Possibility of Religious Pluralism: A Reply to Gavin D'costa

The Possibility of Religious Pluralism: A Reply to Gavin d'Costa Author(s): John Hick Source: Religious Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Jun., 1997), pp. 161-166 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20008088 Accessed: 16/09/2010 10:47 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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Rel. Stud. 33, pp.

I6i-i66.

Copyright

(C I997 Cambridge

JOHN

THE

POSSIBILITY PLURALISM: GAVIN

University

Press

HICK

OF RELIGIOUS A REPLY TO D'COSTA

In 'The Impossibility of a Pluralist View of Religions' (ReligiousStudies 32, June I996) Gavin D'Costa argues that 'pluralism must always logically be a form of exclusivism and that nothing called pluralism really exists' (225). He sees himself as doing a 'conceptual spring cleaning exercise' (225). However the result is to obscure clear and useful distinctions by confused and confusing ones. Some further spring cleaning is therefore called for. The religious pluralism that D'Costa is referring to is the view that the great world religions constitute conceptually and culturally different responses to an ultimate transcendent reality, these responses being, so far as we can tell, more or less on a par when judged by their fruits. And the religious exclusivism towhich he refers holds that one particular religion - in his case Christianity - is alone fully true and salvific, the others being either wholly misleading, or inferior imitations of or inferior approximations to the one 'true' religion1. To say that the former of these two views, religious pluralism, is a version of the latter, religious exclusivism, would be so totally implausible that this cannot be what D'Costa means. Even ifwe banished the word 'pluralism' the two rival views would remain somanifestly different that we would still need different names for them. D'Costa's real concern is, I think, that in distinguishing between, on the one hand, those religious phenomena (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Taoism... ) that are held to be different culturally conditioned responses to theTranscendent, and on the other hand those religious, or quasi-religious, phenomena (he cites Nazism and the Jim Jones cult) which are held not to be responses to the Transcendent but products of individual or collective egoism, the pluralist is obviously using a criterion; and D'Costa's thesis is that to use a criterion is to be an exclusivist. For in operating with a criterion one is accepting something and rejecting something else; and this iswhat D'Costa choses tomean by exclusivism. 'I want to suggest,' he says, 'that there is no such thing as pluralism because 1 D'Costa in this article as an exclusivist presents himself has previously advocated) and pluralism are both 'sub-types

when he says of exclusivism'

that inclusivism (225).

(which

he

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all pluralists are committed to holding some form of truth criteria and by virtue of this, anything that falls foul of such criteria is excluded from counting as truth' (226). That religious pluralists do employ criteria is certainly true, even though D'Costa at one point slips into saying that 'Hick holds that all religions are paths to the "Real"' (227, my italics). The main criterion iswhether a is a context of human transformation from natural self movement centeredness to a new orientation centered in the Transcendent, this salvific transformation being expressed in an inner peace and joy and in com passionate love for others. (More about where this criterion come from presently.) But to think that using criteria, as such, constitutes exclusivism, although intelligible in a purely notional and trivial sense, ismuch more misleading than helpful. In this trivial and misleading sense one is an exclusivist when one admires Mahatma Gandhi and the Dalai Lama but condemns Hitler and Stalin; or when an umpire declares a foul in football; or even when one distinguishes between left and right, or night and day, or makes such an innocent statement as that it is raining! For to make an assertion about anything is to deny its contrary, and to propose a theory or view about anything is to reject alternative views. But to label all judgments, all proposing of theories and hypotheses, all expressions of opinion, as exclusivist would be to empty the term of any useful meaning. For there could then be no non-exclusivist statements, so that the termwould cease to mark any distinction. We can hardly suppose that D'Costa means to affirm the self-destructive principle that to use criteria is to be an exclusivist. But in the special field of religion, when we hold that such religious and quasi-religious movements as Nazism, which set out to exterminate the Jewish race, or (on a much smaller scale) the Peoples' Temple of the I978 Jonestown

mass

or the Order

suicide,

or the Branch

of the Solar Temple

Davidians

of the

of the I993 Waco

I994 Swiss mass

suicide,

massacre, or the Aum

Shin Rikyo cult which put sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo underground system in I995, are not authentic human responses toGod/the Divine/the Dharma/ the Real/the Transcendent, are we perhaps being exclusivist in a more substantial sense? It isof course possible to use the term in this very extended way;

but

it would

in my

view

be confusing

and unhelpful

to do

so. For

it

would obscure the important distinction between, on the one hand, claiming that one's own religion is the only 'true' religion, forwhich 'exclusivism' is surely the natural descriptive term2 and, on the other hand, the idea that 2 There is the only the camp of those who hold that Christianity now a difference within is however in Thomas of Religious Exclusivism' 'Pluralism: A Defense true religion. Some (such as Alvin Plantinga, Cornell University D. Senor, ed., The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith, Ithaca and London: in whilst others (such as Alister McGrath as Exclusivists, to speak of themselves Press, I995) continue and Timothy Phillips, eds., More Than One Way? Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic Dennis Ockholm sounds unattractive Zondervan, World, Grand Rapids, Michigan: I995), perhaps feeling that 'exclusivist' Particularists. to many people today, now call themselves

RELIGIOUS

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there is a plurality of 'true' religions, for which 'pluralism' is surely the natural descriptive term. Gavin D'Costa and others will still want to argue against this latter position, and rather than having to invent a new name for it, would it not be more sensible to continue to use the established name? However D'Costa believes that he ismaking a logical point: 'pluralism', he says, 'operateswithin the same logical structure as exclusivism' (226). But in fact religious exclusivism and religious pluralism are of different logical kinds, the one being a self-committing affirmation of faith and the other a philosophical hypothesis.3 The hypothesis is offered as the best available explanation, from a religious as distinguished from a naturalistic point of view, of the data of the history of religions. Pluralism is thus not another historical religion making an exclusive religious claim, but a meta-theory about the relation between the historical religions. Its logical status as a second-order philosophical theory or hypothesis isdifferent in kind from that of a first-order religious creed or gospel. And so the religious pluralist does not, like the traditional religious exclusivist, consign non-believers to per dition, but invites them to try to produce a better explanation of the data. D'Costa has not taken note of this basic point. He asks, 'how does John Hick know that the Real is beyond all language, incapable of any descrip tion' (229) .The answer of course is that he does not know this.He is offering an hypothesis to explain how it is that the great world religions, with their different concepts of the Ultimate, nevertheless seem to be equally effective (and of course also equally ineffective) contexts of the salvific human trans formation.

With this clarification we can now take up the legitimate question that D'Costa raises. When we judge that Nazism, the Peoples' Temple, the Branch Davidians, theOrder of the Solar Temple, and theAum Shin Rikyo cult, are not authentic responses to theDivine/Ultimate/Real, where did we get the criterion which entitles us to say this? The answer is very simple; but before coming to it I must point to a regrettable misrepresentation which has crept intoD'Costa's article. D'Costa professes to see 'an ambiguity as to how Hick would answer this question' (228), an ambiguity between thinking of the Ultimate as a personal deity and thinking of it as an ineffable transcendent reality ('the Real') towhich, because it is ineffable, the personal/impersonal distinction does not apply.4 The two different ideas of theUltimate as a divine Person, and as an ineffable Reality that cannot be described as either personal or impersonal, both occur inmy writings, the theistic view inwritings in the I970s and those embodying 3 The relevant chapter in my An Interpretation of Religion (London: Macmillan, and New Haven: Yale University Press, I989) is called 'The Pluralistic Hypothesis'. 4 D'Costa describes my position as 'transcendental agnosticism' (228). But it is a mistake to equate the concept of ineffability with agnosticism. in this context Agnosticism is the view that the Ultimate is either personal or non-personal but we don't know which. That the Ultimate is ineffable means that it is beyond the scope of our human conceptual systems, including the personal/impersonal dichotomy.

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the concept of the Real in the I98os and gos, the latter being presented as an explicit departure from the former position. However D'Costa suggests that 'in parts of An Interpretationof Religion (I989)' (228) 'Hick's incipient theism leaks out' (229), so that the two incompatible positions are held simultaneously and there is thus ambiguity as towhich is intended. He does not say which parts of An Interpretation he thinks embody a theistic view, and in fact there are none. There is no 'incipient theism' in the book; and to treat an earlier position, and a later one which replaces it, as jointly constituting an ambiguity is as inappropriate as itwould be to say thatD'Costa's position is ambiguous because in his present article he renounces an earlier view for which he had previously argued! Returning from this corrective we come to the question of the source of the criterion by which we judge Nazism, theOrder of the Solar Temple, etc. not to be authentic responses to the Divine/Ultimate/Real. The answer is that this criterion is a basic moral insight which Christians have received from Christian teachings, Jews from Jewish teachings, Muslims from Islamic teachings, Hindus fromHindu teachings, Buddhists fromBuddhist teachings, and so on. And within the terms of the pluralistic hypothesis this criterion represents the basic moral consensus of all the great world faiths. The Golden Rule, in which this basic consensus is encapsulated, is common to (in his torical order) Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam.5 But why select theseparticular traditions in the first place, rather than Satanism, Nazism, theOrder of the Solar Temple, etc., as providing the right criterion? The answer arises out of the route by which the pluralistic hy pothesis is arrived at. It starts from the basic faith that religious experience is not purely imaginative projection but is also (whilst including such pro jection) a cognitive response to a transcendent reality. The hypothesis is thus explicitly a religiousinterpretation of religion, and as such it originates within a particular religious tradition - inmy own case Christianity. As a Christian, then, one accepts that the sense of the presence of God within the Christian community

is indeed

an awareness

of a divine

presence;

and

one

sees as

confirmation of this the self-evidently valuable and desirable 'fruit of the Spirit' which St Paul listed as 'love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control' (Galatians 5: 22). It is important to recognize that religious experience and its fruits in life cohere together; for if the fruits in this case were hatred, misery, aggression, unkindness, impatience, violence and lack of self-control thiswould lead us to deny the authenticity of the experience. One

then becomes

aware

that

there

are other

within which people conceive and experience 5 For supporting

details

great

traditions

religious

the Divine/Ultimate/Real

see An Interpretation of Religion,

chap.

I 7, section

5.

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differently, but the moral and spiritual fruits of which nevertheless seem to be essentially similar to those of Christian faith and experience. And so one extends to them the basic faith that their religious experience also is a cognitive response to a transcendent reality. At this point, itwould be possible to see the theistic traditions as responses to different deities, Christians responding to the Holy Trinity, Jews to Adonai, Muslims toAllah, theistic Hindus toVishnu or to Shiva, and so on. But on reflection such a polytheism, although theoretically possible, creates more problems than it solves. Does the Holy Trinity preside over Christian countries, Allah over Islamic countries, Vishnu and Shiva over different parts of India? And what about the increasing number of places in which more than one religion is practised? In the city of Birmingham, England, for example, does the Holy Trinity answer prayers in Edgbaston, but Allah in Small Heath, the war guru of the Sikh faith in parts of Handsworth and Vishnu in other parts of Handsworth? And when we enlarge our vision to take account of the non-theistic faiths, particularly Buddhism, the problem ismultiplied. And so ifwe are looking for themost reasonable, the least problem-prone, explanation of the data, the pluralistic hypothesis offers itself as an obvious solution. The process of reasoning which I have described from a Christian point of view is also of course appropriate for adherents of any other of the world religions who are also philosophers seeking to understand our global human situation in relation to the Transcendent. One further point. Possibly the real heart of D'Costa's concern is that according to the pluralistic hypothesis the claim made in varying degrees by each of the great religions to embody the full and final truth, and to be in that respect uniquely superior to all other religions, has to be modified. Thus the pluralist theory denies an aspect of the self-understanding of each faith in so far as each sees itself as having the only fully authentic revelation or enlightenment. D'Costa is very critical of this. But people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones! Has it escaped D'Costa's notice that he also contradicts the self-understanding of every religion except his own? If Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists etc. think that their tradition has the final truth, D'Costa confidently holds that they are mistaken. His difference from a religious pluralist is that he regards his own tradition as the sole exception to the general principle that claims to be the one and only 'true' religion are mistaken! But whilst the difference between religious pluralism and religious exclusivism is, in their logical structure, as narrow as this, there is still an important difference in their religious outlooks and practical outworkings. I have been replying here toD'Costa's attack upon what he calls 'philo sophical pluralism'. But this isnot really distinct fromwhat he calls 'practical or pragmatic pluralism', as is clear from the discussion above about themoral criterion. Paul Knitter's distinctive contribution (with which I am fully in

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agreement) is to stress the liberative social and political aspects of this. There are good answers to the questions thatD'Costa raises about this also, but the present response is already long enough. Institutefor AdvancedResearch in theHumanities, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, BI5 2TT