John Hick

John Hick was an English philosopher of religion and theologian, best known for his theory of religious pluralism. He taught at Cornell, Princeton Theological Seminary and Cambridge, then at the University of Birmingham and Claremont Graduate University in California. In Evil and the God of Love (1966) he developed a soul-making theodicy based on Irenaeus. His Gifford Lectures became An Interpretation of Religion (1989), which argues that the major world faiths are different human responses to one ultimate divine reality, which he called the Real.

Key ideas

• The great world religions are culturally shaped responses to a single transcendent reality, the Real.
• Drawing on Kant, he distinguished the Real in itself, beyond human concepts, from the Real as experienced in particular traditions.
• Evil and suffering are compatible with a loving God because the world is a place of soul-making, where moral character develops.
• God keeps an epistemic distance from us so that faith and goodness can be freely chosen.
• Religious claims are meaningful because they could be confirmed after death, an idea he called eschatological verification.

Major works

• An Interpretation of Religion (1989)
• Faith and Knowledge (1957)
• Evil and the God of Love (1966)
• Death and Eternal Life (1976)

In the Book corner

• An Interpretation of Religion 1989; second edition 2004 · Advanced
  The fullest statement of Hick's pluralist theory of religion, developed from his Gifford Lectures of 1986–87. Hick argues that the great world…

In the conversation

No topics yet. Start one about this thinker.

In the Journal

• Journal Why I stopped saying ‘God has a plan’ at funerals Tendai Moyo · 3 replies
• Journal Why I stopped saying ‘God has a plan’ at funerals Tendai Moyo · 3 replies