John Harwood Hick (20 January 1922 – 9 February 2012) was an English philosopher and theologian, known for his contributions in the areas of theodicy, eschatology, Christology, epistemology of religion, and religious pluralism.
Early life and education John Harwood Hick was born on 20 January 1922 to a middle-class family in Scarborough in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England. In his teens he developed an interest in philosophy and religion, being encouraged by his uncle, who was an author and teacher at the University of Manchester. Hick initially went to Bootham School in York, which is Quaker, and then pursued a law degree at the University of Hull, but, having converted to Evangelical Christianity, he decided to change his career and he enrolled at the University of Edinburgh in 1941. During his studies he became liable for military service in the Second World War, but, as a conscientious objector on moral grounds, he enrolled in the Friends' Ambulance Unit. After the war he returned to Edinburgh and became attracted to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and began to question his fundamentalism. In 1948 he completed his MA thesis, which formed the basis of his book Faith and Knowledge. He went on to complete a D.Phil. at Oriel College, Oxford, in 1950 and a D.Litt. from Edinburgh in 1975. In 1977 he received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Theology at Uppsala University, Sweden. In 1953 he married Joan Hazel Bowers (d. 1996). They had four children. After many years as a member of the United Reformed Church, in October 2009 he was accepted into membership of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain. He died of complications of pneumonia at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham on 9 February 2012 at the age of 90.
Career Hick's academic positions included Danforth Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the Claremont Graduate University, California (where he taught from 1979 to 1992); H.G. Wood Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham (1967-82); and Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham. While at the University of Birmingham Hick played important roles in a number of organisations centred on community relations. Non-Christian communities, mostly Hindu, Muslim and Sikh, had begun to form in Birmingham as immigration from the Caribbean Islands and Indian subcontinent increased. Due to the influx of peoples with different religious traditions, organisations focused on integrating the community became necessary. During his fifteen years at the University of Birmingham, Hick became a founder, as well as the first chair, for the group All Faiths for One Race (AFFOR); he served as a chair on the Religious and Cultural Panel, which was a division of the Birmingham Community Relations Committee; and he also chaired the coordinating committee for a 1944 conference convened under the new Education Act 1944 with the aim of creating a new syllabus for religious instruction in city schools. Between 1970 and 1974 Hick championed a substantially different theory of religious pluralism based, not on Immanuel Kant but on Sri Aurobindo, an Indian yogi (1872–1950). He also held teaching positions at Cornell University, Princeton Theological Seminary and the University of Cambridge. During his teaching stay at Princeton Seminary, Hick began to depart from his conservative religious standings as he began to question "whether belief in the Incarnation required one to believe in the literal historicity of the Virgin Birth". This questioning would open the door for further examination of his own Christology, which would contribute to Hick's understanding of religious pluralism. He was vice-president of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion and vice-president of the World Congress of Faiths. Hick delivered the 1986–87 Gifford lectures and in 1991 was awarded the prestigious Grawemeyer Award from the University of Louisville and the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary for Religion. After retiring as the Danforth Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate University in California in 1992, he returned to Birmingham, where he lived until his death. Hick bequeathed his professional archives to the Cadbury Research Library Special Collections at the University of Birmingham.
Philosophy and theology Robert Smid states that Hick is regularly cited as "one of the most – if not simply the most – significant philosopher of religion in the twentieth century". Keith Ward once described him as "the greatest living philosopher of global religion." He is best known for his advocacy of religious pluralism, which is radically different from the traditional Christian teachings that he held when he was younger. Perhaps because of his heavy involvement with the inter-faith groups and his interaction with people of non-Christian faiths through those groups, Hick began to move toward a pluralistic outlook. He notes in both More Than One Way? and God and the Universe of Faiths that, as he came to know these people who belonged to non-Christian faiths, he saw in them the same values and moral actions that he recognised in his fellow-Christians. This observation led him to begin questioning how a completely loving God could possibly sentence non-Christians who clearly espouse values that are revered in Christianity to an eternity in hell. Hick then began to attempt to uncover the means by which all those devoted to a theistic religion might receive salvation. Hick was criticised by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI from 2005 and 2013), when he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Ratzinger had examined the works of several theologians accused of relativism, such as Jacques Dupuis and Roger Haight, and found that many, if not all, were philosophically inspired by Hick. Therefore, the declaration Dominus Iesus was seen by many at the time as a condemnation of Hick's ideas and theories.
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