Philosophy of Religion
(third edition, 1983)John H. Hick
Contents
INTRODUCTION
What is the Philosophy of Religion? 1ONE
The Judaic-Christian Concept of GodMonotheism 5 Infinite, Self existent 7 Creator 9 Personal 10 Loving, Good 11 Holy 13 The Ontological Argument 15 The First Cause and Cosmological Arguments 20 The Design (or Teleological) Argument 23 Theism and Probability 26 The Moral Argument 28 The Argument from Special Events and Experiences 29 The Sociological Theory of Religion 31 The Freudian Theory of Religion 34 The Challenge of Modern Science 36 The Problem 40 The Augustinian Theodicy 42 The Irenaean Theodicy 45 Process Theodicy 49 The Limits of Proof 57 The Propositional View of Revelation and Faith 60 Voluntarist Theories of Faith 63 Tillich's Conception of Faith as Ultimate Concern 66 A Nonpropositional View of Revelation and Faith 68 A Corresponding View of the Bible and Theological Thinking 72 The Peculiarity of Religious Language 76 The Doctrine of Analogy (Aquinas) 77 Religious Statements as Symbolic (Tillich) 79 Incarnation and the Problem of Meaning 82 Religious Language as Non-Cognitive 83 Braithwaite's Non-Cognitive Theory 87 The Language-Game Theory 90 The Question of Verifiability 94 Two Suggested Solutions 97 The Idea of Eschatological Verification 100 Some Difficulties and Complications 102 "Exists," "Fact," and "Real" 105 EIGHT
The Conflicting Truth Claims of DifferentReligions 107Many Faiths, All Claiming to be True 107 W. A. Christian's Analysis 108 Critique of the Concept of "A Religion" 112 Toward a Possible Solution 113 A Philosophical Framework for Religious Pluralism 118 The Immortality of the Soul 122 The Re-creation of the Psychophysical Person 124 Does Parapsychology help? 127 Resuscitation Cases 131 The Popular Concept 133 The Vedantic Conception 137 A Demythologized Interpretation 142 FOR FURTHER READING 144
INDEX 146