John Hick - Böcker

The interactions of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities through the centuries have often been hostile and sometimes violent. The subjects are the concepts of God in the three traditions, their attitudes to the material world, and their understandings of human life and history.

For many people, the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is the essence of Christianity. Without the incarnation, Christianity would be something else. Yet this assumption is open to a great many questions, and in one of the most exciting and provocative collections of studies to appear for a long time, a group of theologians asks whether the idea of the incarnate God is not another of those patristic doctrines which need to be criticized and interpreted afresh in the modern world.The prospect may sound sensational and destructive, but this volume has neither characteristic. It has been produced by distinguished scholars, who examine the evidence from the New Testament onwards with care and thoroughness. And as they ask their questions, they are at the same time concerned with the consequences of their findings for a full and living Christian faith today. Their work is something that no thinking Christian can ignore.There are ten essays in all, written by the editor, and by Don Cupitt, Michael Goulder, Leslie Houlden, Dennis Nineham, Maurice Wiles and Frances Young.

Published a decade after The Myth of God Incarnate, this book tackles the most important theological question of our time, that of the relationship between Christianity and other religions. Those who have contributed to it have resolved to 'cross the Rubicon' and to move from insistence on the superiority or finality of Christ and Christianity towards a recognition of the independent validity of other religious approaches. Their articles seek to show that their position, though still tentative and controversial, represents a viable option for Christian believers.

John Hick has long argued that the widespread realization that Christianity is only one among several great world religions calls for a need to rethink Christian doctrine. He himself see the great world faiths as very different and (so far as we can tell) equally valid ways of conceiving, experiencing and responding in life to ultimate reality that we call God, The rainbow, as the sun's light refracted by the earth's atmosphere into a glorious spectrum of colours, is a metaphor for the refraction of the divine Light by human religious cultures.

This is a second and revised edition of John Hick's much discussed book first published twelve years ago. He claims that Jesus himself did not teach what was to become the orthodox understanding of him; that the dogma that he had both a divine and a human nature is incoherent and unintelligible; that divine incarnation is a metaphorical idea; that its literal construal makes Christianity the only religion to have been founded by a God in person, and thus uniquely superior to all others, a belief which has done so much harm in the world; that instead Christians should take Jesus as the one who has made God real to us and challenged us to live in God's presence. The new material now added shows how two major contemporary theologians, one Anglican and the other Catholic, face these problems and arrive at many but not all the same conclusions.

The essays in this book cover a wide range of issues centred on two themes, the search for truth, and the search for justice and peace. The search for truth concerns the ultimate reality to which the world's great religions point, involving discussion of religious experience, religious language, the relations between religions, life and death, and Christian belief. The search for justice and peace is pursued in the quest for a global ethic and in the life and thought of Mahatma Gandhi and again in South Africa during the apartheid era. Who or What is God? begins with the ordinary concept of God found today in most churches and in common discourse - the God whom such writers as Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchins in God is Not Great reject. Hick also rejects this concept, but not the experience of transcendent reality that it so inadequately expresses. This leads to a distinction, drawn in different ways within each of the world faiths, between God or the Ultimate in itself and that reality as humanly known in terms of human concepts and in historically and regionally different forms.

John Hick's book Christianity at the Centre has long been valued for the way in which it presents many of the central questions of Christian belief simply and clearly, considering Jesus and the God in whom he believed, the way in which religious beliefs may be said to be knowledge, their practical implications, and the major intellectual difficulties presented by them. At the same time, it has provided a convenient introduction to, and summary of, his own thinking. However, over a decade this thinking has changed, and an opportunity has been taken of revising the book for this new edition. The title itself indicates one of the changes. Christianity at the Centre might have seemed to imply some superiority of Christianity over other religions and would not reflect clearly enough Professor Hick's current views on the relationship between faiths; the new title keeps close to the old to indicate that the book is not completely new but it does carry a different emphasis. The new material also covers areas in which Professor Hick has been engaged in further study, particularly the question of life after death and personal survival.

A major revolution in thinking about religion is called for in this challenging work by theologian and religious philosopher John Hick. The author persuasively argues for a true religious pluralism, respectful of the non-Christian traditions that have persisted over time--Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam.

In this cross-cultural, interdisciplinary study, John Hick draws upon major world religions, as well as biology, psychology, parapsychology, anthropology, and philosophy, to explore the mystery of death. He argues that scientific and philosophical objections to the idea of survival after death can be challenged, and he claims that human inadequacy in facing suffering supports the basic religious argument for immortality.

Renowned theologian and philosopher of religion John Hick takes a hard look at an important intellectual problem facing Christians today: where exactly does Christianity fit into the scheme of the world in light of other world religions? And is it possible to remain Christian while accepting the truth of other beliefs? Offering good reasons for why the traditional stance that Christianity is the only true religion is no longer workable, Hick puts forth a cogent defense of Christianity in the global context of other religions.

The interactions of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities through the centuries have often been hostile and sometimes violent. Today a new 'trialogue' between them is developing in several parts of the world. One of the most ambitious ventures so far of this kind took place recently in California and produced this set of exploratory papers and responses. The subjects are the concepts of God in the three traditions, their attitudes to the material world, and their understandings of human life and history. The discussions were frank and realistic but at the same time hopeful.

Deals with today's disputed religious questions - whether religious language refers to a transcendent divine reality or only reflects our own ideals, whether religious experience is a proper ground of religious belief, and whether Jesus was God incarnate or a man especially open to God's spirit.

Hick addresses many of the major issues posing challenges to contemporary Christian belief, and offers his much-debated proposal for a Copernican revolution in our understanding of Christianity and the wider religious life of humanity.

Edited by two of the most prominent names in interfaith dialogue, this is an introduction to the complex relationships between Christianity and the other world faiths. Featuring essays from some of the key thinkers in the Christian faith. It covers both Catholic and Protestant approaches, and features all the rival points of view, including the uncompromising absolutism of Karl Barth and Pope John Paul II, the more ecumenical approaches of Karl Rahner and Hans Kung, and the religious pluralism of Wilfred Cantwell Smith and John Hick, among others.

Many of us today are all too willing to accept a humanist and scientific account of the universe which considers human existence as a fleeting accident. The triumph of John Hick’s gripping work is his exposure of the radical insufficiency of this view. Drawing on mystical and religious traditionsancient and modern, and spiritual thinkers as diverse as Julian of Norwich and Mahatma Ghandi, he has produced a tightly argued and thoroughly readable case for a bigger, more complete, picture of reality in which a fifth, spiritual dimension, plays a central role.‘Essential reading for anyone concerned with spirituality in the modern world’Professor Keith Ward, University of OxfordErudite, provocative and deeply moving, Hick’s persuasive narrative will prompt all curious readers to re-examine their own spiritual horizons.‘This stimulating book opens up many fundamental issues that must concern everyone. It deserves to be widely read. ‘Expository Times‘Learned, lucid and engaging, easy to read and easy to applaud for its sheer clarity of style and its breadth of interest, even when one disagrees with it!’Anvil