^{page 493 note 1} An earlier version of this article was read to the Cambridge Comparative Religion Seminar, Lent Term 1985.Google Scholar Gratitude is due to Julius Lipner and Brian Hebblethwaite for helpful comments then, and to Kenneth Surin and John Hick for useful suggestions since. Remaining faults are the author's alone.

^{page 493 note 2} Ernst, Cornelius, Multiple Echo: Explorations in Theology, edited by Kerr, Fergus and Radcliffe, Timothy (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1979), p. 142.Google Scholar

^{page 493 note 3} Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Smith, Norman Kemp (London: Macmillan, 1933), p. 22.Google Scholar

^{page 493 note 4} Hick, John, God and the Universe of Faiths, second revised edition (London: Collins, 1977), pp. 120–32.Google Scholar

^{page 494 note 1} Kant, , pp. 21–2.Google Scholar

^{page 494 note 2} Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 10.Google Scholar

^{page 494 note 3} Kuhn, , p. 91.Google Scholar

^{page 494 note 4} See Lipner, J. J., ‘Does Copernicus Help? Reflections for a Christian Theology of Religions’, Religious Studies, XIII (1977), 243–58. (pp. 250–2);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and D'Costa, Gavin, ‘John Hick's Copernican Revolution: Ten Years After’, New Blackfriars, LXV (1984), 323–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar But see also Loughlin, Gerard, ‘Paradox and Paradigms’, New Blackfriars, LXVI (1985), 127–35;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and D'Costa's, reply, ‘An Answer to Mr Loughlin’, New Blackfriars, LXVI (1985), 135–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 495 note 1} Kuhn, , pp. 52–3.Google Scholar

^{page 495 note 2} Kuhn, , pp. 52–3.Google Scholar

^{page 495 note 3} Hick, John, ‘The Theology of Religious Pluralism’, Theology, LXXXVI (1983), 335–40 (p. 338).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 495 note 4} Maritain, Jacques, Redeeming the Time, translated by Binsse, Harry Lorin (London: Geoffrey Bles - The Centenary Press, 1943), pp. 105–6.Google Scholar

^{page 495 note 5} Hick, , God and the Universe of Faiths, pp. 123–30.Google Scholar

^{page 496 note 1} Kuhn, , pp. 66–76.Google Scholar

^{page 496 note 2} Hick, John, ‘Religious Pluralism’, in The World's Religious Traditions: Current Perspectives in Religious Studies, essays in honour of Edward Cantwell Smith, edited by Frank Whaling (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1984), pp. 147–64 (p. 158).Google Scholar

^{page 496 note 3} See Hick, John, ‘The New Map of the Universe of Faiths’, in God and the Universe of Faiths, pp. 133–47.Google Scholar This was first delivered in 1972 as a public lecture at Carrs Lane Church Centre, Birmingham.

^{page 496 note 4} See D'Costa, Gavin, ‘The Pluralist Paradigm in the Christian Theology of Religions’, Scottish Journal of Theology, XXXIX (1986), 211–24 (pp. 214–16).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 497 note 1} Hick, John, ‘On Conflicting Religious Truth-Claims’, Religious Studies, XIX (1983), 485–91 (Pp. 485–7)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 497 note 2} Hick, , ‘On Grading Religions’, Religious Studies, XVII (1981), 451–67 (pp. 452–3).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 497 note 3} Hick, John, ‘Towards a Philosophy of Religious Pluralism’, Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, XXII (1980), 131–49 (p. 132).Google Scholar

^{page 497 note 4} Hick, , ‘On Grading Religions’, p. 453.Google Scholar

^{page 497 note 5} Hick, , ‘Religious Pluralism’, p. 158.Google Scholar

^{page 497 note 6} Hick, , ‘Religious Pluralism’, pp. 156–8.Google Scholar

^{page 497 note 7} Hick, , ‘Religious Pluralism’, p. 156.Google Scholar

^{page 497 note 8} Kant, , p. 22.Google Scholar

^{page 498 note 1} Hick, introduced the distinction between the unknown noumenon of ultimate reality and the known phenomena of religious mythology as early as 1976Google Scholar, in a paper delivered to the Calgary Conference on Mysticism; see Hick, John, ‘Mystical Experience as Cognition’, in Mystics and Scholars, edited by Coward, Harold and Penelhum, Terence (Waterloo, Ontario: Alfred Laurier University Press, 1977), pp. 41–56.Google Scholar

^{page 498 note 2} Hick, , ‘Religious Pluralism’, pp. 160–4.Google Scholar

^{page 499 note 1} Rambachan, Anantanand, ‘A Hindu Looks at Jesus’, Theology, LXXXVIII (1985), 255–9 (p. 258).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 499 note 2} Hick, John, Problems of Religious Pluralism (London: Macmillan, 1985), p. 69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 499 note 3} D'Costa, , ‘The Pluralist Paradigm in the Christian Theology of Religions’, pp. 221–2.Google Scholar

^{page 499 note 4} For this salutary reminder see D'Costa, Gavin, ‘Elephants, Ropes and a Christian Theology of Religions’, Theology, LXXXVIII (1985), 259–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 500 note 1} Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, translated by Anscombe, G. E. M., second edition (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), 67.Google Scholar

^{page 500 note 2} Ernst, , p. 29.Google Scholar

^{page 500 note 3} Lonergan, Bernard, A Second Collection (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974), p. 15.Google Scholar

^{page 501 note 1} Kuhn, , p. 94.Google Scholar

^{page 501 note 2} Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, edited by Barrett, Cyril (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966), p. 18.Google Scholar

^{page 501 note 3} Wittgenstein, , Lectures and Conversations, p. 20.Google Scholar

^{page 501 note 4} Wittgenstein, , Lectures and Conversations, p. 24.Google Scholar

^{page 501 note 5} See Cioffi, Frank, ‘Wittgenstein's Freud’, in Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, edited by Winch, Peter (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), pp. 184–210.Google Scholar

^{page 501 note 6} On Hick's view the world religions appear similar if you pay attention to their soteriological structure and effectiveness and consider their differences, in discourse and practice, as secondary cultural formations.

^{page 501 note 7} Wittgenstein, , Lectures and Conversations, p. 25.Google Scholar

^{page 502 note 1} Wittgenstein, , Lectures and Conversations, pp. 26–7.Google Scholar

^{page 502 note 2} Wittgenstein, , Lectures and Conversations, p. 27.Google Scholar

^{page 502 note 3} Wittgenstein's comment on the attraction of Darwinian theory appears to suggest that against a mere persuasion one way or the other, a third, more logical and determinate method of assessment may be possible. But this third way – which reserves judgement and waits on more evidence – may be forever sitting on the fence. The point about a point of view – Darwinian, Freudian or Hickean – is that one is persuaded or not, not by the evidence but about the evidence.

^{page 502 note 4} Heiler, Friedrich, ‘The History of Religions as a Way of Unity of Religions’, Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress for the History of Religion (Tokyo: Maruzen, 1960), pp. 7–22 (p. 19).Google Scholar

^{page 502 note 5} The desire for harmony is related to what Leroy Rouner notes as the inclusion of ‘theological repentance’ within ‘political and economic repentance for the sins of Western colonialism’. Only this can explain the ‘otherwise inexplicable asymmetry in current inter-religious dialogue’. See his ‘Theology of Religions in Recent Protestant Theology’, Concilium, CLXXXIIl (1986), 108–15 (p. 109).Google Scholar

^{page 503 note 1} Hick, , Problems of Religious Pluralism, p. 97.Google Scholar

^{page 503 note 2} Hick, , ‘Towards a Philosophy of Religious Pluralism’, p. 131.Google Scholar

^{page 503 note 3} Hick, , ‘Towards a Philosophy of Religious Pluralism’, p. 132.Google Scholar

^{page 503 note 4} Hick, , ‘Towards a Philosophy of Religious Pluralism’, p. 132.Google Scholar

^{page 503 note 5} It is interesting to note that at one point (at least) Hick acknowledges that his ‘inductive’ argument seeks to interpret the ‘phenomenological data’ from the ‘standpoint of the basic conviction that religious experience is…in part, an effect…of the presence and pressure of a transcendent divine Reality’ (Problems of Religious Pluralism, p. 97). What he does not acknowledge is that this ‘conviction’ is doing all the work.

^{page 503 note 6} Cobb, John B., ‘Christian Witness in a Pluralistic World’, in The Experience of Religious Diversity, edited by Hick, John and Askari, Hasan (Aldershot: Gower, 1985), pp. 144–62 (p. 156).Google Scholar

^{page 504 note 1} Hesse, Mary, Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science (Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1980), pp. vii–viii;Google Scholar see also pp. 235–55.

^{page 504 note 2} Compare Ernst, , p. 223.Google Scholar

^{page 504 note 3} Hick, , Problems of Religious Pluralism, p. 42.Google Scholar

^{page 504 note 4} D'Costa, Gavin, Theology and Religious Pluralism: The Challenge of Other Religions (London: Basil Blackwell, 1986), p. 44.Google Scholar A similar view is advanced by Newbigin, Lesslie in The Open Secret: Sketches for a Missionary Theology (London, 1978), pp. 184–5.Google Scholar

^{page 504 note 5} Penelhum, Terence, Review of Hick's Death and Eternal Life, Canadian journal of Philosophy, IX (1979), 141–62 (pp. 150–51).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 505 note 1} Hick, , Problems of Religious Pluralism, p. 124.Google Scholar This confirms our argument in Loughlin, ‘Paradox and Paradigms’, though there we did not refer to the logical structure of Hick's global eschatology.

^{page 505 note 2} Barthes, Roland, Empire of Signs, translated by Howard, Richard (London: Jonathan Cape, 1982), p. 30.Google Scholar

^{page 505 note 3} Hume, David, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, edited by Smith, Norman Kemp, second edition (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd, 1947), p. 158.Google Scholar

^{page 505 note 4} Feuerbach, Ludwig, The Essence of Christianity, translated by Eliot, George (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1957), p. 17.Google Scholar

^{page 506 note 1} Cupitt, Don, ‘Thin-Line Theism’, Times Literary Supplement (8 08 1980), p. 902.Google Scholar

^{page 506 note 2} Kant, , pp. 346–8.Google Scholar

^{page 506 note 3} Hick, , ‘Towards a Philosophy of Religious Pluralism’, p. 143.Google Scholar

^{page 506 note 4} Lash, Nicholas, Theology on the way to Emmaus (London: SCM Press, 1986), p. 132.Google Scholar

^{page 507 note 1} See D'Costa, , Theology and Religious Pluralism, p. 40.Google Scholar

^{page 507 note 2} Rouner, , p. 113.Google Scholar

^{page 507 note 3} Hick, , Problems of Religious Pluralism, p. 26.Google Scholar

^{page 508 note 1} Hick, , Problems of Religious Pluralism, p. 100.Google Scholar

^{page 508 note 2} Hick, , Problems of Religious Pluralism, pp. 96–109.Google Scholar

^{page 508 note 3} Compare Lossky, Vladimir, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, translated by members of the Fellowship of Alban, St & Sergius, St (London: James Clarke, 1957), p. 43.Google Scholar

^{page 508 note 4} Rouner, , p. 110.Google Scholar

^{page 508 note 5} Ernst, , p. 30.Google Scholar