John Hick on faith: A critique

Abstract

In various of his writings on the philosophy of religion John Hick has outlined an analysis of religious faith as "total interpretation".1 He holds that the "proofs" of natural theology are inconclusive and that belief in God is not open to that kind of rational demonstration. However, religious belief can still be rational, for the inconclusiveness of the evidence for God's existence is just what we should have expected. The Christian God is a God of love who wishes us to enter freely into a loving relationship with him. But our freedom to choose to commit ourselves in faith and love would be eliminated if overwhelming evidence of God's existence were available. Thus Hick sees faith as the "interpretative element in human experience".2 The preservation of our cognitive freedom in relation to God requires that his revelation to us must take place in a manner which does not coerce our belief in his existence. This revelation is in the form of events and actions, not propositions. On this analysis faith is not assent to propositions as in the Catholic tradition, but rather a "total interpretation" of experience as Heilsgeschichte ("salvation history"). These "saving events" can be given a secular interpretation as well as a revelatory one because this ambiguity of evidence is essential to the preservation of our cognitive freedom. To have faith is to see these events as revelations. Hence faith is an interpretative act comparable to "seeing-as", though Hick extends Wittgenstein's treatment of the notion of "seeing-as" to make faith a type of "experiencing-as". However, although faith is in this way claimed to be optional, Hick goes on to insist that it is not irrational for at least two reasons. First, given the truth of the propositions to which faith commits one, it follows that we should expect that our relation to God must be optional in this way. Second, Hick introduces the notion of eschatological verification to allow for post-mortem justification of the content of faith. On the other hand, although faith is thus claimed to be rational, Hick does not think it follows from this that unbelief is irrational. The reasoning here seems to be that if unbelief was irrational then this would clash with the Christian picture of a personal God of love who wishes us to enter voluntarily into a loving relation-