An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent [Paperback]

This book is still universally agreed to be the most formidable, longstanding and most important academic proposal and defence of the view that all the main world religions are best understood as roads to God i.e. as vehicles to aid humans to reorient their lives from their natural self-centredness toward an increasing centredness in God/The Divine/ultimate reality. No one can seriously challenge that proposal (called religious pluralism) without facing up to what this man has said on the subject more than anyone else.

Evangelical Christians (and I was a well read one) are endlessly rejecting any mention of his ideas but very few have ever actually read anything much at all of his writings. The few academics that have, tend in my experience, to have mis-understood certain key basic ideas on which the whole proposal stands, probably due to their overriding dedication to their existing Christian beliefs. Thus they create straw caricatures of this great academics important work, and kick them down as if it were easy, doing themselves and any discussion of world religions only harm. The man widely regarded as the leading Evangelical Christian apologist in England Dr Alister McGrath recently took on Hick in written debate. He showed great academic discourtesy when by chance he revealed how clearly he'd read virtually nothing of Hick; and most importantly how he'd neglected to read this book which is widely regarded as his most important and truly erudite work, and so McGrath looked rather silly as a result, despite trying to look clever and impressive attacking ideas he clearly felt he already understood but showing his own academic ignorance. (See 'Four Views on Salvation in A Pluralistic World' ed. Okholm - if you're a Christian you may enjoy that book much more as you get 3 other Christian rooted views in debate with Prof. Hick with each person responding to the others etc).

Anyway, for those reading this of greater emotional security, religious maturity, and who desire full academic rigour it's worth mentioning that this edition updates the book to take account of over a decade of academic consideration and attempted criticism. It shows just how strong the remarkably simple theory remains despite desperate attempts by so many of the religiously insecure to pull it down given how it so challenges our traditional and limited human views of God and the Universe and the whole value of beliefs vs actual human transformation from self-centredness to a reorienting in the Ultimate Reality. Briefly put, the book shows how it's the transformational power of a religion to move people out of primitive selfishness and toward deeper reorientation in the divine, which is ultimately our best and only measure of its truth - given that we can't ever be 100% sure a) whether god/the divine is definitely there or not, and b) what religious ideas are accurate about that divine reality (is it personal/not, or beyond such a distinction etc). Christians immediately talk of the uniqueness of Jesus etc (as I used to do) but he's dealt with that issue in depth elsewhere (see his The Metaphor of God Incarnate 2nd edition). The deepest point being that no 'God' worthy of our attention would have ordained a human journey where what you believe is the chief criterion for your being 'ok'. It's a radical yet not so radical and liberating proposal - and feels intuitively true largely because it explains the utter haphazardness of human religious beliefs over all human times.

I cannot commend it highly enough - an easier to read form of it is in his other book called The Rainbow of Faiths which is a less in-depth but more accessible startpoint for many before climbing this great philosophical summit.

Hick has argued for many years for a new Christian interpretation of other religions. This book is really his most developed and compelling statement of his case. In essence, Hick claims that all the major world religions are diverse responses to the same ultimate, divine reality. In order to substantiate his claim he surveys the historical background to the major world religions and develops his own theory about religious knowledge. Hick dismisses the major philosophical arguments for the existence of God as, at best, unconvincing, and suggests that the universe is religiously ambiguous. So how do we know that there is a god out there? Hick argues that this is known through a form of awareness or experience. At least for religious people, the universe "feels" that way. On the basis of this claim, Hick then argues that all the major religions share similar convictions about the importance of love, a sense of ultimate significance and the hope of some kind of continued existence after death. Hick provides a robust response to possible objections (what about wicked religions and cults? what about conflicting truth claims?) along with a proposal for the future and an extensive bibliography. I think Hick is mistaken because his proposal is reductionist: the kind of god presented by pluralism is neither the personal God of Christianity nor the non-personal Nirvana of Buddhist thought. Hick's proposal fails to account for religious belief on its own terms but reinterprets the world religions. As a work of Christian theology I think it fails because Hick cuts off the branch he sits upon. He drops belief in revelation, the Bible and the incarnation while still wanting to claim that his "god" loves, in some sense, the world. On what basis can he make that claim? Nonetheless, despite these objections, I concede that it is a well written and well argued book. Anyone who disagrees with the popular idea that all religions lead to god need to reckon with and respond to this book.