Link to Beyond Toleration

1. What key question can Christian theology face today?

 

 

2. What was the first stage of Christianity's teaching about other religions?

 

 

 

3. What was the second stage of Christianity's teaching about other religions?

 

 

 

4. What was the third stage of Christianity's teaching about other religions?

 

 

 

 

5. What was the fourth stage of Christianity's teaching about other religions?

 

 

 

 

 

6. Explain fully which attitude about toleration to various religions you personally hold and why:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. What is Richard McBrien's attitude toward various religions?

 

 

 

 

 

8. What is Karl Rahner's attitude toward various religions?

 

 

 

 

9. What is Hans Kung's attitude toward various religions?

 

 

 

 

10. What is Wolfhart Pannenberg's attitude toward various religions?

11. Describe an example from your own life of and your reasons for a fundamental transformation of your understanding of one way to another way of looking at the world or people or yourself, for example:

• from a static view of creation to an evolutionary view, or
• from a world in which everything happens for a reason (purpose) to a world which admits real accidents which are unintended by any rational being's consciousness, or
• from one attitude in moral consciousness, for example, a law and order attitude towards morality which emphasizes avoiding what's wrong to another attitude, for example, a loving attitude towards self and other people which emphasizes the positive pra ctice of virtue as a way of enhancing the true happiness of self and others, or
• from one way of understanding human behavior, either as totally determined or totally free, to another way of understanding your behavior as more or less free, or
• from one way of understanding God, perhaps a child's way, to another way of understanding God, perhaps a more mature way, or
• from one way of understanding sacred scripture, perhaps as literally true, to a scholarly view of such scripture, one which recognizes that the scripture writers actually invented some incidents and sayings in the life of Jesus, for example: Link to Scholarly Essay on the Resurrection of Jesus: Can the Four Gospel Accounts be Reconciled? or
• from attitude towards yourself to another attitude toward yourself.

12. What is John Hick's argument that neither theism nor atheism can be proven?

13. Explain whether or not and why you hold that neither theism nor atheism can be proven?

14. What is Hick's argument that we cannot prove that our experience discloses an external world but that we freely interpret ourselves as living in a natural world whose things we can come to know by pragmatic tests?

15. Knowledge of the natural world through scientific method involves creative hypotheses such as Einstein's theory of general relativity which has been tested and confirmed for the experimental consequences which were predicted by Einstein. So, what w ould be wrong in an attack on Hick's view of knowledge of the natural world by a person who would say that interpretation of natural objects is purely subjective and everyone's interpretation of natural events is as good as anyone else's? ((Answer is not in the essay; students must answer this by their own effort.)

16. What is Hick's view of our knowledge of the world as a social world in which both self and others exist? Is this knowledge self-evident, for example, as in Descartes' claim that "I think, therefore I am,"

or can it be proven, or is it an interpretation that is pragmatically verified? Explain your view also.

17. In Hick's understanding, is morality reducible to conditioning by rewards and punishments as Skinner would argue, or is morality of the Golden Rule and of Kant's concept of a rational person able to be proven by a rational argument, or is such mora lity a free interpretation of the value of self and other which is confirmed in a probable manner by its pragmatic enrichment of human life? Explain

your view also.

18. How does Hick understand both the theist and the atheist as both holding creative interpretations of religious faith? Explain your own view also.

19. If we have some creativity in our perceptual interpretations of natural objects and the world, more creativity in our moral interpretations of relationships with other persons, and even greater creativity in our religious interpretations of our nat ural and moral worlds, whether these interpretations be theistic, pantheistic, or atheistic, what two reasons does Hick give for holding that there is a profound degree of cognitive freedom in our interpretations of God in the various world religions?

20. Part One: Describe an example from your own life or anyone else's life in which two or more levels of interpretation of Hick are present. For example, you might have been in a car wreck, a natural event, to which people responded with moral respons ibility, and to which you later gave a religious interpretation. Another example: a person falls in love as a natural event with all the bio-chemicals of infatuation flowing through one's brain. But then the person goes on to make a commitment morally

to date only that person. Perhaps later the person enters into a permanent commitment to the other in a religious ceremony, interpreting their love as a gift from God's love. Another example, a person loses a friend or relative in death as a natural ev ent, say, as the victim of a drunk driving accident. The moral response is to try to help the family through this tragedy. Perhaps the religious response begins when one questions where was God in all of this. The person interprets one's own answer to tha t

question, perhaps saying that God is not there or perhaps drawing some other conclusion as to the nature of God's relationship to the earth and people.

Part Two: What is your evaluation of the overall argument of Hick that we should grow beyond a Ptolemaic way of evaluating other religions always in relationship to our own experiences of and beliefs in God and grow towards a Copernican way of evaluati ng our own religious attitude and all other religions by the transcendent Deity which is infinitely greater than all our religious experiences and doctrines.

Answer both Part One and Part Two fully, labeling your answers Part One and Part Two.