An Investigation and Criticism of the Four Epistemological Bases of John Hick's Theory of Religious Pluralism

The theory of religious pluralism is tied with the name of John Hick (1922-2012) in the West in the present century and the twentieth century. John Hick (which I was informed of his death during the correction of this article) has made a great effort to present an epistemological explanation of the theory of religious pluralism in recent decades. The result of this effort is the theory of religious pluralism noted by various Western scholars which is also seriously criticized. I have tried to investigate the main epistemological parameters and bases of the theory of religious pluralism in this article and will mention some of its results and implications. For this reason this view is analyzed into four main parameters and each one is briefly explained. The main purpose of this article is to prove this hypothesis: the epistemological foundation of Hick's theory of religious pluralism is affected by the theories of four scholars, i.e. Kant and Wittgenstein and Schleiermacher and Gadamer. Although his effort to integrate and create coherency between these parameters is praiseworthy, but in fact analyzing this theory will reduce it to four parameters: the epistemological pattern of Kant, Wittgenstein's theory of seeing as, Schleiermacher's principle of religious experience and Gadamer's base of hermeneutics. Hick himself may not be satisfied with this conclusion. It is mentioned in this article that Hick has himself declared his affection of two theories and two philosophers, i.e. Kant and Wittgenstein, but he has no clear declaration about the affection of his theory from the two other scholars, i.e. Schleiermacher and Gadamer. I believe the effect of these two and their theories is not less than the theories of Kant and Wittgenstein. At the end of this article some main problems of this theory and also the supplanted theory are briefly mentioned; although each of these two discussions – i.e. investigation and criticism of Hick's theory of religious pluralism and the supplanted theory named "pluralism in religion" – should be investigated separately. Therefore the main purpose of this article is to present a new approach to the epistemological investigation and analysis of John Hick's theory of religious pluralism in which the theory is evaluated with four other approaches and bases.