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Christianity at the Centre
ohn Hick's book Christianity at the Centre has long been valued for the way in which it presents many of the central questions of Christian belief simply and clearly, considering Jesus and the God in whoM he believed, the way in which religious beliefs may be said to be knowledge, their practical implications, and the major intellectual difficulties presented by them. At the same time, it has provided a convenient introduction to, and summary of, his own thinking. However, over a decade this thinking has changed, and an opportunity has been taken of revising the book for this new edition. The title itself indicates one of the changes. Christianity at the Centre might have seemed to imply some superiority of Christianity over other religions and would not reflect clearly enough Professor Hick's current views on the relationship between faiths; the new title keeps close to the old to indicate that the book is not completely new but it does carry a different emphasis. The new material also covers areas in which Professor Hick has been engaged in further study, particularly the question of life after death and personal survival.
124 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
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August 12, 2024
A PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN EXPLAINS HIS VIEWS
John Harwood Hick (1922-2012) was a philosopher of religion and theologian who taught at a number of universities, and wrote/edited many other books such as 'Evil and the God of Love,' 'Philosophy of Religion,' 'The Existence of God,' 'The Myth of God Incarnate,' etc.
He wrote in the Preface of this 1978 book, "An earlier version of this little book ... was addressed both to thoughtful Christians and to thoughtful non-Christians who want to look again at the positive core of the Christian faith, leaving aside the mass of intellectual barnacles... which have accumulated around it in the course of nineteen centuries... Since then two ... larger books have been published, one dealing with the relation between Christianity and the other world religions and the place of Jesus Christ in this wider religious scene; and the other with the question of what we can say, on the basis of both Christian and other indications, about human existence beyond this present life. And so this revised version includes new sections on these topics." (Pg. 7)
He begins by stating, "the development of modern science has made incredible much of the content of traditional Christian belief... [such] as that the origin of the universe was a divine act of creation some thousands or millions or thousands of millions of years ago; that man was made finitely perfect but fell through his own wrong choice into sin and misery; that God intervenes from time to time in history...; that Christ was born of a virgin mother, lived on earth as a divine being with omnipotent power and omniscient mind... and that after his death his corpse came back to life; that the Bible is the infallible, divinely inspired record of all this; that eternal heaven or hell awaits us after death. The question today is whether such beliefs are of the permanent essence of Christianity; or whether they belong to the history of its interaction with the prescientific culture which has only recently come to an end." (Pg. 9)
He admits, "It appears to me that we shall never know with any certainty whether the resurrection of Jesus was a bodily event; or consisted in visions... of Jesus, or in an intense sense of his unseen personal presence. The fairly strong probability seems to me to be that it was a matter of visions." (Pg. 25)
In a more personal vein, he says, "we can only come to know God by a free response to the ambiguous indications of his existence, a willingness to know him which then crystallizes into the experience of being in his presence. And the interpretative element within it, which I am identifying with religious faith, serves to safeguard our own separate personal existence over against the infinite being of God." (Pg. 48) He adds, "If our own experience as a whole leads us to respond on his own terms to Jesus of Nazareth this response will then be as rational as we ourselves are. The moral is: if you trust in your own rationality then act upon what you cannot help believing." (Pg. 55)
He suggests, "Salvation, then, is a slow and many-sided process; and instead of asking of someone, Is he saved? it would be more appropriate to ask, Is he on the way of salvation? Is he becoming more authentically human?" (Pg. 74) He argues, "Although the system of Christian beliefs is not as a whole directly verifiable... There are certain eschatological expectations---expectations about the ultimate future---which, I want to suggest, satisfy an acceptable criterion of factual meaningfulness and which impart to the Christian belief-system as a whole the character of a true or false assertion." (Pg. 99)
Anyone interested in progressive views on Christian theology will enjoy this book; and even conservatives might be interested to see what the "other half" thinks.
John Harwood Hick (1922-2012) was a philosopher of religion and theologian who taught at a number of universities, and wrote/edited many other books such as 'Evil and the God of Love,' 'Philosophy of Religion,' 'The Existence of God,' 'The Myth of God Incarnate,' etc.
He wrote in the Preface of this 1978 book, "An earlier version of this little book ... was addressed both to thoughtful Christians and to thoughtful non-Christians who want to look again at the positive core of the Christian faith, leaving aside the mass of intellectual barnacles... which have accumulated around it in the course of nineteen centuries... Since then two ... larger books have been published, one dealing with the relation between Christianity and the other world religions and the place of Jesus Christ in this wider religious scene; and the other with the question of what we can say, on the basis of both Christian and other indications, about human existence beyond this present life. And so this revised version includes new sections on these topics." (Pg. 7)
He begins by stating, "the development of modern science has made incredible much of the content of traditional Christian belief... [such] as that the origin of the universe was a divine act of creation some thousands or millions or thousands of millions of years ago; that man was made finitely perfect but fell through his own wrong choice into sin and misery; that God intervenes from time to time in history...; that Christ was born of a virgin mother, lived on earth as a divine being with omnipotent power and omniscient mind... and that after his death his corpse came back to life; that the Bible is the infallible, divinely inspired record of all this; that eternal heaven or hell awaits us after death. The question today is whether such beliefs are of the permanent essence of Christianity; or whether they belong to the history of its interaction with the prescientific culture which has only recently come to an end." (Pg. 9)
He admits, "It appears to me that we shall never know with any certainty whether the resurrection of Jesus was a bodily event; or consisted in visions... of Jesus, or in an intense sense of his unseen personal presence. The fairly strong probability seems to me to be that it was a matter of visions." (Pg. 25)
In a more personal vein, he says, "we can only come to know God by a free response to the ambiguous indications of his existence, a willingness to know him which then crystallizes into the experience of being in his presence. And the interpretative element within it, which I am identifying with religious faith, serves to safeguard our own separate personal existence over against the infinite being of God." (Pg. 48) He adds, "If our own experience as a whole leads us to respond on his own terms to Jesus of Nazareth this response will then be as rational as we ourselves are. The moral is: if you trust in your own rationality then act upon what you cannot help believing." (Pg. 55)
He suggests, "Salvation, then, is a slow and many-sided process; and instead of asking of someone, Is he saved? it would be more appropriate to ask, Is he on the way of salvation? Is he becoming more authentically human?" (Pg. 74) He argues, "Although the system of Christian beliefs is not as a whole directly verifiable... There are certain eschatological expectations---expectations about the ultimate future---which, I want to suggest, satisfy an acceptable criterion of factual meaningfulness and which impart to the Christian belief-system as a whole the character of a true or false assertion." (Pg. 99)
Anyone interested in progressive views on Christian theology will enjoy this book; and even conservatives might be interested to see what the "other half" thinks.
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