Review of Chung's Christ the One and Only

In a world rapidly moving to twin extremes, pluralism and athiesm, there are unfortunately fewer and fewer voices who bring intellectual dialogue to the religious roundtable. Whereas pluralism says there are many ways to God and whereas athiesm denies His existence, the Christian evangelical message is that there is a God and that there is only one way to know Him. If Christians are going to continue to share the Good News that Jesus saves the sinner from sin, they had better get used to speaking within these ever increasing conversations as well.

             Sung W. Chung’s Christ the One and Only: A Global Affirmation of the Uniqueness of Jesus Christ is a collection of essays by a variety of Christian writers from varying evangelical positions on the subject. Each writer draws attention to a different aspect of the advent of the Christ and how that relates to the major world religions. Beginning with Jesus’ birth and taking various facets of his life, teaching, and salvific work, the authors establish Christ’s uniqueness as a starting point for conversation with other faiths. The latter essays attempt to establish talking points for the major world religions and Christianity by invoking Christ’s uniqueness as the leverage for dialogue. Chung closes the book with his own essay related to the dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism, but he also provides a framework for productive interfaith dialogue.

The first essay highlights the uniqueness of Jesus’ incarnation.  Elias Dantas takes an historical approach to show how the Christian church has affirmed the reality and necessity of the virgin birth. He lists alternative views like Ebionism that has denied the deity of Christ and Docetism that denied his humanity. He shows how Gnosticism was dealt with during the Reformation period and how the great ecumenical church councils rejected Arianism, Apollinarianism, Nestorianism and Eutycheanism. What was finally affirmed was the church’s official position on Christ being fully man and fully God in one Person.

Clark Pinnock then attempts to establish the uniqueness of Christ’s teaching.  In short, Pinnock believes Jesus’ vocation was successful because his teaching was successful. Although he is personally against a literal interpretation of Scripture, Pinnock places a great emphasis on the didactic work of Christ. His teaching about God set him apart from other teachers of his day and throughout history.

The symbol of the cross, handled by Graham Tomlin, has been received in different ways throughout history. During the medieval times, it was seen as a sign of Christian aggression. However, Paul and the early church made it central to their teaching and identity. Martin Luther made it the crux of both his doctrine and spirituality. Pascal used it to unlock the mystery of understanding God. Christ’s crucifixion is unlike any other soteriological symbol.

Gabriel Fackre takes Jesus’ assertions of being the only way, truth and life to apply to a grand narrative. He sees God beginning his work in creation, man rejecting God and yet God accepting man. Through the cross Jesus’ offices of prophet, priest and king are defined. The church is the body of Christ by which mankind enters into communion with Christ. Then Fackre issues a call for hope in universal salvation through a post-mortem evangelism and possibility of temporary hellfire. All in all, Fackre sees Jesus’ resurrection as the guarantee for this salvation.

Mark Thompson takes two approaches to defining the uniqueness of Jesus’ revelation. Exegetically, God made himself “known at particular times to particular people” (92). In the Torah, he revealed himself in part through the ark of the covenant and the temple. In the New Testament, he revealed himself explicitly through the Person of Jesus Christ as the one and only who came from the Father. Thompson takes the claims of Christ’s exclusivity to answer the question of pluralism by stating that “those outside of Christ do not know the God who created them” (107).

Veli-Matti Karkkainen promotes the uniqueness of Christ’s role in the Trinity. Like Thompson he also deals with the challenge of pluralism, but he believes placing the Trinity in the dialogue is a great resource for the exclusivist. Only in the Trinity can the Christian God be defined in a historical context. Karkkainen surveys various positions, but he takes specific issue with Hick for his denial of the Trinity and with Knitter for his denial of absolute truth. In the end his “general dissatisfaction with pluralism includes critique of their either too general a view of salvation (the ‘self-realization’ of Hick) or the particularist (the eco-liberation of Knitter)” (129).

            These unique characteristics are then applied to various world religions. Ellen Charry

deals with what she calls an eternal crusade by looking at Christianity through Judaism’s eyes and Judaism through Christian eyes. The basic points of conflict revolve around the uniqueness of Christ in relation to what must be accepted soteriologically and thereby what constitutes the true people of God. Christians do not understand why Jews would not want to accept Jesus as their Messiah. However, Jews already seeing themselves as God’s people do not see a need for salvation. Moreover, to accept a man in God’s place would constitute blasphemy. Charry leaves these two religions incompatible, except for the notion that Jesus is still unique to Christians.

            Paul Chung believes that Buddhism shares some common elements with Christianity. Using the doctrine of justification, he compares Luther with Shinran. This interfaith dialogue might not bring the two world religions any closer together, but Chung believes that it focuses the adherent to his own beliefs in a newer way.

            Accordingly, Ng Kam Weng discusses the commonalities between Islam and Christianity. Muslim acceptance of Jesus as a lesser prophet to Mohammed offers a dialogical inquiry into what an Old Testament prophet really was. Admittedly with certain difficulties, presenting Jesus as an eschatological prophet who still has a work to complete could be a starting point for this discussion. Weng believes that when Muslims can see Jesus as God in Christ they may move beyond the fatal sin of shirk and begin to see Jesus’ soteriological role.

            In his essay, K.K. Yeo does not deal as much with the uniqueness of Christ as with agape love and the law as Confucian concepts of ren and li. Yeo says that “to be a full Confucianist is to be a Christian” (203). According to Yeo, Jesus’ teachings can be best understood through Confucianism’s teachings and vice versa.

            Finally, Sung Wook Chung also tackles a dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity by noting several points of contact. He promotes a missional model for interfaith dialogue that “allows Christians to explore the possible points of contact between Christianity and other religions and to employ these points of contact to share the gospel with those who are adherents of other religions” (225). By relating to Buddhism’s tenets of suffering, craving, cessation and moral cultivation, Christianity can find dialogical touch points for sharing a clear gospel message. 

My Take on Chung's Approach

Chung’s presentation of such a wide variety of evangelical positions in this book seems to stem from the fact that even evangelicals differ on main points, but the uniqueness of Christ still brings them together. It is for that reason that there is hope in anchoring the evangelical message on this one point and thereby finding the window for the evangelical community to interact with other world religions. Chung states early on that the essays he has gathered for this book are by writers who adhere to the “absolute uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the only Lord and Savior of humanity” (x). Moreover, a reaffirmation of this common tenet then becomes the sticking point in defining who will contribute to the discussion.

            Because of the varying authors, each chapter has its own unique style and flow. Some of the writers produce an essay that reads more like a survey, while others engage directly in a comparative study of religions. The writers also have varying backgrounds, theologically covering the spectrum of evangelical Christianity and geographically representing the globe. But the thing that unifies their contributions is the mainstream evangelical stance that Jesus is unique.

Furthermore, although the writers do vary in their stances, extreme positions are not represented. Karkkainen seems to lean somewhat in his Trinitarian stance toward a greater openness to pluralism, but the extreme ecumenical pluralist would not appreciate the book’s tendency toward recognizing the absolute truth found in Jesus Christ. Thompson seems to be more of an exclusivist in his questioning the very value of an interfaith dialogue, but the extreme separatist would not appreciate the books openness to find elements of Christian contact within other world religions.

            Chung’s main thesis is that Christianity can indeed find those points of contact with other religions by holding the advent of Jesus as a banner for comparison. Chung admits there are limitations to these contact points, but he encourages their exploration nonetheless. Still he holds Christ’s uniqueness in high regard, and that seems to be the strongest point for this book.

The book presents a theology of religions that is clearly Christocentric as opposed to bibliocentric or theocentric. The centrality of the cross is self-evident, but Chung goes further to promote a more comprehensive Christology from a much broader perspective than just the soteriology of the cross. The whole advent of the Christ, from his incarnation to his future eschatological role, is brought into play in this conversation. Tomlin promotes the cross as a symbol that can find value in other religions. Fackne suggests that Christ speaks through a range of religious interpretations. Karkkainen goes further to say that the Spirit of Christ is at work in other religions. 

Although this Christocentric approach informs Chung’s theology of religions, there are nonetheless some writers who seem to toy with pluralism. Clark Pinnock’s stance against bibliocentric Christology, for example, seems to hurt his own argument for Christ’s uniqueness. When he says that the Magi visits recorded in Scripture are not factual or that the church has placed an undo emphasis on the virgin birth of Christ, he unwittingly destroys whatever evidence he might have appealed to for the uniqueness of Christ’s teaching. Because it could be argued that a proper Christology must be founded in Scripture, Pinnock’s rejection of biblical historicity dances dangerously on the edge of the very tenets that fuel pluralism.

In response to this tension between pluralists and exclusivists within the evangelical camp, Chung proposes a “missional model” (225) for dialogue with other religions. The weakness of this model, however, is that it is still somewhat ambiguous in its application. Chung attempts to apply the model in a dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism in his final chapter, but it still falls short of communicating the “solid and clear” (238) salvific truth that he desires. He acknowledges that limitation by disclaiming his missional model as the final conversation, but he nevertheless promotes it as a starting point in the dialogue.

Chung’s attempt to synthesize a Christological perspective across the evangelical spectrum is important. Although some have complained that his essay collection omitted crucial conversation partners like Western secularists, folk religions or Hinduism, it is sufficient to test his theory that a high Christology can be useful in interfaith dialogue. In a day when pluralism and tolerance are being promoted as the only means for a round table discussion, Chung sets a chair for the intelligent evangelical who cannot deny the strong claims of Christ as the only way, truth and life. Chung admits that mutual love and concern must be the atmosphere for exchanging ideas, but his book shows where exclusive truth claims can find conversation partners with other world religions.    

Review of Paul Knitter's No Other Name

No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes toward the World Religions is a case for religious pluralism. I will give a brief survey of Paul F. Knitter's argument and then give my own evaluation of his logic (if theological mumbo-jumbo bores you, just skip down to the critical evaluation section). 

            The basic premise of his book is that “a nonnormative, theocentric Christology does not contradict the New Testament proclamation of Jesus and therefore is a valid interpretation of that proclamation” (172). Knitter’s argument is structured around popular attitudes that exist on the spectrum of pluralistic dialogue as well as varying degrees of acceptance of pluralism by Christians. His ultimate statement requires a redefinition of Jesus’ particularity, so his final chapters are devoted to how pluralists of different backgrounds have devoted themselves to engaging an interreligious dialogue. Flowing from his thesis, Knitter’s most stinging proposal is that Christianity should be redefined in order to enter the pluralistic dialogue to which the religious world is evolving.

            Knitter cites Ernst Troeltsch as the father of historical relativism. According to Troeltsch, no religion has any advantage over another. In fact, all religions are cultural expositions and expressions of utility. Christianity may be the best for the West, Troeltsch would argue, but the evolution of religious understanding moved the world religions from a classicist to a historical culture. This, therefore, creates a problem with concepts like incarnation and superiority.

             He references Arnold Toynbee's belief “that all religions are basically the same”(49). He sees a common essence in all religions, so he encourages a discarding of anything considered nonessential. This being a subjective call, he prefers an “esoteric faith” (49) to the uniqueness of traditional Christianity.  

             Knitter calls upon Carl Jung to support his religious common source theory. By laying the foundation of religion in the psyche, Knitter promotes a view of God that is part of the unconscious and can be decoded as symbol or myth. Jesus becomes a symbol of the Christ concept that can exist in many religions. Thus the clarifying moment for religion is a utilitarian call of whether that religion actually helps people psychologically.

            In order to show how far religion has evolved, Knitter moves from modern psychology to a contrasting conservative evangelical model. Karl Barth, representing neo-Orthodoxy, is cited to show how the evangelical movement has evolved from early fundamentalists to conservative evangelicals to more ecumenical evangelicals. Even so, Knitter claims that holding to the Bible as authority or Christ as the sole source of salvation is arrogant irrelevance for today’s dialogue.

            Protestants are painted in the same light as conservative evangelicals, but Knitter does allow a minute amount of grace for their kinder spirit and “a more open attitude toward other religions” (97). As Barth was a champion for conservative evangelicalism, Wolfhart Pannenberg is the poster child for mainline Protestantism. Barth saw Christ alone as the source of revelation and salvation, but Pannenberg would allow for revelation within all religions. Paul Tillich also holds to salvific revelation in other religions, but this revelation is somehow only partial. Knitter affirms mainline Protestants for their openness to dialogue, but he still thinks their position is inadequate to properly address a science of religions or a theology of religions.

            Insisting that concepts like salvation and sin would have to be redefined before they can be found relevant in the contemporary dialogue, Knitter turns to Karl Rahner for what he considers real progress. He posits that the early church did not believe in salvation through Jesus alone, that this was a development of biblical writers and the church in the third century. Instead, the Catholic Church became more institutionalized and grew more particular in its teachings of “outside the church, no salvation” (123). Rahner’s contribution, based on God’s desire to save, was to promote a move from Christocentrism or even ecclesiocentrism to a theocentrism void of any major emphasis on Jesus. This development seeks to explain the shift from the protestant view of religions “as a negative preparation for the gospel” to a Catholic perspective as “a positive preparation” (135).

Knitter argues that we must recognize revelation and salvation in other religions if we are to have a true dialogue. He cites John Hick, Raimunda Punikkar and Stanley Samartha as the vanguards for theocentricism. Hick’s understanding of Jesus’ incarnation as just an embodiment of love places interreligious salvation within view. Punikkar’s “cosmotheandric” (154) unity principle requires that any representation of salvation is “not be restricted to the merely historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth” (156). Ironically, Samartha says that only relativists might truly be saved (158).

            In order to deal then with the uniqueness of Jesus, Knitter spends the last two chapters denouncing the Christian faith models and proposing new definitions for Christian terminology that make a dialogue more palatable to other religions. Knitter believes traditional Christians are “insufficiently sensitive to the way they contradict contemporary awareness of historical relativity” (171). So in order to not “impede authentic dialogue with believers of other faiths” (171), Knitter proposes a redefinition of Jesus’ incarnation as a myth with personal value, a redefinition of Jesus’ message as a minor prophet, a redefinition of Jesus’ resurrection as figurative “survival language” (184) employed by a minority group who were seeking their way to God. If done so, religion can evolve to a new world order, and world peace can be achieved.

Critical Evaluation

There are several elements that stood out as barriers to Knitter’s success in proving his thesis.

His method for razing the basic particularity of traditional Christianity is not applied universally for all religions. His quest for some common denominator among religious adherents forms a reductionism that borders on pseudo-anthropology. Knitter makes himself a prisoner of his own bias as he scratches at the walls of twentieth century classicist culture. These inadequacies lessen the force of his argument and serve to misdirect any call for mutual understanding.

Limited Method

Although Paul Knitter paints a picturesque fantasy of all world religions somehow able to speak in relativity as per their own identities and live in peaceful harmony, his demands for interreligious dialogue are in reality a brutal militant approach to hack out the heart of Christianity. At best, he presents a case for a Christ-less Christianity, a comical but vampiric approach to studying a religion. At worst, he redefines the particulars of Christianity in such a way that they have absolutely no real meaning. Knitter feels that his theocentric model “holds the greatest promise of the future of interreligious dialogue and for the continued evolution of the meaning of Jesus Christ for the world” (166-67). The ultimate end of this evolutionary process is an outer religious shell void of even the remembrance of the filling.

Knitter does not shy away from the fact that Jesus Christ made some particular claims as to his own uniqueness, but he claims that Christ's statements have been misunderstood or misrepresented. Knitter makes a case against Jesus Christ as the one and only savior, thus opening the door for all world religions to have the same salvific footing. He claims that this constricted Christian view of personal salvation is in fact standing in the way of religion’s salvation. Read my lips: Knitter thinks that it is religion that needs to be saved.

It is interesting that he performs no acts of theological surgery upon any other religions, only Christianity. Perhaps such a broader application is beyond the scope of his book, but his narrow assault on Christ’s particular claims make his method suspect. It could be concluded from this approach that it is only Christianity that is standing in the way of world peace. Knitter stands as the proverbial Elmer Fudd holding a gun over that wascally wabbit called Christianity.

Knitter’s reductionism

 Knitter’s approach can be classified as oversimplification, as if digesting the tenets of any major world religion were an easy thing. He attempts to throw the ingredients of all religions into one soup and then write the recipe. His reductionist perspective simply does not advance the dialogue he proposes. On the contrary, his attempts to reduce religious dialogue to a common denominator of relativism removes anything of value that any religion would attempt to offer during a roundtable discussion. If all revelation is reduced to salvation, then it is questionable as to the need for salvation at all. If any religion’s tenets for salvation are reduced to its own personal applications of any form of revelation, then there is no such thing as a sin problem or suffering or mistakes. Therefore, there is no need for the religion beyond an expression of conflated egoism.

Knitter’s Prison

Knitter defeats himself with his own standard of judgment. Clearly, Knitter is a product of the very culture he seeks to address. He is the prisoner attempting to imprison the rest. In fact, he even maintains that a religion can only truly be judged by an insider. He is ever the Cincinnati theology professor dressed in eastern garb. He is the man spouting feminist theology. He is the symbol of upper middle class advocating liberation. To those whom he addresses, he will never be an insider.

Knitter seeks to deflate any exclusivist concept related to Christianity either by redefinition or by a creative form of religious relativism. He redefines the resurrection of Christ as a myth having only personal significance, but in doing so he still utilizes western linearity both in linguistic expression and conceptual explanation. As such, he builds a cultural prison from which his own book cannot escape, doomed to be placed on the shelves with other works of science fiction and fantasy.

Knitter seeks to promote a Christology that can enter into conversation with pluralism and ecumenism, but the very exclusive claims of Christ that establish Christianity must first be negated or so watered down that anything can be salvific. Knitter claims we can have both exclusivity and inclusivity if we only redefine the terms. In doing so, he unwittingly makes the same error in logic that has consistently plagued western philosophy. In an attempt to create a both/and, Knitter argues it is EITHER both/and OR nothing, thereby locking the door to any openness that might have been achieved through a respect for exclusivity.

Is Jesus the ONLY way to heaven? Review of John Hick's Interpretation of Religion

So, did that question catch you off guard? The evangelist John of the infallible, inerrant Bible reports that Jesus claimed to be the only way to heaven (see John 14:6). But a more modern John says that's not the case. In fact, a recent survey of my own denomination revealed that almost two thirds (61%) of its members now believe that Jesus is not the only way to eternal life. We call these people pluralists, because they accept multiple ways to God.

            John Hick is an accomplished professor in Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham, UK In 2004, he wrote An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent. His academic posts have also included tenure at the Claremont Graduate University in California, Princeton Theological Seminary, Cornell University and Cambridge University. He is the Vice-President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion, and Vice-President of The World Congress of Faiths. His published works also include Disputed Questions in Theology and the Philosophy of Religion, The Myth of God Incarnate and Who or What is God? Both a pluralist and an ecumenist, Hick claims to be an evangelical Christian, but he publicly denies the deity of Christ, original sin, and literal eternal punishment.[1] 

            John Hick’s Interpretation of Religion is a basic treatise on the subject of religion as a rational choice for intellectuals, but his argument takes a pluralistic turn throughout to defend the validity of all major world religions since the axial period. In response to the question of rationality, Hick argues that religion should be evaluated from the perspective of its soteriological value to its adherents as well as the positive results that flow from that salvific process. Grouping all major world religions into one family, he undertakes the writing of twenty chapters to prove his hypothesis that all post-axial religions constitute varying perceptions of the same divinity but that these perceptions are tainted by cultural factors. As such, he concludes that only tolerance and acceptance of all religion, as deemed good by his criteria, will usher the world into a new era of religious peace and maturity.   

            His book is divided into five parts related to questions that mark his proposed understanding of religious tolerance: phenomenological, religious ambiguity, epistemological, religious pluralism and criteriological. Hick outlines his argument for religious rationality and tolerance in chapter one. According to Hick’s own assessment, all religious expressions “represent different phenomenal awareness of the same nuomenal reality and evoke parallel salvific transformations of human life” (p. 15).   

The primary ingredient in Hick’s case is his phenomenological foundation. David McKenzie reviews Hick correctly when he says, “by arguing that all of the major religious traditions are characterized by a focus on ‘human transformation’ from self-centeredness to reality-centeredness.”[2] This soteriological character of post-axial religions marks a huge shift from the universal social concern of the pre-axial period. Citing aborigines, Egyptians and Mesopotamians as examples of this prior state, Hick believes a new religious era has begun with mankind’s interest in “being capable of salvation” (p. 30). For Hick, there is one “single fundamental theme” involved in this shift, namely “the sudden or gradual change of the individual from an absorbing self-concern to a new century in the supposed unity-of-reality-and-values that is thought of as God” (p. 36). Chapter three promotes several examples within the Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions to define what is supposed to define this shift toward a higher power, an ultimate reality or, as Hick labels it, the Real. Because of this shift, chapter four claims that there is a cosmic optimism that all world religions can now unite their soteriology with their eschatology.  

            Hick’s argument is advanced in chapters 5–7 as the second part of the foundation. Because the universe is ambiguous, no argument against the existence of God is valid. Hick goes to great lengths to show the irrelevance of both sides in the religion/naturalism debate. Hick “insists that given the universality of religious experience, it is appropriate to think of it in realist terms and generally to trust its veridical nature.”[3] But citing Anselm’s 11^th century BC ontological argument as well as that of Charles Hartshorne, he counters these as well as Plantinga’s points on the basis that ontological arguments do “not provide a firm ground for belief in the reality of God” (p. 79). He then turns to cosmotological arguments, but he claims to defeat them. Moreover, using metaphors of DNA chromosomes in sperm and eggs, he argues against scientific proofs for intelligent design. He also defeats Swinburne’s probability argument by using Bayes Theorem against itself. Finally, he concludes that neither naturalism nor theism has any advantage for interpreting external evidence for or against the existence of God.

His third part entails epistemology or truth. Because cognition occurs on three levels, meaning must be evaluated according to that level. Truth from data in the physical world is judged naturally. Relationships are judged by socio-ethical standards. The religious order is reserved for our awareness of God. Because of this order, our religious experiences should be understood as subjective interpretations. In chapter nine, Hick more fully explains this concept by attaching ethical and aesthetic meaning to relationships. In chapter ten, however, he promotes religion as a cognitive filter that allows adherents to experience the Real. This mystical experience associated with the Real involves both the information received via revelation as well as the intrinsic significance associated with the experience. By citing instances in major world religions, Hick is careful to show the logic of religious realism. Conversely, he uses religious symbol and mythology to expose the problems associated with the non-realist or anti-realist positions. The question is not whether a religious experience is genuine, but the most important issue is whether it is rational. As such, he blatantly states that “it is rational to believe in the reality of God” (p. 211).

He moves to the heart of his argument in part 4. By appealing to “the Kantian distinction between noumenon and phenomenon as the basis for his religious pluralism, arguing that God, or "the Real," transcends all of the various personae (divinities) and impersonae (nonpersonal ultimate realities) of religious history,”[4] Hick restates his hypothesis for total religious equality. Since God is a phenomenon, Hick believes we cannot fully know Him. Therefore, “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” (p. 240). Because there are aspects about God that are both impersonal and personal, religion as a manmade instrument gives context for our experiences. Since these experiences are subjective, however, Hick believes there is a need for objective criteria to judge them. 

In part five, Hick “establishes as a criterion for evaluation of religious beliefs and practices their capacity to bring about the human transformation noted above, arguing in this regard that the various traditions are essentially of equal strength.”[5] The basic criteria are the sense of salvation that the religion gives the adherent and the ethical worth to society as a whole. Hick admits that there are some unanswerable questions related to his proposal, but he believes that his hypothesis clears the way to deal with the problem of conflicting truth-claims. In essence, his argument is more than just pluralism. He proposes that all post-axial religious expressions are simply “different conceptions and perceptions of, and responses to, the Real from within the different cultural ways of being human” (p. 376).  Because they are all worshipful responses to the same God, only tainted by cultural lens and linguistic inadequacies, they are “compatible with the pluralistic hypothesis” (p. 376).

My Take on Hick

Hick’s Real is not real

There is a definite problem with placing a nondescript definition on God. Although articulately done, Hick’s categorization of God as an ultimate reality or some kind of universal force opens him to the accusation of inclusivism, accepting all human attempts to relate to any god as valid. Understandably, Hick tries to unify the fundamental belief in the existence of God by tying a conceptual label to that belief. This may provide the linguistic means for finding a common denominator in the major world religions, but it also weakens his argument that belief in God’s existence is a rational choice.

Hick seems to intimate that the monotheistic concept was a rational development over time, and as such he disallows progressive revelation. Moreover, he sustains his argument for unverifiable religious truth by maintaining the position that any revelation is both culturally biased and limited. This line of reasoning, in my opinion, might provide an adequate medium for theorizing, but it also is open to the counterargument that it actually proves the irrationality of a belief in God. Like Terrence W. Tilley, I wonder if Hick’s “soteriological and ethical criteria do not finally render him an unwitting inclusivist.”[6]

Hick’s hypothesis portrays God as an unknowable force that can be, at best, partially described. Why do I hear Darth Vader's breath right now? Because Hick’s Real is unknowable, any characterizations of the Real are downplayed into human categories. The Real “cannot be said to be personal” (p. 264). Instead, for Hick the Real truthfully might be only ideals transposed onto some subconscious image a culture has. Thus, his conclusion can only be understood as an expression of “hyper-Kantianism”[7] of a dualistic nature.

Hick’s universalism has no salvation

Hick understands salvation as a process. But exactly what is meant by salvation is open to scrutiny. Saved from what? At points, he seems open to allowing salvation for all of humanity by denying the validity of Christianity’s exclusive claims, by denying the existence of eternal punishment and by suggesting that salvation might be nothing more than earthly liberation and justice.

            Hick denies Christ’s claim to being the only way of salvation. For Hick this claim is not only ludicrous, but it was made by a man who had no more spiritual insight than Gautama Buddha or Krishna. He glosses over his judgment with a sweet shell of humanistic rationalization. Since Christ made this claim, as have many others, we are left to assume that each must have believed it to be true. This can, according to Hick, never be proved; therefore, we can only accept that it was important to Christ to feel this way. Moreover, since even Jesus’ understanding of his own identity is subject to his cultural influences, our experience must be the greater judge. Hicks seems to suggest that Christ’s claims were misunderstood, but his denial of Christianity’s uniqueness and his openness to salvation through many roads make him anything but an evangelical Christian. Why do I sense remnants of The Last Temptation of Christ here?

            Hick also denies hell as a literal place of eternal punishment. At times, he speaks parenthetically about hell as an apologetic against Augustinian Calvinism. He bases his argument on the love of God as One who would not send anyone to a literal hell, but in doing so he employs the very terminology that he claims is inadequate to describe God as a Personal Being. So again, saved from what? 

            To Hick, salvation may be simply liberation from injustice. He applauds liberation theologians for their contribution to the discussion. However, as he waters down salvation to apply to only earthly experience, he inadvertently discounts his very argument that religion should be judged soteriologically. Hick finally admits that “it does not seem to make any soteriological difference whether one believes that the world is or is not eternal and its history cyclical or linear, that we do or do not reincarnate, that there are or are not angels and devils and a hierarchy or heavens and hells” (p. 369). And therein is his thesis: if there is no Supreme Being to which we must give an account, it really doesn't matter what you believe. 

Hick’s Tolerance

Hick takes painstaking efforts to identify all religions’ common god force as the Real. But then he states that “the Real in itself is not a direct object of worship” (p. xxxi). Since the Real cannot be known nor is it worshiped, it is possible to accept all objects of worship as equally valid. Hick claims that this is the evolution to which the Christian church is gradually moving. He further states that anyone in the future who will be educated will “have come to take for granted a pluralistic understanding of the religious life of the world, with Christianity seen as part of that life” (p. 377). It seems that anything less than tolerance for all religions will not usher in peace.

            This stance is not only elitist, but it reeks of liberal activism. It is an anti-Christian core coated with a feel-good luster. The argument that "if you were really educated, you'd agree with me" doesn't hold water. Given the stout denial of the Son of God in favor of language that might appeal to every other ecumenical religious group, Hick’s claim to evangelical Christianity cannot be taken seriously.

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[1] This biographical information about John Hick is based on his dust jacket of An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent; an online biographic sketch at "John Hick," in Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia; (Wikimedia Foundation Inc., updated 22 July 2004, 10:55 UTC) [encyclopedia on-line]; available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hick; Internet; Cited 20 March 2009; and John Hick’s own blogsite. Cited 20 March 2009. Online: http://www.johnhick.org.uk.

[2] David McKenzie, review of John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent. Journal of Church & State Vol. 48 Issue 1 (Winter 2006): 206-207.

[3] David McKenzie, review of John Hick, 207.

[4] David McKenzie, review of John Hick, 207.

[5] David McKenzie, review of John Hick, 207.

[6] Terrence W. Tilley, review of John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent. Theological Studies 51 (March 1990): 139.

[7] Terrence W. Tilley, review of John Hick, 139.