The Development of Hick’s Model of Religious Pluralism

This chapter traces the development of Hick’s pluralism from his early model to the present. His well-known ‘neo-Kantian’ proposal and his more recent soteriological turn will serve as important benchmarks along the way. Interestingly, one of the principal critiques related to the conflicting conceptions of the divine problem was in a sense already anticipated by Hick himself in God and the Universe of Faiths . At a 1976 conference on mysticism, held in Calgary, Alberta, John Hick unveiled a new development in his model. Hick claims that his neo-Kantian proposal is essentially a complex philosophical articulation of a more general religious observation—namely that an inherent epistemological rift exists between the divine Reality as it exists in itself and as it is humanly experienced. It is only with an examination of Hick’s modified Kantian epistemology that the full force of his proposal’s radical subjectivism (i.e., constructivism) is revealed.