Preliminary Definition of religion:
an understanding of
the universe, together with an appropriate way of living within it, which
involves reference beyond the natural world to God or gods or the Absolute or
to a transcendent order or process
This definition includes, e.g., non-theistic Hinduism and Therevada Buddhism, but it doesn't include, e.g., communism and humanism
Hick believes that religion is a universal in human society (though obviously not at the level of individual people). He reviews some history.
There are two main points that he extracts from the history.
First, around 800 BCE, an age of "religious creativity" began. His examples include the Jewish prophets Amos and Isaiah, Zoroaster, Lao-Tzu, Confucius and Buddha, followed later by Jesus and then Mohammed.
The second point is that historically it is no surprise that different religions developed different conceptions of the divine or the ultimate. The religions arose in different societies with different cultures and different needs.
This leads to a larger question: is it theologically intelligible that there should be so many distinct religions with different doctrines? After all, the religions claim conflicting things.
Hick makes two points. First, God or The Ultimate is infinite and beyond our grasp.
If we could fully
define God, describing his inner being and his outer limits, this would not be
God. The God whom our minds can penetrate and whom our thoughts can
circumnavigate is merely a finite and partial image of God.
The second point is that when we look at prayers from different traditions, there is "overlap and confluence."
This is the basis for Hick's hypothesis:
Émany different accounts
of the divine reality may be true, though all expressed in imperfect human analogies,
butÉ none is "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
May it not be that the different conceptions God, as Jahweh, Allah, Krishna,
Param Atma, Holy Trinity, and so on; and likewise the different concepts of the
hidden structure of reality, as the eternal emanation of Brahman, or as an
immense cosmic process culminating in Nirvana, are all images of the divine,
and yet none by itself fully and exhaustively corresponding to the infinite nature
of the ultimate reality?
This is Hick's pluralistic hypothesis.
The hypothesis needs a qualification:
the idea that we are
considering is not that any and every conception of God or of the transcendent
is valid, still les all equally valid; but that every conception of the divine
which has come out of a great revelatory experience and has been tested through
a long tradition of worship, and has sustained human faith over centuries of
time and in millions of lives, is likely to represent a genuine encounter with
the divine reality.
Hick believes that human contact with the divine is mediated through culture. That's one reason why it takes different form in different societies.
He adds some remarks about non-theistic religions. He says
Speaking very
tentatively, I think it is possible that the sense of the divine as nonpersonal
may indeed reflect an aspect of the same infinite reality that is encountered
as personal in theistic religious experience.
He offers a Hindu notion that he sees as marking an important distinction: Niguna Brahman and Saguna Brahman. He generalizes it this way:
Nirguna God is the eternal, self-existent divine reality, beyond the scope of all human categories, including personality; and Saguna God is God in relation to his creation and with the attributes which express this relationship. such as personality, omnipotence, goodness, love and omniscience. Thus the one ultimate reality is both Nirguna and nonpersonal, and Saguna and personal.
Hick defends this view at length in his book An Interpretation of Religion, but this is the view in outline.