![](\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/images41-300x98.jpg\")
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I have been working through Alvin Plantinga\u2019s excellent (but frustrating) book Warranted Christian Belief<\/i>, and I am particularly intrigued by his critique of the\u00a0work of theologian John Hick<\/a>.<\/p>\n Hick began his spiritual odyssey as a traditional, orthodox Christian, accepting what I have been calling \u2018Christian belief\u2019. He was then struck by the fact that there are other religions in which the claims of orthodox Christianity\u2014trinity, incarnation, atonement\u2014are rejected. Furthermore, so far as one can tell from the outside, so to speak, the claims of these other religions, taken literally, are as respectable, epistemically speaking, as the claims of Christianity. Still further, according to Jesus himself, \u201cBy their fruits you shall know them.\u201d The most important fruits, Hick thinks, are practical: turning away from a life of selfishness to a life of service; on this point, these other religions, he thinks, seem to do as well as Christianity. The conclusion he draws is that where Christianity differs from the others, we can\u2019t properly hold that it is literally true and the others literally false; that would be, he thinks, a sort of intellectual arrogance, a sort of spiritual imperialism, a matter of exalting ourselves and our beliefs at the expense of others. Instead, we must hold that the great religions are all equally valuable and equally true.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n How many of us recognise that spiritual odyssey and how many of us have reached that point in their journey? But as Plantinga carefully argues, it is full of pitfalls. Hick wants to declare that all the traditions are actually false. He says \u2018literally\u2019 false, but literal truth and falsehood, as Hick conceives them, are just truth and falsehood. The first problem is that if I am to remain a Christian, I must take part in Christian worship, which requires accepting the doctrines of traditional Christianity (\u2018I believe in Jesus Christ \u2026 who was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead\u2019). But if I accept these doctrines as only mythologically true, i.e. really<\/i> false, how can I at the same time accept these false doctrines as putting me \u2018into the right relation with the Real\u2019? \u2018Is this posture in fact possible for a human being: can a person accept it, and accept it authentically, without bad faith or doublethink?\u2019<\/p>\n Two, we want to avoid imperialism and self-exaltation by declaring that everyone<\/i> is mistaken here (\u2018except for ourselves and a few other enlightened souls\u2019). But aren\u2019t we now exalting ourselves and a few graduate students over nearly everyone else?<\/p>\n Those who think there really is such a person as God are benighted, unsophisticated, unaware of the real truth of the matter, which is that there isn\u2019t any such person (even if thinking there is can lead to practical fruits). We see Christians as deeply mistaken; of course we pay the same compliment to the practitioners of the other great religions; we are equal-opportunity animadverters. We benevolently regard the rest of humanity as misguided; no doubt their hearts are in the right place; still, they are sadly mistaken about what they take to be most important and precious. I find it hard to see how this attitude is a manifestation of tolerance or intellectual humility: it looks more like patronizing condescension.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have been working through Alvin Plantinga\u2019s excellent (but frustrating) book Warranted Christian Belief, and I am particularly intrigued by his critique of the\u00a0work of theologian John Hick. Hick began his spiritual odyssey as a traditional, orthodox Christian, accepting what I have been calling \u2018Christian belief\u2019. He was then struck by the fact that there… Read More »Are all religions the same?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":37947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-theories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37946"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37949,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37946\/revisions\/37949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}