Remembering John Hick (1922-2012)

John Hick, the philosopher of religion and theologian, died on 9 February 2012. He was a theological pluralist who believed that the great living religions, despite their doctrinal and cultural differences, are each experientially in touch with the ineffable divine Ultimate. The article on Hick in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a quote about this from Hick's Autobiography (page 160):

"As I spent time in mosques, synagogues, gurudwaras and temples as well as churches something very important dawned on me. On the one hand all the externals were different... And not only the externals, but also the languages, the concepts, the scriptures, the traditions are all different and distinctive. But at a deeper level it seemed evident to me that essentially the same thing was going on in all these different places of worship, namely men and women were coming together under the auspices of some ancient, highly developed tradition which enables them to open their minds and hearts 'upwards' toward a higher divine reality which makes a claim on the living of their lives."

Hick edited the significantly controversial book The Myth of God Incarnate, which was published in 1977. Apart from Frances Young, who you would not expect to contribute to such a book, the book's authors were the usual familiar culprits: Maurice Wiles, Leslie Houlden, Don Cupitt, John Hick, Dennis Nineham, and Michael Goulder. (It is interesting that Wiles, Hick and Nineham all had evangelical Christian backgrounds in their younger days.)