Mirroring God's world : a critique of John Hick's speculative theology

• Main Author: Loughlin, Gerard Patrick
• Published: University of Cambridge 1987
• Subjects: 100; Theology of John Hick
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.382193

John Rick's work is important in its own right and as exemplary of a dominant empiricist tendency in academic religious thought. This dissertation seeks to display that tendency by exploring the possibility of reading Rick's work as Christian theology. To this end it examines Rick's reflections on six themes: religion, theology, theodicy, eschatology, Christology and theology of religions. It seeks to expose the faults and fissures, disruptions and distortions in Rick's texts. This explains the form of each chapter: a lengthy exposition and criticism of how Hick handles a particular theme, followed by a short sketch of how the theme may be otherwise handled. In each case the sketch draws on insights discerned in the criticism. The central themes of the whole study are Rick's emphasis on experience and the place of interpretation: the dominance of naive realism and the need for hermeneutic as mediation.