In Memory of John Hick (oct 22 1922--Feb 9 2012)

John Hick (1922-2012)



John Hick was a major philosopher of Religion. He was the last great Philosopher of what I call the "holders of the fort," the generation right before Plantinga and the back to God movement of the 80s took over the watch and brought Philosophical arguments for the existence of God back onto the battle field with a strong position. That means that Hick made a name for himself in the era when modern secular society and academia had decided that religion was a thing of the passing away. They didn't attack it with belligerence because they felt it was passing away. Other major holders of the fort included Father Frederick Copleston, Arnold J. Toynbee, E.L. Mascall*, Johnathon Wisdom, Etienne Gilson, and of these Hick was on the first rung. These were the guys who one found in undergraduate philosophy textbooks tucked into the section on philosophy of religion. Hick was one of the most often found in those sorts of anthologies.

He made waves in the 1980s when he moved away from Christianity and into a more pluralistic view point. While I can't agree with the Chrirstology that he adopted, I admire and respect his position on enlarging the sphere of faith to include those of other traditions. It's quite sad to see the official John Hick website, once covered with blurbs about his books, now with an obituary article. Hick was bron in Scarborough England, developed an interest in philosophy in his teens. He began at University of Manchester but changed to Edinurgh in 1941 after conversion to Evangelical Christianity. During his career he taught at Claremont Graduate University and University of Bermingham

From Wiki

Hick played important roles in a number of organizations centered around community relations. Non-Christian communities, mostly Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh, had begun to form in this central England community as immigration from the Caribbean Islands and Indian subcontinent increased. Due to the influx of peoples with different religious traditions, organizations focused on integrating the community became necessary. During his fifteen years at the University of Birmingham, Hick became a founder, as well as the first chair, for the group All Faiths for One Race (AFFOR); he served as a chair on the Religious and Cultural Panel, which was a division of the Birmingham Community Relations Committee; and he also chaired the coordinating committee for a 1944 conference convened under the new Education Act with the aim of creating a new syllabus for religious instruction in city schools.^[1]

Hick has been hailed as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, philosophers of religion of the 20th century (Smid, Robert (1998-1999). "John Harwood Hick". Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology. http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/WeirdWildWeb/courses/mwt/dictionary/mwt_themes_875_hick.htm#John%20Harwood%20Hick. Retrieved February 2008.). That doesn't mean his contributions to God arguments are better than Plantingas it means among philosophers who write about the problems of religion in a philosophical way, Hick was the best. Philosophically Hick was influenced by Kant, influences which helped to move him toward his position of religious pluralism.

One of the ideas he explored that was of greatest influence to me and I feel one of his greatest contributions was his answers to the issues of verification and religious faith. He advanced the idea of eschatology verification. Verification has to wait for the end of our lives, but we can falsify various claims. He is the author of one God argument on my life of 42 God arguemnts: No 34, Argument from Personal Origin:

Xenos Christian Fellowship
Theistic Apolgetics Dennis McCallum

The main critique of the cosmological argument is that it involves special pleading.

1. If everything requires a cause, then God requires a cause. If God requires no cause, then not all things require a cause.

• However, if it can be shown that the eternal existence of God is different than the eternal existence of the Universe, this argument might hold up.
  
  John Hick has argued that since God is personal, He is not subject to natural law, (e.g. thermodynamic laws) which apply to the physical realm. Therefore, there are fewer problems with His eternity than there would be with the eternity of the physical universe.[footnote 7] (John Hick, Arguments for the Existence of God. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971) pp.34 ff. He also gives other reasons for distinguishing between God and the universe in the area of eternalness.)
  

He wrote a fine book, although short,on the issue of researchers who claim to evoke religious experiences by stimulation of the brain: the New Frontier of Science and Religion I drew upon that work in my research of the topic. As far as I'm concerned he uncovered a huge pool of bad research in atheist claims about brain chemistry and religious experience. His work The Many Faced Argument is one of the most lucid, through, and helpful books on the ontological argument, The Many Faced Argument. Hick rejected the modal argument of Hartshorne on the grounds that it deals with "logical necessity" whereas the faith of the Apostles was about ontological necessity. Whether that's a good argument I have my dobuts. The book is through and includes all the major developments form Anselm to Hartshorne.

Books by Hick

Articles by John Hick




Hick was one of the first great Christian thinkers I discovered early in my Christian Walk. I liked his philosophy and it meant a great deal to me to know that there were fine contemporary philosophers who were Chrsitians and were still writing. Whatever truth was disclosed thorugh the life of thought he lived, he now has eschatology verification. I mourn the loss of his ideas.



*The Wiki article on Mascall says so little about his work I used one that says more about it. For the details of his life see the Wiki article linked here.

(1) Wiki article sites:Hick, John. "A Pluralist View." More Than One Way? Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World. Eds. Dennis L. Okholm and Timothy R. Phillips. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995. 27-59. Print.

On Death of John Stott

John Stott

John Stott was a British evangelical, he was totally different from the typical Bible thumping Jerry Fallwell. He never condemned anyone for their views or their life style. He was soft spoken and had a reasoning demeanor. I read two of his books, early in my Christian walk. One of them was on the sermon on the mount. I think it was called Christian Counter culture. The other was about Baptism of the Holy Spirit. I must say the latter book held me back from receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, by teaching--wrongly I feel--that it is not a second separate experience from being born again. I don't hold that against him and aside from that, his Sermon on the mount book was a really fine and thoughtful exposition.

Here's what Nicholas D. Kristof said said as a tribute to Stott
in New York Times Sunday Review, July 30, 2011

Partly because of such self-righteousness, the entire evangelical movement often has been pilloried among progressives as reactionary, myopic, anti-intellectual and, if anything, immoral.

Yet that casual dismissal is profoundly unfair of the movement as a whole. It reflects a kind of reverse intolerance, sometimes a reverse bigotry, directed at tens of millions of people who have actually become increasingly engaged in issues of global poverty and justice.

This compassionate strain of evangelicalism was powerfully shaped by the Rev. John Stott, a gentle British scholar who had far more impact on Christianity than media stars like Mr. Robertson or Mr. Falwell. Mr. Stott, who died a few days ago at the age of 90, was named one of the globe’s 100 most influential people by Time, and in stature he was sometimes described as the equivalent of the pope among the world’s evangelicals.

Mr. Stott didn’t preach fire and brimstone on a Christian television network. He was a humble scholar whose 50-odd books counseled Christians to emulate the life of Jesus — especially his concern for the poor and oppressed — and confront social ills like racial oppression and environmental pollution.

“Good Samaritans will always be needed to succor those who are assaulted and robbed; yet it would be even better to rid the Jerusalem-Jericho road of brigands,” Mr. Stott wrote in his book “The Cross of Christ.” “Just so Christian philanthropy in terms of relief and aid is necessary, but long-term development is better, and we cannot evade our political responsibility to share in changing the structures that inhibit development. Christians cannot regard with equanimity the injustices that spoil God’s world and demean his creatures.”

Mr. Stott then gave examples of the injustices that Christians should confront: “the traumas of poverty and unemployment,” “the oppression of women,” and in education “the denial of equal opportunity for all.”

For many evangelicals who winced whenever a televangelist made the headlines, Mr. Stott was an intellectual guru and an inspiration. Richard Cizik, president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, who has worked heroically to combat everything from genocide to climate change, told me: “Against the quackery and anti-intellectualism of our movement, Stott made it possible to say you are ‘evangelical’ and not be apologetic.”

The Rev. Jim Wallis, head of a Christian organization called Sojourners that focuses on social justice, added: “John Stott was the very first important evangelical leader to support our work at Sojourners.”

Stott graduated form Cambridge and worked on the premise that faith and intellectual go together. His father was a Harley Street Consultant (a high priced doctor) who wanted his son t be a diplomat (Eternity).

Eternity: Remembering John Stott
Stuart Barton Babbage

John Stott was pre-eminently an evangelist to students around the world and in commentaries he wrote as a gifted expositor of the word of God. It is instructive to compare Billy Graham’s autobiography with Timothy Dudley Smith’s massive biography of John Stott. Billy Graham’s autobiography is graphic and revealing; by contrast John Stott’s biography is reticent and discreet. We learn much about John Stott’s bird watching, nothing about his role as Chaplain to the Queen and the names of individuals, high and low, whom he met and ministered to.

Many of the things Stott said those two books I read stuck with me. Even though I wound up disagreeing with his views on the Holy Spirit, I still feel that he was a very positive and important influence upon my early walk with Christ. He's gone home.