Many of us today are all too willing to accept a humanist and scientific account of the universe which considers human existence as a fleeting accident. The triumph of John Hick’s gripping work is his exposure of the radical insufficiency of this view. Drawing on mystical and religious traditions ancient and modern, and spiritual thinkers as diverse as Julian of Norwich and Mahatma Ghandi, he has produced a tightly argued and thoroughly readable case for a bigger, more complete, picture of (...) reality in which a fifth, spiritual dimension, plays a central role. ‘Essential reading for anyone concerned with spirituality in the modern world’ Professor Keith Ward, University of Oxford Erudite, provocative and deeply moving, Hick’s persuasive narrative will prompt all curious readers to re-examine their own spiritual horizons.‘This stimulating book opens up many fundamental issues that must concern everyone. It deserves to be widely read. ‘ Expository Times ‘Learned, lucid and engaging, easy to read and easy to applaud for its sheer clarity of style and its breadth of interest, even when one disagrees with it!’ Anvil. (shrink)

According to Peter van Inwagen, visible inanimate objects do not, strictly speaking, exist. In defending this controversial thesis, he offers fresh insights on such topics as personal identity, commonsense belief, existence over time, the phenomenon of vagueness, and the relation between metaphysics and ordinary language.

I will be concerned with only one problem about truth which is raised by the diversity of religions which exist in the world. The problem is this: many religions claim to state truths about the nature of the universe and human destiny which are important or even necessary for human salvation and ultimate well-being. Many of these truths seem to he incompatible; yet there is no agreed method for deciding which are to he accepted; and equally intelligent, informed, virtuous and (...) holy people belong to different faiths. It seems, therefore, that a believing member of any one tradition is compelled to regard all other traditions as holding false beliefs and therefore as not leading to salvation. Since each faith forms a minority of the world's population, all religious believers thus seem committed to saying that most intelligent, virtuous and spiritually devoted people cannot know the truth or attain salvation. This is a problem, because it is in tension with the belief, held by many traditions, that the supremely real being is concerned for the salvation of all rational creatures. How can this he so if, through no fault of their own, most creatures cannot come to know the truth and thereby attain salvation? (shrink)

According to religious pluralism, the profound differences among the chief objects of adoration in the great religious traditions are largely due to the different ways in which a single transcendent reality is experienced and conceived in human life. The most prominent developer and defender of religious pluralism in the twentieth century is John Hick. Hick uses the expression ‘the Real’ to designate the transcendent reality ‘authentically experienced’ as the different gods and impersonal absolutes worshipped in the major religious traditions. A (...) central claim Hick makes is that, apart from some purely formal characteristics, the Real is ineffable in that the intrinsic properties making up its nature are beyond the scope of any human concepts. I explore this central claim and argue that it implies the dubious, if not incoherent, view that the Real in itself has neither one of many pairs of contradictory properties. (shrink)

The major religious traditions clearly seem to be making very different claims about the nature of the religious ultimate and our relation to this ultimate. For example, orthodox Christians believe in an infinite creator God who has revealed himself definitively in the Incarnation in Jesus. But while affirming that there is one God who is creator and judge, devout Muslims reject as blasphemous any suggestion thatJesus was God incarnate. Theravada Buddhists, on the other hand, do not regard the religious ultimate (...) as an ontologically distinct creator at all. And even within, say, the Buddhist family of traditions sharp differences emerge: followers of Jodo-Shinshu Buddhism maintain that salvation/enlightenment is attainable simply through exercising faith in the Amida Buddha and the recitation of the nembutsu , whereas Zen monks reject as illusory any worldview which implies dualism and hold that enlightenment or satori is to be attained only through rigorous self-discipline. (shrink)

According to one account, vagueness is "metaphysical." The friend of metaphysical vagueness believes that, for some object and some property, there can be no determinate fact of the matter whether that object exemplifies that property. A second account maintains that vagueness is due only to ignorance. According to the epistemic account, vagueness is explained completely by and is nothing over and above our not knowing some relevant fact or facts. These are the minority views. The dominant position maintains that there (...) is a third possible variety of vagueness, linguistic vagueness. And, it goes on to insist, all vagueness is of this third variety. I shall argue, however, that linguistic vagueness is not a third variety of vagueness. Either it is a species of metaphysical vagueness or a kind of ignorance. And this, I argue, makes trouble for the claim that all vagueness is linguistic. (shrink)

John Hick uses a distinction between the formal and the substantial properties of the Real an sich, the noumenal God. Hick claims that substantial properties, such as 'being good' or 'being personal', cannot be ascribed to the Real an sich. On the other hand, according to Hick, formal properties -- such as 'being such that none of our concepts apply' -- can be predicated of the Real an sich. I argue, first of all, that many of the properties Hick ascribes (...) to the Real an sich are hard to interpret as anything but substantial, unless we adopt a highly arbitrary substantial/formal distinction. Secondly, I argue that it is never possible to ascribe only formal properties to the Real an sich, since the correct framing and application of formal properties involves a prior knowledge of some substantial properties. I show that the predication of formal properties involves having more knowledge than we need for the application of substantial properties. I conclude that Hick's practice is better than his theory, and that by dispensing with the formal/substantial distinction, he would enable his doctrine of God to stand on more respectable and theological grounds. (shrink)

A critique of responses to the problem posed to Christian philosophy by the fact of religious plurality by Alvin Plantinga, Peter van lnwagen, and George Mavrodes in the recent Festschrift dedicated to William Alston, and of Alston’s own response to the challenge of religious diversity to his epistemology of religion. His argument that religious experience is a generally reliable basis for belief-formation is by implication transformed by his response to this problem into the principle that Christianity constitutes the sole exception (...) to the general rule that religious experience is an unreliable basis for belief-formation, thus undermining his central thesis. Plantinga’s and van Inwagen’s defenses of the logical and moral permissability of Christian exclusivism fail to address the problem posed by the existence of other equally well-based religious belief-systems with equally valuable fruits in human life. Mavrodes’ discussion of polytheism, and his clarifying questions about religious pluralism, are also discussed. (shrink)

Within each of the major world religions a distinction is drawn between the ultimate ineffable Godhead or Absolute and the immediate object of worship or focus of religious meditation. I examine the notion of ineffability, or transcategoriality, in the influential Christian mystic Pseudo-Dionysius, who reconciles the divine ineffability with the authority of the Bible by holding that the biblical language is metaphorical, its function being to draw us towards the Godhead. If we extend this principle to other faiths we have (...) gone half way towards making the global history of religions intelligible. The other half consists in a recognition of the different human conceptualities and spiritual practices that give concrete form to the divine reality within religious experience. However, William Rowe, and Christopher Insole, have criticized this use of ineffability, and their arguments are responded to here. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss critically Richard Swinburne’s concept of God, which I find to be incoherent, and his understanding of Christianity, which I find to be based on a precritical use of the New Testament.

This investigation takes full account of the findings of the social and historical sciences while offering a religious interpretation of the religions as different culturally conditioned responses to a transcendent Divine Reality.

This study focuses upon the heart of John Hick's pluralistic philosophy of religion – his neo-Kantian response to the problem of conflicting inter-religious conceptions of the divine. Hick attempts to root his proposal in two streams of tradition: the inter-religious awareness of the distinction between the divine in itself vs. the divine as humanly experienced, and a Kantian epistemology. In fact, these attempts are problematic in that his hypothesis introduces a radical subjectivizing element at both junctures. In the end, I (...) contend that Hick's neo-Kantian proposal undermines his decades-long effort to defend some form of religious realism. (shrink)

_Philosophy of Religion_ provides an account of the central issues and viewpoints in the philosophy of religion but also shows how such issues can be rationally assessed and in what ways competing views can be rationally assessed. It includes major philosophical figures in religious traditions as well as discussions by important contemporary philosophers. Keith Yandell deals lucidly and constructively with representative views from Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. This book will appeal to students of both philosophy and religion (...) as well as to the general reader interested in the subject. Unique features of _Philosophy of Religion_: * key reading and new reading in the subject area * questions at the ends of chapters * a glossary of philosophical terms * annotated further reading. (shrink)

According to John Hick's model of religious pluralism, all the world's great religions are equally valid ways of understanding and responding to the ultimate spiritual reality. This book offers an exposition of, and critical response to, John Hick's model. Introducing the various interpretations of religious diversity being discussed today, this book presents constructive suggestions as to how current ideas could be further developed to offer a more accurate presentation of the various options in the theology of religions. The standard threefold (...) typology of responses to religious diversity - exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism - are explained and defended. Hick's pluralist interpretation of religious diversity is traced, culminating in a critical assessment of Hick's pluralistic model and a summary of a variety of critiques directed toward Hick's proposal. Paul Rhodes Eddy concludes that Hick's present model is ultimately unsuccessful in overcoming the pluralist's most difficult conceptual problem -- providing an adequate account of the fact that the world's religions understand the divine in often contradictory ways. Ultimately, Hick's own solution threatens two of his long-cherished goals: a robust religious realism and a consistent religious pluralism. (shrink)

This book surveys the thesis that all religions are alike in referring and relating to a single, common transcendent and sacred reality. It treats this thesis as one in the philosophy of religion. In the first chapter pluralism is defined and its core is distinguished from its particular character and defence in the writings of John Hick and others. The underpinnings of pluralism are held to lie in an understanding of reference in religion, the definition of religion, the nature of (...) salvation, the character of religious language, an appropriate epistemology for the philosophy of religion, and, crucially, the nature of a realist perspective on the religions. A notion of referential realism is set out which when applied to religion makes the pluralist thesis plausible. A chapter is devoted to each of these main themes. The conclusion offers a brief survey of the implications of pluralism for our general view of religion. (shrink)

This short book is a lively dialogue between a religious believer and a skeptic. It covers all the main issues including different ideas of God, the good and bad in religion, religious experience and neuroscience, pain and suffering, death and life after death, and includes interesting autobiographical revelations.

This is the third volume in Alvin Plantinga's trilogy on the notion of warrant, which he defines as that which distinguishes knowledge from true belief. In this volume, Plantinga examines warrant's role in theistic belief, tackling the questions of whether it is rational, reasonable, justifiable, and warranted to accept Christian belief and whether there is something epistemically unacceptable in doing so. He contends that Christian beliefs are warranted to the extent that they are formed by properly functioning cognitive faculties, thus, (...) insofar as they are warranted, Christian beliefs are knowledge if they are true. (shrink)

_Philosophy of Religion_ provides an account of the central issues and viewpoints in the philosophy of religion but also shows how such issues can be rationally assessed and in what ways competing views can be rationally assessed. It includes major philosophical figures in religious traditions as well as discussions by important contemporary philosophers. Keith Yandell deals lucidly and constructively with representative views from Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. This book will appeal to students of both philosophy and religion (...) as well as to the general reader interested in the subject. Unique features of _Philosophy of Religion_: * key reading and new reading in the subject area * questions at the ends of chapters * a glossary of philosophical terms * annotated further reading. (shrink)