John Hick and Pluralism
John Hick and Pluralism John Hick was born in 1922 in England to a middle class family. He developed an interest in philosophy and religion in his teens, being encouraged by his uncle, who was an author and teacher at Manchester University. Hick initially pursued a law degree at Hull University, but converted to Evangelical Christianity from the fundamentalist Christian beliefs with which he was raised, and decided to change his career and enrolled at the University of Edinburgh in 1941. During his studies, he became liable for military service in World War II, but as a conscientious objector on moral grounds, 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 dissertation, which formed the basis of his book Faith and Knowledge (Peters). He went on to earn a Doctorate in Philosophy from Oxford University in 1950 and a Doctorate in Literature from Edinburgh in 1975. In 1953, he married Joan Hazel Bowers, and the couple had three 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. Hick has twice been the subject of heresy proceedings. In 1961-1962, when he was teaching at Princeton Theological Seminary, he sought, as a Presbyterian minister, to join the local Presbytery of New Brunswick. He was asked whether he took exception to anything in the Westminster Confession of 1647 and answered that several points were open to question; for example, he was agnostic on the historical truth of the Virgin Birth and did not regard it as an essential item of Christian faith. Because of this, some of the local ministers appealed against his reception into the Presbytery. Their appeal was sustained by the Synod. A year later, a counter-appeal was sustained by the Judicial Committee
Cited: 2009. 17 Sept. 2011. . Furlong, Andrew. Tried for Heresy: a 21st-Century Journey of Faith. John Hunt, 2003. Hick, John. A Christian Theology of Religion (KY: Westminster John Knox press, 1995), 23 Mann, Mark (1996-1997). "John Hick: Mann 's Quick Notes". Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology Smid, Robert (1998-1999). "John Harwood Hick". Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology