Abstract
This is a response to Hick’s comments on my approach to the problem of religious diversity in Perceiving God. Before unearthing the bones I have to pick with him, let me fully acknowledge that I have not provided a fully satisfactory solution to the problem. At most I have done the best that can be done given the constraints within which I was working. But this best, if such it be, is not as bad as Hick makes it appear. To show this I need to make several corrections in Hick’s depiction of the situation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
William Alston. Perceiving God (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991).
In T. Senor (ed.), The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 216–41. The analogy is presented on p. 238.
One might, of course, ask why 1 am a Christian ‘in the first place’. I do not propose to enter into this question in a brief note. The interested reader may consult my essay ‘Quam Dilecta’, in Thomas V. Morris (ed.), God and the Philosophers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 31–60.
For example, ‘Within each tradition we regard as real the object of our worship or contemplation… It is also proper to regard as real the objects of worship or contemplation within the other traditions… ‘John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 249.
I have discussed responses of this sort at greater length in ‘The Gods above the Gods: Can the High Gods Survive?’, in Eleonore Stump (ed.), Reasoned Faith: (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993).
Maimonides, Guide to the Perplexed, trans. M. Friedlander (London: Routledge &Kegan Paul, 1904), p. 81.
Chandogya Upanishad VI.2.4., trans. S. Radhakrishnan, The Principal Upanishads (London: Allen & Unwin and New York: Humanities Press, 1969), p. 449.
Copyright information
© 2001 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hick, J. (2001). Responses and Discussion. In: Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230510685_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230510685_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-76105-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-51068-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)