The Transcategorial

Prof. John Hick's public lecture last week on Christianity and Other Religions (December 3rd, School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham) began with a series of slides briefly detailing orthodox Christian doctrine, particularly claims to unique revelation by God and therefore access to salvation, truth, etc.

Following the logic of these claims, Hick then asked the room the rhetorical question of whether it then follows that these claims "must show in the lives of Christians generally in distinction from non-Christians." If salvation, truth, God is to have a difference in believers lives (in contrast to non-believers) then Christians must therefore be "better human beings, morally and spiritually" than others. The truth of these claims to unique revelation and special election must therefore be judged by the fruit of believer's lives. Love. Joy. Peace. Patience... However, Hick doubts the superiority of the Christian religion because these fruits are shown in other religions. He concludes that all the world religions are "more or less equally effective and more or less equally ineffective" in changing human beings for the better.

Hick presented three options as philosophical responses to the problem of Christianity and other religions: exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism. However, exclusivism (truth and salvation are for Christians only) leaves the problem of reconciling this with a loving God, and inclusivism (salvation for all, in principle, through Jesus' atoning death on cross but the Holy Spirit's special presence in the Church of Christ) still leaves the problem that Christians ought to be but are frequently not better than those outside the Church: "saints and sinners seem to be pretty evenly sprinkled among the religions of the world." Hick therefore concludes that both exclusivism and inclusivism cannot be the answer.

Pluralism, on the other hand, which emphaises the ineffability of God or, in Hick's language, the "transcategorial" nature of God. He uses critical realism, which posists that "awareness of reality is mediated through our cognitive capacities and conceptual resources," to argue that God is experienced through our context specific categories but that God as Godself is also obscured by them. We can experience God, and even improve in our knowledge about God, but we can never know God fully or even well. Hick quoted Rumi, a medieval Muslim philosopher, theologian and poet to illustrate pluralism: "the lamps are different, but the Light is the same: it comes from Beyond."

As I wrote in another post, I'm going to use a bit of Hick to flesh out the philosophical implications of the first strand within my data. There is a God, but human finitude prevents us from full knowledge of God, though we have faith in both special and general revelation and might progress towards truth through interaction with others in community, both Christians and non-Christians, without ever knowing God as God knows Godself.

Although the lecture was rather basic, it's given me a bit of an idea as to where to go to explore further the Hickean aspects of this strand:

• God and the Universe of Faiths ([1973]1993) - which launched the contemporary pluralist understanding of world religions and sees God, or the Ultimate, at the centre of the universe of faiths with Christianity as one of the religions revolving around it.



• God Has Many Names ([1982]2000) - offers a global theory of religious knowledge and offers a philosophy of religious pluralism.



• The Rainbow of Faiths: A Christian Theology of Religions (1995) - a collection of lectures which uses the metaphor of a rainbow to argue that our awareness of the divine Presence is refracted by our human religious cultures.



• Who or What is God? (2007) - a collection of essays centering on the themes of the search for truth (the ultimate reality to which all world religions point) and the search for justice and peace.

The main argument of my thesis attempts to connect the two themes of Hick's Who or What is God?: the search for truth and the search for justice. I'm in the middle of writing my abstract, so more of this anon!!!

Hick on Christianity and Other Religions

Professor John Hick will be giving a public lecture, entitled "Christianity and Other Religions," at the University of Birmingham at the beginning of next month. The event, which is part of the University's postgraduate open day on December 3rd, is hosted by the School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion.

I'm particularly interested in Hick's work on the philosophy of religion because it relates to the first philosophical strand that I am drawing from my research data. (For an overview of the two strands, see my post on my thesis structure - particularly chapters four and five). This first strand, whose chapter I am currently giving the title "Inaccessibility," acknowledge human finitude, revere subjectivity of experience, and therefore encourage humility in religious knowledge. An example of this strand's Hickean approach is the story of Indian origin in which blind men have access to different parts of an elephant, each believing they know what they have (a tree, a snake, a rope, etc.) without being able to access the entirety of the elephant to know it to be such, told to me by several participants. The story suggests that, while there is absolute truth (it is an elephant; God exists), that truth is inaccessible to us in its totality; we have, instead, subjective or relative truths.

Hick's work on pluralism, universalism, and interreligious dialogue is (or rather, will be, once I've read some more of it!!!) pertinant here. Hick describes God as 'transcategorial,' and argues that beliefs about God are shaped by available categories in our culture(s). There is therefore a plurality of ways of understanding and experiencing God, none of which (like our blind men) have a monopoly on religious truth.

Along with Hick, participants in this first strand conceptualise truth within a paradigm which one participant describes as 'inaccessible Absolutism,' wherein truth exists on 'a kind of universal level,' independently of our stumblings after it, but no 'one person or group can access it' fully.