Introduction to the Diversity of Models of Ultimate Realities

Abstract

John Hick has famously argued that the spiritual and moral fruits displayed by adherents of the great religious traditions should compel us to think of these traditions as more or less equally salvific – where Hick understands ‘salvation’ to be “an actual change in human beings from self-centeredness to a new orientation centered in the ultimate divine Reality.” Yet Hick acknowledges that his pluralist intuitions are challenged by the fact – and it is a fact – that many adherents across the spectrum of these traditions claim a privileged status of some sort or other for their respective tradition. This privileged status, it is often believed, is the inevitable result of propositional commitments essential to one tradition that are either not endorsed or explicitly rejected by other traditions. Clearly, this way of privileging one tradition over others proceeds along an epistemic route, as opposed to a practical or ethical route. The attempt to privilege one tradition by arguing that its adherents display significant moral gains over adherents of other traditions, is, according to Hick, a futile one. But Hick takes seriously the logical and epistemic implications of religious diversity and attempts to meet this challenge by offering a Kantian, split-level view – where the central beliefs adopted by the major religious traditions are phenomenally true but noumenally false.