HICK'S PLURALISM AND LYOTARD ON RELIGION

Living with many Religions: A Comparison between John Hick's Pluralism and Jean Francois Lyotard on Religion

Living with many Religions: A Comparison between John Hick's Pluralism and Jean Francois Lyotard on Religion

Introduction

In the spectrum of thought on this topic of discussion, John Hick's Pluralism is a logical step along the path from Inclusivism. Pluralism stands in direct opposition to exclusivism. Pluralism has the potential to appeal to a wide range of people in today's post-modern world because of its extreme tolerance and its unwillingness to affirm any religion as the center. Hick wants to "move from a christocentric view of reality to a theocentric one." This is due in part to his observation that Christians and non-Christians alike seem to do good and evil in about the same proportion. If it is the case that Christians have special access to God by virtue of the Holy Spirit then why are they not holier or morally better than their non-Christian neighbors?

The other struggle that Hick has with traditional models of exclusivism or the more recent inclusivism is that by virtue of being born in South-East Asia, one will likely become a Buddhist. Is the West so arrogant as to say that by virtue of being born in a certain time and place one has the privilege of knowing the full truth while everyone else has only partial glimpse of it?

Our understanding of the universe underwent a dramatic shift when Copernicus postulated that the current Ptolemaic model of the Earth as the center contained serious flaws. The Copernican model sees the sun as the center and all the planets as moving around it. In the same way, Hick believes that our theologies of pluralism need to undergo a Copernican revolution to move away from Jesus-centered models of faith that inevitably place Christianity at the center and relegate all other religions to an inferior status. Instead Hick would place "the Real" at the center and Jesus as just one of the many orbits revolving around it; in essence no special status is given to Christianity.

Section One

Literature Review

The philosophical challenge that religious diversity poses for religious belief has become in recent years the focal point of a very engaging theological and philosophical debate. The debate began in the Christian context and it would be fair to say that its main issue remains the relationship of Christianity to other major religions. Traditionally Christian thinkers faced with the fact of religious plurality have assumed that Christianity is the only way to salvation, and the truth-claims of other religions can be refuted by way of argument. This position is described today as 'exciusivist'. John Hicks name has become synonymous with a radically different approach to the whole issue. Hick argues that all religious traditions make contact with the same Ultimate Reality ('the Real), each encountering it through a variety of culturally shaped forms of thought and experience, but all offering equally effective paths to ...