The Translucency of the Real: Revisiting John Hick’s Pluralistic Hypothesis

Abstract

John Hick’s An Interpretation of Religion was first delivered as lectures over thirty years ago, yet it is still relevant as a comprehensive pioneering attempt to clarify the general or metaphysical basis of human religiosity from a pluralist perspective. Two familiar criticisms of the pluralistic hypothesis are, first, that it is a covert form of exclusivism, and, second, that it leads to transcendental agnosticism. These clever but ultimately indefensible claims effectively deadlocked the quest for a pluralistic understanding of religious diversity in the theology of religions in recent decades. In refutation of the charge of covert exclusivism, Kenneth Rose argues that, as Hick often pointed out, the pluralist hypothesis is a philosophical hypothesis and not a theological claim. It is not a replacement theology, since it doesn’t seek to replace the vivid teachings of the world’s religions with a pale abstraction. It seeks instead to understand the transcendental categories of human consciousness, which, when schematized or concretized, are the source of humanity’s varied responses to what is ultimately real. In defense of Hick’s pluralist hypothesis against the claims of transcendental agnosticism, Rose argues that Hick’s noumenal Real is translucent, or leaky, because it can be experienced, as is the testimony of the worlds’ religious traditions, although, as simple and infinite, it cannot be fully, finally, and normatively mapped in historically conditioned languages and experiences, a conclusion in harmony with apophatic theologies, philosophies, and mysticisms in numerous religious and philosophical traditions.