Kai-man
KWAN
Hick says, "At the
end of the twentieth century Christianity is in deep crisis. The theological
structure developed by the Western church has come to seem hollow and
irrelevant to the majority of Westerners, and seems foreign and alien, as an
extension of Western cultural hegemony, to many Christians in Africa, India,
China, and the East generally."[1]
One aspect of this crisis is "the widespread realization that Christianity
is only one among several great world religions. Judaism, Islam, Hinduism,
Buddhism now appear to many as different but, judging by their fruits in human
life, equally authentic responses to God, the Divine, the Ultimate, the
Real."[2] So we
have an urgent need to rethink Christianity's dogmas of superiority. For Hick,
only religious pluralism can help us to express an "intellectually honest
and realistic Christian faith" Only it can "speak to the deep
religious concern that exists as strongly as ever among a Western population
that has long since ceased to be captivated by traditional institutional
religion."[3] It is
shown by the fact that "growing numbers of church members" resort to
a metaphorical understanding of the creeds.[4]
All in all, Hick thinks that pluralism is not only theoretically superior to
particularism, it is also practically necessary for the future survival of
Christianity.
However, the alleged
pragmatic advantages of religious pluralism over particularism seem dubious to
me:
1)
For the thoroughly secularised
Western people, both religious pluralism and exlcusivism are equally
nonsensical.
2)
For those Westerners who are
alienated by the traditional dogmas of the Church but who are still spiritually
minded, pluralism might help them to make peace with the Church but it will not
encourage commitment: why can't they find spiritual satisfaction elsewhere?
3)
For those who want a reason for
their commitment to Christianity, religious pluralism will only remove their
rationales for coming to the Church or believing in Christianity!
4)
In Asia, Africa, etc.,
Christianity is only one among many other native and non-native religions which
have been there for a long time. If the Asian people are told that Christianity
cannot offer anything that cannot be obtained from their old options, why then
do they need to choose Christianity? As an Asian, I think Hick’s comment on the
Asian Christians is wide of the mark. I suspect what he says there is largely
based on his reading of the “Asian theologians,” who can hardly represent Asian
Christians.
For the above reasons, I doubt that
religious pluralism is practically more appealing than particularism to the
majority of people, East and West. This view is borne out by the following
facts. The crisis of religion Hick mentions is only a localized one if we view
the problem globally. It is mainly confined to populations deeply influenced by
the secularization trend, i.e., Europeans and intellectuals. Among many other
places, there is no such crisis.[5]
Even in Europe and the USA, the churches which can hold up to the corrosion of
secularization are those which resist religious pluralism or other kinds of
non-realism. In UK, the decline of church membership set in after 50's:
"by 1990 the total figure was down to 5.6 million (3.4 million Protestant
and 2.2 million Catholic) and this amounted to a modest 12% of the adult
population. The current figure is about 14%, an increase largely explained by the
rise in independent pentecostal and evangelical churches."[6]
Michael Green points out, "I cannot help noticing that it is the
Bible-believing evangelical and charismatic churches around the world which are
growing so fast, and that is as much the case in the Anglican communion as it
is in other denominations. The plain truth of the matter is that reductionist
'liberal' reinterpretations of Christianity, based on the sufficiency of human
reason, rather than on biblical revelation, have little to offer us, though
they are still prevalent in many of our theological institutions and among many
senior churchmen."[7]
The story of the decline of the mainline churches in the United States is also well-known.
Hick seems to be so conditioned by his own academic environment that he is
blind to these obvious facts.
[5] Kai-man Kwan, “A Critical Appraisal of a Non-Realist Philosophy of
Religion: An Asian Perspective.” Philosophia Christi, Series 2 Volume 3,
Number 1 (2001), pp. 225-235.
[6] Philip F. Esler, "Introduction: Christianity for the
Twenty-First Century," in Christianity for the Twenty-First Century,
ed. Philip F. Esler (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1998), pp. 1-2.
[7] "The Scope of the Cosmic Christ," in Grace and Truth
in the Secular Age, ed. Timothy Bradshaw (Grand Rapids, Michigan, Eerdmans,
1998), p. 11.
