Professor Hick on Religious Pluralism

Abstract

The major religious traditions clearly seem to be making very different claims about the nature of the religious ultimate and our relation to this ultimate. For example, orthodox Christians believe in an infinite creator God who has revealed himself definitively in the Incarnation in Jesus. But while affirming that there is one God who is creator and judge, devout Muslims reject as blasphemous any suggestion thatJesus was God incarnate. Theravada Buddhists, on the other hand, do not regard the religious ultimate as an ontologically distinct creator at all. And even within, say, the Buddhist family of traditions sharp differences emerge: followers of Jodo-Shinshu (True Sect of the Pure Land) Buddhism maintain that salvation/enlightenment is attainable simply through exercising faith in the Amida Buddha and the recitation of the nembutsu, whereas Zen monks reject as illusory any worldview which implies dualism and hold that enlightenment or satori (viz, a direct, unmediated apprehension of the ultimate nature of reality which transcends all distinctions) is to be attained only through rigorous self-discipline.