicting views.”51 hick endorses Dunn’s view that while it is possible these passages speak of god sending his Son, it is more likely that Paul’s meaning did not stretch so far. But whether or not Paul was near to the earlier or the later Christian understanding of Jesus, for hick, Paul’s contributions toward the deification process cannot to be doubted. hick sums up Paul’s contribution to the deification process as follows: Provisionally, i see his thought as roughly a third of the way along the historical path leading from the honorific designation of the human Jesus as “son of god,” and then more particularly as “the son of god” (with the capital S in due course supplanting the lower case), and finally, after several centuries of debates, as god the Son, second person of the divine trinity.52

Finally, it seems that, for hick, the most crucial factor in the shift from a metaphorical to the metaphysical conception of Jesus as god the Son was the result of the church’s need “to explain its beliefs to the greek-speaking culture of the mediterranean world, and at the same time to itself, in acceptable philosophical terms.”53 in hick’s view, this development took yet a more decisive turn when “after the emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity the peace of the empire required a unitary body of Christian belief.” hick explains: “if the church was to 50. ibid. 51. ibid., 44. 52. ibid. 53. ibid.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism be the spiritual, moral, and cultural director of the Roman empire, and thus of the Western civilization, it needed the prestige of a founder who was none other than god, in the person of the eternal Son, who came down from heaven to institute a new human society and who gave to its officers the fateful ‘keys of the kingdom.’”54 according to hick, it was at the Council of Nicaea in 325 that the church first officially adopted from greek culture the metaphysical idea that Jesus was god the Son incarnate, of the same substance (ousia) as the Father. at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Christ’s two natures, human and divine, were further affirmed as existing without confusion, change, division, or separation. The culmination of the historical process of the deification of Jesus as the metaphysical god the Son, second person of the trinity, was now complete. and while the Christian emperor now had the status of god’s viceroy on earth, the original biblical metaphors, formed within the ordinary discourse of time, were relegated to the level of popular language awaiting philosophical interpretations known only to the educated elites.

Two-Natures Christologies having examined the historical argument, we now move to hick’s conceptual argument that belief in Jesus as god the Son incarnate, as articulated in the language of the two natures Christology of Nicaea and Chalcedon, has never been able to be spelled out in an intelligible way. The problem is, according to hick, the official dogma, asserted in terms of ousia and hypostasis, that Jesus was “truly god” and “truly man” without attempting to say how this paradox is possible. While the creeds were intended to exclude any doctrine that denied either of these claims, they did not spell out in a positive fashion what it is to be simultaneously fully human and fully divine. in order to be genuinely and fully human, Jesus must have had all the attributes that are definitive of humanity, and in order to be genuinely and fully god, he must also have had all the attributes that are definitive of deity. however, hick asks: “how could Jesus be at the same time divinely omnipotent and humanly weak and vulnerable; divinely omniscient and humanly ignorant; the eternal, infinite, self-existent creator of the universe and a temporal, finite and dependent creature? Can such an idea be given any literal meaning?”55 54. hick, Disputed Questions, 47–48. 55. hick, A Christian Theology, 98.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism Not only was a positive explanation missing in the dogmas, any subsequent attempts that tried to give intelligible meaning to the godman formula were all rejected as heresies since, inevitably, none could meet the impossible Chalcedonian criteria of affirming both Jesus’ full deity and full humanity. on this point, hick’s favorite illustration is that of apollinarianism at the end of the fourth century that held that the eternal logos functioned as Jesus’ spirit, whereas his mind (psyche) and body (sarx) were human. But his doctrine was rejected since without a human spirit Jesus would not have been genuinely human. likewise, many other attempts to give specific meaning to the idea of incarnation were declared heretical because they failed to do justice to either Jesus’ deity or his humanity. according to hick, two recent attempts to constructively defend and give meaning to the orthodox doctrine of incarnation include the so-called two-minds theory and several forms of kenotic Christology. of the former type, hick refers to Thomas morris’ book The Logic of God Incarnate as the most sophisticated attempt to explain what it means to say that Jesus of Nazareth is numerically identical with the Son of god, and to defend its conceptual coherence.56 as hick points out, morris has a two-fold strategy. morris’ initial strategy is to clear away what he perceives to be common conceptual stumbling blocks to the incarnation by making three simple but crucial distinctions designed to question whether the properties of human nature are mutually incompatible with the properties of divine nature. First, morris argues that individuals can have more than one individual-essence (cluster of properties essential for an individual’s being the particular entity it is), but various individuals share kind-essences (cluster of properties individually necessary and jointly sufficient for belonging to the kind).57 Therefore, Jesus could have had all the kindessential properties of humanity and divinity while still having a single individual essence. Secondly, morris makes a distinction between common human properties and essential properties that are necessary to being a human at all. Says morris: “it is certainly quite common for human beings to lack omnipotence, omniscience, necessary existence, and so on. i think any orthodox Christian will agree that, apart from Jesus, 56. morris, Logic. See also his article, “understanding”; and his book, Our Idea of God, 159–84. 57. morris, Logic, 38–39.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism these are even universal features of human existence . . . But why think this is true on account of human nature? Why think that any attributes incompatible with deity are elements of human nature, properties without which one could not be truly or fully god?”58 at this point, morris’ third distinction between merely human and fully human becomes important. to be fully human is to have all the properties constituting kind-essence of humanity whereas to be merely human is for an individual to have all the properties essential to being human, along with limitation properties such as lacking in omnipotence, omniscience, and so on. Just as it is possible for a human to be fully animal but not merely animal, it is possible for an individual to be fully human without being merely human. “Thus, god the Son, through whom all things are created, need not have taken on any of those limitations properties distinctive of our creatureliness in order to take on a human nature. he could have become fully human without being merely human.”59 Based on such conceptual distinctions, morris proposes what he calls a two-minds view of Christ according to which we must recognize two distinct minds or ranges of consciousness in the case of god the Son. There was first the eternal mind with its distinctively divine consciousness encompassing the full scope of omniscience. in addition, there was also the distinctively earthly mind that came into existence at conception, grew and developed as a thoroughly human, Jewish, and first-century Palestinian. morris describes the relationship between the duality of consciousness as follows: The divine mind of god the Son contained, but was not contained by, the earthly mind, or range of consciousness. That is to say, there was what can be called an asymmetric accessing relation between the two minds . . . The divine mind had full and direct access to the earthly human experience resulting from the incarnation, but the earthly consciousness did not have such a full and direct access to the content of the overarching omniscience proper to the logos, but only such access, on occasion, as the divine mind allowed it to have. There thus was a metaphysical and personal depth to the man Jesus lacking in the case of every individual who is merely human.60 58. morris, “understanding,” 66. 59. morris, Our Idea of God, 165. 60. morris, Logic, 103.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism morris recognizes that the asymmetric accessing relation does not in itself make Jesus’ earthly mind a mind of god, for all human minds stand in such relation to the mind of god, which would make all human beings divine incarnations. But then where does the personal unity of Christ lie in the two-minds view? here, hick’s interpretation is that “the human mind is only to count as incarnation if there is also identity of ownership of the thoughts within the two minds,” which morris associates with a “unity of ‘causal and cognitive powers.’”61 Thus, the crucial difference between Jesus and any mere human being is that while the latter “have been endowed with real causal and cognitive powers numerically different from any divine powers,”62 in the case of Jesus, there was but one center of causal and cognitive powers: “he was not a being endowed with a set of personal cognitive and causal powers distinct from the cognitive and causal powers of god the Son. For Jesus was the same person as god the Son. Thus, the personal cognitive and causal powers operative in the case of Jesus’ earthly mind were just none other than the cognitive and causal powers of god the Son.”63 While acknowledging that morris’ strategy is impressive, hick believes that morris’ abundance of logical dexterity leads him into an “entangled net of unpalatable consequences.”64 to begin with, hick finds morris’ attempts to establish the general possibility of a being having both ontologically higher and lower characteristics questionable. While hick does not dispute morris’ distinction between individual-natures and kind-natures, he points out that not all kind-natures are capable of being instantiated in the same individual at the same time. Just as squareness and roundness cannot both characterize the same plane figure, it is not all clear for hick that the distinctively human and divine natures could be co-instantiated in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. hick believes that morris’ fundamental mistake is his assumption that if it is coherent for a higher-level being to share the characteristics of a lower-level entity, it is also possible for a lower-level being to exhibit higher-level characteristics without losing its lower-level status. to test this assumption, hick attempts a thought experiment of a human soul becoming incarnate in a living crocodile such as to have all essential, but 61. hick, Disputed Questions, 72–73. 62. morris, Logic, 161. 63. ibid., 161–62. 64. hick, Metaphor, 49.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism not the common, characteristics of a crocodile. hick asks: “But does it follow that it is possible for the crocodile, considered now as a lower-level being, to take on the additional higher-level characteristics of humanity without ceasing to be a crocodile?”65 given the existing laws of nature, such a thing would be impossible for hick. For one thing, a crocodile’s entire body structure, including the nervous system and other systems as a whole, would not be able to accommodate a distinctively human brain of such size and complexity. For another, for a species to have a certain type of genetic origin, it is essential that it be by definition an offspring of that particular species. accordingly, “The incarnation of a higher kind as a lower kind would inevitably break the ordinary mould of the lower kind.”66 however, hick holds that even if the right to hold such beliefs can be granted to morris for the sake of argument, in the case of the second person of the trinity becoming a human being, such a man would not have been mistaken for an ordinary or merely human being as Jesus was. For although his contemporaries perceived Jesus as a uniquely special and significant human being, historical evidence indicates that it was still as a human being and not as god, according to hick. and this fact could not have simply been a matter of distinguishing between having the attributes of god and his having and exercising these powers (omniscience, omnipotence, etc.), for then this would “impart a certain play-acting character” to Jesus’ actions rather than a genuinely vulnerable and ordinary humanity.67 hick also finds morris’ two-minds theory problematic. according to hick, the nature of the limited access of the human mind to the divine mind is not understood by morris as simply an occasional consciousness of mutual awareness and interaction, but rather as an occasional consciousness of mutual unity and identity consonant with the picture of Jesus in the Fourth gospel. Jesus’ god-consciousness is assimilated in a fashion reported in unitive mysticism, as taught in many religious traditions but most explicitly in hindu advaitic thought, where the false individual ego is transcended in “the identity of the purified human consciousness with divine Reality.”68 Since these occasions, rare as they may 65. hick, Disputed Questions, 61. 66. ibid., 64. 67. ibid., 65. 68. ibid., 71.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism be, would constitute an all-important identity for Jesus as god the Son, it is hick’s opinion that he would not be one of us, sharing our human condition, or the historically believable Jesus of the Synoptics. But more specifically, what hick finds most troubling is the notion of “unity of causal and cognitive powers” that is crucial to morris’ final theory on the identity of ownership of thoughts. here, hick understands cognitive power simply as “our capacity to cognize,” whereas causal power is understood volitionally as “our capacity to initiate changes, in other words our will.”69 hick defines the problem in this way: “a unitary will, which is the will of god the Son, would mean that when Jesus decided to say or do anything, god the Son was so deciding; and likewise when Jesus resisted temptation, the will that resisted was that of god the Son. morris is, in other words, at this point embracing the view that Jesus had no separate human will and that the will operative in his life was the divine will of the second person of the trinity.”70 Despite his attempt to avoid the monothelite heresy by affirming a completely free will of Jesus in addition to the divine will, morris’ claim that the “cognitive and causal powers” operative in Jesus were none other than that of god the Son simply amounts to there being a single will of god the Son, according to hick. When morris insists, for example, that Jesus was humanly free to sin, that is, epistemologically free but not metaphysically or logically so, hick finds this “a very strange kind of freedom, depending as it does upon ignorance.”71 Furthermore, morris’ claim that if Jesus in fact tried to sin, the divine will would have intervened to stop him raises serious questions of Jesus’ inner impulses and intentions for hick: how do we know that he never, as a man, intended to do something wrong but was internally prevented from translating the intention into action by the overruling will of the logos? his outwardly perfect life might, for all that we can know, conceal many wrong inner impulses that were nipped in the bud before developing into overt actions . . . What we have, then, is a human Jesus who never did a sinful action but concerning whose inner moral life we can, on morris’ theory, say nothing; for any inner defects would have been systematically prevented from express69. ibid., 73. 70. ibid., 74. 71. hick, Metaphor, 57.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism ing themselves in outward actions . . . We are left with the human Jesus, to whose mind god the Son has full cognitive access; and if, or whenever, the human mind began to make a wrong decision, god the Son prevented him from proceeding with it. That is to say, Jesus is god incarnate in the sense that god singled the human Jesus out for a special role—namely by not allowing him to go wrong.72

For hick, this same criticism applies to morris’ more recent concept of multimind or society of mind, that is, a theory advanced by contemporary psychologists that “the mind is a society of small minds or mental modules.”73 “For a composite mind whose determining element is divine (but which we nevertheless rule to be as a totally human) would not have the freedom to act wrongly . . . Such a person could not be tempted as we are tempted, or become good by overcoming temptation, and accordingly could not embody our human ideal. Nor—in relation to the doctrine of atonement—could his death constitute the sacrifice of a life of a perfect human obedience to god.”74 Richard Sturch’s attempt to improve upon morris with his own central self theory, in which there is “an awareness” on the part of the logos that the human life “accessed” is his own, fails at the same fatal point as morris’ theory: “Was Jesus free to commit sin?”75 a second contemporary option that hick examines is kenotic Christology. he devotes special attention to the versions of Frank Weston and Stephen Davis. Kenotic scholars have generally distinguished between the kenosis motif, which is found in such New testament passages as Phil 2:5–11 and 2 Cor 8:9, and the kenosis doctrine, specific forms of expression given to this theme by different theologians. although the theme of kenosis is found throughout the history Christianity (for example in hilary of Poitiers, Cyril of alexandria, Pope leo, and Nicholas ludwig von Zinzendorf), it was not until the nineteenth century that the doctrine was more fully developed. according to hick, it was gottfried Thomasius (1802–75) “who first proposed that we could properly ac-

72. ibid., 57–58. 73. ibid., 58. 74. ibid., 59. 75. ibid., 59–60.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism knowledge Jesus’ genuine humanity . . . by supposing that in taking human nature the pre-existent Son laid aside some of his divine qualities.”76 Formulated as a response to new biblical-historical questions, and to critiques of classical formulas which struck at belief in the reality of the humanity of Jesus, Thomasius suggested that the logos himself, in the act of incarnation, underwent a self-limitation, divesting himself of the relational attributes of divinity (omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence) that were incompatible with genuinely human existence while retaining the immanent attributes of love, truth, and holiness: “The eternal Son of god, the second person of the deity, gave himself over into the form of human limitation, and thereby to the limits of a spatio-temporal existence, under the condition of human development, in the bounds of an historical concrete being, in order to live in and through our nature the life of our race in the fullest sense of the word, without on that account ceasing to be god.”77 Kenotic Christology was introduced to the english-speaking world by a. B. Bruce (1853–1932) of Scotland in his book Humiliation of Christ in 1875 and was adopted in england by Charles gore (1853–1932) and others in a modified and moderate form where the self-limitation was understood less in terms of divine nature and more in terms of divine glory and the full functioning of his divine attributes so as to be fully human. according to hick, Frank Weston (1871–1924), the anglo-Catholic bishop and missionary to africa, was a most important advocate and representative of kenotic Christology. as hick points out, Weston’s book The One Christ is recognized by some kenotic theologians as “one of the best ever written.”78 unlike morris’ two minds view or Thomasius’ version of kenotic theory, Weston’s position is that “it is useless to enquire whether the incarnate Word uses divine mind or Will as it is wrong to postulate an abandonment by him. he is the divine mind and Will; and in every moment of the incarnate’s life we are bound to acknowledge that where he is there is the divine Nature, with all the powers and activities that are be ascribed to it; there it is, a unity, the divine essence, which is the Word himself.79 76. ibid., 61. 77. Thomasius, Beitrage, 93. 78. Davis, Encountering Jesus, 198, quoted in hick, Metaphor, 63. 79. Weston, One Christ, 13. all quotations of Weston are from hick’s Metaphor, 64–70.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism Foundational to Weston’s emphasis on the personal unity of the divine and human natures in the one Christ is his assumption that there is “in a man a certain underlying ‘i,’ inseparable from soul and body in existence, yet in fact distinct from and the ground of both . . . The essential functions of this ‘i’ require the soul, through which ‘i’ will, and chooses; and for its true and complete life it requires the body, the material expression of which the soul is the essential form. But ‘i’ is not the soul, nor the body, nor the composition of the two, but the ground in which both subsist.”80 Following the orthodox tradition that the humanity assumed by the logos was anhypostatic, that is, impersonal, Weston insists that the “human nature of the incarnate was constituted, in its first moment of existence, not in a human person, or subject, or actor; but in the incarnate Word, who has been its subject, possessor, actor, ego, person, since it came into existence in mary’s womb.”81 Contrary to most of the nineteenth-century german kenotic theologians, Weston’s view is that the logos did not, in becoming incarnate, lack any of his divine attributes. “Whatever of self-limitation is required, he always remains in possession of his powers, recognizing a law of restraint where necessary.”82 Rather, the logos voluntarily restricted his own divine powers in order to operate within the limits of human nature so that “as incarnate he is at every moment observant of and obedient to the law of self-restraint which he as unlimited logos wills should be imposed upon himself.”83 Weston sees the one divine self of god as acting in two sets of relationships—his eternal relationships within the trinity and the historical relationships of his incarnate existence. “The action by which the eternal Son restrains himself, while allowing divine aid to reach the manhood, belongs not to the relations of the incarnate, but to those of his universal activities . . . he lives under a law of selfrestraint that he imposed upon himself as unlimited logos . . . The eternal Son gives the motive-force to the relationships of the incarnate at every moment.”84 80. ibid., 16 81. ibid., 17. 82. ibid., 150. 83. ibid., 175. 84. ibid., 160–61.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism although Weston attempts to show, through a series of analogies, how a single person can be the subject of different sets of relationships with simultaneous ranges of consciousness, he readily recognizes the limitations of analogies in arriving at a conception of a single consciousness of Christ. “how can the logos as self-limited be the subject of the passion, the agony, the desolation and death upon the cross, and yet at the same moment be the living and life-giving Son of god?”85 “No one answered the question, no one can answer it.”86 in the end, Weston honestly admits that “when all is said these analogies have not taken us very far towards seeing the possibility of the co-existence of the two states of the logos.”87 like Weston, Stephen Davis affirms the puzzling and paradoxical nature of the classical doctrine for which the theory of kenosis cannot remove the mystery. For Davis, however, this does not mean that the two natures doctrine is incoherent as charged by hick, who assumes “that we know enough about the properties of divinity and humanity to see that so far as compossibility is concerned, they are on a logical par with squareness and circularity.”88 Rather than taking the classical route to defend the coherence of the doctrine,89 Davis’ approach is to distinguish between accidental and essential properties of god and human beings. Davis’ claim is that perhaps those properties normally associated with god (omniscience, omnipotence, eternality, etc.) are essential properties of being divine simpliciter (i.e., being divine without also being human) and that those properties normally associated with being human (being contingent, finite, non-omnipotent, etc.) are properties of being merely human. applied to the incarnation, Christ was “truly human but not merely human, truly divine but not divine simpliciter.”90 more specifically, Davis gives the following scenario as a possible kenotic explanation: in the incarnation Jesus Christ “emptied himself ” by giving up those divine properties that are inconsistent with being truly hu85. ibid., 181. 86. ibid. 87. ibid., 185. 88. Davis, Encountering Jesus, 50. 89. For Davis, following the classical route is “paradoxically to say that Jesus Christ in some sense did indeed have both sets of properties—and that it is precisely in virtue of his having both that he is truly god and truly man.” Davis, Logic, 122. 90. Davis, Encountering Jesus, 52 (emphasis original).

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism man while retaining sufficient divine properties to remain truly divine; he gave up those common human properties that are inconsistent with being truly divine but retained sufficient human properties to remain truly human. in the incarnation, then, Jesus Christ was not a mere human but truly human; he was not god simpliciter but truly god. Perhaps one cannot simultaneously be a mere human and truly divine; and perhaps one cannot be god simpliciter and truly human; but perhaps it is possible to be “truly divine and truly human.”91

hick is critical of all three versions of kenosis theories as presented by Thomasius, Weston, and Davis. hick thinks that while it is always possible to save the traditional dogma by stipulating definitions that allow it to be true, it is only at the price of giving up concepts that are traditionally or religiously essential. For example, hick is critical of Davis’ distinction between essential and accidental properties in which many of the attributes traditionally assigned to god (eternality, omniscience, and self-existence, etc.) are set aside as accidental since the historical Jesus did not possess them. “Thus, in making conceptual space for divine incarnation,” says hick, “Davis has had to reject much of the traditional Christian understanding of god.”92 hick is also critical of the distinction made by Thomasius between god’s metaphysical attributes (aseity, omnipresence, etc.) and moral qualities (goodness, love, wisdom, etc.), where it is claimed that the former properties were laid aside while the latter qualities were retained in the incarnation. For hick, it is fundamentally incoherent to refer to Jesus’ moral qualities as divine, for it would entail claiming that Jesus was infinitely good, loving, or merciful. as a genuine human being, however, Jesus can only be finite in the expression of these (infinite) qualities. What is distinctively divine about the moral attributes is infinity or unlimitedness. human beings can be good or loving, but only god is infinitely so. are these, then, essential divine attributes? is so, god cannot set them aside in becoming a man, and the man whom god becomes must have these infinite qualities . . . if on the other hand, infinite goodness and love are accidental properties of god, then god in becoming man can become finitely good and loving as, surely, Jesus must have been. But the cost here is 91. ibid., 53 (emphasis original). 92. hick, Metaphor, 73.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism that god’s goodness and love are now insecure because they are merely accidental properties.93

hick also finds fault with Davis’ and Weston’s inability to explain how certain incompatible properties of human and divine natures can exist simultaneously in the same unity of consciousness, memory, and will. For example, hick disapproves of Davis’ idea that Jesus, as god, had certain “ungiveupable” time-indexed properties (such as not having been created) that are incompatible with properties that Jesus also possessed as man (such as having been created). unlike Davis’ analogy of malan whom, as both mayor and athletic director, can perform two different roles at different times, sometimes as mayor and sometimes as athletic director, Jesus “was not sometimes divine and sometimes human . . . he has to be both human and divine at the same time.”94 likewise, given Weston’s view of the eternal logos continuing his heavenly existence throughout the earthly life of the incarnate logos, willing the limitation of his own consciousness in his incarnate state, hick asks: “how then can the self of the earthly Jesus be identical with the heavenly existence which is simultaneously willing his (Jesus’) own limitation of consciousness? This does not seem to be a coherent possibility . . . how can the one undivided divine self be at once unlimited (in heaven) and limited (on earth)?”95 unable to fully explain the process and the precise manner of the simultaneity of existence of both natures, hick is disparagingly critical of how both Weston and Davis, along with many other advocates of kenotic theory, appeal to the idea of divine mystery. hick argues: “The fallacy, however, within such appeals to mystery as a substitute for conceptual clarity is that the kenotic Christology is not a revealed truth but, as Davis correctly terms it, a theory. it is a humanly devised hypothesis; and we cannot save a defective hypothesis by dubbing it a divine mystery.”96

Historical Side-Effects of the Incarnation Dogma having examined hick’s historical argument that Jesus did not teach the doctrine of incarnation that was to become the dogma of the church, 93. hick, “inspiration Christology,” 67 (emphasis original). 94. hick, Metaphor, 75. 95. ibid., 68–69. 96. ibid., 71.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism and his conceptual argument that the dogma of two natures is logically incoherent, we now move to hick’s third argument. hick’s pragmatic argument against the church’s traditional understanding of Jesus Christ is that “great historical evils have been validated specifically by appeal to the doctrine of the incarnation.”97 in identifying anti-Semitism, colonial exploitation of the Third World, Western patriarchalism, and Christian superiority complex, hick is careful to point out that these great evils have not been caused by the incarnation dogma, but that they have been validated and defended by appeal to the doctrine. Recognizing that the “history of every major religious tradition includes great moral evils committed by its adherents,” and that such evils are often “validated by appeal to the official teachings of the tradition,” hick’s pragmatic “conclusion is not that the doctrine is thereby shown to be false, but a recognition that it is inherently liable to dangerous misuse by fallen human nature.”98 The first historical evil that hick discusses is anti-Semitism. according to hick, while anti-Semitism did not begin with Christianity, the Jewish persecution escalated directly as the result of Christianity becoming the religion of the Roman empire. The absoluteness afforded to Christ by Christians has proved from the time of Constantine, the first “Christian” emperor, to the present day to be readily available to validate anti-Semitism. Says hick: This Christian anti-Semitism rose to appalling heights in the medieval period, then waned somewhat, but rose again in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to reach a new extreme of truly demonic intensity in the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jewish population of europe. Throughout this long history antiSemitism has justified itself as a morally appropriate treatment of those who had committed deicide by crucifying god incarnate . . . The charge of deicide—which presupposes Jesus’ deity—continued to justify recurrent phases of violent periods and was still exploited by the more secular anti-Semitism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.99

For hick, the history of anti-Semitism that defended itself for many centuries by the charge of deicide presupposed the deity of Jesus. indeed, 97. ibid., 80. 98. ibid. 99. ibid., 81.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism “The secular anti-Semitism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, culminating in the holocaust of the 1940s, was only possible in a culture that had been prepared by centuries of Christian anti-Semitism.”100 Furthermore, for hick, historical anti-Semitism in the Christian tradition is theologically rooted in the New testament, especially in the sayings in the Fourth gospel “which brands the Jews as enemies of god in a way that has poisoned the Christian imagination for many centuries.”101 hick quotes with approval the following views of Rosemary Ruether concerning the gospel of John: “By mythologizing the theological division between ‘man-in-god’ and ‘man-alienated-from-god’ into a division between two postures of faith, John gives the ultimate theological form to that diabolizing of ‘the Jews’ which is the root of anti-Semitism in the Christian tradition.”102 a second historical evil that has been justified with the doctrine of incarnation is the Western imperialist exploitation of the Third World during the fifteen to nineteenth centuries. hick describes the massive colonization process as follows: european colonization in africa, india, South america, and the Far east was initially an outlet for the explorers’ adventurousness and their appetite for treasure. But the development of trade required military intervention to protect it, then political annexation to control the native people and keep out the rival traders of other nations, and finally led to the massive and systematic exploitation of the subject populations. Their minerals and other natural resources were exported to enrich Spain, Britain, Portugal, France, and germany, and later to feed the european industrial revolution; their people became a captive market, often buying back their own materials, now processed into finished artifacts in the West; and in the case of africa many of their people were subjected to the ultimate exploitation of being forcibly abducted as slaves in the united States and elsewhere.103

as hick points out, such imperialist enterprise was morally and religiously justified as “vocation to take charge of backward continents so that they might benefit from the saving gospel of Christ and the blessings of Western civilization” and defended as “the way in which 100. hick, A Christian Theology, 99. 101. hick, Metaphor, 81. 102. Ruether, Theological Roots, 116. 103. hick, Metaphor, 83.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism the universal claim of Christ is to rule human life, and to offer the only escape from perdition.”104 hick offers many of the historically available illustrations, including British imperialism, Spanish conquests in South america, and the following counsel of Count Zinzendorf to the slaves of the Caribbean island: “god punished the first negroes by making them slaves, and your conversion will make you free, not from the control of your masters, but simply from your wicked habits and thoughts, and all that makes you dissatisfied with your lot.”105 Patriarchalism is the third area of historical evil to which hick points. according to hick, “male dominance” and “subordination of women” are associated with the rise of monotheism in which male chauvinism creates god in its own image. in the case of Christianity, the assumption of male superiority “was readily justified both by the maleness of the biblical image of god and the maleness of Jesus as god incarnate.”106 although hick readily acknowledges that Jesus was ahead of the culture in respect to his attitude and treatment of women, he also believes that the Christian church “as a whole took a patriarchal path possibly initially under the leadership of St. Paul.”107 Paul’s attitude of male dominance “validated within Christendom a general degrading of women, thought of as associated with earth and flesh in contrast to heaven and spirit, and as epitomizing temptation and sin in contrast to spirituality and virtue.”108 For hick, the theological validation of female subordination becomes especially evident in debates about ordination of women, where it is claimed that, “god the Son, being male, became incarnate as a man, not as a woman, and therefore only men can be god’s priestly representatives on earth.”109 “Thus, the dogma of Jesus’ deity lends itself to exploitation by male chauvinists in perpetuating the subordination of women within the church. “once again, this does not establish the falsity of dogma; but it does prompt us to look at it again to see whether it really is an essential Christian belief.”110 104. ibid. 105. ibid., 84. 106. hick, A Christian Theology, 100. 107. hick, Metaphor, 85. 108. ibid. 109. ibid., 86. 110. ibid.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism lastly, hick points to the attitude of condescension that Christians have displayed toward the peoples of other great religions compromising the majority of the human race. “This has for centuries consisted, and still consists to too great an extent, in a religious superiority-complex which readily manifests itself in arrogance, contempt, condemnation and hostility.”111 For hick, just as the “missionary movement that was carried on the back of the imperial expansion of the West generally regarded hinduism, islam, taoism, Sikhism and african primal religion as areas of spiritual darkness from which souls were to be rescued by conversion,”112 the theological justification for religious superiority is built into the doctrine of the incarnation: “if Jesus was god incarnate, the Christian religion is unique in having been founded by god in person. The Christian story is that in Jesus god came down to earth and inaugurated a new and redeemed community, the church; and it seems self-evident that god must wish all human creatures to become part of this community; so the church is called to convert the human race to the Christian faith.”113 Such theological justification for religious exclusivism continues to be widely held by the fundamentalist constituencies, but in light of the recent breakup of imperialism and the decrease of the number of Christians in proportion to the world population, such a view has become untenable. also unacceptable are the various epicycles of the incarnation dogma held by the more liberal wing of the church in an attempt to include non-Christians within the sphere of Christian salvation through various forms of inclusivism. For hick, ideas such as implicit faith, baptism by desire, and anonymous Christianity, are a continuation in a milder form of the old theological imperialism since they still hold “that salvation is, exclusively, Christian salvation, won by the atoning death of Christ, although the benefits of that death are now generously extended in principle to all human beings.”114 Thus, the only realistic alternative to the Christian superiority-complex is, for hick, pluralism, “which recognizes the validity of all great world faiths as authentic contexts of salvation/liberation, not secretly dependent upon the cross.”115 111. ibid. 112. ibid. 113. ibid., 87. 114. ibid., 88. 115. ibid.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism as pointed out earlier, it is not hick’s argument that Christianity’s participation in the dark historical evils described above disproves the doctrine of the incarnation, but that such an exclusivistic dogma is inherently liable to dangerous misuse by fallen human nature. That is, while the “misuse does not show that belief in the deity is mistaken, it does cause us to ask whether an idea which has been so readily available to validate massive human evil is really an essential element of the Christian faith.”116 While for hick the connection between the deification of Jesus and Christianity’s participation in these historical evils is not a straight line of necessity, the fact that the doctrine has lent itself to exploitation is undeniable. accordingly, for hick, it is only when the dogma of the incarnation is understood metaphorically that Christians will “be deprived of a powerful psychological weapon” in their justification of and participation in these acts of evil, and “a barrier will be removed from the relationship between Christianity and other sections of humankind.”117

The Doctrine of the Atonement having examined the historical, conceptual, and pragmatic arguments against the doctrine of the incarnation, we now move to hick’s last argument, which is a soteriological one based on his deconstructive views of the traditional understanding of the atonement. here it must be recognized that hick does not present his criticisms of the atonement doctrine as a direct argument against a literal understanding of incarnation, but as a plea for a pluralistic reinterpretation of Christian soteriology. Nevertheless, a careful examination of hick’s critical views of the traditional understanding of the doctrine reveals an underlying argument aimed against a dogma of the incarnation in favor of a metaphorical and soteriological pluralistic reinterpretation. at first, hick’s sustained attack on the church’s doctrine of atonement may seem somewhat odd as even an indirect method for tearing down the traditional incarnational Christology, but the importance of a close connection between the doctrines must not be missed. after all, when St. anselm of Canterbury gave expression to his classical statement of the satisfaction theory, in Cur Deus Homo?, he was not primarily set116. ibid., 85. 117. ibid., 88.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism ting out to develop a theory of atonement but to explain the rationale for the incarnation. Furthermore, since the church’s doctrines of atonement have traditionally presupposed the doctrine of incarnation, hick’s attack on the former, if successful, would be devastating to the latter. With this in mind, we will examine the criticisms of the traditional understanding of the atonement in this section as an implicit argument set forth by hick in favor of deconstructing the dogma of the incarnation. We begin with hick’s definition of the term atonement. hick identifies narrow and broad uses of this word that have little in common beyond the name: in its broad etymological meaning, at-one-ment signifies becoming one with god—not ontologically but in the sense of entering into a right relationship with our creator, this being the process or state of salvation. But in its narrower sense atonement refers to a specific method of receiving salvation, one presupposing that the barrier to this is guilt . . . in this narrower sense, Jesus’ crucifixion was an act of atoning, or making up for, human sin. on the other hand, in the broader sense in which atonement simply means salvation, or entering into a right relationship with god, Jesus’ death may or may not be separated off from his self-giving life as a whole as having a special significance of its own.118

The basic difference between the narrow and the broad meaning of atonement is that in the former, “salvation requires god’s forgiveness and that this in turn requires an adequate atonement to satisfy the divine righteousness and/or justice.”119 hick describes such a notion as “a transaction, analogous to making a payment to wipe out a debt or cancel an impending punishment.”120 The broader meaning is, on the other hand, a transformational conception of salvation, “the idea of a gradual transformation of the human by the divine Spirit, called by the orthodox theologians deification (theosis).”121 although the two conceptions of atonement do not necessarily exclude each other, hick is of the opinion that the broader view has been characteristic of the eastern, or greek, development and the narrower view more descriptive of the Western church. hick’s overall 118. ibid., 112. 119. ibid. 120. ibid. 121. ibid., 113.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism argument is “that in this narrower sense the idea of atonement is a mistake; although, of course, the broader sense, in which atonement simply means salvation, is vitally important.”122 accordingly, hick restricts his criticism to those theories that exemplify the narrower and more specific meaning of the atonement as a transactional act. hick begins his attack with the ransom theory, which enjoyed great popularity in the first thousand years or so of the church until anselm introduced the satisfaction theory. Based on the markan saying of Jesus, that “the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (matt 20:28; mark 10:45), the ransom theory was held in different variations by many of the church fathers, including irenaeus, origen, gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of alexandria, gregory the great, and Peter lombard.123 Those who held it argued that Satan, as a captor in war, had a right to his captives. The only way of release would be by the payment of a ransom to Satan, which Jesus Christ provided through his death on the cross. as hick points out, “Ransom had a poignant meaning in the ancient world, when a considerable proportion of the population lived in a state of slavery, and free citizens were liable to become slaves if their tribes, city or nation was defeated in war. Being ransomed, and thus made free, was accordingly a vivid and powerful metaphor whose force most of us can only partially recapture today.”124 The basic problem hick finds with the ransom theory is that of taking the metaphorical language literally, thereby being forced to ask the question of “to whom Jesus was, by his death, paying a ransom; and the inevitable answer was the devil—who else?” according to hick, “it was generally accepted by Christian writers and preachers that the human race had fallen through sin under the jurisdiction of the devil and that the cross was part of a bargain with the devil to ransom us.”125 in one popular version, god handed over to Satan Jesus Christ, whose divinity was concealed by his humanity, enabling him to overpower Satan through the resurrection, thereby freeing humanity from Satan’s power and authority. Such a view obviously assumed Jesus Christ’s divinity, thereby presupposing the doctrine of the incarnation. The ransom the122. ibid. 123. mcDonald, The Atonement, 138ff. 124. hick, Metaphor, 114. 125. ibid.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism ory was rejected by anselm, who asked in the eleventh century, “Why should we accept that the Devil has any valid legal rights over against the infinite Creator?”126 The second transactional theory to come under hick’s scrutiny is anselm’s satisfaction theory as presented in Cur Deus Homo? hick sketches the following cultural background for understanding the medieval notion of satisfaction: This was the idea that disobedience, whether to god or to one’s feudal lord, was a slight upon his honour and dignity, and required for its cancellation an appropriate penance or gift in satisfaction. in the medieval penitential system a sinner’s prescribed act of penance was believed to be accepted by god as restoring the moral balance and likewise, when one did something to undermine the dignity and authority of one’s earthly overlord, one had either to be punished or to give some sufficient satisfaction to appease the lord’s injured dignity. This notion, reflecting a strongly hierarchical and tightly-knit society, evidently made sense within the culture of medieval europe.127

anselm saw sin as the refusal of every rational creature to give to the Creator due honor by being subject to god’s will. in order to obtain forgiveness, “everyone who sins must pay to god the honor he has taken away, and this is satisfaction, which every sinner must make to god.”128 in the interest of justice, satisfaction must be made in proportion to the measure of sin, making it necessary to make up for insult by going beyond the precise amount refused. But since the restitution that is required surpasses any human loss, the only satisfaction that is adequate is death. a sinless person who is without debt to god can, however, make satisfaction for a guilty person through the merit of his innocent death. But since no human being passes through life without sin, god must bring about salvation by becoming human. as the god-man, Jesus Christ was able, by his humanity, to represent mankind, and by his divinity, to give something worthy of god, thereby making satisfaction. accordingly, salvation is possible only through Jesus Christ. against such a theory of atonement, however, hick offers the following criticism: “however, in our own more democratic age it is virtually impossible to 126. ibid., 115. 127. ibid., 117. 128. anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo, 85.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism share anselm’s medieval sense of wrongdoing as a slight upon god’s honour which requires a satisfaction to assuage forgiveness. The entire conception, presupposing as it does a long-since vanished social order, now makes little sense to us; and in my view it would be best to cease altogether to use it in our contemporary theologies and liturgies.”129 another view hick evaluates is the idea of atonement that can be characterized as justification theory. in some ways this view, as exemplified by luther, melanchthon, Zwingli, and Calvin, can be seen as a variation of the anselmian satisfaction theory, but with important developments and differences. according to hick: The concept of justification, and hence of salvation as being counted innocent in the eyes of god, emerged from the background of an understanding of law that had changed since anselm’s time. in the medieval world, law was an expression of the will of the ruler, and transgression was an act of personal disobedience and dishonour for which either punishment or satisfaction was required. But the concept of an objective justice, set over ruled and ruler alike, had been developing in europe since the Renaissance. law was now thought to have its own eternal validity, requiring a punishment for wrongdoing which could not be set aside even by the ruler. it was this new principle that the Reformers applied and extended in their doctrine that Christ took our place in bearing the inexorable penalty for human sin—a powerful imagery that has long gripped the Christian imagination.130

more than any other, it belonged to Calvin to present with great clarity the justification theory of atonement in his Book ii of the Institutes of the Christian Religion. in this work, Calvin indicates that, because humankind fell in sin by disobedience, Christ, by the whole course of his obedience, took upon himself the divine punishment and wrath. in his death on the cross, Christ bore, by substitution, not only sin’s guilt and penalty, but also the curse of sin. Calvin states: “our lord came forth as a true man and took the person and the name of adam in order to take adam’s place in obeying the Father, to present our flesh as the price of satisfaction to god’s righteousness, and, in the same flesh, to pay the penalty that we deserve.”131 “he offered as a sacrifice the flesh he 129. hick, Metaphor, 118. 130. ibid., 118–19. 131. Calvin, Institutes, 466.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism received from us, that he might wipe out our guilt by his act of expiation and appease the Father’s righteous wrath.”132 against the Reformers’ understanding of atonement, however, hick offers the following scathing criticism: it is hardly necessary today to criticize this penal-substitutionary conception, so totally implausible has it become for most of us. The idea that guilt can be removed from a wrongdoer by someone else being punished instead is morally grotesque. and if we put it in what might at first sight seem a more favourable light by suggesting that god punished godself, in the person of god the Son, in order to be able justly to forgive sinners, we are still dealing with the religious absurdity of moral law which god can and must satisfy by punishing the innocent in place of the guilty. as anselm pointed out long ago, through his interlocutor in Cur Deus Homo?, “it is a strange thing if god so delights in, or requires, the blood of the innocent, that he neither chooses, nor is able, to spare the guilty without the sacrifice of innocent” (anselm 1969, 200; Book i, chapter 10).133

The last transactional theory of the atonement hick evaluates is Richard Swinburne’s version in his impressive book, Responsibility and Atonement.134 The following is a rather long quotation of hick’s helpful seven-point summarization of Swinburne’s conception of salvation: (1) guilt in relation to god is the great barrier to salvation, i.e. to receiving god’s gift of eternal life. (This is assumed throughout Swinburne’s discussion.) (2) in the case of wrong done by one human being to another, reconciliation requires four things: repentance, apology, whatever reparation (i.e. undoing of the harm done) is possible, and penance, i.e. some additional act—such as the giving of a costly gift—which is not part of the reparation but is an expression of the reality of one’s regret and sorrow at having done the wrong (Chapter 5). (3) god is a personal being—though absolutely unique in nature—with whom we exist in the same kind of moral relationship as our fellow human beings, and the same general conditions for 132. ibid., 466–67. 133. hick, Metaphor, 119. 134. Swinburne, Responsibility and Atonement.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism reconciliation apply. (This is assumed throughout Part ii, though not explicitly stated.) (4) all wrong-doing to fellow humans is also wrong-doing done to god. For, “man’s dependence on god is so total that he owes it to him to live a good life. hence when a man fails in any objective or subjective duty of his fellows, he also fails in his duty towards god, his creator” (124). (5) We can repent and apologize to god for our sins, but we cannot on our own offer adequate atonement, i.e. reparation and penance. For, “Since what needs atonement to god is human sin, men living second-rate lives when they have been given such great opportunities by their creator, appropriate reparation and penance would be made by a perfect human life” (157). (6) That “perfect human life” is provided by Christ, who lived without sin and voluntarily endured a death which he openly intended as a sacrifice that we, accepting it from him, can offer to god as atonement for our sins, both individual and corporate. Christ’s death is thus “an offering made available to us men to offer as our reparation and penance.” “This is no need,” Swinburne adds, “to suppose that life and death [of Christ’s] to be the equivalent of what men owe to god (or that plus appropriate penance), however that could be measured. it is simply a costly penance and reparation sufficient for a merciful god to let men off the rest” (154). (7) to be sanctified and thus finally saved is only possible to those who (as well as repenting and apologizing) participate in the Christian worship of god and plead the atoning death of Christ, thereby throwing off their guilt. to be saved we must thus be joined—either in this life or hereafter—to the Christian church, which is the Body of Christ (173).135

While granting that Swinburne’s theory is logically possible, hick thinks it highly implausible. hick chides the oxford professor for his personal and anthropomorphic understanding of god, who is “subject to the same moral requirements as ourselves, and thus with obligation and duties and possibilities of supererogatory deeds.”136 in hick’s opinion, Swinburne’s fundamental mistake is to assume that the fourfold schema of repentance, apology, reparation, and penance can be carried 135. hick, Metaphor, 120–21. 136. ibid., 121.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism unchanged into our relationship with god. For hick, while repentance and apology may apply both to god and human beings, reparation and penance apply only to the latter. “god cannot be benefited, and thus recompensed and atoned to, by any human acts in addition to those that benefit god’s creation.”137 even if god could be benefited, “a perfect life, fulfilling every “objective and subjective duty,” is already, according to Swinburne, owed by all of us to god, and therefore “could not constitute a reparation-plus-penance for not having lived a perfect life in the past.”138 Besides, “how would one single perfect human life, namely that of Jesus, count as all human beings having led perfect lives?”139 Furthermore, hick points to the illogical consequence of Swinburne’s departure “from the traditional view that the value of Jesus’ death was equal to, or exceeded, the evils of human sin, so as to be able to balance it.”140 For on Swinburne’s view there was no necessity for the cross, such as was provided in their own way by the satisfaction and penal-substitutionary theories. Swinburne is abandoning the idea of a moral law that could only be satisfied by Jesus’ death. For it was, according to him, entirely within god’s free choice to establish the conditions for human salvation. But in that case god’s insistence on the blood, sweat, pain and anguish involved in the crucifixion of god’s innocent Son now seems even to cast doubt on the moral character of the deity . . . The traditional atonement theories explained why god could not freely forgive penitent sinners. But what was intelligible—whether or not morally acceptable—on those theories becomes unintelligible, and doubly morally questionable, on Swinburne’s view.141

in the end, hick’s most pointed criticism of Swinburne is this: “But if a merciful god can properly ‘let men off the rest’ without a full punishment having been inflicted or a full satisfaction exacted, why may not god freely forgive sinners who come in genuine penitence and a

137. ibid., 122. 138. ibid., 123. 139. ibid. 140. ibid., 125. 141. ibid., 123–25 (emphasis original).

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism radically changed mind?”142 indeed, hick applies this last criticism to all four separate transactional theories of the atonement: The basic fault of the traditional understanding of salvation within the Western development of Christianity is that they have no room for divine forgiveness! For a forgiveness that has to be bought by bearing of a just punishment, or the giving of an adequate satisfaction, of the offering of a sufficient sacrifice, is not forgiveness, but merely an acknowledgment that the debt has been paid in full. But in the recorded teaching of Jesus there is, in contrast, genuine divine forgiveness for those who are truly penitent and vividly conscious of their utter unworthiness.143

in contrast to the theories he criticizes, hick’s own position is that this: “in relation to god the truly penitent person, genuinely resolving to do better in the future, can only accept forgiveness as a free gift of grace, undeserved and unearned.”144 at the same time, hick fully recognizes the deeply seated source of difference between the traditional theories of the atonement and his own position. For the transactional conceptions of the atonement were premised “on the belief in the original sin as an inherited guilt affecting the entire human race and requiring an adequate atonement to expunge it.”145 Furthermore, they involve beliefs in “the willful fall from grace of the first humans and the genetic inheritance by the whole species of a guilt and sinful nature.”146 however, hick is unusually derogatory toward such a view. Since it is now widely recognized that human beings evolved out of lower forms of life over immensely long period of time, hick finds the idea of an actual human fall resulting in a universal inherited depravity and guilt to be totally unbelievable. in the light of a typical contemporary ethic the idea of an inherited guilt for being born as the kind of being that we are is a moral absurdity. We cannot be guilty in the sight of god for 142. ibid., 125. 143. ibid., 127. 144. ibid., 122. 145. ibid., 115. 146. ibid. Swinburne’s view of the original sin is somewhat of an exception, however. While he believes “that there is a proneness to sin in all men” and that this “disease” is transmitted genetically, he disagrees with the traditional view that this proneness was caused by the sin of the first sinner or that “all of adam’s descendants are guilty of adam’s original sin.” See Responsibility and Atonement, 137–47.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism having been born, within god’s providence, as animals biologically programmed for self-protection and survival within a tough environment. and even if we discount our modern awareness of the continuity between homo sapiens and the rest of animal life, the moral principle behind the traditional doctrine is still totally unacceptable. although evidently believable in the age in which it was propounded, the idea of a universal inherited guilt was losing plausibility by the end of the eighteenth century and had entirely lost it, for many, by the end of the nineteenth.147

hiCK’S ReCoNStRuCtioN oF a NeW ChRiStology having examined hick’s deconstructive Christology and soteriology, we now move to his attempts at reconstructing these doctrines. Clearly, hick is not satisfied to simply tear down traditionally orthodox doctrines within Christianity. his ultimate aim in deconstructing the traditional understanding of Jesus Christ and salvation is to create a new Christology and soteriology that are better suited for pluralistic purposes. to this end, hick begins, not by completely ignoring all past developments, but by selectively retrieving from traditional resources those concepts that may serve as a point of departure for his new Christology. hick finds one such springboard in Thomas aquinas’ discussion of the possibility of multiple incarnations of the eternal Word. in Part iiia of the Summa Theologica,148 aquinas argues not only that god the Father and the Spirit could have become incarnate in addition to the Son, and that different persons of the trinity could assume the same human nature, but that it is also logically possible for the second person of the trinity to become incarnate as another, different human being. hick says, “it seems, then, that the second person of the trinity could take human nature again, and if twice, then presumably three or four, or indeed any number of times, and could presumably have done so before the Jesus incarnation as well as after it.”149 aquinas rejected the idea of a universal incarnation in which god assumes human nature in all human individuals on grounds that this take away from humanity’s unique individuality and freedom, and also because god incarnate could only die once to atone for the sins of the 147. ibid., 117. 148. aquinas, Summa Theologica. 149. hick, Metaphor, 93.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism world. on the other hand, aquinas did not consider the “other and surely more serious possibility” of “a limited number of incarnations in various places and at various times in order to do for others what Jesus, as an influence within human history, has done for some.”150 hick’s claim is that if we allow for a limited number of divine incarnations, only one of which would die the atoning death, it would be entirely permissible under Thomistic Christology for there to be plural incarnations since aquinas has already affirmed such a possibility. Thus, only the suffering of Jesus Christ would suffice as the atonement for the sins of the world, but other incarnations would serve the valuable purpose of teaching the true way of life, purifying nations, bringing god’s rule of justice and peace to the world, and so on. given this possibility, hick asks whether such epoch-making spiritual leaders as moses, gautama, Confucius, Socrates, and mohammed may not, in fact, have been such divine incarnations. according to hick, even Christians who accept the traditional doctrine of incarnation might welcome such a pluralistic view of incarnation. Nevertheless, such a modification of the Thomistic view can still assume a rather literalistic, if not inclusivistic, understanding of the incarnation. Surprisingly, hick sees some limited value in the literalistic understanding of the incarnation in the older theological tradition. These virtues include a historical sense of god’s presence with us in the midst of human life, a directness and fullness of knowledge of god that would not otherwise be possible, a revelation of god as sharing through Jesus’ life and death in our human suffering, as well as confronting and taking ultimate responsibility for the presence of evil within the created universe.151 however, the problem with a literalistic understanding of the incarnation is that Christianity is not the only religion that sees the Divine as historically active on earth and as participating in the historical process. also, Jesus is not the only evidence of a suffering god. Furthermore, a literal understanding of incarnation is shadowed by the scandal of particularity, that is, the scandal of limited revelation and restricted access. Why would a loving god limit such a great salvific revelation to only a minority of human beings who have failed in its project to convert the world? according to hick, inclusivism does not solve this dilemma either, since, in such a framework, non-Christians lack the 150. ibid. 151. ibid., 153–57.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism “glorious privilege” which Christians supposedly enjoy due to the latter’s explicit knowledge of god, making it incompatible with universal divine love. The only viable alternative is, for hick, to enlarge our field of vision and to accept the idea that Christianity is only one among a plurality of authentic human responses to divine reality. in this vision, Jesus is not literally himself god, but the supreme lord and spiritual guide for Christians, though not necessarily for others. Such a pluralistic vision can take two different forms, according to hick. in the demythologized form, initiated by Rudolf Bultmann and others, Christian belief is stripped of its mythological elements.152 The other option, taken by hick, is to fully acknowledge and to affirm the mythological character of Christian belief “and to affirm its positive value in touching the more poetic and creative side of our nature, and then allowing our imagination and emotion to resonate to myth as myth.”153 hick freely admits that such a way of thinking does not come as easily to the typical Western mind as it does to the hindus, for example. he says, “For we seem to have an ingrained tendency either to accept our myths as literally true or reject them as simply false.”154 Rather than rejecting such Christian stories as the incarnation and the virgin birth as simply false because they are not literally true, hick’s option suggests “accepting the myth as evocative poetry, stirring the emotions, expanding the imagination, warming the heart—and all in the direction of an enhanced sense of the gracious, loving, benign character of the ultimate in relationship to human life.”155 more specifically, hick describes his central christological program as that of reinterpreting Christ’s divine incarnation as a metaphor, which is, according to hick, a much-simplified form of a myth. in this regard, it seems crucial to understand several important elements in the way in which hick uses the concept of metaphor. We begin, therefore, with hick’s most basic description of metaphor: 152. For Bultmann, myth is the use of language symbols or images of this present world and life to conceptualize the divine or the otherworldly. according to Bultmann, the contemporary humanity, which depends upon a scientific worldview, cannot accept the mythological worldview of the Bible and thus must be reinterpreted in anthropological and existentialist categories. See Bultmann, “New testament and mythology.” 153. hick, Metaphor, 160. 154. ibid., 161. 155. ibid., 161–62.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism The metaphorical stands in contrast to the literal use of language. The latter is simply standard use within a given linguistic community, employing words to convey agreed meanings, which may be recorded in a dictionary. Thus, the literal meaning of a word is, roughly, its dictionary meanings, and to speak literally is to intend one’s utterance to be understood in this standard or dictionary sense. in distinction from this, metaphor is a form of non-literal or figurative speech—along with metonymy, irony, synecdoche, hyperbole, simile, idiom, and meiosis. Thus, metaphorical speech is a use of language in which speaker-meaning differs from dictionary-meaning. The precise way in which it differs has proved hard to locate, and has in fact never been defined in any generally acceptable way. But the central idea is indicated by the derivation of the word from the greek metaphorein, to transfer. There is a transfer of meaning. one term is illuminated by attaching to it some of the associations of another, so that metaphor is “that trope, or figure of speech, in which we speak of one thing in terms suggestive of another” (Soskice 1985, 54). metaphorical meaning is thus generated by the interaction of two sets of ideas.156

Furthermore, for hick, translating the metaphor into literal speech does not exhaust the metaphor: For such translation can never be complete and definitive, both because there is no fixed boundary to the range of similarities that may occur to different people, and because these similarities can activate an indefinite range of varied associations and feelings. There is thus an ineliminable and indefinable aura of meaning to metaphor. a metaphor’s central thrust can be literally translated, but its ramifying overtones and emotional colour are variable and changing and thus are not translatable without remainder into a definitive list of literal propositions. The use of metaphor is accordingly a different kind of speech-act from the listing of identifiable similarities. metaphorical speech is indeed akin to poetry, and shares its non-translatability into literal prose.157

hick is of the opinion that metaphors function to serve and promote a sense of community. Says hick, “Within a community of people who largely understand one another communication is greatly enhanced

156. ibid., 99. 157. ibid., 100.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism by a liberal use of metaphor, so that ordinary speech is usually saturated with it.”158 it is hick’s claim that while prior to the Council of Nicea the Christian language about Jesus was devotional, ecstatic, and liturgical, afterwards it became more formal, technical, and theologically precise. Both the Nicene and Chalcedonian formulae were intended to be understood with strict literality. however, the two-natures Christologies, as well as the contemporary Chalcedonian types of theories (i.e., the twominds and the divine self-emptying ideas) have all proved to have no literal or metaphysical meaning for hick, as we saw in previous sections. Thus, says hick, “The real point and value of the incarnational doctrine is not indicative but expressive, not to assert a metaphysical fact but to express a valuation and evoke an attitude.”159 What hick offers as an alternative is, therefore, a new christological formulation in which the incarnation is claimed to be a metaphor in its theological use. That is, the idea of the incarnation is not a metaphysical claim about Jesus having two natures, but a metaphorical claim of the significance of a life through which god was acting on earth. “it says something that is capable of being true or false—true or false in the sense that the metaphor is appropriate and illuminating or inappropriate and misleading.”160 The central thrust of this metaphor has to do with the fact that Jesus was a human being who was exceptionally open and obediently responsive to the divine presence, and that he lived a life of unselfish love. For hick, this central idea can be indicated in three specific ways: (1) in so far as Jesus was doing god’s will, god was acting through him on earth and was in this respect “incarnate” in Jesus’ life; (2) in so far as Jesus was doing god’s will he “incarnated” the ideal of human life lived in openness and response to god; (3) in so far as Jesus lived a life of self-giving love, or agape, he “incarnated” a love that is a finite reflection of the infinite divine love.161

158. ibid., 101. 159. hick, Myth of God Incarnate, 178. 160. hick, Metaphor, 105. 161. ibid., 105.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism as metaphors of god incarnate, these ideas can, and did, readily develop into a myth. What is a myth? according to hick, “a myth is a powerful complex of ideas, usually in story form, which is not literally true but which may nevertheless be true in the practical sense that it tends to evoke an appropriate dispositional attitude to its subject matter.”162 in short, a myth is a much-expanded metaphor. how then are myths and metaphors similar and different from each other? according to hick: “Both function to help us see something in a new light and so react to it in a new way. But, whereas metaphor usually operates within a single sentence, a myth is a more or less developed story based on a metaphor. Thus, we may think of god, metaphorically, as our heavenly Father, and we can develop this into the story of how the heavenly Father sent his Son down to earth to reconcile us to himself by dying for our sin; and so the story can grow—indeed has grown—into a whole theology.”163 given this relationship, we can readily see how hick conceives of the divine incarnation in both metaphorical and mythical terms. The basic idea of the incarnation is a metaphor, but the whole complex of multidimensional ideas and stories that have developed may be seen as a myth. it is in this light that we can recall hick’s description of Jesus Christ in The Myth of God Incarnate: That Jesus was god the Son incarnate is not literally true, since it has no literal meaning, but it is an application to Jesus of a mythical concept whose function is analogous to that of the notion of divine sonship ascribed in the ancient world to a king. in the case of Jesus it gives definitive expression to his efficacy as saviour from sin and ignorance and as giver of new life; it offers a way of declaring his significance to the world; and it expresses a disciple’s commitment to Jesus as his personal lord. he is the one in following whom we have found ourselves in god’s presence and have found god’s meaning for our lives. he is our sufficient model of true humanity in a perfect relationship to god. and he is so far above us in the “direction” of god that he stands between ourselves and the ultimate as a mediator of salvation.164

at this point, we may point to two representative Christologies that hick mentions exemplifying the metaphorical and mythical type 162. hick, Myth of God Incarnate, 178. 163. hick, A Christian Theology, 102. 164. hick, Myth of God Incarnate, 178–79.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism of understanding of Jesus that he advocates. The first of these is Donald Baillie’s paradox-of-grace Christology. in his book God Was in Christ, Baillie proposed that we understand incarnation in terms of, in hick’s words, the “paradoxical fact that when we do god’s will it is true both that we are acting freely and responsibly, and also that god, by divine grace, is acting in and through us.”165 This paradox of grace is then seen “as the clue to the yet greater paradox of the incarnation: that the life of Jesus was an authentically human life and, yet, that in and through that life god was at work on earth.”166 in understanding the idea of incarnation in terms of paradox-of-grace, furthermore, “Baillie had to discard the traditional Chalcedonian language of Jesus’ having two natures, human and divine, and of his being, in his divine nature, of one substance with the Father.”167 The second Christology that hick considers is that of geoffrey lampe in his book God as Spirit. using as his model the activity of the Spirit of god within human life, lampe advocates a “Christology of inspiration” in which “the Spirit of god has always been active within the human spirit, inspiring men and women to open themselves freely to the divine presence and to respond in their lives to the divine purpose.”168 however, for lampe, Jesus has a special status in god’s general relationship toward humanity in that he is the central and focal point of the Spirit’s continuous and single activity toward human persons. lampe says, “god indwelt and motivated the human spirit of Jesus in such a way that in him, uniquely, the relationship for which man is intended by his Creator was fully realized.”169 he adds, “For a ‘union of personal deity with human personality’ can only be a perfected form of inspiration.”170 While hick applauds each of the above Christologies as “a good rendering of the religious significance of Jesus, well expressed by the metaphor of divine incarnation,” he seems especially enthusiastic about lampe’s inspiration Christology. to begin with, hick agrees with Pannenberg that Christology based on the concept of Spirit is probably 165. hick, Metaphor, 106–7. 166. ibid. 167. hick, “inspiration Christology,” 19. 168. hick, Metaphor, 109. 169. lampe, God as Spirit, 11. 170. ibid., 12.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism the oldest attempt to express god’s presence in Jesus.171 Furthermore, says hick, “in this inspiration Christology we have not only a return to the original understanding of Jesus in the very early church but an advance to an understanding of him that makes sense in our consciously religiously plural world as it moves toward the twenty-first century.”172 on the other hand, he chides both Baillie and lampe, for assuming a priori that Jesus’ response to divine grace and inspiration was “unique,” “complete,” “absolute,” “fully realized,” or “perfect.” given their dynamic understandings of incarnation, Baillie and lampe did not fully appreciate that the dogma of Jesus’ unique superiority does not necessarily follow from their Christologies. For if, with them, we see in the life of Jesus a special instance of the fusion of divine grace/inspiration and creaturely freedom that occurs in all authentic human response and obedience to god, we can ask how this particular instance compares with others. We are not speaking of something that is in principle unique, but of an interaction of the divine and the human which occurs in many different ways and degrees in all human openness to god’s presence . . . it leaves open the further question of the relationship between the operation of god’s grace/inspiration in Jesus and in other outstanding religious figures. in other words, whereas the Chalcedonian Christology entailed the unique status of Jesus as the one and only person with both a human nature and a divine nature, a grace/inspiration Christology does not by itself single him out in this way. it can no longer be an a priori dogma that Jesus is the supreme point of contact between god and humankind. This is now a matter of historical judgment, subject to all the difficulties and uncertainties of such judgments.173

in addition to the metaphorical revisioning of divine incarnation, hick’s reconstruction of a pluralistic Christology also involves a restatement of the doctrine of atonement. having rejected all transactional theories of atonement on grounds that “they have no room for divine forgiveness” and that “they were premised on the belief in original sin as an inherited guilt affecting the entire human race,” hick now attempts a positive reconstruction of the doctrine in terms of its broader meaning as simply salvation, or transformation. hick sees such a reconstruction 171. hick, “inspiration Christology,” 20. 172. ibid., 21. 173. hick, Metaphor, 109–10.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism as being in alignment with certain presuppositions that are widely shared among the world’s theistic faiths, including in hinduism, Judaism, and islam, that see “human natures as basically good and yet also with an evil inclination that has continually to be resisted. however, god is aware of our finitude and weakness, and is always ready to forgive the truly penitent.”174 Based on the lord’s Prayer, parable of the prodigal son, and the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector, hick concludes that such was also the view of the historical Jesus for whom there was “genuine divine forgiveness for those who are truly penitent and vividly conscious of their utter unworthiness.”175 and while latin Christianity did not generally hold such views, the various moral influence theories suggesting that Christ’s death can lead to remorse, repentance, and therefore forgiveness, stand out as exceptions. indeed, moral influence theories were “theological epicycles by which it sought to abandon an untenable traditional idea—in this case the transactional conception of salvation—whilst at the same time retaining the traditional language.”176 The limitation of the moral influence theories was, however, “that remorse at humanity having collectively killed god the Son can only be felt by that minority of human beings who believe that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the second person of a divine trinity.”177 a more attractive alternative to the Western/latin understanding of the atonement is, for hick, the views of the orthodox Christianity built upon the work of the hellenistic fathers. in the orthodox understanding, the divinization of humanity, frequently called theosis, is the ultimate framework within which transformation is to be understood. although not advocating acceptance of the total theological package, hick believes that the orthodox interpretation provides the groundwork for a superior view of salvation. The difference is between salvation as hinging upon an atoning transaction that enables god to forgive the fallen human nature, and a salvation as the gradual transformation of human beings, who already exist in the “image” of god, into what the hellenistic fathers, on the basis of genesis 1.26, called the “likeness” of god 174. ibid., 128. 175. ibid., 127. 176. ibid., 129. 177. ibid.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism . . . This is the gradual transformation of the person from human animal into the finite “likeness” of god; and it is this actual human change that constitutes salvation. Thus, whilst on the latin view to be saved is to be justified, i.e. relieved of guilt, by Christ’s sacrificial death, on the orthodox view to be in the process of salvation is to be responding to the presence of the divine Spirit and thus gradually moving towards a radical new re-centering within the divine life.178

in the orthodox doctrine of Christian transformation, the process of theosis involves the idea of becoming Christ-like. The Christian does not become a god, but, in keeping with the Scriptural teaching, he or she is renewed in Christ’s image. it is hick’s claim, however, that, in orthodox thought in general, the role that the incarnate Christ played in the process of transformation is not spelled out, but “only described in broad metaphorical terms.”179 “indeed,” says hick, “it perhaps cannot be spelled out intelligibly except in terms of the experience, known within all religious traditions, of being influenced and changed by the life and words of a great exemplar.”180 Within such a broad metaphorical conception of Christian salvation as the experience of being influenced by the life and words of Jesus Christ, hick now reconstructs his own doctrine of the atonement. here, hick reconceptualizes the atonement in terms of the powerful salvific influence that the sacrificial death and martyrdom of Jesus has had, and is bound to have, in the transformational process of believers. Says hick: as a cumulative result of the teaching of Jesus, as well as of hosea and amos before him and many others, can we not now see that the sacrifice of animal or human blood pointed, in a crude and inadequate way, to the much deeper sacrifice of the ego point of view in becoming a channel of divine grace on earth? The real meaning of Jesus’ death was not that his blood was shed—but that he gave himself utterly to god in faith and trust. his cross was thus a powerful manifestation and continuing symbol of divine kingdom in this present world, as a way of life in which one turns the other cheek, forgive one’s enemies “unto seventy

178. ibid., 130. 179. ibid. 180. ibid.

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism times seven,” trusts god even in the darkness of pain, horror and tragedy, and is continually raised again to the new life of faith.181

however, for hick, even this revised interpretation of the atonement does not completely exhaust the meaning and the felt impact of Jesus’ death since “the voluntary acceptance of death by a holy person has a moral power that reverberates beyond any words that we can frame to express it.”182 Nevertheless, hick is confident in rejecting all ecclesiastical theories that reduce the mythology of the cross to unacceptable culture-bound categories. in the end, hick’s conclusion concerning the doctrine of the atonement is that “Jesus’ death was of a piece with his life, expressing a total integrity in his self-giving to god; and his cross continues to inspire and challenge us on a level that does not involve the atonement theories developed by the churches.”183 if the metaphorical conception of the incarnation is the most central element of hick’s new Christology, his doctrine of salvation, based on a revised understanding of the atonement, is the most significant aspect of this reconstruction. For it is here, more than anywhere else, that hick’s philosophy and theology of religions converge. hick’s novel interpretation of atonement has several important implications for a religiously pluralistic understanding of salvation. to begin with, and most obviously, other great traditions that provide similar contexts for human transformations must now be seen as authentic paths of salvation along with Christianity. For, “These different paths are all forms of a gradual transformation from self-centredness to a new centering in the Real.”184 of course, the other side of this logical coin involves a rejection of the traditional Christian claim that the death of Jesus on the cross constitutes the exclusive ontological basis for all salvation. in other words, “what we cannot say is that all who are saved are saved by Jesus of Nazareth.”185 Furthermore, a metaphorical interpretation of Jesus’ death allows hick to arrive at a religiously comparative definition of salvation as “the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to a new ori181. ibid., 132. 182. ibid. 183. ibid., 132–33. 184. hick, A Christian Theology, 107. 185. hick, Myth of God Incarnate, 181.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism entation centered in the divine Reality.”186 although each tradition conceptualizes in its own ways the wrongness of ordinary human existence, as well as sets forth ways of attaining a limitlessly better possibility, all major religions must now be judged as more or less equal ways of salvation, since each provides effective contexts within which transformation is taking place from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness. in this regard, a common salvific criterion is, for hick, unselfish regard for others that we call love or compassion.187 Finally, hick’s metaphorical understanding of salvation places a serious limitation on Christian and other missionary movements. hick says: “There have of course been, and no doubt will always be, individual conversions in all directions of individual reasons. But any proposal today to convert the whole world to Christianity, or for that matter to islam or to any other faith, is today treason against the peace and diversity of the human family.”188

CoNCluSioN in this chapter, we have made every effort to give a careful and accurate account of hick’s Christology and soteriology as they relate to religious pluralism. in our exposition, we have made a special effort to be accurate, balanced, and fair in our presentation of hick’s thought. We have given a rather detailed account of hick’s refutation of the traditional Christian understanding of Jesus of Nazareth as god incarnate, who became a man to die for the sins of the world and founded the church to proclaim this. We have seen how hick’s deconstructive strategy involved four separate arguments: 1) that Jesus was neither aware of nor taught that he himself was god incarnate, but that this idea was a post-easter creation of the church; 2) that the dogma of two natures, along with the more contemporary two-minds and kenosis theories, have proven to be incapable of being explicated in any satisfactory way; 3) that the traditional dogma has been used to justify great historical evils of 186. hick, Metaphor, 136. 187. as we pointed out in the last chapter, when it comes to the actual practices of these ideals of love and compassion, hick thinks that we cannot determine at present whether any one of the great religious traditions has shown itself to be more productive than others since each has produced its own distinct kinds of good as well as evil. 188. hick, A Christian Theology, 118. on the other hand, hick encourages “the translation and distribution of the sacred scriptures and secondary writings of every tradition, and accurate knowledge of them, as well as the peaceful dialogue of people of different faiths.”

Hick’s Theology of Religious Pluralism anti-Semitism, colonialism, patriarchalism and a religious superiority complex; and 4) that the transactional latin understanding of the atonement, along with its transactional conception of salvation, is culturally outmoded and intellectually implausible. in addition, we have also examined hick’s alternative reconstruction of the doctrines of incarnation and atonement based on a metaphorical rather than a literal interpretation. Such an approach has enabled hick to understand Jesus as the one who has made god real to Christians while allowing for a pluralistic conception of Christianity as but one among a number of different equally valid human responses to the Real. it now remains for us to carefully evaluate some of these ideas in the following chapters.

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4 an evaluation of hick’s historical arguments

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n the previous chapter, i have given a detailed survey of hick’s negative descriptions of the traditional Christian understanding of Jesus of Nazareth as god incarnate, who became a man to die for sins, and who founded the church to proclaim this. i have also described hick’s own metaphorical Christology, proposed as an alternative model more appropriate for a pluralistic age. The purpose of this chapter and the next is to engage in a critical evaluation of these ideas. Specifically, in this present chapter, i shall evaluate what i have previously characterized as hick’s “historical argument” against the church’s incarnation Christology. in the next chapter, his “conceptual argument” that the doctrine of the two natures is either incoherent or that no adequate explanation has thus far been proposed will also be addressed. together, my assessment of these two arguments will comprise the substance of the conclusion i will draw concerning the validity of hick’s theology of religion pluralism. The very thesis that i am addressing in this chapter is hick’s historical argument that Jesus did not teach what was to become the orthodox dogma about him and that this was the creation of the church only subsequent to his death. Specifically, there are four important areas that need to be carefully scrutinized in this connection. These include hick’s methodology involving historical skepticism and imaginative reconstruction, his negative claims about Jesus’ filial consciousness, his revisionist account of Jesus’ resurrection, and, finally, his description of the church’s creative role in the progressive deification of Jesus. i shall begin with the methodology. 130

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hiStoRiCal methoDology in the previous chapter, i have already characterized hick’s approach as belonging to the category of Christology from below rather than from above, since, like Pannenberg, hick begins with the historical Jesus of Nazareth rather than the idealized Christ of the dogma. in this regard, hick is to be applauded for adopting such a starting point of inquiry, for, in my opinion, it is highly desirable that Christology be firmly anchored in who Jesus actually was and what he actually accomplished. For by focusing on the person, teaching, attitude, and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth insofar as they are accessible to historical and exegetical investigation, Christology is assured of the objective foundations that neither doctrine nor preaching nor even religious experience can provide as a way of distinction from self-delusion. in this respect, the modern quest for the historical Jesus that began in the enlightenment in the person of hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768),1 and the historical-critical methodology that accompanied this quest, must be judged in a positive light, since the employment of such method was a necessary challenge to the dogmatism of european Christianity in the name of history. While appreciative of such a starting point, however, there are also serious problems related to hick’s historical methodology. The most obvious and notable shortcoming that needs to be mentioned is his unwarranted and excessively radical separation of the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith based on an extremely questionable and skeptical view of the abundance of biblical data constituting a historically unreliable source. Such a procedure, accompanied by his imaginative approach to historical reconstruction, seems to cast serious doubts on hick’s methodology as a whole. in many ways, hick’s extremely negative stance against the historical reliability of biblical sources, and the radical discontinuity that he alleges between the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history, reflect a type 1. generally recognized as inaugurating the quest of the historical Jesus, Reimarus’ writings were published after his death by g. e. lessing in the form of seven “fragments.” The final fragment, “on the intention of Jesus and his Disciples,” published in 1778, is generally recognized as the most important for the sharp delineation that was made between Christ of faith and Jesus of history. albert Schweitzer hailed this document as “perhaps the most splendid achievement in the whole course of the historical investigation of the life of Jesus,” in Quest, 23. in addition to Schweitzer’s book, an excellent overview of the Jesus studies in the nineteenth century is provided by Colin Brown, Jesus.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism of skepticism characteristic of the radical wing of the nineteenth century “liberal” quest that eventually led to its demise, as well as the subsequent period of pessimism that led to a near abandonment of the entire project. in particular, striking similarities between hick and David Friedrich Strauss (1808–74), on the one hand, and with Rudolf Bultmann (1884– 1976), on the other, are hard to miss. Strongly denying that the Bible is a historical account, and repudiating even Schleiermacher as a supernaturalist, Strauss insisted that the gospels are, almost in their entirety, myths.2 The incarnation was, according to Strauss, the mythological symbol of the divine manifestation in humankind in general. Following Strauss, Bultmann also agreed that the kerygma was so shrouded in first-century mythology that no historical methodology could so penetrate to discover the real Jesus of history. The intensity of such skepticism is well expressed by Bultmann’s well known statement: “i do indeed think that we can know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since the early Christian sources show no interest in either, are moreover fragmentary and often legendary; and other sources do not exist.”3 Such a view led Bultmann to adopt his well known hermeneutic of demythologization. Similarly, hick’s portrait of Christ as presented in the New testament represents “the church’s mingled memories and interpretations” of Jesus of Nazareth about whom the “written gospels cannot yield a great deal in the way of fully assured results.”4 The only assured knowledge we have about the Nazarene is a bare minimum, anything beyond which hick relegates to the realm of conjecture and imagination. 2. Strauss, Life of Jesus and Christ of Faith. in the former book, Strauss describes what he believes to be the historical core of the life of Jesus as follows: “that he grew up at Nazareth, let himself be baptized by John, collected disciples, went about teaching in the Jewish land, opposed Pharisaism everywhere and invited men into the messianic kingdom, but that in the end he fell victim to the hatred and envy of the Pharisaic party and died on the cross.” Quoted and translated from the german by Colin Brown, Jesus, 191. 3. Bultmann, Jesus, 8. 4. hick, Metaphor, 18. Such radical separation and skepticism is not unlike the claim of The Jesus Seminar that only eighteen percent of the words ascribed to Jesus in the gospels were actually spoken by him. Such conclusions are based on the fundamental assumption that no details of Jesus in the gospels are historical until proven otherwise. The burden of proof rests, in other words, on those wishing to demonstrate that the considered details in the gospels are in fact historical. See, Funk, hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels, 4–5.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments Without denying that the gospels do clearly reflect the post-easter faith of the church, is hick’s excessively skeptical posture warranted in light of the post-Bultmannian developments in Jesus research after World War ii, and more importantly, the so-called “Third Quest” that began more recently in the 1980s?5 i think not. For if those who pursued the “New Quest” (including ernst Käsemann, günther Bornkamm, and J. m. Robinson) continued to maintain the distinction between the Christ of faith—the kerygmatic Christ—and the Jesus of history, they also established a sense of continuity between the two, believing that, within limits, it was methodologically possible to reach relatively certain historical conclusions about Jesus.6 But even more pertinent for our consideration, the New testament scholars belonging to the “Third Quest” have established the historical reliability of substantial portions of matthew, mark, and luke by situating Jesus of Nazareth in the early first-century Palestinian Jewish setting and treating his teaching in light of its consonance with Jewish ethical teachings.7 e. P. Sanders, whose quotes hick utilizes in great abundance, well expresses the general consensus when he writes: “The dominant view today seems to be that we can know pretty well what Jesus was out to accomplish, that we can know a lot about what he said, and that those two things make sense within the world of first-century Judaism.”8 5. The “New Quest” of the historical Jesus, began in the 1950s by Bultmann’s most distinguished disciples (including ernst Käsemann, günther Bornkamm, and J. m. Robinson) in reaction to his extremely negative historical conclusions. The “Third Quest” of the historical Jesus that began in the 1980s places Jesus much more self-consciously into the Jewish context in which he lived and taught. Compared to the “New Quest,” these Nt scholars employ less stringent and historically more realistic criteria of authenticity (similar to criteria that other historians of antiquity were employing) and they are theologically more neutral. Some of its leading figures include geza Vermes, e. P. Sanders, marcus Borg, John P. meier, and N. t. Wright. For an excellent introduction to the subject, see tatum, In Quest of Jesus, and also, Ben Witherington iii, The Jesus Quest. 6. Thus, in his famous lecture that was subsequently published and translated with the title “The Problem of the historical Jesus,” ernst Käsemann states: “The question of the historical Jesus is, in its legitimate form, the question of the continuity of the gospel within the discontinuity of the times and within the variation of the kerygma.” 7. See for example the works of e. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, and Historical Figure; Charlesworth, Jesus Within Judaism; Vermes, Jesus and the World; and a. e. harvey, Jesus and Constraints. 8. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 2.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism although it is true that hick borrows from some scholars belonging to the “Third Quest” (especially e. P. Sanders), it is also clear that hick’s general methodology seems to remain closer to the older school of Bultmann and Strauss in its radical skepticism and emphasis on myths. But perhaps more accurately, the bigger problem may be that hick lacks a clear and coherent historical-critical methodology of his own. For example, what exactly are the criteria of authenticity that hick uses to arrive at his conclusions? hick nowhere identifies them.9 What historical methodology legitimates throwing away of so much of the written gospels as historically unreliable information? Despite hick’s claim that his radical starting point represents a “modest but significant area of consensus” characterizing the “sufficient overlap of conclusions” among New testament scholars, it must be pointed out to the contrary that recent Nt scholarship appears to have taken a more moderate, if not a conservative, turn in the evaluation of the relationship between the Christ of faith and the historical Jesus.10 although Nt scholarship has still come to no universally accepted positions regarding the relationship between Jesus’ Christology and that of his followers, Raymond Brown is surely correct when he asserts “that the extreme positions on either end of the spectrum (no difference, no continuity) have fewer and fewer advocates.”11 given hick’s assumptions about the radical unreliability of the Nt documents, hick’s own positive methodology of imaginatively reconstructing a portrait of the historical Jesus is both problematic and inconsistent. it is problematic because if so little historical information can be established based on the written gospels, then so much of hick’s imaginative portrait of Jesus must necessarily be a product of his subjec9. according to tatum, the five criteria most commonly cited within the “Third Quest” are that of dissimilarity, multiple attestation, embarrassment, language and environment, and coherence. tatum, In Quest of Jesus, 106–7. 10. The most impressive among the recent works are the three massive multivolume works of John P. meier, A Marginal Jew and N. t. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory. meier’s four-volume project and Wright’s six-volume project together represent perhaps the best historical Jesus studies to appear in the twentieth century. Neither meier nor Wright is precritical in their approach to Jesus, yet their scholarship clearly demonstrates a substantial continuity between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. as such they are a necessary antidote to the unwarrantedly speculative and historically minimizing character in some extreme wings of radical Nt scholarship. 11. Brown, Introduction, 15. here, Brown significantly points to “moderate conservatism” as the most agreed upon scholarly approach in contemporary Christology.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments tive mental constructs. in that case, they reveal more about hick’s own mental imagination then of the historical Jesus. it is also inconsistent because hick is forced to make selective yet informative statements about the historical Jesus without having any way of establishing their historicity. on what historical basis, for example, can hick establish the “extremely intense god-consciousness” of Jesus of Nazareth, or the fact that the “heavenly Father was utterly real to him—as real as the men and women with whom he interacted every day or the galilean hills among which he lived.”12 if indeed hick is as serious about the minimal knowledge we can obtain from New testament sources as he insists, he is thoroughly inconsistent when he makes such claims as that the apocalyptic expectation of a decisive divine intervention in history “must surely go back to Jesus himself.”13 as James m. Robinson points out concerning hick’s methodology, such “formulations of theological method and its results . . . do suggest that one is in too much of a glass house to speak loudly of the traditional Christology.”14

JeSuS’ SelF-uNDeRStaNDiNg having pointed out the deficiencies in hick’s methodology, i must now turn to his main thesis that Jesus of Nazareth never made claims to deity that later Christian thought was to make for him. This is the issue of Jesus’ own self-consciousness in comparison to the church’s affirmations of his divinity. here, there are two areas where i am in agreement with hick. First, i agree that unless the substance of the claims made by Christianity can be legitimately referred back to what Jesus affirmed about himself, Christology is in serious jeopardy. Christianity cannot persuasively claim for Jesus what he did not teach or claim for himself. Secondly, hick is correct about the general consensus among New testament scholars that the historical Jesus never made explicit claims to be the Son of god, or lord, or used any such christological titles found in the gospels. Where i strongly disagree with hick, however, is the way in which the issue of Jesus’ divinity is tackled. That is, as the late Raymond Brown correctly pointed out, the question “Did Jesus know that he was god?” is 12. hick, Metaphor, 18. 13. ibid., 20 (emphasis added). 14. Robinson, “Very goddess,” 26.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism “so badly phrased that it cannot be answered and should not be posed.”15 For the Palestinian Jews God meant yahweh, the Father in heaven. Since it is certain that Jesus did not think of himself as being the Father in heaven to whom he prayed, hick is correct, in this sense, that Jesus did not believe or teach that he was god, for he was not “god” in the sense that the word would have been understood by his audience (i.e., as a reference to his Father in heaven). in addition, as Stephen Davis has pointed out, it is a moot point “that Jesus himself did not teach the classical doctrine that the church codified centuries later at Nicea (325 Ce), Constantinople (381 Ce), and Chalcedon (451 Ce),” accompanied by technical metaphysical concepts, such as hypostasis, physis, and ousia that were given expression centuries later as it became necessary to use the language of two natures.16 although hick is surely correct about a general agreement that Jesus did not use the christological titles found in the gospels, what hick so conveniently fails to mention is the other powerful and overwhelming consensus among New testament scholars that Jesus did make implicit claims about himself that strongly imply virtually the same thing as many of the titles. Significantly, even among the New testament scholars whom hick utilizes in support of his position that Jesus did not claim to be god, many do agree that Jesus did in effect make implicit christological claims. For example, arguing for a continuity between the historical Jesus and the New testament experiences of him, C. F. D. moule states, “What i am saying is that the evidence, as i read it, suggests that Jesus was, from the beginning, such a one as appropriately to be described in the ways in which, sooner or later, he did come to be described in the New testament period—for instance, as ‘lord’ and even, in some sense, as ‘god.’”17 also, recognizing that “John’s gospel is a well developed portrayal of Jesus’ claims to divine sonship,” James D. g. Dunn says, “that claim is in fact well rooted in Jesus’ own ministry, and particularly in his prayer address to god as ‘abba.’”18 Dunn continues, “Jesus, we may say with confidence, thought of himself as god’s son and encouraged his disciples to share his own intimate relationship with god as his 15. Brown, Jesus, God and Man, 86. 16. Davis, “John hick,” 252. 17. moule, Origin, 4 (emphasis original). 18. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus, 49.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments son.”19 likewise, michael Ramsey and gerald o’Collins are agreed that the christological titles merely serve to express explicitly what Jesus had already claimed about himself implicitly.20

Jesus’ Use of “Abba” Contrary to the majority view, hick denies not only the explicit claims of divine self-consciousness, but also indirect expressions of Jesus’ christological self-understanding as well. one such expression is the aramaic word abba used by Jesus to address god in prayer (mark 14:36), the authenticity of which very few scholars would dispute.21 according to Joachim Jeremias, abba was originally a term of endearment used by children for their father; but at the time of Jesus, it was used also by adults, and for persons other than their father to express respect and intimacy.22 Since abba was a child’s expression, and a common address form expressing intimacy, the Jews apparently found it unsuitable for god. Seen against this background, Jesus’ use of this term for god be19. ibid. 20. Thus, gerald o’Collins says: “Not only through the sayings about the future Son of man but also in other ways Jesus claimed what can only be called divine prerogative. The gospels, or at least the Synoptics, do not directly concern themselves with Jesus’ consciousness of his own activity. Nevertheless, his startling claims about his function for the present and coming kingdom leave us with the question: who did he think he was? . . . Christ was/is not only the Saviour of all but also the Creator of all. We might see such a claim being already asserted when the earthly Jesus in his own named healed broken bodies, multiplied food for the hungry, and in other miraculous ways expressed a power over the created world.” o’Collins, Christology, 66–67. michael Ramsey also argues for an implicit Christology when he asks: “Did the real person make the literature, or did the literature make the person? There are overwhelming reasons for thinking that it was the person who made the literature and that the literature reflects him.” Ramsey, Jesus and the Living Past, 36. 21. See Joachim Jeremias, “abba,” in Prayers of Jesus, 11–65. according to Jeremias, the greek vocative form pater (matt 11:25/luke 10:21; luke 11:2; 22:42; 23:34, 46; John 11:41; 12:27f.; 17:1, 5, 11, 24f.), the vocative form with personal pronoun pater mou (matt 26:39, 42), the nominative with the article ho pater used as vocative (mark 14:36; matt 11:26/luke 10:21; Rom 8:15; gal 4:6) all render the aramaic abba. mark 14:36; Rom 8:15; gal 4:6 indicate that abba was taken as the emphatic state or determinative form. But in aramaic, as in hebrew, such a form was often used as a vocative. Therefore, Jesus always seems to have addressed god as “abba,” with the exception of mark 15:34/ matt 27:46, which was a quotation from Ps 22 on the cross. 22. For example, in Targ. Mal. 2:10, near the end of the first century BCe, children call hanin ha-Nehba, the grandson of honi the Circle Drawer, “abba, abba habh lan mitra,” that is, “Father, father give us rain.” Cited by Witherington, Christology, 216.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism comes all the more significant, for as Jeremias states: “he spoke with god like a child with his father: confidently and securely and at the same time with reverence and with readiness to obey.”23 Jesus also taught his disciples to address god as abba, teaching them to use this form of address only for god, but not, apparently, for human teachers or masters (matt 23:9). Speaking to his disciples, and only to them, Jesus used the expression “your Father,” indicating that god is the Father only of those who are in the basileia that Jesus has inaugurated.24 in this connection, Jeremias calls our attention especially to Jesus’ distinction between “my Father” and “your Father,” but never “our Father,” in the sayings materials. accordingly, Jesus’ unique use of abba for god expresses his consciousness that, as the unique Son of god, he is to make his followers children of god.25 Jeremias’ proposal has been widely accepted by Nt scholars even though it has been subject to some qualifications. hick himself concedes “that Jesus’ use of the word did constitute a genuinely new contribution to Western spirituality” and that “Jesus seems to have made the idea distinctively central and powerful and thus to have initiated a new development through its use within what was to become Christianity.”26 Based on the challenges of Dunn and James Barr, however, hick emphasizes “that to experience god as one’s heavenly Father is not the same as experiencing oneself as uniquely god the Son, second person of a divine trinity.”27 But as Ben Witherington has well argued, Dunn’s objection to the uniqueness of Jesus’ use of abba based on such citations as Wis 14:3 and 3 macc 6:3 and 6:8 are rendered invalid because the appearance of the vocative pater indicates that these books were composed in greek and do not go back to a Semitic original. Dunn’s use of Sir 23:1, 23:4, and 51:10 are also rendered invalid because “god is called abi in Sirach 51:10, not the aramaic term of endearment, abba, and in the greek of Sirach 23:4 we have kurie pater.”28 Perhaps more significant is Barr’s objection that the aramaic term “did not have the specially intimate sense that has so often been 23. Jeremias, Neutestamentliche, 73. 24. Kim, The Son of Man, 74. 25. ibid. 26. hick, Metaphor, 31. 27. ibid. 28. Witherington, Christology, 216–21 (quotation from 217).

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments attributed to it, but simply meant ‘father,’ whether used by children or by adults.”29 But as Witherington points out, “Barr was unable to deny that the term connotes intimacy even when used of god.”30 Since abba was the language of adult children as well, Witherington accepts Barr’s critique of the translation “Daddy,” but he then rebuts, “it does seem that the word abba in the examples we have means something like ‘dearest Father,’ not just Father.’”31 agreeing that “its use by adult children in aramaic does not thereby make it a more adult word,” gordon Fee offers a more plausible meaning: most likely the word was in fact an expression of intimacy, used by children first as infants and later as adults, reflecting what is true in many such cultures where the terms of endearment for one’s parents are used lifelong—a circumstance generally not true in english-speaking homes. That it was used by adult children is irrelevant. What is relevant is that it was probably the language of intimacy and endearment. if “Daddy” is not an exact equivalent—and it is not—the basic thrust of the term, and the significance of Jesus’ use of it in addressing god, nevertheless carries considerable theological weight. if the term cannot be demonstrated, as Jeremias supposed, to be unique to Jesus, it can surely be argued to be distinctively his form of address; and for Jesus it is best understood as a term denoting his own sense of unique Sonship—by his addressing god consistently in the language of the home.32

Thus, contrary to hick who wants to deny that Jesus’ use of abba in prayer revealed the uniqueness of his own self-understanding as Son of the Father, i must say that, on the whole, Jeremias’ thesis still stands even if we were to assume the minimalist position of James Barr. For while it is true that god was increasingly becoming addressed as Father in early Judaism, J. a. Fitzmeyer is correct when he observes: “There is no evidence in the literature of pre-Christian or first-century Palestinian Judaism that abba was used in any sense as a personal address for god by an individual.”33 29. hick, Metaphor, 31. See also Barr, “abba Father, 173–79; Barr, “abba isn’t Daddy,” 28–47. 30. Witherington, Many Faces, 62. 31. ibid., 218. 32. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, 411 (emphasis original). 33. Fitzmeyer, “abba and Relation,” 32.

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Jesus’ Attitude Toward the Law of Moses in addition to the use of abba in prayer, many Nt scholars agree that Jesus’ attitude toward the law of moses also indirectly reveals a christological self-disclosure. to be sure, this is a complicated topic, and hick freely concedes, “There is much scope here for scholarly disagreement.”34 here again it must be pointed out that hick’s position belongs outside the widely held scholarly consensus. hick’s own position seems completely dependent on the view of e. P. Sanders, who says the following: We have found one instance in which Jesus, in effect, demanded transgression of the law; the demand to the man whose father had died [“Follow me, and leave the dead to bury the dead,” in matt 8.22]. otherwise the material in the gospels reveals no transgression by Jesus. and, with one exception, following him did not entail transgression on the part of his followers. on the other hand, there is clear evidence that he did not consider the mosaic dispensation to be final and absolutely binding.35

in Sanders’ favor, it must be said that, according to the overall portrait that the gospels paint, Jesus seems generally to have been obedient to the law of moses. after all, he did attend major feasts in Jerusalem, paid the half-shekel temple tax (matt 17:24–27), and even wore the prescribed tassel on his robe (matt 9:20; cf. Num 15:38–41). on the other hand, in an attempt to defend the Pharisees against negative Christian stereotypes, Sanders has overstated his case and neglects strong evidence from the gospels that Jesus surely did have some major controversies with the Pharisees concerning not only the “traditions of the elders,” but the mosaic law itself.36 as Nt scholars, such as marcus Borg, have confirmed, controversy and conflict, especially over the issue of holiness, was one of the essential characteristics of Jesus’ ministry.37 34. hick, Metaphor, 32. 35. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 267. Quoted in hick, Metaphor, 32. 36. For example, in mark, our earliest gospel, Pharisees appear in controversy settings with Jesus no less than twelve times according to Witherington, Christology, 60. in addition, Witherington has persuasively shown that Sanders cannot plausibly attribute all of the controversy materials to the ongoing disagreements between the church and the Synagogue after the time of Jesus since there are just too many strands of the tradition. he states, “it stretches credulity to the breaking point to suggest that Christian communities throughout the Diaspora were having major controversies with Pharisaic Jews of the sort that the Synoptic gospels reflect.” Witherington, Many Faces, 31. See also Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 55–57. 37. See, for example, Borg, Conflict.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments There are at least three areas where Jesus clearly clashed with the Pharisees of his day over his treatment of the mosaic law. First, numerous portrayals of Jesus being at odds with the Pharisees over the issue of Sabbath observance (mark 2:23–28; 3:1–6; and luke 13:10–17) must be seen to have historical authenticity on the basis of the criterion of multiple attestation.38 in particular, Jesus’ defense of the disciples picking heads of grain on grounds that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for Sabbath” (mark 2:27) is significant because it seems to sanction behavior in clear violation of exod 16:25–26 and 34:21 which rule out gleaning, plucking, and harvesting on the Sabbath. Secondly, in response to the controversy on hand washing, Jesus makes the truly remarkable statement that “there is nothing outside a person which by going into a person can defile them” (mark 7:15; cf. matt 15:11).39 in enunciating this principle, Jesus casts doubt on the continuing validity of huge portions of the old testament ritual laws (especially in the book of leviticus), with their scrupulous instructions of purity. Thirdly, in discussing the question of divorce with the Pharisees (matt 19:3–12; mark 10:2–12; cf. luke 16:18), the mosaic provision for divorce (Deut 24:1–4) is simply swept aside as a concession to “hardness of heart.” By citing the higher law of creation in gen 1:27 and 2:24 to call into question the entire matter of an allowance for divorce, Jesus implicitly claims to have authority to speak on behalf of god to correct and to judge even the law of moses and, a forteriori, the “tradition of the elders.” Perhaps the most remarkable clue for understanding Jesus’ relationship with the mosaic law is the “antitheses” in matt 5:17–48. Concerning six instances of Pentateuchal law, Jesus contrasts what god said to the wilderness generation of israel at Sinai with what Jesus himself says to his disciples in terms of the formula: “you have heard that it was said to the ancients (tois archaiois) . . . But i say to you.” in the first, second, and sixth antitheses, Jesus radically internalizes and deepens the law, focusing on the “heart” (motive) rather than the mere “letter.” however, in the third, fourth, and fifth antitheses, Jesus goes against the wording of the written torah: against the mosaic concession about divorce (cf. 38. For a criticism of Sanders’ denial of the authenticity of these passages, see Witherington, Christology, 66–67, and Witherington, Jesus Quest, 210–11. 39. This logion is widely regarded as an authentic saying of Jesus, but Sanders has expressed his doubts about its authenticity. For a convincing criticism of Sanders’ view, see Witherington, Christology, 63.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism matt 5:33ff. and Deut 24:1, 3), against the concession about promissory swearing (matt 5:33ff. and lev 19:12), and against the lex talionis (matt 5:38ff. and exod 21:24ff.). Since the phrase “it was said” has god as the understood agent, as John P. meier points out, “Jesus dares to contrast his word with god’s word.”40 The implicit claim here is not only that he is greater than moses, the greatest authority in Judaism, but, as meier notes, “Jesus stands where god stands.” meier explains: “Jesus revokes the letter of the law and replaces it with his own diametrically opposed command. Despite the permissions and commands of the law, there is to be no divorce, no oaths or vows, no legal retaliation. given the highly Jewish coloration of all this material, the claim Jesus makes for the authority of his own word is astounding . . . as regards the law and authority over it, Jesus stands where god stands. in a Jewish or JewishChristian context, a higher status could not be imagined.”41 Sanders is, of course, partly correct that “it was Jesus’ sense of living at the turn of the ages which allowed him to think that the mosaic law was not final and absolute.”42 But apparently, what both he and hick do not seem to realize is the full extent to which such an eschatological consciousness, along with Jesus’ own sense of representing the perfect will of god, would shift the center of authority between Jesus and the mosaic law. For as N. t. Wright reminds us, the central message of Jesus was an eschatological challenge toward israel to embrace the in-breaking kingdom of god in which he himself, as the new temple and embodiment of a new torah, would be the place and the means by which israel’s god would be personally present with his people.43 This was precisely the message that was ultimately rejected as blasphemous, resulting in Jesus’ death by crucifixion. The preeminent Jewish scholar, Jacob Neusner, sees much more clearly than both hick and Sanders the radical nature of Jesus’ attitude toward the mosaic law involving nothing less than a Copernican shift from the torah to Jesus himself as the central authority. according to Neusner, Jesus regarded himself as authoritative over the torah and authorized to issue a new version of it in a way that made him not a new 40. meier, The Vision of Matthew, 63–64. 41. ibid., 64. 42. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 257. 43. See Wright, Jesus and Victory, and also his more recent and readable book, The Challenge of Jesus.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments moses but in some sense or other a new yhWh.44 explaining why he, a Jew, would not have joined the circle of Jesus’ disciples if he had been in the land of israel in the first century, Neusner says: “at issue is the figure of Jesus, not the teaching at all . . . in the end the master, Jesus, makes a demand that only god makes.”45

Jesus’ Authority to Forgive Sins a third area of scholarly consensus concerning Jesus’ implicit christological claims is his declaration of forgiveness of sins. in various places, the gospels portray Jesus as declaring forgiveness of sins (mark 2:5, 10 and par.; luke 7:48) independent of the temple cult, despite not being a priest. Since Jesus was exercising what was believed to be a divine prerogative, a charge deserving of blasphemy (mark 2:7), many Nt scholars (including e. Fuchs, g. Bornkamm, h. Schumann, e. Schweizer, and W. Kasper) have rightly concluded that Jesus was indeed acting in the place of god.46 This general truth can be seen with greater clarity, however, when we do not interpret Jesus’ declaration in a timeless manner, but in the context of what N. t. Wright describes as Jesus’ historical mission: to achieve a restoration of israel from their “exile” to become reconstituted as the eschatological people of god.47 Since exile was seen as the result of israel’s sin, the declaration of forgiveness was an eschatological sign that israel’s exile was coming to an end. Seen in this light, Jesus’ declaration of forgiveness was an implicit claim that the return from exile was happening in and through his own presence, work, and fate. Jesus believed himself called to act as the new temple, fulfilling its function, to declare and to impart forgiveness as the bearer of the eschatological salvation. Jesus was therefore offering forgiveness on his own authority and without requiring any official interaction with Jerusalem. in contrast to the consensus view, however, Sanders has offered a counter interpretation that Jesus “only pronounced forgiveness, which 44. See especially Neusner’s book, A Rabbi Talks with Jesus, 31. 45. ibid. 46. Commenting on Jesus’ healing of the paralytic, for example, Bornkamm asks: “Why are his opponents enraged at this? Not because he expresses the idea of love of god and the hope of his mercy, but because he is doing what is god’s prerogative.” Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth, 81. See also e. Schweizer, Jesus, 14; and Kasper, Jesus the Christ, 102. 47. See Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus, 39–48.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism is not the prerogative of god, but of the priesthood.”48 hick obviously agrees with Sanders. in response, Stephen Davis has shown that although some texts may support Sanders’ thesis, other texts would seem to refute it. Writes Davis: There are some texts where hick and Sanders could conceivably be correct. in luke 7:36–50, for example, Jesus declares a woman who was a sinner forgiven after she anointed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. The woman’s tears can possibly be read as expressing sorrow for her sins and perhaps even repentance. So perhaps when Jesus said to her, “your sins are forgiven,” this amounted to no more than Jesus performing the role that priests performed—declaring that a sinner who had fulfilled all the religious requisites for forgiveness was indeed forgiven by god.

Davis continues: But notice that the paralytic in mark 2:1–12 had done none of the religious acts that are normally requisite to receiving forgiveness. There is no evidence of sorrow for his sins, confession of them, repentance from them, nor any sacrificial act at the temple or elsewhere. Doubtless this is why the scribes in the story were so incensed when Jesus said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” They said, “Why does this fellow speak in this way? Who can forgive sins but god alone?” The violent reaction of the scribes seems to me to preclude the Sanders-hick interpretation of this text.49

here, i must agree with Davis over hick and Sanders. in my opinion, Davis’ conclusion is further supported by Jesus’ distinctive practice of table-fellowship with “sinners” and tax collectors.50 as Witherington carefully observes, “What is striking about this behavior is that Jesus does not require repentance or changed behavior in advance of having table fellowship with the sinners. Rather, he seeks them out as they 48. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 240. 49. Davis, “John hick,” 254. 50. The numerous narratives of table-fellowship with sinners (mark 2:15–17 pars; matt 11:19/ luke 7:34; luke 7:36–50; 19:1–10; etc.) must be seen as ipsissima actu Jesu satisfying the criterion of dissimilarity. The early church could not possibly have created such distinctive stories, if for no other reason than the fear of tarnishing Jesus’ image, given that no self respecting Jew would associate with sinners or the unclean, and also because the disciples themselves seem to have struggled with the difficulty of overcoming Jewish purity laws (cf. gal 2:11–14).

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments are, and without prerequisites calls them to face the implications of his ministry and the inbreaking Dominion of god.”51 moreover, for a respectable Jew to associate with these “unclean,” “immoral,” and “wicked” people was considered scandalous behavior on ritualistic and moral grounds of “defilement by association.” in the case of Jesus, however, the exact opposite seems to have been true, as it was the “sinners” and the “unclean” themselves who were extended forgiveness and made clean through association with him. Jesus’ authority was, accordingly, determined by the principle of “sanctification by association” rather than that of “defilement by extension,” a clear self-disclosure that his prerogatives were greater than those of levitical priests.52

The “Son” in addition to Jesus’ use of abba in prayer, his attitude toward the law of moses, and declaration of forgiveness of sins, both Jesus’ implicit as well as explicit references to himself as “the Son” in three gospel passages (mark 12:1–11 and par., mark 13:12; matt 11:27) seem to imply his unique consciousness of a very special relationship to god as Father. hick has argued, however, that these relevant passages must be dismissed on grounds that their authenticity and significance has been seriously questioned and much debated by Nt scholars. This claim must be evaluated. While i cannot engage in a detailed analysis of all of these passages, the following can be said in strong favor of their authenticity.53 in the case of the parable of the vineyard (mark 12:1–11 and par.) involving the owner of the vineyard who sends his son, and the tenants who kill the son, a simpler version of the parable found in Gos. Thom. 65 has convinced even skeptical scholars that, while the synoptic versions may have undergone some allegorical developments, they are in their basic form authentic. even in the simplest form, however, the figure of the son cannot be treated as a later addition for then the whole climax and the rationale of the parable is lost. Furthermore, the parable ends abruptly with the death of the son without any hint of his vindication, 51. Witherington, Christology, 79. 52. on this point, i am indebted to Prof. S. Kim’s class lectures on “early Christologies” at Fuller Theological Seminary, Spring, 1997. See also Kim, Son of Man, 89–93. 53. a more detailed analysis of the following arguments can be found in Witherington’s Christology, 213–14, 221–33.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism as might be expected were it a post-easter development. Contrary to hick, it is highly probable, therefore, that this parable, as well as the “the Son” sayings contained in the parable, goes back to the historical Jesus himself. as for the saying in mark 13:32, “But of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone,” it is highly unlikely that the early church would make up the idea that Jesus was ignorant about an important matter involving his own eschatological role. That is, the criterion of embarrassment attests to its historicity. moreover, the argument that the use of the term Son is a later addition fails to notice that the saying is meant to convey the idea of an “ascending line” of closeness of knowledge moving from the ordinary humans to angels to the Son and, finally, to the Father. as Witherington points out, “There would be little reason to mention the angels if the phrase ‘not even the Son’ was not originally part of the saying.”54 Finally, we consider the matt 11:27 passage that states: “all things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son, except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him.” here, the investigation of wisdom literature since the 1950s, such as important parallels found in Wis 2:13–16 and 1 En. 42:1–2; 51:3, has convinced many scholars that matt 11:27 is also an authentic saying of Jesus expressing his selfunderstanding using wisdom language. For example, Wis 2:13–16 states: “he claims to have a knowledge of god, and calls himself a son of the lord . . . and boasts of having god for his father.” Since this parallel passage demonstrates that matt 11:27 saying could have easily arisen out of the Jewish milieu with its wisdom heritage, both in form and content, Bultmann’s thesis that it is a later hellenistic revelation saying has now been shown to be unlikely.55 i conclude with Raymond Brown, therefore, that these three Synoptic passages are evidence of great probative value, making it “likely that Jesus spoke and thought of himself as ‘the Son,’ implying a very special relationship to God that is part of his identity and status.”56

54. Witherington, Many Faces, 63. 55. Witherington, Christology, 221. 56. Brown, Christology, 89 (emphasis original).

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments

The “Son of Man” in addition to all the implicit claims we have discussed so far, is there any possibility from the evidence found in the gospels of Jesus also making explicit christological claims about himself? as i. h. marshall has perceptively observed, “indirect christology makes the existence of a direct christology in the teaching of Jesus highly probable.”57 applying the criterion of coherence, the gospel materials that conform to the picture of Jesus derived from the indirect Christology, achieved largely by means of the criterion of dissimilarity, may further guide our examination. although i cannot pursue this line of inquiry in detail, it is my contention that the Son of Man title constitutes such an explicit designation. While the topic is of immense complexity,58 the following important points can be made. Son of Man is a title that appears in all of the gospels (eighty times), constituting some fifty-one sayings, fourteen of which are in mark and ten in the Sayings Source (Q).59 it is not only Jesus’ favorite self-designation but also the only title he freely used in reference to himself. No person addresses Jesus by this title in the gospels, nor is there evidence of the early church calling him the Son of man.60 This unusual phrase is unknown in secular greek, but in the old testament, the term was used both as a synonym for humanity in general (cf. Num 23:19; Job 25:6; Ps 144:3) and as the particular designation by which god addresses the prophet (ezek 2:3–6; 3:1; 4:16; 5:1; 6:2). more significantly, in Dan 7, the aramaic phrase “one like a son of man” seems to be a symbol for israel, or quite possibly, a human-like being representing the people of israel. During the time of Jesus, the phrase son of man seems to have been used in the generic sense of “a human being,” or in the indefinite sense of “someone,” or as an idiom for self-reference. at the same time, there was emerging a Jewish messianic interpretation of Dan 7 involving a human figure whom god would enthrone, glorify, and make judge over israel

57. marshall, Origins, 56. 58. an excellent discussion of the subject can be found in Kim, Son of Man. For more introductory surveys, see Brown’s New Testament Christology, 89–100; Dunn’s Christology, 65–97; ladd’s Theology, 143–57; marshall’s Origins, 63–82; moule’s Origin, 11–21; and Witherington’s Christology, 233–62. 59. Brown, Christology, 90. 60. The only exceptions are John 12:34 and acts 7:56.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism and her enemies (cf. 1 En. 37–71; 4 Ezra 13).61 These interpretations that formed the tradition of Jewish mysticism sometimes spoke of a human being sharing the throne of israel’s god, as when rabbi aqiba speculated about the throne spoken of in Dan 7:9: “one is for god; the other is for David.”62 Speculating on the possibility of “two powers in heaven,” the heavenly figure in Dan 7:13 was even interpreted as a second deity in some strands of this tradition.63 although not widespread, and limited to some groups like the one in Qumran, Jesus seems to have not only drawn on and alluded to the earlier form of this apocalyptic material, he also broadened and deepened its meaning by applying the term to himself. as C. F. D. moule points out, Jesus’ use of the definite article in the phrase “the Son of man” is a strong indication that he was referring to himself as “the Son of man” of Dan 7, since the definite form does not occur in pre-Christian hebrew or aramaic literature.64 here, even hick affirms the existence of an apocalyptic strand that expected a savior figure to appear from the sky, leaving open the possibility that, in addition to the developing mind of the church, Jesus himself may have believed “that when Jesus returned on the great Day he would be this Son of man appearing in the clouds.”65 This interpretation gains further confirmation when we take into account Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin (mark 14:61–62), where the high priest asks him, “are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed one?” and Jesus responds affirmatively in terms of the apocalyptic Son of man “sitting at the right hand of the mighty one and coming on the clouds of heaven.” as W. g. Kümmel points out, the reply by Jesus combining Ps 110:1 and Dan 7:13–14 has no later analogy and therefore must be seen as authentic.66 Quoting Schillebeeckx, however, hick contends that these words are not in fact historical, but “what the post-easter church 61. Specialists generally consider 1 enoch a non-Christian work representing an independent Jewish interpretation of Dan 7 originating in the first century, sometime before 70 Ce. See Charlesworth, Pseudepigrapha, 89n82. 62. Cited by evans in “Jesus’ Self-Designation,” 34. 63. See Seagal, Two Powers in Heaven. 64. See moule, Origin, 11–22. as moule points out, a similar analogy can be found in 1 En. 46:1, where the heavenly figure in Dan 7:13 is introduced as “another being whose countenance had the appearance of man,” and then from 46:2 onwards as “that/ this Son of man.” See moule, Origin, 15. 65. hick, Metaphor, 20. 66. Kümmel, Promise and Fulfillment, 50.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments put into Jesus’ mouth later on.”67 But as both Kümmel and Raymond Brown have observed, the fact that this is a prediction that went unfulfilled in the earthly lifetimes of the high priest and the members of the Sanhedrin to whom it was addressed is a strong claim for its authenticity, “for the church would not make up what appeared to be an unfulfilled prophecy.”68 “if Christians produced such a statement post factum, presumably they would have clarified it.”69 Furthermore, the above interpretation best clarifies the high priest’s indignant charge of blasphemy and the action of the Sanhedrin in condemning Jesus as worthy of death (mark 14:63–65). What was so offensive to the Jewish leadership was not necessarily that Jesus claimed to be the messiah, but that he claimed to be the Danielic heavenly figure who, as god’s plenipotentiary, would share in god’s glory and kingly rule over the nations as the representative of the eschatological people of god. a messianic claim made in these terms was clearly an infringement upon divine prerogatives.

Other Considerations in addition to all of the implicit as well as explicit claims i have considered thus far, there are plenty of additional christological affirmations in the gospels that Nt scholars have long recognized as authentic, not least of which include Jesus’ non-responsive use of amen70 (e.g., mark 38; matt 5:18; 8:10; luke 4:24; John 1:51) as well as his performing of miracles and casting out evil spirits.71 although i cannot discuss any of the following points in greater detail, Ben Witherington has listed thirteen established features of the historical Jesus that any theory of Jesus’ self-perception must adequately explain:

67. hick, Metaphor, 20. 68. Kümmel, Promise and Fulfillment, 50. 69. Brown, Christology, 99n157. 70. This unique usage meets the criterion of dissimilarity. Jesus’ usage of the terms lays an implicit claim to the absolute authority of the one who can speak truth on his own authority. 71. in contrast to the older quests, one of the notable characteristics of the “Third Quest” is a greater willingness to see miracles and exorcisms as part and parcel of any historical reconstruction of Jesus’ ministry. See, for example, John meier’s excellent discussion of miracles in volume 2 of A Marginal Jew.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism (1) Jesus’ independent approach to the law; (2) his feeding of the 5000; (3) his interpretation of his miracles; (4) his proclamation of the dominion of god as present and inbreaking in his ministry, and his action based on the conviction of the inbreaking dominion; (5) his choosing of twelve disciples; (6) his use of bar enasha; (7) his use of amen; (8) his use of abba; (9) the way he distinguished himself from all his close contemporaries to one degree or another, including the Baptist, the Pharisees, the revolutionaries, and even the disciples; (10) his belief that one’s future standing with yahweh hinged on how one reacted to his ministry; (11) his understanding that it was necessary for him to die, to undergo a baptism to rectify matters between god and god’s people; (12) Jesus’ sense of mission to the whole of israel, but especially to the least, lost, and last, the sinners and outcasts, which led to table fellowship with such people; and (13) his raising messianic expectations with a repeated pattern of controversy between Jesus and various of his contemporaries even at the earliest stages of the gospel material.72

From this wealth of evidences that large numbers of critical scholars have argued are authentic, i am bound to ask the question: Who did Jesus think that he is? What sort of a person acts and says the things that he did? at minimum, i must make the following conclusion on the basis of our investigation: he is a unique son of god (abba) who reveals god’s will more perfectly than moses (his attitude to the torah), and acts in place of god in imparting forgiveness to sinners and welcoming them into fellowship with him. as i have argued, the gospels also contain the implicit claims that Jesus is god’s special Son (mark 12:1–9), whose knowledge of the Father is unique and authoritative (mark 13:32), exceeding even that of angels (mark 13:32). indeed, he is the Son of man whom as god’s plenipotentiary will share in god’s eschatological glory and rule over the nations as the judge and representative of the people of god. Contrary to hick, the category of a prophet, or even that of the last prophet, simply will not do justice to such claims. it requires a category that is higher than that of moses, the greatest human authority on earth for Judaism—for a person with such an authority, not even the Jewish category of messiah, let alone prophet, is adequate. The basic problem with hick’s historical argument, that Jesus did not teach what was to become the orthodox Christian understanding 72. Witherington, Christology, 268.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments of him, is not only that he ignores plenty of cumulative evidence that suggests otherwise, but that he is not critical enough in his historical consciousness. That is, one gets the sense that the only choice available for hick is between either the view that Jesus went around claiming to be god the Son, the second person of the trinity in one hypostasis with the Father, or the view that he was just an extraordinary man in possession of unusual spiritual gifts. There seems to be no middle ground that takes seriously, on the one hand, Jesus’ implicit christological claims that the gospels contain in abundance, and on the other, the historical progression in the development of the christological dogma. Rather, hick’s position is that because the christological claims under consideration “are points of the kind that will long continue to be argued back and forth by New testament scholars,” they do not “permit proof or even an objective degree of probability.”73 as such they must be abandoned in favor of the alternative interpretation that is more amicable and serviceable to the pluralistic age. Such a position is strongly reminiscent of hick’s claim in regard to philosophical epistemology that because unanimity of judgment on such controversial matters as existence of god and conflicting truth-claims is not possible, and since alternative interpretations are possible, we must either remain agnostic about the issues or simply make choices based on experientially subjective considerations. Without repeating my previous arguments, the philosophical criticism that i have offered earlier is clearly relevant here.74 For while i do not argue that the christological claims we examined constitute hard proofs, they are nevertheless historical-critical arguments that, on a cumulative basis, constitute historical evidence to be evaluated on the basis of the standard canons of historical investigation. here, i am not denying hick’s valid point that there is an element of inevitable circularity in any interpretation of the Scriptures; for as hermeneutic philosophers and theologians (such as h. g. gadamer, P. Ricoeur, D. tracy, and J. Croatto) have been teaching us, our “preunderstandings” always play a significant role in shaping our view of reality, making it impossible to interpret in a “totally objective” way.75 Furthermore, to some degree, i 73. hick, Metaphor, 32–33. 74. See chapter 2. 75. according to gadamer, for example, we all stand in some tradition and have some prejudice (der Begriff des Vorurteils) when we approach the task of interpretation. See his Truth and Method.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism agree with the truth of hick’s insistence that orthodox Christology is not simply based on New testament evidence alone. to be sure, Christian faith is more than a simple function of historical evidence as other variables inevitably factor in. on the other hand, it must also be seen that Christian faith is not to be divorced from historical affirmations. in the case of Christianity, especially, faith cannot preempt the historical questions about Jesus, and accurate historical facts ought to both shape and modify our faith in Christ. The problem with hick’s circularity argument is, however, that it does not seem to allow for such cumulative evidence to objectively challenge and modify our presuppositions, thereby forcing historical studies to remain doomed and enclosed within a vicious cycle of subjective interpretations. if so, there can be no other function for its purpose than for apologetics, and we would forever be trapped within our philosophical and religious presuppositions without the possibility that the force of historical evidence would be allowed to challenge and to objectively modify our presuppositions.

the ReSuRReCtioN having examined hick’s methodology and his claims concerning Jesus’ self-understanding, i now turn to the subject of resurrection. For in addition to Jesus’ implicit (as well as explicit) claims of unique sonship by his words and deeds, the resurrection has served as another important foundation for the church’s perception of Christ’s divinity. as Wolfhart Pannenberg has so powerfully argued, Jesus’ implicit claims to speak and act on behalf of god were not self-justifying, but required the resurrection as a confirmation by god.76 Such a confirmation was not in the form of revivification of a perishable body but, according to Pannenberg, a historical event involving the transformation of the 76. Pannenberg says: “There is no reason for the assumption that Jesus’ claim to authority taken by itself justified faith in him. on the contrary, the pre-easter Jesus’ claim to authority stands from the beginning in relationship to the question of the future verification of his message through the occurrence of the future judgment of the Son of man according to the attitude taken by men toward Jesus. Thus has been shown the proleptic structure of Jesus’ claim to authority which is analogous to that of the old testament prophetic sayings. This means, however, that Jesus’ claim to authority by itself cannot be made the basis of Christology . . . Rather, everything depends upon the connection between Jesus’ claim and its confirmation by god.” Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man, 66.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments physical body into a spiritual body no longer limited by death. in this connection, hick’s revisionist description of this transitional event must be judged unsatisfactory. as we saw in the last chapter, hick argues for a “spiritualizing” conception of the resurrection based upon Paul’s account of the “appearance” of the risen lord, independent of the empty tomb tradition or the later physical resurrection stories.77 For hick, the post-easter “appearances” were most likely in the realm of an inner spiritual experience involving a supernatural light rather than an outer sense experience. By rejecting the tradition of the empty tomb and comparing the appearances of Jesus to near-death experiences of the “clinically dead” patients, hick is denying the absolute uniqueness of his resurrection, which involves bodily transformation into a new mode of physicality.78 By analogizing Jesus’ resurrection with other visionary appearances of the dead, hick minimizes not only the significance of Jesus’ resurrection but also its formative role in shaping the church’s perception of Jesus’ divinity. in rejecting the historicity of the gospel accounts of the empty tomb and, by corollary, the notion of resurrection as a miraculous physical event, hick is in company with a sizable number of Nt scholars and theologians both new and old,79 although they by no means constitute a majority.80 already in the eighteenth century, hermann Reimarus (1694–1768) argued against the historicity of the empty tomb story, claiming that the guard assigned to the grave was obviously a fraud invented by matthew to cover up the disciples’ own theft of the corpse.81 77. The theory of spiritual resurrection “affirms that Jesus was genuinely dead and later genuinely alive, but its does not necessarily affirm that the tomb was empty. The idea is that what was raised was Jesus’ spirit or soul or self, quite apart from his body. his bones might still be decomposing in Palestine, but nevertheless he lives.” Davis, Risen Indeed, 44. 78. in contrast to spiritual resurrection, the theory of bodily transformation “affirms that Jesus was genuinely dead and later genuinely alive and that the tomb was empty, but it denies that Jesus was restored to the kind of life he experienced earlier. in the resurrection, the earthly body was transformed into a new ‘glorified body’ that was indeed physical but possessed strange new properties. There was continuity between the old body and the new body, but the new body was no longer as bound by certain of the laws of nature as was the old.” ibid. 79. For example, Fuller, “The Resurrection”; moule, Significance; marxen, Resurrection; Crossan, “empty tomb and absent lord”; lindars, “Jesus Risen.” 80. according to a recent study done by gary habermas, roughly 75 percent of scholars on the subject accept the empty tomb as historical fact, a ratio of 3:1. 81. in talbert, Reimarus: Fragments.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism according to Reimarus, the disciples purposely waited fifty days before preaching about the resurrection so that the body, even if found, would not be recognizable.82 in the nineteenth century, D. F. Strauss treated the resurrection of Jesus not so much as a deception, but as mythical, enabling him to explain the resurrection narratives of the gospels as legendary fictions.83 Rudolf Bultmann, in the twentieth century, also rejected physical resurrection as “utterly inconceivable!”84 For Bultmann, resurrection accounts are myths that must be demythologized to reveal the true character of the Christian message: the call to authentic existence in the face of death.85 more recently, contemporary “Post-Bultmannian” scholars, such as John Dominic Crossan, gerd lüdemann, gregory Riley, marcus Borg, Burton mack, michael goulder, Roy hoover, and Robert J. miller have all made arguments rejecting the empty tomb account in denial of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.86 on the other hand, since the re-opening of the question of the historical Jesus in the second half of the twentieth century, a remarkable reversal has been occurring in the historical-critical evaluation of Jesus’ resurrection. energized by the methodological rejection of the unwarranted historical skepticism of Bultmann and his followers, the trend among Nt scholars in recent years has been toward rejection of the wave of skepticism involving Jesus’ resurrection, and an increased 82. ibid., 260. 83. Says Strauss, “according to our view the imagination of his followers, aroused in their deepest spirit, presented their master revived, for they could not possibly think of him as dead. What for a long time was valid as an external fact . . . is hereby reduced completely to the state of mind and made into an inner event.” in Strauss, “herman Samuel Reimarus,” 280–81. 84. Bultmann, “New testament,” 39. 85. although Bultmann rejected the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection, he, like Strauss, nevertheless affirmed that the earliest disciples believed in the physical resurrection of Jesus and that Paul, in 1 Cor 15, even attempts to prove the resurrection. For Bultmann, however, to appeal to the resurrection as historical evidence is misguided, for to argue historically for resurrection is contrary to the nature of existential faith which is a leap without evidence. 86. Crossan, The Historical Jesus; Crossan, Jesus: a Revolutionary Biography; Crossan, in Copan, Will the Real Jesus; lüdemann, What Really Happened; lüdemann, in Copan and tacelli, Resurrection; lüdemann, Resurrection of Christ; Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered; Borg, “irrelevancy”; idem, The Meaning of Jesus; mack, A Myth of Innocence; lüdemann, Who Wrote; goulder, “explanatory Power; hoover, “Contest”; miller, “What Do Stories.”

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments willingness to accept the historical credibility of his bodily resurrection in particular.87 For example, Wolfhart Pannenberg, one of the foremost german theologians in the second half of the twentieth century, has based his entire Christology on the historical evidence of Jesus’ ministry, especially that of his bodily resurrection.88 equally impressive is the leading Jewish theologian, Pinchas lapide, who, in his book The Resurrection of Jesus, chides Nt scholars like Bultmann and marxen for their unjustified skepticism and declares his belief that Jesus of Nazareth was physically raised from the dead on the basis of historical-critical evidence.89 most impressive, however, is N. t. Wright’s momentous and recent book, The Resurrection of the Son of God.90 as one of the most definitive monographs ever to be written on the topic of Christ’s resurrection, this book represents a definite turning point in historical-critical study of the resurrection, being the book that scholars will be arguing with, for, or against, for some time to come. over eight hundred pages of first rate scholarship, this monumental book can only be described as a masterpiece that now places the weight of burden solidly on those who, like hick, argue against the bodily resurrection of Jesus. other Nt scholars who have also argued for the bodily resurrection in recent years include, among many others, george e. ladd, Raymond Brown, gerald o’Collins, James D. g. Dunn, gordon Fee, Craig Blomberg, Ben Witherington iii, and Robert gundry.91 87. These positive trends can be seen in the work of following authors: Robinson, “Bodily Resurrection”; ladd, “Resurrection and history”; Pannenberg, “Did Jesus Really Rise”; Fuller, Easter Faith and History; Fuller, “The Resurrection of Jesus”; Richardson, “The Resurrection”; Stein, “Was the tomb Really empty?”; evans, “mark’s use”; osborne, Resurrection Narratives; Cranfield, “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ”; Walker, “Resurrection.” 88. especially in his book, Jesus: God and Man. Critical of Barth, Bultmann, and others who insisted that the resurrection was not a historical event, but occurs either in super history, primal history, or existential subjectivity, Pannenberg argues that resurrection is both historically verifiable in principle and not beyond or above “ordinary” universal history. 89. lapide, The Resurrection. however, according to lapide, Jesus’ bodily resurrection did not mean that he was either the messiah or the divine “Son of god.” it simply meant that he was a great prophet who had a great part in the preparation for the messiah. 90. Wright, Resurrection. 91. ladd, i Believe; Brown, The Virginal Conception; o’Collins, Jesus Risen; Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus; Fee, Corinthians; Blomberg, “Jesus of history”; Witherington, “Resurrection Redux”; gundry, “trimming the Debate.”

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism in light of these contemporary developments in critical scholarship, it must clearly be seen that, today, while it is still generally agreed that the evidence for the empty tomb is not as strongly attested to as the appearance stories are, which virtually all Nt scholars acknowledge as valid, the majority of critical scholars do nevertheless accept it as historically reliable. according to a recent study on the subject by gary habermas, nearly 75 percent of Nt scholars accept the historicity of the empty tomb, as opposed to about 25 percent who reject it.92 in the words of the austrian resurrection specialist, Jacob Kremer, “By far, most scholars hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements concerning the empty tomb.”93 gerald o’Collins has listed some prominent scholars who maintain a historical nucleus in the empty tomb tradition: “i. Berten, J. Blank, J. Blinzler, R. e. Brown, h. von Campenhausen, J. Delorme, J. a. Fitzmyer, R. h. Fuller, W. grundmann, J. Jeremias, W. Kunneth, X. leon-Dufour, C. m. martini, C. F. D. moule, J. murphy-o’Connor, F. mussner, W. Nauck, W. Pannenberg, K. h. Rengstorf, e. Ruckstuhl, l. Schenke, J. Schmitt, K. Schubert, e. Schweizer, P. Seidensticker, a. Strobel, P. Stuhlmacher, W. trilling, a. Vogtle, and u. Wilckens.”94 What all this shows is that although those who hold to the bodily resurrection of Jesus do not constitute an overwhelming majority, as was perhaps the case involving Jesus’ implicit claims mentioned in the last section, they are nevertheless in the majority, albeit a smaller one. it is with this perspective in mind that hick’s position on the resurrection must now be evaluated. in what follows, i shall examine four pertinent issues in relation to hick’s claim that Christ’s resurrection or his post-easter appearances were simply “spiritual” in nature, involving nonphysical events. These include the historical topics of Jesus’ burial, 92. habermas and licona, The Case, 70. according to this study, habermas found the ratio to be about three scholars who accept one or more arguments in favor of the empty tomb verses to one who accept one or more arguments against it. 93. Kremer, Die Osterevangelien, 44–50. Kremer lists prominent german-speaking critical scholars who accept the empty tomb including “Blank, Blinzler, Bode, von Campenhausen, Delorme, Dhanis, grundmann, hengel, lehmann, leon-Dufourr, lichtenstein, manek, martini, Schwank, Schweizer, Seidensticker, Strobel, Stuhlmacher, trilling, Vogtle, and Wilckens.” 94. o’Collins, Jesus Risen, 123. William Craig has also identified additional prominent scholars who have argued for the veracity of the empty tomb, most of whom are not evangelical, including “Benoit, Brown, Clark, Dunn, ellis, gundry, hooke, Jeremias, Klappert, ladd, lane, marshall, moule, Perry, Robinson, and Schnackenburg.” as cited by habermas and licona in The Case, 287.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments Pauline understanding of resurrection, the empty tomb, and the Jesus movement. i shall demonstrate that hick’s understanding is untenable, and why a bodily understanding of Christ’s resurrection is historically and critically pertinent.

Jesus’ Burial The first major issue concerns the historicity of Jesus’ burial. That is, was Jesus’ dead body buried, as the gospels attest, or was it not, as some have recently argued? if buried, was it buried in a tomb by Joseph of arimathea, as the gospels claim, or in a common grave by Roman soldiers as some have argued? These are important issues with regard to the nature of Jesus’ resurrection, since if Jesus was not buried, as the gospels claim, then there was no empty tomb to be spoken of. in that case the argument in favor of the bodily (physical) resurrection is dramatically undermined. on the other hand, if Jesus was buried in the tomb as claimed, the burden of proof is shifted on to the skeptics to convincingly explain why the tomb was reportedly found empty by a group of his woman followers. in addition, an explanation of what happened to Jesus’ dead body must also follow. here it must be pointed out that hick does not himself address the issue one way or the other. The question must nevertheless be pursued, however, due to its pivotal importance in determining the outcome of the debate between those who advocate Jesus’ physical resurrection and those who, like hick, argue for a “spiritual” form of resurrection. Since hick is silent on the issue of Jesus’ burial, i shall enlist the help of the Nt scholar John Dominic Crossan, the former co-founder and co-chair of The Jesus Seminar, whose position on this issue has become well known due to its relatively recent coverage by popular media.95 according to Crossan, what happened to Jesus’ body is what typically happened to the corpses of victims crucified by the Romans around Jerusalem in the first century—it was left on the cross for scavenger birds and dogs to devour. if in the unlikely event that Jesus’ body was buried at all, the Roman soldiers would have done it as part of their job and left 95. For example, the aBC network television program, “The Search for Jesus,” produced by news anchor Peter Jennings in July of 2000. in this program, the views of Crossan received wide coverage as representing current New testament scholarship.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism it in a common shallow grave barely covered with dirt and stones, to be scavenged by dogs.96 in support of his position, Crossan cites martin hengel’s statement that those who were crucified were quite often never buried but “served as food for wild beasts and birds of prey.”97 in addition, he points to the fact that with all the thousands of people crucified around Jerusalem in the first century, only a single skeleton of a crucified man was ever found, at giv’atha-mivtar, in northeastern Jerusalem, and that, preserved in an ossuary.98 and although there are literary records of crucified corpses given back to their families for honorable burial, it would have been impossible under normal circumstances for a family to obtain the crucified body, since among the Romans, crucifixion was inflicted primarily on the lower classes with no influence or ability to approach, indirectly or directly, the powers involved.99 Crossan concludes, therefore, that Jesus’ dead body was never buried in a tomb but became a corpse for the wild beasts. according to Crossan, the gospel accounts of Jesus’ body being buried by Joseph of arimathea are completely the creation of mark who first created the figure to contrive a way to have Jesus’ body buried by his followers, rather than having it eaten by scavengers or buried in a common grave by enemies. By creating a person who is both “a respected member of the council” and “waiting expectantly for the kingdom of god,” mark created a figure who is at once a person of authority and on the side of Jesus’ followers.100 But how does Crossan know this figure to be a creation of mark? it is because no such mention is made in the “Passion-Resurrection Source” contained in the earliest of the three strata in the gospel of Peter that, according to Crossan, goes back to an original which he dates in the 40s of the first century. according to Crossan, this fragment antedates mark, mathew, luke, and John and is actually the single primary source from which all their resurrection narratives derived.101 Crossan has described this original source as the 96. Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, 154. 97. ibid., 124. 98. ibid., 124–25. 99. ibid., 152–53. 100. ibid., 155–56. 101. Crossan, Four Other Gospels, 145.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments “Cross gospel, a document presently embedded in the gospel of Peter, just as Q is in matthew and luke.”102 according to this single primary source, Jesus’ burial was completely under the motivation and control of his enemies. The earliest followers of Jesus “knew almost nothing whatsoever about the details of his crucifixion, death, or burial.”103 Beginning with the gospel of mark, however, Crossan claims to be able to trace layers of redactional expansion emphasizing reverential dignity in the burial accounts. instead of a shallow grave, there is now a rock tomb and a heavy rolling stone for closure and defense. in matthew, Joseph is described as a “disciple of Jesus” and “rich,” explaining why he has access to Pilate. also, the tomb is described as “new,” containing no other body. By the time of John’s gospel, Joseph is accompanied also by Nicodemus, and Jesus’ burial becomes an unhurried, complete burial in a brand new tomb located in a garden, thus adding to its magnificence.104 What shall we make of Crossan’s denial of Jesus’ burial and his theories concerning its fabrication by the disciples? The first thing to be said is that very few recognized Nt scholars, even those skeptics who would otherwise deny the historicity of the resurrection, have followed Crossan’s lead that Jesus was probably never buried and that his corpse was consumed by scavengers. here we must remember that reference to Jesus’ burial is contained in the earliest of kerygma recited by Paul in 1 Cor 15:3–4: “For i handed on to you as of first importance what i in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” even gerd lüdemann, who through his books The Resurrection of Jesus, What Really Happened to Jesus, and most recently, The Resurrection of Christ, has established himself as today’s foremost Nt scholar opposing the historicity of Jesus’ bodily resurrection, has nevertheless criticized Crossan on this point. lüdemann says: “Jesus was obviously buried. and here we have a different opinion than that of John Dominic Crossan, who in saying that Jesus might have been eaten by dogs is replacing the tradition of the burial with imagination. There is the tradition of the burial in Paul; it’s a very old tradition, and it’s likely to be 102. Crossan, The Cross That Spoke, xiii. 103. Crossan, Jesus, 145. 104. ibid., 156–58.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism historical.”105 according to lüdemann, this traditional formula quoted by Paul can be dated as early as within a couple of years of Jesus’ crucifixion.106 Therefore, he says the following concerning the likelihood that Jesus’ body was consumed by wild scavengers: “This possibility is excluded for Jesus, as the tradition agrees in relating that his body was taken down from the cross (1 Cor 15:4 also presupposes this). So the burial of Jesus may be one of those cases in which the Roman authorities released his body.”107 But what possible motive would Roman and Jewish leaders have for burying the body of Jesus? lüdemann has offered several excellent reasons for why it would have been in the interest of both the Jewish leaders as well as Pontus Pilate to have Jesus’ body buried: “Presumably Jews took Jesus down from the cross, because someone who had died from crucifixion might not hang on the cross overnight (Deut 21:23) and because a feast day (Passover) was imminent. moreover the release of Jesus’ body and its removal from the cross might also have suited Pilate, because this would a priori avoid unrest among the large numbers of visitors for the festival.”108 Raymond Brown has similarly drawn much the same conclusion: “That Jesus was buried is historically certain. That the Jewish sensitivity would have wanted this done before the oncoming Sabbath (which may also have been a feast day) is also certain, and our records give us no reason to think that this sensitivity was not honored.”109 Thus, when we examine the specific evidence of Jesus’ burial, much of the objection that Crossan has presented proves to be simply his tendency to arrive at specific conclusions based on general analysis. Rather than presenting specific evidence, his conclusions have tended to be speculations based on customary burial procedures. When specific evidences are examined, however, such problems disappear. in addition, most Nt scholars have generally remained quite unconvinced about Crossan’s thesis concerning the core “Cross gospel” being the earliest of three strata in the gospel of Peter antedating the gospel of mark. Rather, the majority of the scholarship accepts the view 105. Jesus’ Resurrection, 53. 106. lüdemann, What Really Happened, 14–15. 107. ibid., 23. 108. ibid. 109. Brown, Death of the Messiah, 1240.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments that the surviving fragment of the gospel of Peter is dependent upon the canonical gospels, dating the gospel of Peter to sometime in the early to mid-second century.110 even helmut Koester, who belongs in the minority in believing this fragment to be an older version independent of the canonical texts, has not agreed with Crossan’s central thesis.111 as N. t. Wright has pointed out, the primacy of the gospel of Peter “has not been accepted yet by any other serious scholar.”112 The reason for this is very clear, according to o’Collins and Kendall: “The reviews of the The Cross That Spoke by Black, Fuller, green, matera, meier and Wink were little less than devastating in demolishing Crossan’s case for an early date for the core of the Gospel of Peter and a literary dependency from it on the part of mark and other canonical gospels.”113 Thus, in the words of Raymond Brown, the gospel of Peter “does not constitute or give the earliest Christian account or thoughts about the passion” or resurrection.114 and according to martin hengel, the attempts to “fix earlier dates” for apocryphal gospels, including the gospel of Peter, “have not convinced me at all.”115 Finally, concerning Crossan’s thesis that Joseph of arimathea was a pure fabrication of mark, it must be pointed out to the contrary that the general historicity of the markan burial narrative is not doubted by most Nt scholars, due to lack of any reason for such skepticism.116 even someone as skeptical as Rudolf Bultmann has accepted the essential credibility of the markan burial narrative. Concerning this account, Bultmann says, “This is a historical report which makes no impression as being legendary, apart from the women who appear again as witnesses in v. 47 and vs. 44, 45.”117 Furthermore, as Joseph Fitzmyer points out, “Joseph of arimathea is otherwise unknown, but in all four gospels 110. ibid., 1341–42. 111. Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, 219f. 112. Wright, Jesus and the Victory, 49. 113. o’Collins and Kendall, “Joseph of arimathea,” 218. 114. Brown, “The gospel of Peter,” 339. 115. Quoted by o’Collins and Kendall in “Joseph of arimathea,” 238. 116. See for example marshall, Commentary on Luke, 879; Fitzmeyer, Gospel According to Luke, 1526; and hooker, Gospel According to St. Mark, 380. in addition, see a list of other prominent Nt scholars cited by marshall in his Commentary on Luke, 879. 117. Bultmann, History, 274.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism he is linked to the burial of Jesus, clearly a historical reminiscence being used. Who would invent him?”118 That mark created such a figure is most unlikely, since it runs counter to his hostile generalizations of casting blame on all the members of the Sanhedrin for the injustice of sentencing Jesus to death (14:55, 64; 15:1). Thus, while the essential historicity of Joseph of arimathea in mark cannot be demonstrated with absolute certainty, we can safely conclude with Raymond Brown the following: That the burial was done by Joseph from arimathea is very probable, since a Christian fictional creation from nothing of a Jewish Sanhedrist who does what is right is almost inexplicable, granted the hostility in early Christian writings toward the Jewish authorities responsible for the death of Jesus. moreover, the fixed designation of such a character as “from arimathea,” a town very difficult to identify and reminiscent of no scriptural symbolism, makes a thesis of invention even more implausible. The very fact that the later gospels had to ennoble Joseph and to increase the reverence of the burial given to Jesus shows that Christian instincts would not have freely shaped what i have posited for the basic account. While high probability is not certitude, there is nothing in the basic pre-gospel account of Jesus’ burial by Joseph that could not plausibly be deemed historical.119

Paul’s Understanding in addition to the question of Jesus’ burial, the second area that must be examined is hick’s claim that the resurrection of Jesus be understood non-physically, since the “earliest strata of New testament do not include any reference either to the empty tomb or to a visible or tangible body of the risen Jesus.”120 For hick, what caused the first disciples to believe that Jesus was alive as their exalted and glorified lord was not the empty tomb or Jesus’ bodily presence but the appearances of a supernatural light around them within which they were conscious of the glorified presence of Christ. according to hick, the earliest account that we have of an “appearance” of the risen lord is that of Paul on the Damascus road some two or three year after the crucifixion, as later reported in 118. Fitzmeyer, The Gospel According to Luke, 1526. 119. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, 1240–41. 120. Metaphor, 24.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments acts 9:3–8, in which he is said to have experienced a blinding light and heard a voice, but did not see any bodily presence. in hick’s opinion, “Paul himself equated this experience with the paradigm ‘appearances’ to Peter and the twelve (1 Cor 15:8); and Barnabas likewise described the Damascus road experience as Paul’s ‘seeing of Jesus’ (acts 9:27).”121 Since the earliest discussion of the resurrection of Jesus in the New testament is provided by Paul, and his writings are the only eyewitness accounts that we have, it is imperative that we examine Paul’s understanding of Jesus’ resurrection, especially as found in 1 Cor 15, to see if hick’s interpretation can be sustained. Since hick does not give a detailed analysis of his own position, however, i shall appeal to several leading Nt scholars whose views on the subject are similar to hick’s. These include such Nt scholars as gerd lüdemann, marcus Borg, and Roy hoover. lüdemann, Borg, and hoover all agree with hick that Paul’s silence about the empty tomb in any of his letters, especially in 1 Cor 15, witnesses to the fact that he obviously did not know anything about it; or if he did, he did not regard it as important for faith in the risen lord. Borg finds it significant that Paul in 1 Cor 15 does not say, “and on the third day, they found the empty tomb.”122 For, as hoover points out, “if the empty tomb were a crucial matter of faith, it is inconceivable that Paul would omit all reference to it, especially in 1 Cor 15, where he is arguing, at some length, for the truth of the resurrection in response to a direct challenge from some in the church in Corinth.”123 lüdemann says, “if he [Paul] had known about the empty tomb, he would certainly have referred to it in order to have an additional argument for the resurrection.”124 according to lüdemann, furthermore, it is not possible to read the empty tomb into the traditional formula quoted by Paul in the phrase, “and that he was buried,” for it is a part of a two-lined creedal formula in which the burial is part of the first line reinforcing the phrase “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.”125 Thus, “burial” reinforces death, not resurrection, as if to say, “he was really dead.” 121. ibid. 122. Borg, The Meaning of Jesus, 132. 123. hoover, “a Contest,” 130. 124. lüdemann, Jesus’ Resurrection, 44. 125. ibid.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism moreover, lüdemann objects to the idea that Jews at the time would automatically have assumed a notion of bodily resurrection that undoubtedly included the corpse being transformed into a new body, since the notions of resurrection were quite variegated in Judaism ranging from “fleshly to bodily and even to spiritual forms thereof.”126 lüdemann, Borg, and hoover all agree with hick that at the heart of the New testament belief in the resurrection is not deceit but the claim to have seen visions of the risen Christ.127 according to lüdemann, in the traditional formula cited by Paul in 1 Cor 15, it was the “appearances” to Cephas and the twelve in the second line of the creedal formula that reinforces resurrection. While these and some other scholars agree in pointing out that the greek verb “ophthe” (“he appeared” or “he was seen”) in 1 Cor 15:5–8 should not be interpreted as a normal kind of visual phenomenon involving outer sense experience or ocular perception, they tend to have subtle differences in their descriptions of the exact nature of Jesus’ appearances. Rudolf Pesch, following Wilhelm michaelis, has described these visions as a legitimation formula involving manifestations, revelations, and vocational commission.128 lüdemann understands them as the exalted Christ’s appearances from heaven, though they surely involve physicality.129 For Borg, they were “apparitions,” which are a particular kind of vision and paranormal kind of experience “not visible to everybody who happens to be there, and not the kind of experience that could have been videotaped.”130 “apparitions do not involve a physical body, even though what is seen often includes seeing a person in bodily form.”131 Regardless of their shades of differences in their understanding of visions, however, these scholars are agreed that his repeated use of “ophthe” indicates that,

126. lüdemann, The Resurrection of Christ, 64–66, 174. 127. lüdemann, however, considers the understanding of the resurrection in bodily terms. 128. For a summary of Pesch’s position, see galvin, “Resurrection.” 129. although these heavenly visions were physical in nature, for lüdemann, there was no bodily resurrection of the earthly Jesus. lüdemann, The Meaning of Jesus, 150–51. 130. Borg, The Meaning of Jesus, 132. 131. ibid., 133.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments implicitly, Paul regarded his own vision experience to be of the same character and significance as that of others whom he cites.132 to further support the view that Paul understood the resurrection of Jesus to be spiritual rather than bodily in character and involving an empty tomb, some scholars have appealed to Paul’s understanding of the future resurrection of believers as described in the latter part of 1 Cor 15. using the analogy of a grain and a plant, Paul writes: “That which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain . . . So also is the resurrection of the dead . . . it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body . . . Now i say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of god; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (NRSV). here, it is claimed by lüdemann that “Paul himself distinguishes between two notions of body in 1 Cor 15: (1) the body that is flesh and blood and cannot inherit the kingdom of god and (2) the body that is spiritual and that every Christians will get.”133 Concerning the resurrected body, Borg thinks that Paul in the above passage “explicitly denies that it is a physical body; instead, it is a spiritual body.”134 in other words, “Paul thought there are spiritual bodies that are not physical.”135 “Thus, Paul affirms a bodily resurrection, even as he radically distinguishes the resurrection body from a flesh-and-blood (that is, physical) body.”136 if it is true that Paul understood Jesus’ resurrection as analogous to the general resurrection, it would seem that, at least at first glance, this passage does supports Borg’s contention that Paul’s understanding of the resurrection was nonphysical, based on such statements as “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of god.” in 132. Thus, lüdemann says, “Paul claims in 1 Corinthians 15:1–11 that Christ appeared ‘last of all’ to him. and he is using the same verb ophthe (“he was seen” by me) he uses for the other apostles. in other words, he claims to have experienced the same appearance that the others had before. isn’t it reasonable to grant that Paul was right on this point—he had the same experience that the others had—and to conclude from his statement that the others had visionary experiences too? . . . if Paul was right, if his appearance experience was like that of the others, then we have a right to read the appearance to the others through the window of the Pauline experience.” lüdemann, Jesus’ Resurrection, 61. 133. ibid., 44. 134. Borg, “irrelevancy,” 123. 135. Borg, The Meaning of Jesus, 133. 136. ibid.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism this case, the thesis would seem to be true that Paul’s understanding of the resurrection differed from that recorded by luke 24:39, where Jesus is reported to have stated that his resurrected body has “flesh and bones.” What then are we to make of these interpretations regarding Paul’s understanding of Jesus’ resurrection? Contrary to hick, lüdemann, and Borg, there is simply no evidence that the earliest Christians understood Christ’s resurrection as involving anything other than bodily transformation. Whereas lüdemann is correct that in Judaism there was clearly no uniformity in the views concerning the afterlife for the first-century Jews (ranging from denial of a future life of any sort, to immortality without connection to a physical resurrection, to an extremely literalistic concept of bodily resurrection), the word resurrection was not a general term for “life after death.”137 Says Wright: “it [resurrection] was one particular story that was told about the dead: a story in which the present state of those who had died would be replaced by a future state in which they would be alive once more . . . ‘Resurrection’ was a life after ‘life after death,’ the second stage in the post-mortem programme.”138 observing the importance of such a distinction, N. t. Wright says, “Though there was a range of belief about life after death, the word resurrection was only used to describe reembodiment, not the state of disembodied bliss.”139 Continues Wright, “Where second-temple Jews believed in resurrection, then, that belief had to do with the reembodiment of formerly dead human beings on the one hand and with the inauguration of the new age, the new covenant, in which all the righteous dead would be raised simultaneously on the other.”140 if Wright is correct on this point—2 macc 7:10–11; 14:46; Wis 2–3, and the Sib. Or. 4:176–82 all seem to indicate that he is—then historically the earliest Christians must surely have viewed Jesus’ resurrection as involving bodily transformation in accordance with their religious tradition. additionally, in light of Paul’s citation of the traditional formula in verses 3–5 containing the phrases “he was buried” and “he was raised on the third day,” it seems difficult to argue, as hick and others do, that Paul, a Pharisaic Jew, could have believed that a man can be buried and then be raised from the dead and yet his body still remain in the grave. 137. For a detailed analysis of this point, see Wright’s Resurrection, 129–206. 138. ibid., 201 (emphasis original). 139. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 134 (emphasis original). 140. ibid., 135.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments as Witherington observes, “The Pharisaic understanding of resurrection was nothing if it was not materialistic; and more to the point, those who denied such a view of the afterlife were simply said to deny the resurrection, not to have an alternative interpretation of it.”141 Wright therefore remarks: “in Paul’s world, as has been said often enough but still not heard by all scholars, to say that someone had been buried and then raised three days later was to say that the tomb was empty . . . There is simply no evidence to suggest that the word [resurrection] could mean to a well-taught Jew halfway through the first century that the person concerned was alive and well in a nonphysical sphere while his body was still in a tomb.”142 moreover, lüdemann’s claim that the traditional formula quoted by Paul is actually a two-line formula where burial simply reinforces, and is subordinated to, Christ’s death, must be seriously questioned in light of the fourfold hoti (“that”) in greek which orders the four events of death, burial, resurrection, and appearances as having equal importance and equal weight. as Craig rightly points out, Paul’s use of the phrase “according to the Scriptures” shows only the parallelism of death and resurrection rather than the alleged subordination of burial and appearances to death and resurrection. Thus, contrary to lüdemann, the quotation is better understood as a four-line formula that, in two sets of Semitic parallels, lists the sequential events of Jesus’ passion and resurrection.143 Furthermore, Paul’s silence concerning the empty tomb in 1 Cor 15 is not so significant, as some have alleged, for there was no reason for Paul or the tradition he cites to mention the empty tomb. Neither Paul nor the traditional formula he quotes is narrating the story of Jesus’ resurrection, as the gospels are; they are merely listing the events in their chronological sequence: death, burial, resurrection, and appearances. as Wright correctly observes, “The mention here of ‘buried, then raised’ no more needs to be amplified in that way than one would need to amplify the statement ‘i walked down the street’ with the qualification ‘on my feet.’”144 This phrase “that he was buried” found its way into the formula

141. Witherington,” Resurrection Redux,” 133. 142. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 141. 143. Craig, Jesus’ Resurrection, 48. 144. Wright, Resurrection, 321.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism as a condensed statement both to verify the reality of Jesus’ death as well as to verify the reality of the empty tomb stories.145 lüdemann and hoover’s claim that had Paul known about the empty tomb he would have surely mentioned it as an additional argument for the resurrection, loses its force when Paul’s motivation for writing 1 Cor 15 is taken into consideration. here, Paul is not attempting to persuade the unbelieving Corinthians that Jesus really did die and was buried and rose again, for they already believed all this with Paul. Rather, as gundry states: “having cited the tradition as common ground, Paul argues from Christ’s resurrection, not for it. to what purpose does he argue? to the purpose of proving a future resurrection of Christian believers. That, not the past resurrection of Christ, is what some of the Corinthians are denying.”146 Therefore, Paul’s statement in 1 Cor 15:6 concerning more than five hundred people who saw the risen Christ at one time is meant to strengthen the common ground between Paul and the Corinthian believers and to reinforce Paul’s argument for the future resurrection rather than being an argument for Christ’s bodily resurrection. additionally, the attempts of Pesch, lüdemann, and Borg to interpret the verb ophthe in verses 5–8 as revelatory manifestations, heavenly visions, or apparitions, rather than visual and ocular perceptions involving sensory phenomena, should rightly be rejected as unjustified. to begin with, Pesch’s interpretation of ophthe as a legitimation formula for apostolic authority, rather than a visual experience of the resurrected lord, ignores Paul’s reference in verse 6 to the “more than five hundred.” Furthermore, while it is true that ophthe is used in the Septuagint for people having heavenly and revelatory visions (for example, god or angels appearing to people), it is also used many times in connection with ordinary visions as well.147 in addition, Francis Fiorenza has made the following observation: “When the verb ‘he appeared’ (ophthe) was used in the Septuagint with the preposition pros and en, the visual element was not weakened but strengthened. likewise, appearance terminology was used in the Septuagint with a visual element, for example, tob 12:22 (the appearance of Raphael) and 2 macc 3:23–24 (the horseman).”148 145. Fee, Corinthians, 725. 146. gundry, “trimming the Debate,” 120 (emphasis original). 147. See Wright, Resurrection, 323. 148. Fiorenza, Foundational Theology, 35.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments in the New testament also, ophthe is used in the form of heavenly or revelatory visions (acts 9:17; 26:16; Rev 11:19; 12:1, 3), but there are other instances where it is used of ordinary visions involving objects of earthly locale as well (cf. acts 7:26, 27).149 as Stephen Davis points out, therefore, since ophthe can be used both for ordinary seeing of material objects and for the visualizing of supernatural beings, it is impossible for hick and others to build a theory of non-physical resurrection appearances of Jesus on the basis of linguistic analysis of one verb.150 Nor is it satisfactory to argue that Paul in 1 Cor 15 regarded his own vision experience to be of the same character and significance as the other appearances that he cites. given the ambiguous use of the verb ophthe in the Septuagint and New testament, as we have seen, hick and other scholars have absolutely no basis for their conclusion that Paul’s use of the same verb for other paradigm cases amounts to a claim to have experienced the exact same type of visionary appearances. Rather, it is very likely that the earlier appearances of the disciples were of different character from Paul’s own vision, especially with regard to the question of corporeality. The descriptions of Paul’s encounter with the risen lord in acts 9:3–8 (repeated in 22:6–11 and 26:12–18) involving a blinding light from heaven and a voice, differ markedly from, for example, Jesus’ appearance to the disciples in luke 24:36–43. in the latter, Jesus appears with “flesh and bones,” hands and feet, and is capable of being touched as well as eating “a piece of broiled fish.” lest the lukan descriptions of the appearance to the disciples be simply dismissed as a later embellishment, it must not escape our notice that the author of the gospel of luke is the same author of acts, which was written after luke. in other words, it must be remembered that hick and other scholars who argue for a non-bodily resurrection of Jesus based on his appearance to Paul on the Damascus road, do so not from Paul’s own writings, but, significantly, from the recorded descriptions in acts written later by the same author who earlier wrote the gospel of luke. and from this lukan perspective, Jesus’ earlier appearances to the disciples occurred prior to his ascension to heaven, whereas his later appearance to Paul was characterized by the glorified 149. gundry, “trimming the Debate,” 116–17. 150. Davis, “‘Seeing’ the Risen Jesus,” 134–35. in this same essay, Davis has convincingly argued on other grounds than linguistic analysis that the biblical stories of the resurrection of Jesus are best understood in terms of ordinary vision.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism Jesus already in heaven. Therefore, it is reasonable to surmise that, for the early Christians, Jesus’ appearances to Paul and to the disciples were of a different order and, most likely, of different character as well. The likelihood of Paul and the early Christians being very much aware of such differences in the nature and order of the appearances is supported by the well established fact that Paul had to constantly defend his apostleship throughout his ministry (cf. gal 1:11—2:21; 1 Cor 9; 2 Cor 10–12). as was the case in the Corinthian church, many doubted Paul’s apostleship, in part due to the different and unusual character of his experience with the risen Christ vis-à-vis that of the other apostles. Not only was Paul different from the others in not having accompanied Jesus “beginning from the baptism of John until the day he was taken up” (acts 1:22), he did not witness, nor was he commissioned by, the risen Christ before his heavenly ascension, as the other apostles were. it is not at all surprising then that Paul would be so eager in 1 Cor 15 to include himself in the list of witnesses of the risen lord. as Craig says, “Paul is eager to include himself in the list, and in so doing he is not trying to reduce the earlier appearances to purely visionary experiences; rather he is trying to bring his experience up to the objectivity and reality of the others.”151 in this sense, at least, John Dominic Crossan is correct when he observes the following: “Paul needs, in 1 Corinthians 15:1–11, to equate his own experience with that of the preceding apostles. to equate, that is, its validity and legitimacy but not necessarily its mode or manner . . . Paul’s own entranced revelation should not be presumed to be the model for all others.”152 Thus, contrary to hick, lüdemann, Borg, and hoover, it is not reasonable to infer from Paul’s fourfold use of ophthe in 1 Cor 15:5–8 that Paul regarded his own vision of the risen Christ like the appearances of Jesus seen by the others, and that this somehow supports the non-bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. Finally, that Paul’s own view of the resurrected Jesus comes closest to bodily transformation is supported by his description of the future resurrection body of those who will inherit the kingdom of god that, as Pannenberg observes, Paul always and fully thought of as essentially parallel to the resurrection of Jesus.153 in describing the nature of the 151. Craig, Jesus’ Resurrection, 181. 152. Crossan, Jesus, 169. 153. Pannenberg, Jesus, 76–77.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments transformed body in 1 Cor 15:44, it is most unfortunate that some english bible translations (RSV, NRSV, ReB) rendered the greek phrases soma psychikon and soma pneumatikon as “a physical body” and “a spiritual body.” to a contemporary reader unaccustomed to Paul’s use of these terms, such a rendering gives the false impression that Paul is here contrasting a “physical body” to a “non-physical body.” This is the misleading interpretation that Borg adopts, for he thinks the immediate context shows that soma psychikon is “‘flesh and blood,’ ‘perishable,’ ‘of the earth,’ ‘of dust.’”154 But contrary to Borg, a careful examination of how Paul uses the terms pneumatikos and psychikos throughout 1 Corinthians clearly demonstrates that what Paul is contrasting here is not the “physical” and “non-physical,” but rather “a body animated by soul” and “a body animated by spirit.”155 Throughout 1 Corinthians, Paul uses pneumatikos in the sense of the spiritually mature in this world (2:15; 3:1; 14:37), or of something that has to do with, or has as its origin, the holy Spirit (2:13–14; 9:11; 10:3–4; 12:1; 14:1). in 1 Cor 2:14–15, furthermore, psychikos is not used to refer to or describe something as being material: “The phychikos person does not receive the things of the spirit, because they are spiritually discerned, while the pneumatikos person discerns everything. There is, of course, no question there of ‘physical’ and ‘spiritual’ as appropriate translations.”156 in greek, a soma psychikon literally means a “soulish body.” The word psychikon is derived from psyche which had a range of meaning including “soul” and “life force,” but never a “body.” Since the “soul” is often thought of as being in opposition to the “body,” the translation of soma psychikon into “physical body” is all the more misleading. The irony of such translation is well pointed out by Wright when he says, “if Paul had wanted to find a word for ‘non-physical’, phychikos . . . would itself have been a possible option.”157 Contrary to Borg, therefore, in referring to the resurrected body as “a spiritual body” (soma pneumatikon) in verse 44, Paul does not mean a “nonphysical” body; as Nt commentators widely 154. Borg, The Meaning of Jesus, 133. 155. an excellent overview of this thesis can be found in Wright, Resurrection, 347–56. 156. ibid., 349. 157. Wright, Resurrection, 351.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism agree, he is describing the glorious and imperishable (physical) body that is animated by god’s Spirit in the renewed creation. as Stephen Davis points out, by using the simile of a seed growing into a plant in the earlier verses of 36–38, Paul conceives there to be a material continuity between the earthly body and the resurrected body. Says Davis: “The relationship of material continuity that obtains between Jesus’ earthly body and his resurrected body is like the relationship that obtains between a grain of wheat and the plant that grows from it. Thus, Paul’s view . . . is not, as is sometimes suggested, the exchange of one sort of body for another; it is that the one body becomes or is transformed into one another.”158 gordon Fee sums up the case for many scholars when he states: “The transformed body, therefore, is not composed of ‘spirit’; it is a body adapted to the eschatological existence that is under the ultimate domination of the Spirit. Thus, for Paul, to be truly pneumatikos is to bear the likeness of Christ (v. 49) in a transformed body, fitted for the new age.”159

The Empty Tomb having examined the issues of the historicity of Jesus’ burial as well as Paul’s treatment of the nature of Jesus’ resurrection, i now turn to hick’s understanding of the empty tomb tradition. here, hick’s argument is that Jesus’ resurrection should not be understood as bodily, but spiritually, since the stories of the empty tomb are all later elaborations and that “as we trace the stream of tradition back through successive layers we find less and less of the physically miraculous and more of the spiritually transforming.”160 a similar argument can be found in lüdemann, who sees a very similar progression: “We start with the Pauline witness, which presupposes a visionary appearance, an appearance from heaven. and that visionary experience in the early tradition was later replaced by the stories that you read, for example, in luke. There, all of a sudden, Jesus shows up and eats fish . . . you have to start with Paul and see that gospel stories are later developments.”161 158. Davis, Risen Indeed, 50. For an extended discussion, see also ibid., 50–57. 159. Fee, Corinthians, 786. See also ladd, Theology, 609–10; and Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 144 (emphasis original). 160. hick, Metaphor, 25. 161. lüdemann, Jesus’ Resurrection, 54–55.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments goulder presents a short summary of such developments in the gospel stories: “at first, in the 60s we have the empty-tomb story (which requires burial in a tomb), which we first find in mark. Then in luke we have stories about Jesus’ eating and asking to be touched. Finally these physical aspects are made memorable by the stories of Thomas and mary magdalene (‘Do not hold on to me’) in John (20:17). luke wrote in about 90 C.e., and John about 100 C.e.”162 lüdemann has attempted an explanation for why the earlier appearance tradition found in Paul was later replaced by the empty tomb traditions found in the gospels. as early as in the 50s, when Paul was asking, “how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?” (1 Cor 15:12), lüdemann thinks that a Docetic or even gnostic view existed already in the church, according to which resurrection was not bodily but spiritually understood.163 The gospel stories then represent a secondary stage of the resurrection tradition designed to refute such non-physical, spiritual views. Such interpretations offered by hick, lüdemann, and goulder are problematic, however, for several reasons. to begin with, we must keep in mind that the gospel of mark, containing the earliest written record of the empty tomb tradition, was probably composed sometime in 60s, only about a decade or so after 1 Corinthians, containing the earliest appearance tradition, was written.164 moreover, there are strong indications that the empty tomb story (mark 16:1–8) is much older, since it was part of the pre-markan source material. according to William l. Craig: “The burial story and empty tomb story form one smooth, continuous narrative. They are linked by grammatical and linguistic ties. it seems unlikely that the early Christians would have circulated a story of Jesus’ passion ending in his burial. The passion story is incomplete without victory at the end. hence, the pre-markan source probably included and may have ended with the discovery of the empty tomb.”165

162. goulder, “explanatory Power,” 99. 163. lüdemann, Jesus’ Resurrection, 54–55. 164. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians in the year 54 or 55. in the case of mark’s gospel, most Nt scholars assign a date in the decade 60–70 Ce, possibly in the years 65–67. See Kümmel, Introduction, 97, 278; martin, New Testament Foundations, 213–14. 165. Craig, Reasonable Faith, 274. For a more extended analysis of this thesis, see Craig’s book, Assessing, 168–70, 197–201.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism Craig’s thesis is further supported by mark’s use of the aramaic phrase “on the first day of the week” (mark 16:2) which antedates “the third day” motif prominent in the earliest Christian preaching, suggesting that the empty tomb tradition reaches all the way back to an early Palestinian setting. Furthermore, Craig points to Rudolf Pesch’s observation that since the pre-markan passion source speaks of the “high priest” without using his name (14:53, 54, 60, 61, 63), Caiaphas must still have been the high priest when the pre-markan Passion story was being told. according to Craig, “Since Caiaphas held office from 18–37 Ce, this means that at the latest mark’s source dates from within seven years of Jesus crucifixion.”166 in addition, since Paul’s tradition of the last Supper (1 Cor 11:23–25) presupposes the pre-markan account, and his citation of the death-burial-resurrection formula (1 Cor 15:3–5) implies familiarity with the empty tomb tradition, the Pre-markan source must go back to the early years of the Jerusalem fellowship. additionally, contrary to hick’s claims, not only do the earliest layers of tradition contain references to the physically miraculous, including those in the pre-markan as well as the Pauline sources; the most developed layers of tradition in the gospels contain references to the spiritually transforming as well. as Stephen Davis has perceptively observed, both “‘physical’ and ‘spiritual’ motifs are often combined in the third and Fourth gospel, even in the same stories.”167 as Davis points out, in the road to emmaus story in luke 24:13–35, Jesus is said to have “vanished out of sight.” in John 20:19–25 and 26–29, furthermore, Jesus appears in the room despite the doors being shut. accordingly, Davis notes, “The two gospels that are most often criticized by defenders of spiritual resurrection for the ‘gross physicalism’ are the very gospels in which ‘spiritual’ motifs are found.”168 given the weight of all of this evidence, it is truly hard to believe, as hick and others apparently do, that the resurrection accounts of bodily transformation, especially in luke and John, represent a late development in the tradition in which, for the first time, people thought it appropriate or even necessary to speak of Jesus in such an overtly physical fashion.169 The fact that immortality of the soul or the resurrection of the 166. ibid., 275. 167. Davis, Risen Indeed, 54. 168. ibid. 169. Thus, Pannenberg points out: “how could Jesus’ disciples have proclaimed his resurrection if they could be constantly refuted merely by viewing the grave in which

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments spirit is a hellenistic idea, and the resurrection of the body part of Jewish tradition, makes it extremely unlikely, in any case, that the empty tomb tradition would have developed from a more hellenistic early period to a more Jewish later period.170 For this reason, lüdemann’s explanation for why the appearance tradition was later replaced by the empty tomb tradition is very unconvincing. as gundry points out, while it is commonly accepted that gnosticism became an issue in the church toward the end of first century or perhaps in the beginning of the second, lüdemann’s contention that Paul in 1 Corinthians was dealing with gnosticism prior to, or in the middle of, the first century is by no means commonly accepted by scholars, and is without much support.171 Furthermore, the idea that the physicality of the resurrection in the gospels of luke and John was also directed against the gnostics is equally unconvincing since the further Christianity moved away from its Jewish origin, a concoction of stories requiring the physicality of resurrection would be less likely. Thus, Wright finds unbelievable a claim, such as lüdemann’s, that the resurrection traditions developed in the church from a more hellenistic type of understanding (non-bodily post-mortem existence) to a more Jewish idea (embodied resurrection). Wright comments: “it makes no sense to think of luke sitting down to compose an anti-docetic narrative about the genuine human body of Jesus and allowing himself so far to forget this important purpose as to have Jesus appear and disappear, not be recognized, and finally ascend into heaven. Similar things must be said of John.”172 Witherington would agree with such an assessment. For he remarks: if the gospels were written in the last third of the first century when the church not only had a viable gentile mission but was well on the way to becoming a large gentile community, why in the world would a group trying to attract gentiles make up a resurrection story, much less emphasize the material resurrection of Jesus? . . . indeed, as acts 17 suggests, pagans were more likely than not to ridicule such an idea. i can understand the his body was interred?” Furthermore, even the Jewish polemic against the primitive Christian community “shared the conviction with its Christian opponents that Jesus’ grave was empty.” Jesus, 100–101. 170. Wright, in The Challenge of Jesus, 147, has made this point. 171. gundry, Jesus’ Resurrection, 119. 172. Wright, Resurrection, 606.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism apologetic theory if, and only if, the gospels were directed largely to Pharisaic Jews or their sympathizers. i know of no scholar, however, who has argued such a case.173

The Jesus Movement The fourth and final area of hick’s view of resurrection that must be examined is his claim that physical resurrection was not necessary for Jesus’ movement to survive the death of its founder. in support of this view, hick utilizes edward Schillebeeckx’s argument that just as the movement of John the Baptist was able to continue after John’s execution on Jewish grounds, the death of the Nazarene need not entail a break in the Jesus movement. For Schillebeeckx, since the crucifixion did not set a big question mark against Jesus’ entire ministry here on earth, the resurrection was not foundational for its continuation.174 Rather, the regathering of the shocked and dispersed disciples to form a community in Jesus’ name, after the death of their master, was due to some sort of a post-easter “conversion experience” in which they came to a profound recognition about the identity of Jesus. led first by Peter, the disciples came to a realization based on the totality of Jesus’ life and his death that: the crucified one is the coming Judge; he is actively present with them; and he has risen.175 importantly, Schillebeeckx rejects the “empty tomb,” or for that matter, even the “appearances” of the risen Christ, as the foundational cause of the disciples’ conversion. Rather, such an acknowledgement was grounded in the disciples’ post-easter experience of grace as forgiveness, on the one hand, and in the earthly Jesus’ pre-easter self-understanding as an eschatological prophet who would be martyred and vindicated by god, on the other. For Schillebeeckx, the death of Jesus was a necessary event for the disciples’ “christological confession” to be made possible based on the totality of Jesus’ life; it did not represent a total breach or loss of faith on the part of the disciples. accordingly, “Christianity arises out of the message and the total career of Jesus, up to and including his death and, along with that, out of a renewed offer on god’s part, after Jesus’ death, of salvation through the heavenly Jesus, which meant 173. Witherington, “Resurrection Redux,” 136. 174. Schillebeeckx, Jesus, 393. 175. ibid., 387.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments that the disciples’ return to Jesus became a return to the living, crucified one.”176 in analyzing hick’s use of Schillebeeckx’s argument, a glaring problem is immediately apparent. The crucial historical differences between Jesus’ movement and that of John the Baptist are not taken seriously into account. The movement of John the Baptist was premised on the identity of their leader as a prophet, who proclaimed the eschatological message of repentance and baptism. on the other hand, as John meier reminds us so forcefully, Jesus was “not just another prophet uttering more prophecies about the future. he was the prophet who was accomplishing what the prophets had foretold.”177 in other words, in contrast to John the Baptist, the followers of Jesus viewed him not only and simply as a prophet, but, importantly, also as a messianic figure. This point is clear from the fact that Jesus was crucified as a wouldbe messiah, as the title on the cross indicates, and from the evidence of several different formulae in the very earliest Christianity in which the word Christos had attached itself to the name of Jesus. as Wright notes, “not even resurrection would have generated the belief that the newly alive person was the messiah unless people had already suspected that he was that prior to his death.”178 in this sense, at least, Schillebeeckx is correct that Christianity originates out of the message and the career of the earthly Jesus. But to draw a parallel between the movements of John the Baptist and Jesus on the basis that the former movement had similarly survived the death of its founder is fundamentally to miss the messianic nature of Jesus’ movement. in addition, given what we now know about the second-temple Jewish messianic expectations, Schillebeeckx and hick are surely wrong to assume that the death of Jesus on the cross did not create a deep breach of faith for the disciples. although there was no single unified concept of the messiah in the first century, there were at least two things, according to Wright, by which the first century Jews believed that the coming messiah would rescue israel and bring god’s justice to the world: “First, he would build or restore the temple. Second, he would fight the decisive battle against the enemy.”179 Since Jesus did not fulfill either of these 176. ibid., 390. 177. meier, Marginal Jew, 2:1043. 178. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 76–77. 179. ibid., 76.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism criteria, Wright thinks it all but certain that the followers would have seriously questioned the crucified Jesus as the true messiah. Says Wright: “if a would-be messiah was killed by the pagans, especially if he had not rebuilt the temple, liberated israel or brought justice to the world, that would be the surest sign that he was another in the long line of false messiahs. The crucifixion of a messiah did not say to a first-century Jew that he was the true messiah and that the kingdom had come. it said exactly the opposite. it said that he was not and that it had not.”180 Thus, while hick may be correct that in Jewish thinking the deaths of martyrs were not necessarily taken as discrediting them but as giving them an exalted place of honor, the humiliating crucifixion of a wouldbe messiah at the hands of the pagan enemy would most surely have been different. Furthermore, given the early church’s application of the old testament belief that “anyone who is hung on a tree is under god’s curse” (gal 3:13), it seems hard to believe that the violent and shameful end of their master’s life did not set a big question mark against Jesus’ entire ministry on earth. if my interpretation is correct, however, how can hick and Schillebeeckx adequately explain the early church’s continual belief in Jesus as the messiah, especially since such a claim was extremely embarrassing and most dangerous? Schillebeeckx’s explanation that the disciples had some type of post-easter “conversion experience” independent of Jesus’ resurrected appearances and knowledge of the empty tomb is terribly inadequate, for as Fiorenza observes, “Just what leads to this conversion experience is not clear.”181 Fiorenza observes concerning Schillebeeckx, “he does not exactly determine the source of the conversion experience except to emphasize that it results from an act of god and from recollections of the life of Jesus.”182 moreover, Schillebeeckx’s theory that the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection was based on preChristian expectations of the death and resurrection of an eschatological prophet has been seriously questioned by Nt scholars on ground that the data on which he depends actually belongs to a period much later than that of the New testament.183 180. ibid., 138. 181. Fiorenza, Foundational Theology, 23. 182. ibid. 183. ibid., 26.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments Therefore, Schillebeeckx is without any plausible explanations as to how the disciples’ post-easter “conversion experience” arose. lacking an adequate explanation from hick and Schillebeeckx, we must conclude that the best explanation, indeed the only logical explanation, that makes sense of the emergence of the Christian community shortly after the death of Jesus, and rapid spread within the entire Roman empire, is a physically resurrected Jesus. it was this Christ and lord that the disciples came to witness and proclaim as a result of the post-resurrection appearances and the empty tomb. in and of itself, of course, the resurrection proved neither that Jesus was the messiah nor that he was divine. however, when taken together with Jesus’ own pre-easter claims, it was a powerful and decisive validation of the activity and authority of Jesus of Nazareth. as Jack Verheyden puts it: “This [the resurrection] was seen as an event of marvelous proportions—not first of all because it indicated that Jesus lived immortally, although that was included, but that it confirmed and validated his message and activity during his life. The resurrection of Jesus attested something about who he really was and is: ‘let all the house of israel therefore know assuredly that god has made him both lord and Christ.’”184

oRigiNS oF the Dogma oF ChRiSt’S Deity my final task in this chapter is to examine hick’s explanation of the emergence of the church’s belief in the deity of Jesus Christ. Stated in hick’s terms, this is the question of transition from the earthly Jesus of Nazareth to the divine Christ of orthodox Christian faith, theology, preaching, and sacraments. in order to best evaluate hick’s position, i must begin with an observation that, by the best accounts of Nt scholars, we have strong indications that belief in the divinity of Jesus arose quite early after his death and resurrection. according to the tübingen Nt scholar martin hengel: The real problem of the origin of the early Christian Christology is above all the first 4 or 5 years which are “pre-Pauline” in its proper sense . . . apparently the fundamentals of the so called “pre-Pauline” Christology—with the exception of the pre-existence Christology and the idea of the sending of the Son—were laid by the time of the conversion of Paul. The “dynamic-creative impulse” of the fundamental event that grounded the Church laid 184. Verheyden, “Christian Doctrine of god,” 48.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism thus within a very short time the christological foundation that is predominant in the NT.185

indeed, in the pre-Pauline fragments of hymns and confessions quoted by Paul, we have strong evidence that the earliest Jewish Christians exalted Jesus as the Lord (mare) of the community, as in the invocation maranatha (1 Cor 12:3; 16:22), a practice that carried over into greekspeaking circles in the common use of kyrios for Jesus. The title Lord takes on great significance for the early church, for in the Septuagint, the word kyrios is used not only to translate such a hebrew word as Adonai but also to render the ineffable name of the god of israel—yahweh. Thus, while this term was often used in both aramaic and greek simply as a respectful form of address for a person of high position, the early Christians transformed its usage to invoke the exalted Jesus in corporate worship as Lord simultaneously with god as the object. The most amazing instance of this pre-Pauline confession that “Jesus (Christ) is lord” appears in the hymn in Phil 2 where the passage refers to Christ as a preexistent being who “emptied himself ” and “became” man.186 as Raymond Brown points out, although some refuse to see any note of pre-existence in this hymn or take a “thoroughgoing anthropological” approach,187 most Nt scholars accept a “precreational preexistent” interpretation of this passage.188 Furthermore, since Paul founded the community of Philippi in the year 48 or 49 when he arrived in macedonia from asia during his second missionary journey, and since the most likely date for his letter to the believers there is either 53–55 (from ephesus) or 56–58 (from Caesarea),189 martin hengel is led to the following observation: “This means that the ‘apotheosis of the crucified Jesus’ must already have taken place in the forties, and one is tempted to say that more happened in this period of less than two decades

185. hengel, “Christologie,” 63–64, (emphasis original). 186. although most Nt scholars accept this hymn as pre-Pauline, there are a few notable exceptions. See, for example, Kim, Origin of Paul’s Gospel, 147–49; marshall, Epistle to the Philippians, 47–48; Carson, moo, and morris, Introduction, 318–19; Fee, Philippians, 40–46. 187. Cf. Dunn, Christology in the Making. 188. Brown, Christology, 133–41. See also, martin, Carmen Christi, 99ff. 189. Kümmel, Introduction, 322, 332.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments than in the whole of the next seven centuries, up to the time when the doctrine of the early church was completed.”190 given such an early formation of the church’s incarnational belief of Jesus Christ, hengel has called our attention to what he refers to as the “riddle of the origin” of the Christology of the early church. That is, according to hengel, “The discrepancy between the shameful death of a Jewish state criminal and the confession that depicts this executed man as a preexistent divine figure who becomes man and humbles himself to a slave’s death is, far as i can see, without analogy in the ancient world.”191 This being the case, do hick’s descriptions adequately explain the historical emergence of the incarnational dogma? are hick’s explanations plausible in accounting for the sudden rise of the church’s belief in Christ’s deity? as i have described in the last chapter, hick’s position is that the origin of Christology lies not in the earthly Jesus of history as confirmed in the resurrection and proclaimed by his disciples, but essentially in the attempts by the post-easter church to find an adequate language to speak of their master in the first century mythological milieu and, later on, in the context of greek philosophy. For hick, the church’s literal understanding of the deity of Christ represents not only a break from the way Jesus understood himself, but also a break from the metaphorical way the early church (with the exception of Paul) conceived of him. however, if hick is correct that Jesus was in no way conscious of his unique sonship and that neither his teachings nor actions never indicated such a self-understanding, how can hick account for the sudden shift in the disciples’ belief in him as a mere human being to that of preexistent incarnate lord in such a short period of time, given, first of all, the strongly Jewish monotheistic context in which the doctrine of the incarnation first arose and, secondly, the cursed and shameful death that their master met on the cross at the hands of the pagan enemy? it appears that hick’s explanations fall far too short of adequately explaining the “riddle of the origin” of Christology for several reasons. to begin with, in the strongly Jewish monotheistic context of early Christianity, the Jewish disciples of Jesus could not have developed such an exalted view of Jesus in such a short period of time, if they had not received any clues about Christ’s divinity from Jesus himself. it is im190. hengel, Son of God, 2 (emphasis original). 191. ibid., 1.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism plausible to suppose as hick does that what was so unthinkable to the self-consciousness of Jesus all of a sudden became such a likely possibility in the minds of the disciples that they would begin to proclaim a doctrine that would have been so blasphemous to their master. Did the Jewish mentality change so swiftly within such a short period after Jesus’ death that the disciples would so fundamentally contradict the teachings of their master? are we to believe that the disciples were all of a sudden so influenced by greek and Roman myths and concepts of the divine that they were willing to compromise the sharp differentiation between god and the world, the Creator and the created, so jealously observed in their Jewish tradition? to be sure, the early Christians were inevitably influenced by the greek and Roman cultures and ideas of their time, but if we are to truly understand the concept of the incarnation historically, we need to appreciate more seriously than hick does the Jewish roots from which the doctrine emerged, where the definition of divinity was much more sharply drawn (cf. Rom 1:25).192 That the influence of greek mythological ideas of the divine was distasteful to the Jews and therefore could not possibly have been the source of the doctrine of the incarnation is well expressed by the charges of trypho, a Jew who challenges Justin’s ideas of the incarnation in his Dialogue: in the fables of those who are called greeks, it is written that Perseus was begotten of Danae, who was a virgin . . . you [Christians] ought to feel ashamed when you made assertions similar to theirs and rather [should] say that this Jesus was born man of men. and if you prove from the Scriptures that he is the Christ, and that on account of having led a life conformed to the law, and perfect, he deserved the honor of being elected to be Christ, [it is well]; but do not venture to tell monstrous phenomena, lest you be convicted of talking foolishly like the greek.193

Secondly, hick has no firm basis for claiming that Paul’s distinctive understanding of Jesus as the unique Son of god incarnate constitutes 192. according to hick, the idea of divinity was much less clearly defined and more elastic in the ancient world, including that of first century Judaism. if so, why does hick think it impossible and blasphemous that Jesus could have thought of himself as belonging to the class of divine persons, especially since he had such powerful godconsciousness and a strong sense of his place in the eschatological mission within the kingdom of god? 193. martyr, Dialogue with Trypho. 67.2.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments an exception to the Jewish metaphorical understanding of incarnation. in interpreting Paul as standing in discontinuity with the earlier Christian tradition, hick neglects the important fact that Paul inherited an existing tradition that had already come to acknowledge not only the divine lordship of Jesus Christ but also, quite possibly, his preexistence.194 i have already alluded to the numerous pre-Pauline confessions of and prayers to Jesus as “lord,” especially the hymn of Philippians where the exalted Jesus receives the worship of the whole universe (Phil 2:6–11). i have not yet mentioned the pre-Pauline hymn in Col 1:15–20 where Christ is said to have “created all things in the heavens and upon the earth” and that he is “before all things and in him all things hold together.” moreover, that Paul stood in essential continuity with the earliest Christian tradition is also seen in the fact that, in the seven indisputably authentic letters, Paul refers to Jesus as “lord” over two hundred times, whereas we find “Son of god” only fifteen times.195 in 1 Thessalonians alone, Paul’s first letter and our oldest Christian document, the title Lord appears twenty-four times. as gerald o’Collins notes, hick is therefore mistaken in thinking that the “father and son” imagery is so central to Paul, and in his disregard of the Lord title as the earliest post-easter proclamation about Jesus.196 Rather, the available evidence from prePauline prayers and confessions and hymn fragments all seem to suggest an essentially continuous outlook with Paul’s understanding of Christ as the pre-existent agent of creation who took on human form, died on the cross, and rose from the dead for the salvation of the world. at the same time that hick overestimates Paul’s significance in relation to the origin of the idea of Jesus as the unique Son of god incarnate, he seems to underestimate Paul’s Christology as having moved only a “third of the way” along the path from seeing Jesus as merely human to divinizing him. The fact that Paul is not the originator of the ideas of Christ’s divine lordship and preexistence must in no way negate the utmost impact that Paul has had in the development of early Christology. 194. of course, it is also possible that the idea of Christ’s preexistence emerged in the church after Paul’s conversion but before Paul’s missionary and literary activities began. in either case, however, what cannot be said is that Paul’s understanding of Jesus constitutes a fundamental exception to the early Jewish Christian understanding. 195. o’Collins, “incarnation under Fire,” 268. hengel, Son of God, 7, has also made this point. 196. ibid.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism By recasting his inherited perception of Jesus as “lord,” Paul has done more than any other historical figure to redefine Jewish monotheism to produce a christological monotheism. By specially applying the characteristics of pre-existent Wisdom to Jesus, Paul has tremendously advanced the church’s ideas of Christ’s preexistence, mediatorship in creation, and the sending and giving up of the Son of god into the world. accordingly, martin hengel is correct to point out that, for Paul, Jesus “is identical with a divine being, before time, mediator between god and his creatures.”197 moreover, Paul’s explicit references to Jesus as theos (Rom 9:5; titus 2:13) not only attest to his decisive significance in the development of early Christology, but also to his direct impact on other New testament writers (cf. heb 1:8; John 1:1; 20:28; 2 Pet 1:1). Thus, what we find in Paul is an already highly developed Christology that genuinely sees Jesus in divine terms. hick is correct that in Paul’s theology the Son is subordinate to the Father, and that it is technically pre-trinitarian. however, it is not clear exactly what hick hopes to gain by making this point, since no one would argue that the doctrine of the trinity was explicitly developed by Paul’s time or that the functional subordination of the Son to the Father is necessarily contradictory to the doctrine of the trinity. Finally, hick’s reference to greek philosophy as the most crucial factor in the shift from a metaphorical to the metaphysical conception of Jesus Christ must be seriously questioned. to begin with, hick himself freely acknowledges that “our modern distinction between the literal use of language and its various metaphorical and other non-literal uses was not sharply drawn in the ancient world.”198 Regardless of this recognition, however, it is puzzling why hick would go right ahead and claim anyway that the hebraic understanding of Jesus’ divinity must only be understood mythically or metaphorically and not literally. The fact of the matter is, we have no indication that the Nt conceptions of Jesus as lord, Son of god, and the Word incarnate were simply metaphors that excluded any reference to ontology. When, for example, Paul speaks of Christ as the preexistent one in whom “all things were created” and in whom “all things hold together,” or when in heb 1:2 Jesus is said to be the heir of all things and also the agent through whom god made the universe, are these not more 197. hengel, Son of God, 15. 198. hick, Metaphor, 42.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments than metaphorical statements? also, when the gospel of John states: “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with god, and the Word was god. he was in the beginning with god . . . and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:1–2, 14); or when it is said that “before abraham was, i am” (8:58), are these not talking about the personal existence of a pre-incarnate being and, indeed, an eternal one? Surely these are ontological statements! The fact that these powerful Nt statements were made several centuries before emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, and even further before the official employment of greek philosophical terms in the Councils of Nicea (325) and Chalcedon (45l), should not escape our notice. Nor should we forget that the metaphysical concepts of greek philosophy were not at all hospitable to the Christian notion of the incarnation as hick seems to presuppose. unlike the hellenistic and Roman religions whose boundaries between the divine, the human, and the world were elastic and fluid, the greek philosophical tradition was distinct in their rejection of myths that depicted the deity in excessively human terms. The greek philosophers in general found the idea of mythological gods being subjected to suffering and being powerless over against the cunning and power of other gods intolerable.199 in this connection, the Norwegian theologian, oskar Skarsaune, makes an important observation: “in contrast to this [mythological] concept of deity, especially Platonic and Stoic philosophy developed an alternative, anti-mythological theology. god, or rather the divine, is far removed from human suffering and passion. god is ‘beyond suffering’; he cannot suffer. he cannot be subject to another’s power. god is pure reason and absolutely sovereign. he is apathes (not suffering). any human curtailment of god was unthinkable.”200 given such an anti-mythological starting point in the greek philosophical tradition, it is not at all surprising that the Christian doctrine of incarnation would have been considered foolishness to the philosophically cultured classes of greco-Roman society. The idea of a deity who becomes a human being and experiences all forms of suffering including actual birth, hunger, thirst, tears, and even death by execution was scandalous to the greek philosophical understanding of the word theol199. Skarsaune, Incarnation, 15–21. 200. ibid., 16.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism ogy (coined by Plato).201 Celsus’ attack on Christianity (ca. 170 Ce) well demonstrates the point: god is good and beautiful and happy, and exists in the most beautiful state. if then he comes down to men, he must undergo change, a change from good to bad, from beautiful to shameful, from happiness to misfortune, and from what is best to what is most wicked. Who would choose a change like this? it is the nature only of mortal being to undergo change and remolding, whereas it is the nature of an immortal being to remain the same without alternation. accordingly, god could not be capable of undergoing this change.202

What all this evidence clearly indicates is the fact that, historically, Christology could not have originated, in the first instance, from the post-easter attempts of the disciples to derive an adequate description of Jesus from greek and Roman myths, the theological constructions of St. Paul, or the metaphysical language of greek philosophy. to be sure, these factors inevitably contributed in varying degrees to influence the shaping of the doctrine of Jesus’ deity. however, as i have argued, none of these descriptions adequately explains the sudden emergence of the church’s belief in the deity of Jesus Christ. Therefore, rather than looking to the cultural and philosophical environments of the hellenistic and the Roman world, we must look instead in an entirely different place—to Jesus himself and his resurrection. Contrary to hick, the origin of Christology must now be recognized as being firmly rooted, first, in the earthly Jesus’ own claims of divine messianic authority as reflected in his teachings and actions, and, secondly, in the disciples’ certainty that god had raised his crucified messiah Jesus. it is from these two pivotal pillars that the doctrine of Christ’s divinity emerged and further developed, out of inner necessity, in interaction with the contextual factors that hick describes. Therefore, contrary to hick, the church’s belief in Jesus’ divinity arose not because of “mythological” or “philosophical” pressures in subsequent cultural environments, but mainly from the “theological” pressures that lay inherent in Jesus’ own implicit claims that were unleashed through the resurrection. 201. ibid., 131. 202. From origen’s polemic against Celsus, Contra Celsum 4.14, quoted in Skarsaune, Incarnation, 18.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Historical Arguments as martin hengel therefore observes, “indeed, one might even ask whether the formation of doctrine in the early church was essentially more than a consistent development and completion of what had already been unfolded in the primal event of the first two decades, but in the language and thought-forms of greek, which was its necessary setting.”203 in this sense, the historical emergence of Christology is best characterized by what C. F. D. moule has described as the “developmental” model rather than a sort of “evolutionary” process that hick seems to espouse. Such a developmental model explains all the various estimates of Jesus reflected in the New testament as, in essence, only attempts to describe what was already there from the beginning. They are not successive additions of something new, but only the drawing out and articulating of what is there. They represent various stages in the development of perception, but they do not represent the accretion of any alien factors that were not inherent from the beginning; they are analogous not so much to the emergence of a new species, as to the unfolding (if you like) of flower from bud and the growth of fruit from flower.204

203. hengel, Son of God, 4. 204. moule, Origins of Christology, 2–3. in contrast to the developmental model, the evolutionary model is characterized by “the tendency to explain the change from (say) invoking Jesus as a revered master to the acclamation of him as a divine lord by the theory that, when the Christian movement spread beyond Palestinian soil, it began to come under the influence of non-Semitic Saviour-cults and to assimilate some of their ideas; and also by appeal to the effect of lapse of time, which may itself lead to the intensification of terms of adoration.” ibid., 2. hick’s explanations clearly fit the evolutionary model.

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5 an evaluation of hick’s Conceptual arguments

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aving examined hick’s thesis that Jesus never claimed to be divine but that this momentous doctrine was the creation of the church subsequent to his death, my next task is to assess his other important thesis, which i am here calling his “conceptual argument.”1 This is the thesis that the belief in Jesus as god the Son incarnate, as articulated in the language of the two-natures Christology of Nicaea and Chalcedon, has proven to be incoherent and incapable of being explicated in any satisfactory way, and that, in fact, no adequate explanation has thus far been proposed. i shall examine this thesis in this chapter by evaluating whether hick succeeds in his arguments against such thinkers as Thomas morris and various kenotic theologians, especially Stephen Davis and Frank Weston, all of whom have attempted to defend and give meaning to the orthodox doctrine of the incarnation. according to Christianity’s orthodox definition of Christology as defined at the Council of Chalcedon, Jesus is described as: “one and the same Christ, Son, only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence [hypostasis], not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten god the Word, lord Jesus Christ.”2 1. Conceptual in the sense that hick argues the concept of the two natures is incoherent or illogical. 2. The definition of Chalcedon in Bettenson, Documents, 51–52.

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An Evaluation of Hick’s Conceptual Arguments The church’s affirmation that Jesus of Nazareth is fully divine and fully human is one of the most perplexing problems in Christian theology. This so-called “two-natures” Christology has been the subject of severe controversy and attacks throughout history, and continues to be debated to this day, hick being perhaps the most aggressive of the doctrine’s contemporary opponents. in the nineteenth century, Schleiermacher criticized the classical notion that two natures can coincide in a single individual, substituting instead the ideal of Jesus’ god-consciousness as sufficient to express what Christians call his “divinity.” according to Schleiermacher, “The Redeemer, then, is like all men in virtue of the identity of human nature, but distinguished from them all by the constant potency of his godconsciousness, which was a veritable existence of god in him.”3 adolf harnack also dismissed the traditional Christological dogma as part of the “heap of rubbish” in which real Christianity was later buried.4 For harnack, concerns of Christology arose within hellenistic culture, owing nothing to the teachings of Jesus Christ or to primitive Christianity in its original Palestinian context. Rudolf Bultmann, in the twentieth century, also rejected Chalcedon as presupposing supernatural realities outmoded by modern thought, contending that it merely objectified an existential affirmation. as my previous exposition of hick in chapter 3 clearly shows, hick would not be in disagreement, for the most part, with each of these views.5 in addition, hick’s claim is that even as metaphysical formulations in their own right, the two-natures Christologies based on Nicea and Chalcedon are incoherent since they have never been spelled out in an intelligible way. in the following, i shall evaluate the validity of hick’s criticisms of some of the contemporary theories he discusses that have

3. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, 385. 4. harnack, What is Christianity, 272. 5. of course, this is not to imply that there are no important differences between hick and these pivotal thinkers. For example, although hick freely admits that his own picture of Jesus falls within the tradition of “liberal” interpretation established by Schleiermacher and others, and that the most important fact about Jesus is his strong and continuous god-consciousness, hick would not, like Schleiermacher, attribute to Jesus an absolutely unbroken god-consciousness. unlike Schleiermacher, for whom Jesus is uniquely the one in whom god dwells, hick does not speak of that which is in principle unique.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism attempted to set forth a positive meaning to the Chalcedonian doctrine of two natures.

hiCK oN moRRiS let me begin with hick’s treatment of Thomas morris’ two-minds Christology, which i have already outlined in chapter three, that morris defends in two stages. The first stage is concerned with “the general logical possibility of a being having both ontologically higher and lower characteristics,” while the second stage “seeks to show more particularly that there is no reason why the distinctively divine and human characteristics should not coinhere in Jesus.”6 here, hick’s claim is not only that morris’ two-minds proposal fails as a positive explanation of the two-natures doctrine; it is also that, even as a general argument for the logical possibility of incarnation, morris’ explanation is as impossible as “square” and “circle” characterizing the same plane figure. interestingly, hick does not challenge the broadly aristotelian distinctions that morris makes between essential properties and accidental properties, as well as the notion of individual-essence and kind-essence. What hick does take issue with is morris’ distinction between having essential or “fully x” properties and having common or “merely x” properties as they relate to the idea of ontological hierarchy. Specifically, hick accuses morris of “assuming that if it is coherent to speak of progressively higher beings having lower characteristics, it must automatically be coherent to speak of progressively lower beings having higher characteristics.”7 By examining the logical possibility of the absurd idea of a man-crocodile (a humanly intelligent and spiritual creature sustained by a body of a crocodile), hick comes to the conclusion that “the incarnation of a higher kind as a lower kind would inevitably break the ordinary mould of the lower kind.”8 Thus, while it may be coherent for a higher being to have lower characteristics, hick does not believe that morris’ distinction between “merely x” and “fully x” allows for the logical possibility of lower beings exemplifying progressively higher characteristics.

6. hick, Disputed Questions, 58. 7. ibid., 61. 8. ibid., 64.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Conceptual Arguments in my opinion, hick’s critique of morris’ general logical argument is neither successful nor entirely fair to morris. While it is true that morris’ distinction between “merely x” and “fully x” speaks to the possibility of a higher-level being also having lower-level characteristics, it does not seem fair to assume, as hick does, that this distinction automatically entails the converse possibility of a lower-level being also exhibiting higher-level characteristics. a human being that is “fully” animal but not “merely” animal may exemplify properties characteristic of a lower-level animal (for example, the intelligence of a chimpanzee), but this does not automatically entail the converse possibility of a chimpanzee exemplifying the full intelligence of a human being. That is, the specific idea of the Son of god coming to have essential (“fully x”) human characteristics does not have to mean that, for morris, all lower-level beings must now exhibit higher-level characteristics, for that would indeed be absurd. morris’ point in using the distinction between “merely” and “fully” in regard to the incarnation is not in reference to just any higher-level beings incarnating into lower-level beings, as, for example, a man becoming a crocodile. Rather, it speaks to the logical possibility of a very specific claim that the unique Son of god, who is in himself infinite and eternal, became incarnate as a human being. Furthermore, crocodiles were not made in the image of human beings, but human beings were made in the image of god. although morris himself does not elaborate on this important point, the logical implications that follow from the differences between these two possibilities are enormous and profound. in hick’s thought experiment of a man becoming a crocodile, it is a matter of a finite class of being (a human) changing into a finite lower class of being (a crocodile). in the case of Christ’s incarnation, it is a matter of an infinite being (the Son of god) becoming a finite class of being (a human). as hick’s analogy of a man-crocodile correctly shows, the incarnation of a finite class of being changing into a lower class of being is empirically and causally impossible since such a possibility would inevitably break the ordinary mould of the lower kind and, for that matter, the higher kind as well. Thus, hick correctly observes the following concerning the impossibility of a human being changing into a crocodile: “it would require the crocodile to have a brain of the size and complexity found only at the human level of evolution; and since the brain is integral to the nervous

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism system as a whole, and this in turn to the entire bodily structure and circulatory and metabolic function, it would presumably not be possible for a crocodile body to sustain a distinctively human brain.”9 here we can agree with hick’s obvious but relevant observation that a (finite) being cannot totally and internally be related or be immanent in another (finite) being without either destroying the other (finite) being, or being itself destroyed by the other. however, while hick is correct to assume the logical impossibility of a (finite) being incarnating into another lower class of being, whether god as an infinite being can become incarnate in a finite being is an entirely different question. The infinity of god does not stand in a mere side-by-side relationship with human finitude, as if it has limits or boundaries in finitude; rather, god contains within god’s infinity all points of finitude in creation. it is for this precise reason that hick’s example of a man-crocodile is so misleading as an analogy of Christ’s incarnation. For morris is speaking of the incarnation of an infinite being that by definition has the ability to become immanent in a finite being. god’s infinite nature implies the ability to be immanent in finite creation while remaining present to god’s self as infinite and preserving the distinct identity of both god’s self and finite creation. Thus, it is neither entirely inconceivable nor logically impossible, as hick alleges, that an infinite god can choose to become incarnate in a human being while remaining infinite without breaking the ordinary mould of humanity.10 What definition of infinity is in view here? although the notion of infinity has been variously understood in the history of Christian thought, the concept expressed here is consistent with a particular shift in the fundamental theological category that developed in late modernity which began to displace previous notions of god as the first cause or immaterial substance.11 Fundamental to this shift was an increasing 9. ibid., 62. 10. of course, hick might say that it is easier for a human (finite) to become a crocodile (finite) then for god (infinite) to become a human, due to the qualitative distance between god and humans. But it is precisely god’s infinite quality that is able to overcome such distance, for finitude and infinitude do not stand in a mere side by side relationship. Rather, god’s infinite power entails the ability to become finite. While it is impossible for a finite being to incarnate into another finite being, regardless of how close their relationship (e.g. twins), it is possible for god to incarnate into a finite being, precisely because of god’s attribute of infinity. 11. For helpful summary of this shift in paradigm, see Stanley grenz, The Named

An Evaluation of Hick’s Conceptual Arguments distinction between mathematical and theological models of infinity.12 Whereas the former was often conceived of in quantitative terms as the collection or extension of limitless number of finite parts, the latter emphasized the qualitative and intensive character of the absolute that is transcendentally united, and therefore internally and inclusively related, to the finite. “true” infinity, which moves beyond the mathematical to the metaphysical, was distinguished from “spurious” infinity which mistakenly conceives of the relationship between finitude and infinity in mutually exclusive and external terms. Without doubt, it was the german philosopher george W. F. hegel whose articulation of “true” infinity has exercised the greatest influence on contemporary theology, even if in modified forms.13 For hegel, the infinite being contains the finite in its very being as the a priori, internal condition for the very existence of the finite. infinity is not “merely” the transcendent other, but internally related to the finite whose externality has been “sublated” (aufgehoben) by the infinite. as such, an infinite Creator cannot be thought of as something alongside of (neben) finite creation for to do so would be to treat both as two entities over against each other at the same ontological level.14 in that case, the infinite could no longer be considered true infinity because it has something external to itself which at the same time limits it from outside. an infinite that God and the Question of Being, 78–101; Wolfhart Pannenberg, Metaphysics & the Idea of God, 22–42; and leron Shults, Reforming the Doctrine of God, 14–40. Schults considers the late modern concept of infinity as one of the three central notions for reforming evangelical theology along with the trinitarian doctrine and eschatological ontology. 12. For contemporary discussion on the important distinction between mathematical and theological infinity, see leBlanc, “infinity in Theology and mathematics.” 13. For example, leron Schults identifies such theologians as Karl Barth, Colin gunton, Jürgen moltmann, among Reformed thinkers; Robert Jenson, eberhard Jüngel, Wolfhart Pannenberg, among lutheran theologians; Karl Rahner, John Zizioulas, Kathryn tanner, elizabeth Johnson, and gustavo gutierrez among ecumenical thinkers as those whose articulation of divine infinity is rooted in the late modern theological discourse that attempted to avoid the problem of a spurious infinity in favor of “true infinity.” Schults, Reforming the Doctrine of God, 97–132. 14. according to hegel, “Dualism, in putting an insuperable opposition between finite and infinite, fails to note the simple circumstances that the finite is thereby only one of the two, and is reduced to a particular, to which the finite forms the other particular. Such an infinite, which makes for a particular, is co-terminus with the finite which makes for it a limit and a barrier: it is not what it ought to be, that is, the infinite, but is only finite.” The Logic of Hegel, sec. 95.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism is merely external to and “beyond” the finite is a “spurious” infinite because it is limited by the finite. if god is truly infinite, furthermore, nothing could remain external to the creative causality of god that limits and conditions from outside. The true infinite has the power to create and establish the finite in its entirety by allowing it an internal relation to the infinite. This internal unity is not an empirical one, as in the case of unity of one finite being and another, but a transcendental unity. a finite being cannot be entirely and internally related to or immanent in another finite being without either destroying it or being itself destroyed by it. Finite relations are always externally circumscribed by the material immediacy of other entities, occurrences, and contingencies outside of one’s power. in contrast, it is the prerogative of the infinite to be able to posit the finite as other, be present to it in its totality, and still preserve it as other than itself. as the positing source of all reality, god is not subject to any unsublated otherness.15 Since god is Spirit, the relation of infinite and finite is not only internal but also spiritual. at the level of physical immediacy, the only possible relationship between two physical entities is that of external juxtaposition and opposition. immanence at this level necessarily entails the loss of self-identity and self-destruction. at the level of spirit, whose property it is to be in the other while remaining present to the self, the distinct identity of each is preserved and internally sublated. Thus spiritual immanence is the only way to maintain both the integrity and intelligibility of the finite world and infinite god.16 incarnation is possible only because of the nature of god as Spirit. hick is surely correct that humans cannot become crocodiles because both humans and crocodiles depend on physical brains of certain sorts which are not mutually interchangeable. But god as Spirit does not require any material substrate such as a human brain to support a divine mind making hick’s human-crocodile analogy irrelevant. given the logic of “true” theological infinity that is increasingly displacing mathematical ideas of infinitude among theologians, hick’s critique that a metaphysical incarnation is logically impossible even as 15. For an excellent summary of hegel’s view of the inner relationship between the infinite and the finite, see min, “hegel’s absolute,” 68–76; and “The trinity and the incarnation,” 174–78. 16. min, “hegel on the Foundation of Religion,” 96.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Conceptual Arguments a square circle is logically incoherent misses the mark.17 hick is surely correct that even an omnipotent god cannot do what is logically impossible, but why assume that incarnation is logically impossible for an infinite Creator of the universe? What definition of infinity is he working with? Sadly, hick seems to be hopelessly in the grips of “spurious” if not mathematical understanding which holds to the opposition of finite and infinite as something fixed and absolute making incarnation seem logically absurd and unintelligible. While hick’s objections are relevant with regard to the possibility of incarnation among finite class of beings, he has failed to demonstrate the logical impossibility of the incarnation of an infinite god. if hick is unsuccessful in his attempts to discredit morris’ argument for the general logical possibility of incarnation, his specific criticisms against morris’ two-minds proposal seems much more convincing. to begin with, hick is absolutely correct that morris’ two-minds model is excessively preoccupied with only the cognitive relationship between the divine and the human mind of Jesus, neglecting other important faculties, including those of emotion and volition. Since human beings, as well as the divinity of god, are much more than a mere complex of cognitive propositions and activities, hick seems accurate in his assessment that the two-minds model is somewhat simplistic and one-dimensional. hick also seems correct that when the volitional dimension is introduced into the two minds theory, the unity of the relationship between the two wills become problematic, since the human freedom of Jesus, including the freedom to sin, becomes seriously undermined. morris argues with great ingenuity that being tempted does not require the metaphysical possibility of sinning but only epistemic possibility of thinking that one has a choice.18 That is, according to morris, a person could be tempted to perform an act even if it were not possible, so far as she believed it to be possible.19 But as hick correctly points out, 17. in this regard, C. Stephen evans has pointed out that “hick does not provide any argument for the accusation, and he has in fact recently retreated from the claim that the doctrine of the incarnation is logically incoherent, in favour of the weaker charge that no one has successfully stated a coherent version of the doctrine that is also religiously satisfying.” The Historical Christ & The Jesus of Faith, 121. 18. morris, Logic, 146–53. 19. Thus, morris writes, “on reflection, we can see that it is the epistemic possibility of sinning rather than a broadly logical, or metaphysical, or even physical possibility that is conceptually linked to temptation.” ibid., 147.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism “This is certainly a very strange kind of freedom, depending as it does upon ignorance. it seems that in morris’ sense i am free to do anything that i cannot do but think that i can do.”20 What is, of course, being correctly implied by hick’s criticism is an alternative view that true freedom consists of more than an epistemic possibility to do what one chooses; it must also entail the power to do otherwise. if, for example, mr. Jones enters a room without knowledge that the only door available automatically locks, and not knowing that he cannot leave the room he decides to stay rather than to leave, does that constitute a genuine act of freedom as morris alleges? likewise, if mr. Jones has electrodes implanted in his brain that will prevent his deciding or attempting to leave the room, can such freedom be said to be genuine just because he decides not to leave and therefore the electrodes are never activated? in either case the answer must be negative, for common sense tells us that genuine freedom must consist of more than simply what one in the end chooses to do, it must necessarily entail that it is in one’s power to do otherwise if one so chooses. if mr. Jones became bored, for example, or for whatever other reasons decided to leave the room, does he now have the genuine freedom to carry out his wishes under morris’ analogy? No, since the only door is automatically locked. or if every time that mr. Jones had the beginning of an intention to leave the room the electrodes were activated thereby preventing mr. Jones from deciding or attempting to leave the room, this too would not constitute genuine freedom since there is obviously a lack of any personal freedom of intention. So both externally and internally, it seems that mr. Jones is not free to leave the room. Similarly, if, in morris’ theory, Jesus’ human mind does not have the ability to decide contrary to the divine mind, how can Jesus be held responsible as a man for his decisions, including resisting temptations, if he could not have any choice to do otherwise? if it were never in the power of Jesus as a man to succumb to temptation because the divinity of Christ will not allow it, either internally or externally, then nothing Jesus did as a human being was done freely. if so, it would seem that the two-minds theory ultimately fails to do full justice not only to the substantial unity of the two minds and wills, but also to the genuine humanity of Jesus Christ. Despite the admirable boldness, philosophical sophistication, and beautiful clarity with which morris presents his two20. Metaphor, 57.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Conceptual Arguments minds position, it seems that, at least in the sense that i have just argued, hick is justified in his critique of morris’ proposal.

hiCK oN KeNotiC theoRieS if morris is ultimately unsuccessful in articulating a positive and logically satisfying meaning of the two-natures doctrine, what about the various kenotic theories that hick also criticizes? While not all versions of the kenotic theory have been successful, i want to argue in this section and the next that at least a few of them have shown to be quite meaningful. to help our task of evaluating hick’s criticism of kenotic theories, it may be helpful to identify at least three of the many different ways in which the idea of kenosis has been ordinarily understood.21 The first way that theologians often use the term is simply as a matter of “concealing” or “veiling” the divine glory or attributes. in this view, Jesus always and fully shared in the divine attributes in his earthly life since the incarnation in no way limited their exercise. That is, all of the divine attributes (including omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence) were always actual and fully present in Jesus since they were infused into his human nature.22 however, the sense in which the notion of kenosis can be applied to this view is in the fact that Jesus systematically refrained from using the divine attributes or used them only in secret. This was roughly the view of the lutheran theologian John Brentz (1499–1570) and the Cryptists from tübingen, whose views were subsequently rejected in favor of the giessen theologians at the Saxon Declaration of 1624.23 Quite correctly, hick also rejects this view as failing to do justice to the true humanity of Jesus: For an omnipotent Jesus who consciously refrained from using his limitless power, and who was omniscient but pretended to human ignorance, would scarcely count as a fellow being. he might be declared by stipulative definition to be so; but from an ordinary point of view he would be a superhuman being. The 21. For a more detailed treatment of the variety of ways that kenosis has been understood throughout history, see Dawe’s excellent book, The Form of a Servant. 22. This idea is normally related to the lutheran understanding of the communicatio idiomatum, according to which the divine nature gives to the human nature of Jesus full participation in its attributes through a direct exchange of properties. This view is to be distinguished from the Reformed view that normally sees the transfer of attributes to the person, and not directly to the natures themselves. 23. See Dawe, 73–77.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism fears and anxieties to which we are subject, the temptations that afflict us, and mystery of death that faces us, would all be unreal to him, so that he would live in a different world of meaning from we ordinary mortals. it would be impossible to see in him the perfection of our common human natures, towards which we should strive as his disciples.24

The second way in which the idea of kenosis is often understood is as a literal concept describing a self-emptying, on the part of Jesus of those divine attributes that are inconsistent with true humanity. in this view, kenosis is understood not simply as a hiding or veiling of the divine attributes, as in the first view, but as an actual renunciation of some aspect or mode of being of the logos.25 according to gottfried Thomasius, Christ retained the immanent attributes that belong to god’s absolute nature (e.g., truth, love, holiness) while giving up the relative attributes pertaining to god’s relation to the world (e.g., omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience). While the logos gave up possession of the relative attributes, the immanent attributes were retained in Christ since they were thought to be capable of expression in and through a human personality without vitiating the reality of human nature. in this sense, the kenotic theory of Stephen Davis seems to share some similarities with Thomasius’ theory in that both agree that during Jesus’ life on earth, the logos divested itself of those properties that are inconsistent with being truly human. like Thomasius, Davis believes that Jesus retained the essential (necessary) properties of god while divesting the accidental (contingent) properties in the incarnation. however, we should also keep in mind the important differences between these two thinkers. unlike Thomasius, Davis is not bound by the distinction between immanent (moral) and relative (physical) attributes as the decisive category that distinguishes god’s essential and accidental properties. For Davis, we simply do not know enough about the attributes of divinity and humanity in general to be able to decide with certainty what properties are essential and accidental to being god and being human. Nevertheless, according to Davis: “One of the things that 24. hick, Metaphor, 62. 25. The most radical expression of this view was undoubtedly that of Wolfgang Friedrich gess (1819–91), for whom the logos had completely renounced the whole of his divine nature so that Jesus Christ ceased to be god in order that he may gradually find himself again as god in the developing self-consciousness. This view is obviously opened to the criticism that the deity of Jesus Christ is made incomprehensible.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Conceptual Arguments would surely have to happen would be that god would have to give up whatever divine properties (accidental ones of course; the essential ones cannot be given up if god is to remain god) are inconsistent with being human. it would also entail god’s not assuming whatever accidental human properties are inconsistent with being divine.”26 hick has challenged the kenotic views of Thomasius and Davis on the ground that the unlimited fullness of any of god’s divine attributes is incompatible with the earthly human limitations of Jesus. as an authentic human being, according to hick, Jesus’ earthly goodness and love could only be a limited reflection of the infinite divine goodness and love, and never absolute or unlimited: “For what is distinctively divine about god’s moral attributes is their infinity or unlimitedness. human beings can be good, loving, wise, just, merciful; but only god is infinitely so. Thus, for god’s moral qualities to become fully embodied in a human being, that human being would have to possess those qualities to the unlimited divine extent. The characteristics of a finite human person can only be finite.”27 however, hick makes a basic assumption in this passage that must be questioned. That is, is it really true that “what is distinctively divine about god’s moral attributes is their infinity or unlimitedness”? This idea must be probed for greater clarity. Now, it is certainly true that Christians have traditionally maintained the doctrine that god is infinite and eternal in his essence or being, but is this necessarily the same as affirming that all of god’s divine attributes must also be infinite and unlimited?28 This does not always seem to be the case. of course, insofar as god’s attributes are inseparable from the being of god, and do not have any objective and independent existence apart from their presence in the One being as their source and ground of unity, we may 26. Davis, Encountering Jesus, 52. 27. hick, Metaphor, 76. 28. according to henry C. Thiessen, “essence” is defined as “that which underlies all outward manifestation; the reality itself, whether material or immaterial; the substratum of anything; that in which the qualities or attributes inhere . . . if there were not essence or substance, there could be no attributes.” on the other hand, the attributes of god are “the qualities that inhere in the substance and constitute an analytical and closer description of it . . . They are to be thought of as . . . descriptions of the particular ways in which the divine essence exists and operates and not as denoting distinct parts of god. The attributes are the differentia of the genus essence or substance.” Thiessen, Introductory Lectures, 119, 123 (emphasis original).

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism speak of these attributes as being infinite and unlimited. however, insofar as these attributes designate the various effects that god produces in relation to the created world, as the manner in which finite beings meet the infinite Being as facing us, it may not necessarily be appropriate, as hick seems to think, to speak of the divine attributes as being infinite and unlimited.29 The very fact that god possesses a plurality of attributes means that, while all of these attributes may form a perfect and unlimited harmony in the unity of the godhead, at least some of these attributes may place limitations on others in relation to the world, especially given the freedom granted to creatures and the general sinfulness of the human condition. For example, Christians believe that god is omnipotent in the sense of being infinite and unlimited in strength, energy, or might. That is, god is the ground and source of such unlimited power. This does not mean, however, that there are absolutely no limitations imposed on god’s power in relation to the created world. Certain aspects of god’s moral character, such as his qualities of truth, love, and holiness, also constrain god’s infinite power in relation to creatures. Thus, while god can do everything, god will not lie, be tempted by evil, or sin. Similar patterns of limitation can also be discerned with respect to god’s moral attributes. While god is the infinite source of goodness, love, and mercy, god’s attributes of holiness and justice impose certain constraints on god’s ability to express the former qualities without limits. Thus, Scripture witnesses not only to god’s everlasting love, goodness, and mercy towards humanity; in many places it also attests to god’s righteous wrath and judgment, even everlasting punishment, towards sinful creatures. if it is indeed true, however, that god’s attributes are not always infinite and unlimited as they are manifested in relation to the finite world, it is not necessary, as hick seems to believe, that a divinely incarnate being must manifest each of the essential divine attributes to an unlimited degree while on earth. That Jesus, as god the Son, retained the essential moral attributes of truth, love, and holiness does not necessitate, under Thomasius and Davis’ theory of kenosis, an infinite and unlimited 29. here we are trying to avoid two extreme tendencies in the Christian thought— that of conceptualizing the divine attributes as having independent and separate existence apart from god, and that of taking them to be simply relational concepts arising out of our own subjective experience of god’s relation to the world.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Conceptual Arguments actualization of each of these attributes during the earthly life of Jesus. Rather than speaking in terms of the absolute and boundless quantum, what is required is that Jesus possessed these essential moral attributes in such a manner as to be qualitatively free from limitations or defects. i believe, therefore, that Stephen Davis is correct when he points out that, “Jesus was clearly not infinitely good. There were lots of good deeds as far as we know he never bothered to perform, e.g., healing all the sick people of Jericho, feeding all the hungry of egypt, preaching his message to the needy of tibet. That is why i am much more inclined to say that Jesus was perfectly morally good, which the New testament interprets in terms of sinlessness (see heb. 4:15).”30 in light of such an understanding, the interpretation that hick imposes on the gospel passages that he cites as demonstrating moral “blemishes” in the life of Jesus must be seen as taken out of context and ought to be interpreted in a radically different light. For example, when Jesus is reported as saying to the rich young ruler, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but god alone” (mark 10:18), Jesus was not denying his own goodness or posing the question of his own sinlessness, but directing attention to the fact that god alone is the source and norm of essential goodness and the giver of eternal life.31 Furthermore, it is important to observe that this young man was seemingly perfect according to the highest moral standards of the Jewish religion (vv. 19–20), and as far as Jesus was concerned, he was deficient in only one area—his love for riches (v. 21a). The fact, however, that Jesus commanded this young man to give his riches away and “come, follow me” (v. 21b) implies an incredible Christological claim that, in contrast to the rich young man who was perfect except for one thing, Jesus himself is morally complete and perfectly sinless. otherwise, by what moral authority can Jesus command such a “good” person? Thus, quite contrary to hick’s interpretation, Jesus is indirectly claiming that his own goodness is not that of a mere “teacher” of the law, a relative moral goodness, but that of the one who is able to give eternal life. another fundamental criticism that hick makes toward Davis’ view of kenosis (which is also applicable to Thomasius’ view) is the charge that too high of a price must be paid for making the type of conceptual move necessary for divine incarnation. according to hick, “The danger 30. Davis, Encountering Jesus, 75. 31. lane, Mark, 365.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism here is that in adjusting the concept of god to make divine incarnation possible one may jettison aspects of the concepts that are religiously essential.”32 in making conceptual space for divine incarnation, hick’s criticism is that Davis has had to reject not only such metaphysical attributes as omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, but also such a property as aseity, which has been part of the traditional Christian understanding of god. Davis disagrees with this assessment, however. Rejecting hick’s fundamental assumption that the traditional understanding of god involves any claim that omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence were essential (necessary) properties of god, Davis insists that the traditional view is simply that god possesses these attributes without further question as to whether they were essential or contingent properties. in Davis’ opinion, his own view does not depart from the traditional understanding of god since it fully affirms that the attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence simpliciter are properties of god, although he doubts that they are essential properties.33 however, Davis has also suggested that omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence may in some sense be essential properties of god. Davis maintains that “a coherent kenotic theory of incarnation will doubtless hold that what is necessary to god is not, for example, omniscience, but the more complex property of being omniscient-unless-freely-and-temporarilychoosing-to-be-otherwise. The same point will then be made with such other divine properties as omnipotence, omnipresence, etc.”34 For Davis, then, it is not omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence simpliciter that are the essential properties of god, but the compound properties of being omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent-unless-freely-and-temporarily-choosing-to-be-otherwise that are essential. Thus, in the incarnation, god the Son voluntarily ceased to have the contingent properties of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence simpliciter but did not cease to be divine since he never ceased to possess the essential divine properties of omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence as qualified by kenotic limitation possibilities. as even hick seems to agree, such a move is indeed a most sophisticated form of kenotic theory that seems to avoid what morris has described as “a 32. hick, Metaphor, 73. 33. Davis, Logic, 126. 34. Davis, Kendall, and o’Collins, The Trinity, 262.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Conceptual Arguments patent artificiality of trying to introduce a new analysis of such traditionally recognized divine attributes as omniscience and omnipotence.”35 moreover, according to Davis, once we are willing to recognize that “some things are going to be true of the logos-as-kenotically-incarnate that are not true of the logos-as-not-kenotically-incarnate, or as notyet-kenotically-incarnate, e.g., having a human body,”36 then the problem of divine aseity also disappears. That is, “god, as non-kenotically incarnate, possessed aseity; god, as kenotically incarnate for some thirty years, did not possess aseity.”37

hiCK oN WeStoN Besides the above two concepts of kenosis understood as concealment and as the abandonment of certain divine attributes, there is a third sense in which some theologians often employ the idea. instead of understanding Christ’s self-giving as a matter of abandoning, renouncing, or being divested any of the attributes of deity, this third view conceives of kenosis as Christ’s voluntary limitation, or self-restraint, of the full exercise of divine attributes within the incarnate sphere. a gerald hawthorne says, “None of the attributes of god are accidental qualities that can be put off or put on as one would put on or off a garment of some kind. They belong to the very nature of deity, so that divested of them one can justly say that god is not god.”38 While this view differs from the first type in that not all of the divine attributes are in the state of actuality in Jesus, but remain either potential or latent, it also differentiates itself from the second type in that the incarnate Christ always retains the full possession of all of the divine attributes. typically, those who adhere to this third type are often quite critical of the earlier two versions of kenosis, while some do not even consider their own view as kenotic. The Christology of Frank Weston seems to belong to this general type, but

35. morris, Logic, 100. Concerning this approach, hick says, “it is certainly sophisticated . . . indeed this version of kenoticism, which is as theologically unattractive as it is philosophically ingenious, illustrates again the fact that it is always possible to save a particular element within a larger theological complex by making appropriate adjustments at some other point.” hick, Metaphor, 75. 36. Davis, Kendall, and o’Collins, The Trinity, 264. 37. ibid. 38. hawthorne, The Presence & the Power, 211.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism there are also many other variations of this view as represented by such thinkers as P. t. Forsyth, gerald hawthorne, and millard erickson.39 in an important respect, Weston’s view differs from both the Cryptists and the kenotic theories of Thomasius and Davis, and is unique even among the kenoticists mentioned as belonging to the third type. in line with the lutheran doctrine emphasizing “Deus est homo et homo est Deus; totus homo est Deus,” it is quite common, given the lutheran origin of the modern kenosis doctrine, for most kenoticists to adhere to the idea that the whole of the logos was totally present in Jesus of Nazareth.40 in such a view, the logos is usually pictured as having left the heavenly abode to become and to dwell as a human being on earth, such that apart from Jesus of Nazareth, the logos no longer existed or operated in heaven. Weston’s Christological views, however, have closer affinities to the Reformed emphasis, Finitum non capax infiniti and the so-called “extra Calvinisticum” doctrine, the idea that the finite cannot contain the infinite and that after the incarnation, the eternal Son had an existence etiam extra carnem.41 accordingly, Weston distinguishes between two “spheres” in which the same logos acts as incarnate and discarnate. in the domain of universal relationships, the logos is said to be unbounded, “possessed of all divine powers, prerogatives, and attributes,” but in the terrain of the incarnation, the divine agency is circumscribed to the extent that the logos wills to be restrained by the boundaries of humanity that he assumes. While starting from the god-centered, “alexandrine” position, Weston’s Christology also attempts to preserve the best of the “antiochene” tradition. For Weston, “The person who became incarnate is purely divine” and “possessed of all divine powers, prerogatives, and attributes.”42 The incarnation of Christ “in no way interferes with his true 39. See Forsyth, The Person and Place; Farrer, “Very god and Very man”; hebblethwaite, The Incarnation; erickson, The Word Became Flesh. 40. historically, this view is associated with the distinctively lutheran understanding of the eucharist and communicatio idiomatum understood as genus majestaticum, i.e. the idea that those things which are predicated of the eternal deity may and must also be ascribed to the human nature. 41. according to e. David Willis, the polemical term “extra Calvinisticum” is somewhat misleading since it is not an exclusive mark distinguishing the Christology of Calvin from the remarkably broad number of other Catholic Christologies. See his book, Calvin’s Catholic Christology. 42. Weston, The One Christ, 149.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Conceptual Arguments life in the eternal godhead, or hinders him from his divine activities in the universe.”43 unlike many of the kenoticists, furthermore, Christ’s incarnation did not “involve him in the absolute abandonment of any one of the attributes of his divinity. Whatever of self-limitation is required, he always remains in possession of his powers, recognizing a law of restraint where restraint is necessary.”44 Consistent with the alexandrine emphasis, Weston maintained that, in the incarnation, Christ “did not take manhood, in the sense that he associated with himself one human person” but “took human flesh which, with its own proper and complete soul, he constituted in himself so that he became truly man, living as the subject or ego of real manhood.”45 at the same time, in line with the antiochene School, Weston also upheld the full reality of Christ’s humanity. according to Weston, “he Who is god, possessing all the attributes of god, lives entirely and utterly under conditions of manhood. apart from his manhood he has no existence as incarnate, although all the while he lives and reigns in the eternal sphere as the unlimited Word of the Father.”46 indeed, it was Weston’s criticism against the Cyrilline School that they not only belittled the authenticity of Jesus’ human affliction, passion, and mortality; they were incapable of explicating Christ’s growth in knowledge and learning. For Weston, on the other hand, Christ’s humanity “is in all points like our own except in the matter of sin . . . having the same natural weaknesses and limitations that hinder us.”47 Furthermore, the scope of the self-limitation under which the incarnate Christ lived varied at different points of his human development, and was dependent upon the increasing measure of Christ’s humanity to assume, appropriate, and personify divine capacities.48 43. ibid. 44. ibid., 150. 45. ibid., 150–51. 46. ibid., 325. 47. ibid., 151–52. 48. Weston states, “it would appear that the measure of his self-restraint was not one and the same at every period of his development. it varied as the capacity of his manhood varied. as his human soul grew and developed, so did its capacity widen, and the degree of his self-restraint was always determined by the state of his human soul; it was never arbitrary. For the act of self-sacrifice lies in his determination to possess himself and his powers within the conditions of manhood, and to allow the needs and the capacity of his manhood to determine at every moment the limits of his

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism as for hick, the central criticism that he has against Weston’s theory of kenosis is in regard to the relation between the heavenly logos and the incarnate logos. according to hick, “The problem that confronts Weston, and with which he was honest and clear-sighted enough to struggle, is how the self of Jesus could be the eternal, omniscient, omnipotent self of the second person of the trinity and simultaneously the self of a time-bound, normally ignorant and weak human being.”49 hick further asks, “how can the one undivided divine self be at once unlimited (in heaven) and limited (on earth)?”50 For hick, apparently, Weston’s position is obviously incoherent. it is not entirely clear, however, exactly why hick thinks that the simultaneous existence of the logos in the incarnate and discarnate spheres is incoherent given the traditional Judeo-Christian concept of god as infinite and omnipotent. Perhaps what hick finds objectionable is the notion of simultaneity, the idea that the eternal logos can exist in heaven and be on earth as a finite human being, at the same time. or perhaps what hick finds questionable pertains to the notion that an eternal, omnipotent, and omniscient being can become a time-bound, normally ignorant, and weak human being without ceasing to be divine. more likely, hick may simply be against the idea of a single divine self that is simultaneously unlimited in heaven but limited on earth, the former willing the limitation of the latter. in hick’s own words, “how then can the self of the earthly Jesus be identical with the heavenly self that is simultaneously willing his (Jesus’) own limitations of consciousness?”51 in the following, then, it would seem appropriate to briefly examine each of these possible objections. The first issue is whether the same divine self can exist in heaven and on earth, or in two or more different places, at the same time. of course, when speaking of finite things, it is obviously true that an object that is in one place cannot simultaneously be in another place. all finite objects have specific locations that necessarily prevent their being somewhere else. however, Christians have traditionally affirmed the doctrine freedom. Thus, the incarnate state is one of progress at every moment; beginning with the life of the unborn child and looking for its consummation to the day when he shall mediate to his mystical body the beatific vision of the godhead.” ibid., 153–54. 49. hick, Metaphor, 66. 50. ibid., 69. 51. ibid.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Conceptual Arguments that god is not finite but infinite. This doctrine has had two important implications in relation to the created world. on the one hand, god’s infinity implies that god is transcendent over the world and is immeasurable, that is, surpassing all limitations of space and time. god is infinite in relation to spatial and temporal categories such that god cannot be contained in any measurable frame or extension. as augustus Strong says, “god is not in space . . . space is in god . . . With creation, space began to be.”52 and as h. orton Wiley says, “as time is born out of eternity, so space is born out of immensity.”53 as a corollary, this also means that heaven, as a metaphorical concept describing the place where god dwells, cannot be confined to our spatial dimensions either. on the other hand, god’s infinity also expresses god’s immanence and omnipresence in the world, the active filling of every mathematical point of space with his whole being. That is, god does not stand in a mere side-by-side relationship with finitude but contains all points of finitude. indeed, god’s omnipresence affirms the truth that god is more profoundly and intimately interior to everything than anything else. Thus, it is often said that while god is not anywhere, god is everywhere. Furthermore, neither is god diffused through space as if one part of god’s being is present in one place while another part is somewhere else. Rather, the doctrine of immensity and omnipresence affirms that god both transcends space and fills every part of it with god’s whole being. accordingly, while it may not be possible for mere finite beings to exist in heaven and on earth, or in two or more different places at the same time, it is certainly conceivable that, given the church’s traditional doctrine of immensity and omnipresence, the eternal logos can wholly exist in heaven and on earth simultaneously. to be sure, the presence of the logos in Jesus Christ is unique and different from the general omnipresence of the logos in rocks, trees, animals, and even other human beings. according to the teachings of the church, the presence of the logos in Jesus of Nazareth was not merely a general, spiritual presence; the very divinity of godhead was fully present in the humanity of Jesus in the hypostatic union of the one divine person. The presence of god in Jesus was not identical with either the logos’ presence in the world generally, as in creation, or the universal presence of the holy Spirit in believers. The logos personally assumed 52. Strong, Systematic Theology, 1:279. 53. Wiley, Christian Theology, 1:339.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism humanity such that the very divine essence was hypostatically present in Jesus and was numerically identical with the divine nature possessed by the Father. Christ was truly divine (“consubstantial with the Father”) and truly human (“consubstantial with us”) in the unity of the divine person of the logos. another issue is whether it is possible for an eternal, omnipotent, and omniscient god to limit his omnipotence, and omniscience without ceasing to be divine? For as Weston emphasizes, “in every moment of the incarnate’s life we are bound to acknowledge that where he is there is the divine Nature, with all powers and activities that are ascribed to it.”54 here, it is important to emphasize once again that, for Weston, attributes such as omniscience and omnipotence are essential properties without which god cannot be god. as Weston says, “Whatever of self-limitation is required, he always remains in possession of his powers, recognizing a law of restraint where restraint is necessary.”55 The question then is whether it is possible, as Weston believes, that in the incarnation the logos could fully retain his omniscience and omnipotence, but be selfrestrained by the added conditions that human nature imposes. here the answer must be affirmative, for as augustus Strong reminds us, “omnipotence in god does not exclude, but implies, the power of self-limitation.”56 and as Karl Barth has also pointed out, “For god it is just as natural to be lowly as to be high.”57 in other words, the self-restraint of the logos in Jesus of Nazareth is not a vitiation of omnipotence or omniscience in any way but, instead, an expression of god’s power, rather than a lack of power. as P. t. Forsyth has so forcefully articulated, god’s highest power is his ability to accept the limitation of a human life and yet not become unlike himself. in other words, god’s ability to accept freely and fully the limitations of human life is precisely the highest evidence of Christ’s divinity. as Forsyth says: it is a most Divine thing that the eternal Christ should consent to be weak, ignorant, short-lived. it should not come between us and the faith of his divinity at all, when we read true greatness, true godhead, right. So we have the principle that limitation is a power of godhead, not a curtailment of it. among the infinite 54. Weston, The One Christ, 13. 55. ibid., 150. 56. Strong, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, 287. 57. Barth, Church Dogmatics, iV/1, 82.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Conceptual Arguments powers of the omnipotent must be the power to limit himself, and among his glories the grace to bend and die. incarnation is not impossible to the infinite; it is necessary. if he could not become incarnate his infinitude would be partial and limited. it would not be complete. it would be limited by human nature in the sense of not being able to enter it, of being stopped at its gates. god would be curtailed to the extent of his creation. and that would be a more fatal limitation to his power than any he could suffer from being in it. . . . The power to limit himself into man is an essential part of his infinite power. Without it he could not create. and creation is the beginning of incarnation. it is god’s self-concentration. limitation or concentration is one of the surest signs of power.58

Does the same hold true also for omniscience as it does for omnipotence? is it also possible, as Weston believes, for the eternal logos to fully retain his attribute of omniscience while being self-limited by the human nature that he assumes? at this point an objection could be raised based on an important difference between the attributes of omniscience and omnipotence. For since omnipotence is, by definition, the potency to do x, y, z, rather than its actuality, it may make perfect sense, as both Barth and Forsyth have argued, to conceive of the ability to limit omnipotence as being its greater expression. Divine omnipotence entails the potency to do x, y, z, without god necessarily and actually doing them. in contrast, omniscience does not entail the potency to know x, y, z—it necessarily and actually is to know everything.59 Thus, while it may conceivably be possible to limit omnipotence while remaining omnipotent, how would it be possible for god to limit omniscience while remaining omniscient? The above question does not, however, pose a particularly serious problem for Weston as it did for other Kenoticists, who tended to think of kenosis as either self-abandonment or self-reduction of divine attributes. For many of these thinkers, the incarnation involved the abdication of certain divine attributes, particularly omniscience, such that the logos was either depotentiated or self-reduced in the incarnate sphere without the external reference to the logos extra carnem.60 Since they usually 58. Forsyth, God the Holy Father, 33. 59. i am indebted to my editor Robin Parry for pointing out this important difference. 60. This idea that the eternal logos existed also beyond the flesh of the incarnated

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism conceived of the eternal logos as having left the heavenly abode, and as being restricted to the flesh after the incarnation, they tended to think of divine omniscience and its limitation as simultaneously co-existing in the incarnate logos.61 Within this frame of reference, the notion that a single being was simultaneously unlimited and limited in omniscience does seem to pose a serious problem since the incarnate logos was seen as possessing omniscience in the incarnate sphere while simultaneously self-limiting it in the same sphere. it is important to see that, for Weston, the logos as one and the same person always stood in two sets of relations during the entire period of the incarnation.62 in the universal sphere, the Word never ceased for a moment from his activity of upholding the universal creative relationships in full possession and exercise of all of his divine attributes. Within the sphere of incarnate relations, on the other hand, the logos lived under the law of self-restraint genuinely limited by the capacity of his human nature to receive, assimilate, and mediate the divine. it was only through the mediation of his genuine human nature that the incarnate logos related to himself, to others, and even to the Father in heaven.63 importantly, the action by which the eternal Son continuously limited himself belonged to his universal activities, not to his relations in the incarnate sphere. For Weston, then, one cannot speak of the divine and human natures as though they are on the same plane. The logos does not in any way abandon or even self-reduce omniscience in the eternal sphere for that would mean that the Son of god ceases to be omniscient altogether. Rather, it is only with regard to the incarnate sphere that the eternal logos willingly restrained omniscience, allowing himself to be limited Son of god, that the logos was united to the human nature to form one person but was not, even after the incarnation, restricted to the flesh, was not commonly accepted by Kenotic thinkers. 61. This understanding was common with lutheran theologians who, following the antiochians emphasis of the communication idiomatum, emphasized that finitude of the incarnate Christ was able to contain and mediate the infinite attributes of the logos. The result was, according to Weston, a form of dualism in the incarnate sphere. 62. Weston, The One Christ, 149. 63. according to Weston, “We can see that the incarnate Son must at every moment live under a law of self-restraint as to all his divine powers, in some measure. The measure of the self-restraint is the capacity of the perfect manhood to receive, assimilate, and manifest divine power . . . he has as incarnate no existence and no activity outside the condition that manhood imposes upon him.” ibid., 153.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Conceptual Arguments by the human nature that he assumed. There is no change in the nature of the logos as divine with respect to omniscience, nor does the eternal logos cease at any point to exercise omniscience. it is only in assuming a new, limited set of relations as a human being that the logos is, as incarnate, limited in knowledge. The incarnate Son is, qua divine, omniscient, but qua human, lacking in omniscience.64 Thus it is only with respect to his human nature in the incarnate sphere that he is limited in knowledge, not with respect to his divine nature in the eternal sphere. Finally, let me turn to hick’s question of whether the divine consciousness of the eternal Son can limit itself to a finite form and still retain unity with its discarnate form. That is, how is it conceivable that a single divine self can exist as an unlimited consciousness in heaven and be, at the same time, the subject of a limited consciousness on earth, the former willing the limitation of the other? This was the central problem with which Weston was himself primarily concerned. however, before touching on Weston’s approach to the problem, an observation may be in order. That is, when hick and others raise questions such as these, we can readily identify an underlying assumption of dualism on their part that fundamentally presupposes a belief in a deep and irreconcilable division between the universal state of the eternal logos and the limited state of the logos incarnate. There is, for hick, an unbridgeable gap between the two states of the logos as eternal and as incarnate that can only be characterized as a dualism of opposites. in other words, it is in principle impossible for the eternal and the limited states of the logos to come together in a unique way. in this regard, hick’s position is perhaps not so different from the basic dualistic assumptions that have dominated much of Western intellectual history.65 64. Stephen Davis correctly regards this type of “reduplicative” proposition as being implied in the Chalcedonian Definition: “of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his humanity” (emphasis added). Christian Philosophical Theology, 178. 65. it was Weston’s contention that the oppositional dualism that divides the eternal and the incarnational states of the logos dominated much of Christianity’s intellectual history, both modern and classical Christologies alike. in the athanasian form, which Weston believed to be the gateway to the truth, its great teachers (including ignatius, Justin, irenaeus, athanasius, gregory of Nazianzus, and Basil) remained basically faithful to the Scriptural perspective of refusing to acknowledge dualistic philosophical presuppositions between “the reality of divine nature and its wondrous powers, and the reality of the human nature and its limitations.” Weston, The One Christ, 64. however, their simple methodology of appealing to the authority of the apostolic teaching and

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism For Weston, on the other hand, such a complete separation suggests only the condition of our finite minds that necessitates a division between the eternal and limited states of the logos. according to Weston: “The isolation of the relationships that make up the state of the incarnation is not only possible and legitimate; for us men it is necessary . . . But, on the other hand, looked at from above, this isolation has no existence in the eternal order; for the person who constitutes each set of relationships is one and the same, the eternal Son of god. to him these relations are additional to those that are universal: additional, formed for a special purpose, for our salvation, at the cost of his self-humiliation.”66 For Weston, the incarnation allows “for the reality, permanence and co-existence of the two states of the incarnation, without in any way providing room for a wall of separation between them.” Says Weston: “as his glorious, heavenly state is in fact his internal relations with the juxtapositioning “one set of facts over against the other without any attempt at a reconciliation” precluded them from conceptualizing a single and permanent subject of Jesus’ consciousness. While these teachers assumed the simultaneous coexistence of the logos in the states of glory and humiliation, the incarnate Christ was seen to have a “double center of consciousness” (ibid., 67). attempting to find the one permanent subject of Christ’s humanity, the Cyrilline Christologians (including St. Cyril of alexandria, St. leo, gregory of Nyssa, hilary, ambrose, and augustine) succumbed to a type of dualism that was heavily biased toward the unlimited logos as the permanent subject of Jesus Christ. in so doing, they minimized the reality of Christ’s humanity because “they did not see that human nature can never adequately mediate the self-expression of the eternal Son so long as he exercised all his divine powers in their fullness” (ibid., 74). according to Weston, such a position operated on the view that Jesus’ weariness, suffering, and death were acts of the divine will rather than due to the inherent weakness of the flesh, and it was inadequate in explaining Christ’s ignorance and growth in wisdom. in the antiochene tradition, the opposite tendency was “to postulate as the subject of the manhood in Christ a human individual, intimately associated with the divine logos” (ibid., 87). here, the unlimited logos was regarded as conjoined to a complete human being in some kind of godly union, making it difficult to determine whether the proper subject of the incarnate life was the assumed man or the logos conjoined with the man. Followers of this school “were inclined to assume a composite nature or composite will, through which the incarnate might manifest his dual activity” (ibid., 87). lastly, among the Kenoticists, it was maintained that the one permanent subject of the incarnate Christ must be the eternal logos himself. at the same time, they postulated of the incarnate logos “a self-abandonment of his divine power as will reduce him to the level upon which, in their view, his manhood can truly and naturally develop and exercise its normal powers” (ibid., 21). Thus, while granting reality to the limited, self-abandoned, logos, it was only at the expense of the permanence of the universal life and cosmic functions of the eternal Word. 66. ibid., 165.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Conceptual Arguments Father and the holy Spirit together with his relation to the world that his wisdom has created; so his state of incarnation is the sum of certain new relations which he has willed to form, in respect to the incarnate activities, with his creatures, and with the Father and the Spirit in so far as his peculiar indwelling of the redeemed and his office of mediator render necessary an addition to his essential relations. Between these two states there is no definite separation.”67 Without attempting to summarize Weston’s entire Christology, or repeating hick’s restatement of it, i shall briefly mention several reasons why Weston may be correct in his claim that both the eternal god and his historical self-presentation, both eternity and time, are given together in the incarnation without a wall of separation between them. in the first place, it was Weston’s position that humanity and divinity are not to be thought of as categorically or directly opposed to each other so as to create a fundamental antithesis between the divine and human nature, for then, the incarnation of Christ would not be possible. Rather, there is “an essential capacity in man for union with the Spirit who made him, and upon a readiness in that Spirit to create a level on which man can meet with him.”68 Since creation itself is structured according to the pattern of divine nature, and human beings are made in the image and likeness of god, the incarnate Christ was not entering something completely foreign in coming into the world. in other words, for Weston, “god is not so different from man as to bar all union between them.”69 according to him: “man is god’s creature, the embodiment of a divine Thought; and in his spiritual nature expresses the divine idea of FreeWill. When we speak of man as personal we mean that in some real degree he is himself, in his essential being, akin to his Creator in respect to his reason and free-will; and that, while he is an end in himself and to himself, his final destiny is full spiritual membership in a society of like persons, in union with his Creator.”70 For Weston, then, there is no material and spiritual divide between god and humanity that can be thought of as mutually self-exclusive in a total way. Weston remarks: 67. ibid., 22. 68. Weston, Fullness of Christ, 53. 69. ibid. 70. ibid.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism By creation he [man] is in the spiritual order as well as on the material plane; and, as a matter of experience, the spiritual in man is dominant and, so far as we can form a judgment, permanent. moreover, in the material order there is no hindrance to man’s spiritual development, since the material, like the spiritual, is of divine origin, coming forth from the mind of the Creator. So that if it be possible for the spiritual in man to become dominant, to the extent that all which is material is subjected to, and as subject is unified with, the spiritual, there is no reason plain to us why god may not regard man, for purposes of union with himself, as indeed a spiritual being.71

Secondly, rather than viewing the self-limitation of the logos as an act belonging to the incarnate sphere, Weston regarded the act as fundamentally belonging to the sphere of eternal divine relations. as Weston states, “the actions by which the eternal Son restrains himself, while allowing divine aid to reach the manhood, belong not to the relations of the incarnate, but to those of his universal activities.”72 While Weston had great admiration for athanasian Christology in general, he was nevertheless very critical of their particular tendency to circumscribed Christ’s self-limitation solely to the domain of the incarnate sphere. For this resulted in the most unfortunate impression that the incarnate logos actually had a two separate centers of consciousness that was at once constituted in the Word in his eternal relationships, “conscious of himself as god the Son exercising full divine powers,” but at other times constituted in the Word in the incarnate state, “conscious of himself as god the Son, limiting himself and his powers.”73 Similarly, Weston was critical of some kenoticists for implying that “the Word as self-abandoned has a different self-consciousness from the eternal Word as unlimited; and that the self-emptied Son as conditioned by manhood requires a form of self-consciousness that is different from both.”74 For Weston, on the other hand, the divine kenosis was not a special act of god’s self-limitation in the incarnation but an eternal quality of the divine life rooted in the intra-trinitarian relations that are supremely made actual in the plane of history through the incarnation. The human life into which the eternal Son enters is not a mode of 71. ibid., 54. 72. ibid., 160. 73. ibid., 67–68. 74. ibid., 125–26.

An Evaluation of Hick’s Conceptual Arguments existence that is foreign to him, for self-limitation is already an aspect of the eternal logos. Therefore, and finally, not only is the self-limiting humanity an integral aspect of the eternal logos, for Weston, eternality is also a constitutive element of the incarnate logos. Rather than simply being a temporary act of self-limitation, “the manhood of the Christ is his proper assumed nature to all eternity. The state of the incarnation is permanent.”75 to be sure, at the ascension, the exalted Son was “glorified with the glory that is proper to god,” but there was no cessation of the true humanity. Rather, “to all eternity the incarnate lives in and under the conditions of a glorified humanity, unburdened it is true by the earthly limitations of humanity, yet still in some sense limited.”76 Weston further elaborates on the exalted state of Christ as follows: Whatever self-consciousness we attribute to the incarnate upon earth we must ascribe to him as he is in heaven, the Firstfruits of the redeemed race, the head of the mystical body, the Church. We may not change our fundamental conception of his self-consciousness: we may only conceive an immeasurable increase in its content. For the ascension caused no break or violent change in the life of the incarnate. it only marked the elevation of manhood to the sphere in which the limitations of manhood are reduced to a minimum, and the enabling powers of the divine life and glory are set free to aid the manhood in a measure that passes our thought. There remained after the ascension just those limitations that are the measure of the ultimate difference between godhead and manhood: limitations which we lose sight of perhaps as our eyes are dazzled by the divine glory, but which none the less are real and permanent, and in our counting infinite.77

While godhead cannot be fully expressed even in terms of the exalted Son’s glorified humanity, Weston contends that the ascension of Christ elevated the humanity of Jesus into the highest conceivable union with the divine life and glory as to render it the perfect agent and instrument of mediation between god and all of creation. “The mediation then is a permanent process; and the humanity which is both its base

75. ibid., 194. 76. ibid. 77. ibid., 195–96.

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism and its efficient cause must itself be permanent, everlasting, never to be done away with.”78 in the various ways just described, then, Weston has gone a long way in explaining the truth that the unlimited state of the eternal logos and the limited state of the incarnate logos are not two opposing realities in a contradictory relationship, but an interacting duality of god and creation. Just as the eternal and unlimited logos interacts with creation by freely and voluntarily restraining the exercise of divine powers, so does the limited and the temporal nature of the incarnate logos participate in eternity through the permanent and glorified humanity. eternity and temporality are not, therefore, two fundamentally opposing dualities, but, in Christ, they are realities that are eternally, permanently, and personally united. Nevertheless, Weston frankly admits that the mystery of the coexistence of two sets of relations in Christ as the single subject is not entirely removed. For as Weston asks, “how can the logos as selflimited be the subject of the passion, the agony, the desolation and death upon the cross, and yet at the same moment be the living and life-giving Son of god?” he answers, “No one has answered the question, no one can answer it.”79 however, in making the above remark, Weston is far from suggesting the incoherence or irrationality of the doctrine of two natures. he is merely reaffirming the fact that no finite explanation can exhaustively explain or do justice to the concept of the infinite and eternal god and to the question of “how” god became human. For Weston, god can become human because he is what he is—the great “i am.” in the end, the question of “how” god became human finds its ultimate ground in the truth that the infinite Creator, whom we call Father, possesses the possibility in Himself of becoming the other, the finite. and no finite characteristic can be applied without qualifications to this infinite Being. all finitude must be negated or purged before attributes may be appropriately applied to god. moreover, certain attributes can best be applied to god only when they are understood analogically.80 78. Weston, Fullness of Christ, 63. 79. Weston, The One Christ, 181. 80. in fact, this is exactly what Weston does. Through the analogies of St. Francis de Sales, who, as a priest, acts as the confessor to his parents; the african king who is reduced to a state of slavery; the enlisted son of a commanding officer; and the king’s son who becomes a manual laborer, Weston demonstrates the truth of the coexistence of two sets of relations in the one person. however, Weston clearly recognizes the limi-

An Evaluation of Hick’s Conceptual Arguments hick, on the other hand, is unwilling to lend legitimacy to any sense of mystery or paradox in the discussion of the doctrine of two natures. Pointing out that many of the two-natures Christologies regularly appeal to mystery as a substitute for conceptual clarity, hick chides Weston and other kenoticists by noting that the fallacy of such appeals is that the dogma of two natures is not a divinely revealed truth but “a humanly devised hypothesis; and we cannot save a defective hypothesis by dubbing it a divine mystery.”81 in one sense, of course, hick is entirely right to insist against appeals to mystery especially when they function as a substitute for conceptual clarity. We must agree with hick that the two natures dogma cannot simply function negatively; it must also elucidate positively the conceptual content of the doctrine. indeed, there are those whose appeal to mystery is at the same time intended to discourage any attempts to rationally understand the doctrine of two natures. on the other hand, for hick to disallow any rational reference to mystery is to supremely misunderstand the essential nature of theological inquiry. For theology is at its core mysterious, because neither reason nor revelation can exhaust the being and the work of the infinite Creator. god always transcends both human reason and even his divine disclosure in revelation. as Stephen Davis perceptively points out, even in hick’s own theory of religious pluralism there are clear elements of paradox or mystery, as when hick endorses Donald Baillie’s notion of “paradox of grace,” and when he insists that “(1) the god of Judaism and (2) the impersonal ‘voidness’ spoken of in mahayana Buddhism are two different phenomenal apprehensions of the same noumenon.”82 Thus, hick clearly overrates the power of reason to achieve a goal so utopian as to eliminate all mystery.

tations of these finite analogies in elucidating the essential consciousness of Christ, who is not only truly human but also truly divine. 81. hick, Metaphor, 71. 82. Davis, “John hick,” 259–61.

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s i stated at the beginning of the study, my purpose in writing this book was to examine John hick’s theology of religious pluralism with special regard to his rejection of the traditional Christian understanding that Jesus of Nazareth is “god incarnate, who came to die for the sins of the world and who formed the church to proclaim this.”1 hick’s negation of such a central tenet of orthodox Christianity is essential to his project of establishing religious equality among major religions, because, in hick’s own words, “if he [Jesus] was indeed god incarnate, Christianity is the only religion founded by god in person, and must be uniquely superior to all other religions.”2 Since the orthodox doctrine of the incarnation is clearly incompatible with hick’s pluralistic hypothesis that sees Christianity as but one of many salvific responses to the Real, it was incumbent upon hick to demolish this core and traditional doctrine of the church before replacing it with an alternative Christology more hospitable to his program. hick’s arguments, which attempt to deconstruct the literal understanding of the idea of divine incarnation, are in this sense foundational to hick’s overall theology of pluralism, for, without them, his alternative Christology lacks adequate justification. Thus, in this book i examined two of hick’s major arguments, “(1) that Jesus himself did not teach what was to become the orthodox Christian understanding of him” and “(2) that the dogma of Jesus’ two natures, one human and the other divine, has proved to be incapable of being explicated in any satisfactory way.” as to hick’s first argument, that the Jesus of history neither taught nor was conscious of his divinity, but that this doctrine evolved in the church subsequent to his death, i examined his historical-critical methodology, claims concerning Jesus self-understanding, the resurrection, 1. hick, Metaphor, ix. 2. ibid.

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Conclusion and his description of the church’s creative role in the deification process. as to methodology, it was seen that hick’s excessive skepticism concerning the historical reliability of biblical data is unwarranted, especially in light of the recent “Third Quest” for the historical Jesus, a movement that has tended to establish greater continuity with and affirm a greater reliability of the gospels in relation to first century Judaism. Furthermore, his lack of a clear methodology and criteria, and his program of imaginative reconstruction, were problematic, since his conclusions tended to lack historical justification and were too subjective to be of real value. and contrary to hick’s thesis that Jesus never made the claims of deity that later Christians were to make for him, i have clearly demonstrated that Jesus made implicit Christological claims through his use of “abba” in prayer, his attitude toward the mosaic law, authority to forgive sins, and by referring to himself as the “Son.” Through these implicit claims, as well as his use of the explicit title “the Son of man,” Jesus made claims establishing a strong continuity with the post-easter proclamations of the church. in addition, hick’s spiritualizing conception of the resurrection was found to be contrary to the earliest Christian understanding of the event as involving bodily transformation, as well as lacking plausibility in explaining the historical emergence of the church. Finally, i have argued that the belief in Christ’s divinity cannot be attributed to cultural and philosophical factors subsequent to Jesus’ death, but that the origins lie in Jesus’ own messianic claims as confirmed by the resurrection event. Concerning hick’s second claim that modern theories that attempt to explain the two natures doctrine, like the classical ones, inevitably fail to provide any intelligible meaning to the idea of divine incarnation, i argued that while hick’s evaluation of morris’ theory is in some ways convincing, his criticisms of the kenotic theories are much less so. Whereas kenotic theories are numerous, each with its own distinct variations, hick is content to dismiss them all by examining only two or three proponents of the theory. to be sure, it is fitting that the Christologies of the Cryptists and many of the kenotic theories of early nineteenth-century theologians (including g. Thomasius) should come under hick’s attack. however, hick’s criticisms against Frank Weston and Stephen Davis have not shown to be, in any way, conclusive. as we have seen, Davis has successfully met hick’s criticisms point by point and has demonstrated that by employing some conceptual

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Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism qualifications, his version of kenoticism can be consistently maintained. and while i may agree with hick that Weston did not ultimately solve the question of the relationship of the divine and human on the level of a single resultant consciousness, i disagree with hick’s evaluation that therefore Weston’s kenotic theory as a whole is incoherent and meaningless. Rather, while reverently recognizing the mysterious nature of the issue, Weston has presented us with a positive explanation of the doctrine of two natures in a way that is at once orthodox, intelligible, and religiously plausible. in short, hick’s contention that the dogma of two natures has failed to give an intelligible meaning to the idea of divine incarnation has proven to be only partly true. Whereas morris’ two-minds theory may not ultimately be satisfactory, hick has not successfully proven the incoherence or the unintelligibility of all of the various kenotic theories. on the contrary, kenotic theories have largely proven themselves to be successful in giving us positive content to the dogma of the two natures of Christ, one human and the other divine, without necessarily removing the mystery that rightfully belongs to this doctrine. my final conclusion is, therefore, that John hick’s impressive attempt to both deconstruct traditional incarnation Christology and to reconstruct a radically new Christology for a pluralistic age must ultimately be judged a failure. Because hick’s foundational attempts to deconstruct the church’s ontological understanding of incarnation are mainly untenable and unconvincing, hick is without justifiable warrant in breaking away from the church’s traditional form of incarnation Christology that has been at the core of Christianity for almost two thousand years. having failed to tear down the old, hick lacks a proper foundation for reconstructing his alternative metaphorical Christology. Despite hick’s failure, i do nevertheless acknowledge the enormously valuable contributions hick has made to the fields of the philosophy and theology of religions. more than any other philosopher or theologian in recent times, hick has confronted the challenge of religious pluralism head on with profound courage and thoughtfulness, exhibiting richness of understanding and empathy towards diverse religious traditions. With charity and liberality of spirit, he has entered into conversations with various faiths, tackling difficult and puzzling issues that have for centuries divided various cultures. With boldness of a prophet, he has confronted Christians concerning their own arrogance, narcis-

Conclusion sism, and narrow-mindedness in relation to people of other faiths. and although his revisions of traditional Christology have ultimately failed to prove convincing, hick has compelled Christians of traditional faith to address this most important problem of how Jesus Christ is related to the plurality of religions, a contribution to which all of us can be grateful in this increasingly pluralistic world.

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