John Hick

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John Harwood Hick (born January 20, 1922 in Scarborough / Yorkshire , † February 9, 2012 in Birmingham ) was a British Presbyterian theologian and religious philosopher . He was an important representative of the pluralistic theology of religion - that is, the consideration that different religions can be true and convey salvation. The philosophical-theological work of Hick focused on the points of 'faith and knowledge', the 'epistemology and philosophy of religion', the 'question of God', the 'existence of God', the 'possibility of knowledge of God and his personality' and the 'philosophy of language'.

Life

Childhood and professional education

Hick grew up as the second of three sons of the lawyer Mark Day Hick (1880-1962) and Mary Aileen, a born Hirst (1896-1988) in a coastal town in the east of England; 7 Westbourne Grove, Scarborough, Yorkshire . One of his older brothers was Edwin Pentland Hick (1919-2016), a British entrepreneur, author, publisher, and World War II veteran; Royal Army Medical Corps from 1939 to 1945. His family was a member of the Anglican Church . His paternal ancestors owned a successful shipping company . His grandfather Albert Edwin (1846–1900) left the shipping business to become a lawyer.

Hick attended elementary school, grade school the “Lisvane School” on site, where he found his way around poorly as a shy child, then he was taught at home by a private tutor. From 1937 to 1938 he attended the Bootham Quaker School in York . He then worked as a paralegal in the small Hick & Hands law firm that belonged to his father. His maternal great-uncle Edward Wales Hirst , Uncle Eddy who taught Christian ethics at Manchester University , encouraged him to go to university. Through Uncle Eddy he met a friend of his, David Smith Cairns (1862-1946), a retired professor and director of one of the Scottish theological faculties.

Study and evangelization

As an employee, he casually attended lectures in law at University College in Kingston upon Hull . At the age of seventeen he began to read important works of Western philosophy, and Hick was particularly impressed by Immanuel Kant . Perhaps his greatest influences at the time came from Thomas Edmund Jessop , whose philosophical lectures Hick attended in Hull. During his studies, he found friends who for Inter-Varsity Fellowship Group ( Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship included), and introduced him to the evangelical faith. A Welsh evangelist and his friends were instrumental in his conversion. Autobiographically, Hick noted that during this period of his life he accepted all of evangelical theology, such as the verbal inspiration of the Bible , creation and the fall of man , Jesus as the incarnate Son of God who was born of the Virgin Mary , etc. He decided to be pastor of the Presbyterian Church in England to become. He then switched to theology and philosophy in order to be able to enter the church service later. In Edinburgh he attended lectures by the philosopher Norman Kemp Smith , who further influenced him. This newfound enthusiasm for philosophy and religion led him to drop out of law school and enroll in a philosophy course at Edinburgh University in 1941 .

Military service and university studies, degrees

During the time of the Second World War , Hick refused to work with the weapon and so he could be used in an ambulance unit of the Friends , Friends' Ambulance Unit in Egypt, Italy and Greece.

In Edinburgh he was able to complete his studies in 1948, then he went to Oriel College in Oxford . Under Henry Habberley Price earned his doctorate, in the period from 1948 to 1950 in philosophy on The Relationship Between Faith and Belief , which later became his first book Faith and Knowledge (1957) (German: faith and knowledge ) was created. In his dissertation, Hick addressed the relationship between belief, understood as an existential attitude, and confession, understood as cognitive belief. What in itself seems to be based on the Thomas differentiation between the “act of faith” fides qua creditur 'the faith with which one believes' and the 'belief content ' fides quae creditur 'the faith that is believed'. Hick revised his dissertation and created the basis for his first work, which was in 1957 with the title Faith and Knowledge. A modern Introduction to the Problem of Religious Knowledge has been published. With the influence of Kantian and positivist philosophy, Hick increasingly distanced himself from his evangelical brothers and sisters in his reflections.

1950 to 1953 he studied Reformed theology under Herbert Henry Farmer at Westminster College in Cambridge to become a Presbyterian clergyman. He was ordained in 1953 and pastored the Belford Presbyterian Church in Northumberland for two and a half years .

University professor

1956 to 1959 taught Hick as an assistant professor of philosophy at Cornell University in Ithaca in New York . In 1959 he received the Stuart Chair in Christian Philosophy at Princeton Theological Seminary . Here he came into conflict with teachings of the Presbyterian Church for the first time. In 1963 he received the Guggenheim and Cook-Crone Research Bye Fellowships for one year each , which he spent at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge. There he worked on his second book Evil and the God of Love . In the early 1960s, Hick met the Canadian religious and Islamic scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith personally . An encounter that influenced Hick in his scientific direction.

In 1964 he returned to Great Britain to teach at Cambridge University . From 1966 he held the HG Wood Chair in Philosophy and Religion at the University of Birmingham . It was there that his turn to religious theological pluralism began to be made public by working with multi-religious groups on topics such as racism and fundamental rights and by increasingly studying Eastern religions. He also traveled to India in order to Hinduism to understand by Punjab for Sikhism and after Sri Lanka to the Buddhism know locally. His work Death and Eternal Life (German: Death and Eternal Life ) emerged from these study trips .

When he received an important position at Queens College in 1972 , the multi-religious life situation of his fellow men in Birmingham had become more important to him. So Hick became the head of the group All Faiths for One Race and was committed to a deeper understanding of other religions. Published in 1977 Hick a book with the provocative title The Myth of God Incarnate (German: The myth of the incarnation of God ), which was sold in the first six months times 30,000 and translated into several languages. From 1978 he lectured at the Claremont Graduate University near Los Angeles , where he was offered the Danforth Professorship for the Philosophy of Religion. For the first three years he commuted back and forth between Claremont and Birmingham in order to be able to fulfill both teaching assignments. In the summer of 1980 he also taught in South Africa, where he met Desmond Tutu , which led to a lifelong friendship. In 1982, Hick moved entirely to Claremont to further develop his religious philosophy there. From 1986 to 1987 he was able to present them at the Gifford Lectures , where he examined the religions in a large-scale attempt at interpretation. In 1989 he received the Grawemeyer Award . As a result of his exchange with Buddhist philosophers such as Masao Abe and other people, he increasingly distanced himself from the theistic concept of God.

After his retirement in 1992 in Claremont, he returned to Birmingham, where he was a Fellow for Research and Studies in Social Sciences at the university. He wrote other books and traveled around the world for conferences and lectures. In 2011, the University of Birmingham opened the John Hick Center for Philosophy of Religion and awarded it an honorary doctorate. He made his last public speech on the occasion, and he died soon after - in Queen Elizabeth Hospital - shortly after his 90th birthday.

Two of his students Alan Race (* 1951) and Gavin D'Costa (* 1958) are known.

Private

At Westminster College in Cambridge, Hick met his wife, Joan Hazel, née Bowers (May 21, 1926 - September 15, 1996), they were married on August 30, 1953 and had a daughter and three sons. Hazel died in 1996 of complications from a stroke following an operation .

Joan Hazel Bower's mother was a missionary, Frances Bowers, née Harris, born in Johannesburg , where her father, Rev JT Harris, served as a priest.

One of his sons, Michael, died in Switzerland in 1985 at the age of 24 in a fall from a great height while he was helping a friend to catch grazing animals; three other children are Eleanor (* 1955), Mark (* 1957) and Peter Hick as well six grandchildren.

Work and teaching

Turning to pluralistic theology of religion

Hick experienced a probably profound change in his theological and religious thinking after his appointment to the theological chair at the University of Birmingham in 1967; as Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities . In the multicultural city ​​community of Birmingham he was confronted with the problem of religious pluralism. In this way, Hick attended services in Jewish , Muslim communities, the Sikhs and various Hindu communities.

The division of the theology of religion into an “exclusive”, “inclusive” and “pluralistic model” goes back, from a Christian perspective, to the considerations of Hick, for whose terminological elaboration his student Alan Race provided.

  • Exclusivism : Christianity alone mediated salvation;
  • Inclusiveism : not only did Christianity mediate salvation, but through Jesus is the more superior religious form;
  • Pluralism : not only Christianity mediates salvation.

Hick's criticism of Christianity's sole claim to truth and salvation became manifest from the early 1970s. In the spring of 1972 he gave a programmatic lecture The Copernican Revolution in Theology in which he outlined the basic concept of pluralistic theology of religion.

In 1987, under the influence of Wilfred Cantwell Smith and with the appearance of two conference reports, a turning point came. One of the conference reports together with Paul F. Knitter was entitled The Myth of Christian Uniquess. Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions , in which further contributions from the editors as well as Wilfried Cantwell Smith, Stanley Jedidiah Samartha , Raimon Panikkar , Aloysius Pieris , Rosemary Radford Ruether , Tom Faw Driver , Gordon Dester Kaufman , Langdon Brown Gilkey , Seiichi Yagi and Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki were published. The published work was based on presentations given at a convention in Claremont, California , Claremont Graduate School Conference of March 1986 . This conference was also known as the "Rubicon Conference" because it introduced a paradigm shift in theology of religion. For most pluralists, the postaxial world religions, be they theistic (personal) or non-theistic (impersonal), are religions of equal rank, such as Judaism , Christianity , Islam , Sikhism , Zoroastrianism, as well as Hinduism , Jainism , and Buddhism , Taoism and Confucianism .

In February 2005, at a lecture in Tehran , he quoted Hick a metaphorical sentence by the Persian Sufi mystic Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī , or Rūmī for short: The lamps are different but the Light is the same; it comes from beyond. "The lamps are different but the light is the same, it comes from beyond above."

Hick developed his understanding detached from the concrete postaxial religious systems, from a metatheoretical perspective. Hick spoke of the "hypothesis of self-equality" of a divine reality, the real, which manifests itself in postaxial religions in particular . Because all postaxial religious systems aimed at the redeeming transformation of human existence from a self-centeredness to a reality-centeredness and only because of whether they promote or hinder such a redeeming transformation their “value” can be determined. With the transcendence of the ego point of view, in the place of which the devotion to a manifestation of the real or a concentrated focus on this would occur, the reality-centeredness was founded. For the believer, the healing, personal or non-personal divine appears in different metaphors , in the various narratives and in the culturally and historically conditioned symbolic designs.

General religious theological

According to Hick, at the center of all legitimately so-called religions is a transcendent being that he calls the real , the - unreservedly, absolutely - 'real' or ultimate reality . In every historical religion this is only inappropriately addressed in language and appearance, which explains the diversity of religious traditions.

Because what the different religious systems designate as the 'real' is, according to his conclusions, not the 'real in itself ', but the 'real' as it appears to people in their limited, respective perspective, as it is through the respective Lens would be perceived. He takes up the terminology of Immanuel Kant ( Critique of Pure Reason ) and his distinction between the thing in itself and how it appears to a consciousness depending on a certain system of perception. His theory of religion begins with what he characterizes as the Kantian representation of the relationship between the human spirit and the world.

Hick made a distinction between 'the real in itself' ( Noumenon ), the divine reality that lies beyond human experience, and 'the real' ( Phainomenon ), as it is represented in human experience, thought and imagination. Kant's distinction between the 'thing in itself' ( noumenon ) and its 'appearance' ( phenomenon ) and linked with this the thesis that the transcendent (absolute, real, real) is in itself unknowable and does not finally reveal itself in world and history. The perception apparatus is equipped with specific interpretation concepts, which in turn are embedded in a linguistic system. Unlike Kant, however, Hick assumed a real experience of God. Kant postulated “God” because for him he was not “the real”, but rather an object that human reason assumed on the basis of its inherent practical function in moral action.

Hick admits that Kant would not have consented to applying his distinction between 'noumenon' and 'phenomenon' to religion. For Kant, “God” was a “regulative idea” and never an object of experience, the sum of which Kant called “nature”. For Kant, 'God' is the guarantor for the correspondence of happiness with morality, so that his existence must be postulated by practical reason. The recourse to Kantian terms allowed misunderstandings and distortions of Hick's position. In no way did Hick want to express with Kant that 'God' cannot be experienced in principle due to our epistemological endowment or limitation. Rather, Hick emphasized that people are quite capable of a real experience of God.

The “divine noumenon” enters human consciousness through the mediation of certain concepts or categories, either “personal” through the term “God” or “non-personal” through the concept of the absolute. Both are then 'the real'. Hick admitted to using the term “God” with reservations, whereby the question of a personal vs. non-personal God would remain open, but on the other hand the theistic association of the term was so pronounced that it always led to misunderstandings. So in the scientific discussion of the pluralistic theology of religion the options 'the transcendent', 'the highest', 'the highest reality', 'the highest principle', 'the divine', 'the one', 'the eternal' in short remained in the Hicke's terminology 'the real'. The position of the pluralistic theology of religion is consistently formulated by Hick as a hypothetical conception.

The different human formulations about "the real" borrow from culture-specific and individual ideas, should be related to them and, correctly understood, are often not in the relationship of a logical contradiction, so that at most one of the contradicting claims could be true. In general, the truth of sentences is not decisive in terms of religion theology, but the practical function of conveying salvation. Different religious beliefs and rites could exercise this function to the same maximum extent. Even if not all religions do justice to their purpose in the same way and there are differences in their teaching, they are in principle equal answers to the question of life and death.

In his work An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent. (German: Religion. The human answers to the question of life and death ) (1989, German 1996) he also prepared a wide variety of religious studies material and advocated similar theses such as Gustav Mensching . Religions are therefore not divine phenomena, but only human structures that have developed from personal encounter with a lived religious experience of transcendence.

In his presentation Hick attacks the Jaspers' concept of axis time and considers the religions, pre-axial or axial pre-religions' or archaic religions ( Ethnic religions ) compared to post-axial or axial according religions'. So he saw in the former the religions whose concern was the preservation of the cosmic and social order. In contrast, post-axial religions are primarily those that are primarily concerned with striving for salvation or liberation. Thus the movements of the Axial Age are shaped by soteriological structures. All 'post-axial religions' started from the fact that ordinary human existence was damaged, unsatisfied, or deficient. In all post-axial religious traditions, redemption / liberation is nothing other than the 'transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to reality-centeredness'. Or, the transformation of human existence from a self-relatedness to a relatedness to the (personally spoken 'divine') reality. 'Revelation' is that of the absolute real, generally an enlightening effect that changes human consciousness, illumination of the transcendent ultimate reality or personal divine reality. The process has a communicative character, which aims to create the belief, faith , a holistic existential devotion of human consciousness or people to the 'highest real' that reveals itself to it.

In summary, the post-axial religions all relate to the same basic process, namely to

  • the human relationship to a transcendent reality ('the real'), which is of vital importance;
  • Religion is anchored in a spatio-temporal context of conditions, that is, in a certain cultural context;
  • the plurality of religions is a necessity or a consequence due to the plurality of cultures.

'The Real' and Soteriology

The basic criterion for judging religious systems or phenomena is the soteriological criterion. For Hick, the 'redemption / liberation' complex can only be explained through a transformation of human existence from 'self-centeredness' to 'reality-centeredness'. Turning away from oneself and turning to 'the real', i.e. the transformation, would happen as a decision for a certain religious perspective of reality; Such a decision is primarily the same as 'conversion' to a new 'new way of experiencing'.

The function of post-axial religion was to create contexts that would enable humans to offer such a transformation of human existence. Both personal and non-personal ideas can be related to the same soteriological process, so that the gods / god and absoluta, "the real in itself" ( noumenon ), which bring about it, different modes of presence, "the real in human experience" ( Phainomenon ), the same supreme transcendent reality. For reality as such ( noumenon ), in itself the real , is inaccessible to human cognition, but would stand as the transcendent cause of all religions. What we humans have left are the various forms in which it appears to us ( Phainomenon ). From this Hick drew the conclusion that the goal of every 'post-axial' religion was 'redemption / liberation' and he suggested introducing the 'soteriological effectiveness' of a religion as the all-important evaluation criterion. For Hick, in a 'soteriological universalism' it is possible for all people, regardless of their religion, to ultimately participate in redemption / liberation through 'God', the Real .

Hick leaned against the differentiation of Wilfred Cantwell Smith in which a distinction between faith as a personal attitude of faith and inner experience faith and the faith was or beliefs, beliefs and tradition pointed. Beliefs, beliefs a doctrine appeared in the form of records. Belief refers to the 'holding-to-be-true' of canonized and dogmatic beliefs and tradition to the socio-historical dimension of religious systems, faith is the personal attitude and orientation that depicts a person's relationship to the divine principle.

For Hick, however, the term belief, faith, was too strongly tied to a theistic position in Smith , so he suggested replacing the term faith , which was used in the same way as in Smith, with the phrase 'transformation from self-centeredness to reality-centeredness'. The difference between the religious systems is thus not shown in the 'divine revelation' as such, but in how 'the real' is perceived in detail.

For Hick, the concept of 'revelation' is not linked to a process of revealing truths and as a knowledge aimed at a cognitive process , but to 'faith', i.e. a holistic, existential devotion of man to the 'divine reality that is revealed' . Revelation thus becomes an enlightening work of the transcendent divine reality ( illumination ) that changes the human consciousness in a positive way . The central content of this revelation is the redemption / liberation of the human being, as it is characterized by the post-axial religions as redemption religions. Hick's doctrine of revelation takes a special stance on Christian theology. He saw no central or normative role for Christian revelation in the post-axial religious systems with regard to their quality of revelation; he represented a consistent pluralism of revelation. The real or personal God had revealed himself to the different streams of human life in the various world religions, without any weighting or ranking with regard to the degree or authenticity of the revelation being recognizable. The pluralism of revelation could be deduced for him because the essence of divine revelation, of human religions, of the real would expressly not lie in the conveyance of revealed truths or doctrines of revelation, but solely in their soteriological effectiveness.

Religions and Reality

For Hick, religions are different human responses to the transcendent reality . Here restructure traditional religious beliefs religious experience and in a further development dynamics are religious beliefs then implicit in the religious experience. With regard to this hypothesis , he asked whether the complex designs of convictions and experiences, of the various traditions, were simple productions or the human reaction to a transcendent reality. Whereby he also saw the creative act of human imagination involved in the latter partial answer. For Hick, 'the real', the real, can only be experienced how its presence can affect human modes of consciousness. These are interculturally and interhumanly different in terms of their perceptual resources and habits. There is a multitude of traditional religious systems that refer to many 'personal' deities and 'non-personal' supreme beings. Divine reality cannot be known directly. If people relate to her in an I-Thou movement, they experience it as personal. When a person relates himself to the real in a non-personal perception, he experiences it as non-personal. For comparison, Hick uses the analogy to the wave-particle dualism from quantum physics. The reality is such that both types of imagination and observation - personal or non-personal - are valid.

For the term “God” he first used the “Supreme Reality”, Ultimate Reality , then synonymously “the Transcendent”, the Transcendent , “the Divine”, the Divine and “the Eternal”, the Eternal One . Then since the publication of his work An Interpretation of Religion ( 1989 ) now 'dasreal', the real also 'the highest real', the ultimately real , 'the highest reality', the ultimate reality , 'the highest', the ultimate or also 'the reality', reality .

Verification in the afterlife

From Philosophy of Religion (1963), the German Protestant theologian Wilfried Härle particularly emphasizes the idea of eschatological verification by declaring the part on verification in the afterlife to be a basic text of modern theology. Verification does not mean to prove something logically, but rather reasonable doubts, e.g. B. through experience. Statements that can be verified are not necessarily falsifiable. Hick gives the example of the decimal representation of the number π , in which no one has yet found three consecutive 7s. Since you can continue the presentation indefinitely, the claim “π contains three consecutive 7s” may at some point be verified , but it can never be falsified because the calculations can be continued indefinitely and a completed check is beyond our experience.

Religious statements are also verifiable, but not falsifiable. The claim that the soul continues to exist after death can be verified by dying and experiencing one's continued existence. This is then not necessarily a proof of theism , but the Christian conception of God in turn can be verified. The New Testament ties God's revelation to Jesus Christ and symbolically describes that Christ will be exalted as the Lamb on the throne and reign in the kingdom of God . When one will experience this rulership, this Christian statement of God is verified. Such things are beyond our earthly realm of experience and therefore cannot be falsified.

Hick's understanding of salvation

For Hick, the concept of salvation , salvation or liberation was in the foreground of his considerations, which was embedded in the reference field of his pluralistic theology of religion. While he was more reluctant to use the concept of redemption , redemption . The concept of salvation is presented by Hick as a clearly soteriological concept.

From an exclusivist, Christian position, the concept of salvation is fundamentally linked to the idea of ​​the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who revealed himself to people and, as the Savior sent into the world, alone makes salvation possible for all people. Other religious systems are thus denied salvation and redemption.

Publications (selection)

  • Faith and Knowledge. Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1957 and 1966.
  • Philosophy of Religion. 1963.
  • Evil and the God of Love. 1966, reprint Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-2302-5279-0 .
  • Arguments for the Existence of God. 1970.
  • God and the Universe of Faiths. 1973.
  • Death and Eternal Life. Collins, London 1976 and Westminster / John Knox, Louisville 1994.
  • God Has Many Names. Westminster, Philadelphia 1980.
  • 1984, 1989 and Yale University Press, New Haven 2004.
  • Disputed Questions in Theology and the Philosophy of Religion. Yale University Press, New Haven 1993.
  • A Christian Theology of Religions: The Rainbow of Faiths. 1995.
  • Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion. Palgrave, New York 2001.
  • To Autobiography. Oneworld, Oxford 2002 ( [10] )
  • The Fifth Dimension: An Exploration of the Spiritual Realm. Oneworld Publications, London 2004.
  • The New Frontier of Religion and Science. November 2006.
  • The Myth of Christian Uniqueness. SCM PR 1988 together with Paul F. Knitter .

German editions

  • Religion. The human answers to the question of life and death. (Original: An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent. ) Diederichs, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-424-01311-0
  • God and his many names. Otto Lembeck, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 978-3-87476-368-4 ( [11] on drive.google.com)
  • A philosophy of religious pluralism. Pp. 302-318. Preliminary remarks by the editors on the article by John Hick in this journal by Gerhard Ludwig Müller . Translated by Perry Schmidt-Leukel [12]

literature

  • Ankur Barua: Hick and Radhakrishnan on Religious Diversity: Back to the Kantian Noumenon. Sophia, Volume 54, (2015), pp. 181–200 [13]
  • Reinhold Bernhardt : The absolute claim of Christianity. From the Enlightenment to the pluralistic theology of religion. Gütersloh 1990, pp. 199-225.
  • Ignacy Bokwa : John Hicks (1922-2012) Christological reflection as relativization of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ's mediation of salvation. Pp. 16–29 ( [14] on cejsh.icm.edu.pl)
  • Gerhard Gäde : Many religions - one word of God. Objection to John Hicks pluralistic theology of religion. Gütersloh 1998.
  • Lucas Graßal: How to teach religion (s)? Religious education in German religious-educational concepts in the light of the pluralistic theology of religion by John Hick (= educational contributions to cultural encounter. Vol. 30). EB-Verlag, Berlin 2013.
  • Christian Heller: John Hicks Project of a Religious Interpretation of Religions. Presentation and analysis - interpretation - reception (= religion, history, society. Vol. 28). Munster 2001.
  • Seyed Hassan Hosseini : Religious Pluralism and Pluralistic Religion: John Hick's Epistemological Foundation of Religious Pluralism and an Explanation of Islamic Epistemology toward Diversity of Unique Religion. The Pluralist, Volume 5, Number 1 Spring 2010, pp. 94-109 [15]
  • Gerfried Kirchmeier : Christ and the Religions A study of the religious studies approach of Lesslie Newbig in dialogue with Karl Rahner and John Hick with regard to the question of salvation in non-Christian religions. Thesis, IGW International (= Institute for Community Building and World Mission ), September 2016 [16]
  • Reinhard Kirste : Theological approaches of religious pluralism I. In: Yearbook for Interreligious Encounter. Vol. 1, pp. 303-317.
  • Reinhard Kirste: John Hick and the Copernican turn in theology. In: Michael Klöcker , Udo Tworuschka (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Religionen. Loose-leaf work. Olzog, Munich 1997 ff., ISBN 978-3-7892-9900-1 , 15th supplement 2007 (I-14.9.1), pp. 1-17.
  • Bernd Elmar Koziel : Critical reconstruction of the “pluralistic theology of religion” John Hicks against the background of his complete works. (= Bamberg Theological Studies, Volume 17), Peter Lang, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften; Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Bern / New York 2002, ISBN 978-3-63138-039-0 .
  • Haejong Je: A Critical Evaluation of John Hick's Religious Pluralism in Light of his Eschatological Model. Dissertation, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan 2009 ( [17] on digitalcommons.andrews.edu)
  • Kirsten Joswowitz-Bäumenbach : Between Chalcedony and Birmingham. On the Christology of John Hicks. (Contributions to fundamental theology and philosophy of religion 5), ars una Neuried 2000, ISBN 3-89391-455-2 .
  • Werner Neuer : Hail in all world religions? The understanding of revelation and salvation in the pluralistic theology of religion John Hicks. Giessen 2009, ISBN 978-3-7655-1755-6 (Brunnen Verlag), ISBN 978-3-86540-074-1 (Freimund-Verlag).
  • Christopher Sinkinson: John Hick and the Universe of Faiths: A Critical Evaluation of the Life and Thought of John Hick. Paternoster Press, Cumbria, UK 2016, ISBN 978-1-84227-918-2
  • Klaus von Stosch : The claim to truth of religious traditions as a problem of intercultural philosophy. Philosophical explorations in the field of tension between theology of, religions and comparative theology. In: Claudia Bickmann , Tobias Voßhenrich , Hermann-Josef Scheidgen , Markus Wirtz (eds.): Rationality and Spirituality. Traugott Bautz, Nordhausen 2009, pp. 203-234 ( [18] on kw.uni-paderborn.de)
  • Klaus von Stosch: Transcendental Criticism and Truth Question. Pp. 1–35 [19]

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Professor John Hick The Telegraph, February 16, 2012
  2. ^ Leading Birmingham philosopher of religion John Hick dies at the age of 90 Birmingham Post, February 23, 2012
  3. ↑ Werner Neuer : Heil in all world religions? The understanding of revelation and salvation in the pluralistic theology of religion John Hicks. Brunnen / Freimund, Giessen 2009, ISBN 978-3-7655-1755-6 , p. 88
  4. ↑ Also "Lisvane Prep School" since 2010 renamed "Scarborough College Junior School"
  5. ↑ Haejong Depending: A Critical Evaluation of John Hick's Religious Pluralism in Light of His Eschatological Model. Dissertation Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan 2009 ( [1] on digitalcommons.andrews.edu), p. 15
  6. ↑ David Smith Cairns left the University of Edinburgh after a crisis of faith and attended the United Presbyterian Theological Hall from 1888. In 1895 he became minister in Ayton , Berwickshire and in 1907 professor of dogmatics and apologetics at the United Free Church College in Aberdeen , of which he later became director. He was chairman of the 1910 World Missionary Conference commission which drafted a missionary message relating to non-Christian religions.
  7. ^ Church Times. Obituary: Professor John Harwood Hick, February 22, 2012 [2]
  8. ↑ Christian Danz : Introduction to the Theology of Religions. Vol. 1 Textbooks and Study Books on TheologyLIT Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 978-3-82587-058-4 , p. 154 ( [3] on books.google.de)
  9. ^ Bernd Elmar Koziel: Critical reconstruction of the pluralistic theology of religion John Hicks against the background of his complete works. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Bern / Bruxelles / New York / Oxford / Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-631-38039-9 , pp. 20-21
  10. ^ David C. Cramer:  John Hick. In: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
  11. ^ Elizabeth Sleeman (ed.): International Who's Who of Authors and Writers 2004. Europa Publications. Psychology Press, 2003, ISBN 978-1-85743-179-7 , p. 247 ( [4] on books.google.de)
  12. ^ David C. Cramer:  John Hick. In: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
  13. ↑ John H. Hick: An Autobiography. Oneworld, Oxford 2002 [5] p. 238; 248
  14. ↑ (GREAT) GRANDMOTHER'S FOOTSTEPS, July 30, 2016 [6]
  15. ↑ John Hick: An Autobiography. Simon and Schuster, New York City 2014, ISBN 978-1-78074-683-8 ( [7] on books.google.de)
  16. ↑ Werner Neuer : Heil in all world religions? The understanding of revelation and salvation in the pluralistic theology of religion John Hicks. Brunnen / Freimund, Giessen 2009, ISBN 978-3-7655-1755-6 , pp. 69-77; 92
  17. ↑ John Hick: Religious Pluralism and Islam. Lecture delivered to the Institute for Islamic Culture and Thought, Tehran, in February 2005 ( [8] on johnhick.org.uk) here p. 11
  18. ↑ Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rumī : Poet and Mystic Translated into English by Reynold Alleyne Nicholson , George Allen & Unwin, London / Boston 1950, p. 166
  19. ↑ Katajun Amirpur : The Recognition of the Religious Different Islamic Texts Reread. In: Katajun Amirpur, Wolfram Weisse (Ed.): Religions - Dialogue - Society: Analyzes of the current situation and impulses for a dialogical theology. Waxmann Verlag, Münster 2015, ISBN 978-3-83098-248-7 , pp. 165 f. ( [9] on books.google.de) here p. 177 f.
  20. ↑ Compare to this “al haqq” ( Arabic حقّ ḥaqq) the real or the truth, in the sense of Sufism “ana al-Haqq”. A saying that translates as "I am the truth or reality", where "Haqq" not only means truth or reality, but is also one of the names of God .
  21. ↑ also the 'highest real', the ultimately real , 'the highest reality', the ultimate reality , 'the highest', the ultimate , 'the reality', reality
  22. ↑ see also Kant's Epistemology , Transcendental Analytics and Immanuel Kant's Schematism
  23. ↑ " Thing in itself ", Noumenon, which is not perceived by human consciousness
  24. ↑ “Thing for us” phenomenon, that which the human consciousness perceives
  25. ↑ Perry Schmidt-Leukel : Truth in Diversity. From religious pluralism to interreligious theology. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2019, ISBN 978-3-579-08249-3 , pp. 50–51.
  26. ↑ John Hick: Religion. The human answers to the question of life and death. Diederichs, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-424-01311-0 , p. 30.
  27. ^ John Hick: An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent. Macmillian, Basingstoke UK 1989, ISBN 978-0-3001-0668-8 , pp. 243 f.
  28. ↑ John Hick: Religion. The human answers to the question of life and death. Diederichs, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-424-01311-0 , pp. 262-269.
  29. ↑ Perry Schmidt-Leukel : Truth in Diversity. From religious pluralism to interreligious theology . Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2019, ISBN 978-3-579-08249-3 , p. 51.
  30. ↑ Werner Neuer : Heil in all world religions? The understanding of revelation and salvation in the pluralistic theology of religion John Hicks. Brunnen / Freimund, Giessen 2009, ISBN 978-3-7655-1755-6 , pp. 109–110
  31. ↑ John Hick: Religion. The human answers to the question of life and death. Diederichs, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-424-01311-0 , pp. 34-48.
  32. ↑ John Hick: Religion. The human answers to the question of life and death. Diederichs, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-424-01311-0 , p. 46.
  33. ↑ John Hick: Religion. The human answers to the question of life and death. Diederichs, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-424-01311-0 , p. 182.
  34. ↑ Bernd Elmar Koziel : Critical Reconstruction of the "Pluralistic Theology of Religion" John Hicks against the background of his complete works. (= Bamberg Theological Studies, Volume 17), Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Bern / Bruxelles / New York / Oxford / Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-631-38039-9 , ISBN 3-631-38039-9 , p 514
  35. ↑ John Hick: Religion. The human answers to the question of life and death. Diederichs, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-424-01311-0 , p. 323
  36. ↑ Wilfred Cantwell Smith : The Faith of Other Man. New American Library, New York 1963 (Dutton, 1978), ISBN 0-453-00004-5 , p. 156 f.
  37. ↑ Perry Schmidt-Leukel : Truth in Diversity. From religious pluralism to interreligious theology. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2019, ISBN 978-3-579-08249-3 , p. 79.
  38. ↑ Perry Schmidt-Leukel : Truth in Diversity. From religious pluralism to interreligious theology. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2019, ISBN 978-3-579-08249-3 , pp. 46-47.
  39. ↑ Werner Neuer: Heil in all world religions? The understanding of revelation and salvation in the pluralistic theology of religion John Hicks. Brunnen / Freimund, Giessen 2009, ISBN 978-3-7655-1755-6 , pp. 146–147
  40. ↑ John Hick: Religion. The human answers to the question of life and death. Diederichs, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-424-01311-0 , p. 189.
  41. ↑ John Hick: Religion. The human answers to the question of life and death. Diederichs, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-424-01311-0 , p. 268.
  42. ↑ Werner Neuer: Heil in all world religions? The understanding of revelation and salvation in the pluralistic theology of religion John Hicks. Brunnen / Freimund, Giessen 2009, ISBN 978-3-7655-1755-6 , pp. 144–145
  43. ↑ Wilfried Härle: Basic texts of the newer Protestant theology . ISBN 3-374-02469-6 .
  44. ↑ Werner Neuer: Heil in all world religions? The understanding of revelation and salvation in the pluralistic theology of religion John Hicks. Brunnen / Freimund, Giessen 2009, ISBN 978-3-7655-1755-6 , pp. 191–245
  45. ↑ Doctor Divinitatis also an honorary church doctorate
personal data
SURNAME Hick, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hick, John Harwood (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British Presbyterian theologian and religious philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Scarborough / Yorkshire
DATE OF DEATH February 9, 2012
Place of death Birmingham