An Interpretation of Religion

A summary of:

Hick, J. (1989). An Interpretation of Religion. Yale University Press: New Haven.

Hick’s book attempts to trace a common thread between the world’s religious/spiritual traditions, and while he admits “there is no such essence” of religion, there are distinct trends and commonalities; primary among them being that “nevertheless most forms of religion have affirmed a salvific reality that transcends (while also usually being thought of as immanent within) human beings and the world, this reality being variously conceived as a personal God or non-personal Absolute, or as the cosmic structure or process or ground of the universe” (6). Hick’s argument is that religions universally offer what he prefers to call by the hybridized “salvation/liberation”: “for they both speak of the transformation of our human situation from a state of alienation from the true structure of reality to a radically better state in harmony with reality” (10).

The important feature of this transcendental aspect of religion is that it begins with a recognition of our imperfection, mythologically speaking, our fall from grace. As Hick writes, “Each of the great post-axial streams of religious experience and belief has been shown to exhibit a soteriological structure: a recognition of our human moral weakness and failure or of the pervasive insecurity and liability-to-suffering of all life; the proclamation of a limitlessly better possibility arising from another reality, transcendent to our present selves; and the teaching of a way, whether by ‘own-power’ spiritual discipline or the ‘other-power’ of divine grace, to its realisation" (56).

But the other feature is hope; or a faith in the belief that things can be improved: “It is the affirmation that human life is in reality more than the harsh experience that has always (68) been the lot of so many; and it offers a hope of salvation or liberation or fulfillment which can even now suffuse our life with a positive meaning and value” (69). What is interesting, though, is that this hope is a specific characteristic of post-axial religion: “What however we do not find in archaic religion is the hope, central to the post-axial movements, for a radically new, different and better existence, whether in this life or in a further life to come” (28). And I would argue that this hope has become embodied by technology – technology will save us from our burdens and make our lives livable and happy, etc.. In a sense, then, technology is a contemporary manifestation of the soteriological worldview. And my research, too, draws on this same salvation/liberation thinking; so long as we get ourselves oriented properly to our technology, we shall be saved! That does not detract from its value, as will be discussed soon in relation to the purpose of myth. The point is that technological development, and even the development of an alternative technological development, draws on the “soteriological structure” that we have become familiar with through exposure to Christianity, Judaism, etc.: “The great post-axial traditions, as we have seen, exhibit in their different ways a soteriological structure which identifies the misery, unreality, triviality and perversity of ordinary human life, affirms an ultimate unity of reality and value in which or in relation to which a limitlessly better quality of existence is possible, and shows the way to realise that radically better possibility” (36).

Now for the second crucial contribution from Hick (the first, again, being that the common theme of religions is salvation/liberation), namely his nuanced discussion of ‘meaning’. Hick identifies three levels of meaning – physical, ethical, and religious (13) – which fulfill different needs in different contexts (and corresponds nicely with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs). Furthermore, the different meanings are only appropriately contemplated relative to the context. When the physical is challenged, say in a food shortage, we see how quickly ethics goes out the window – people revert to an every man for himself mentality. Similarly, think how impractical it would be for a starving person to worry about how spiritual his technology is! It is a luxury to be able to contemplate the religious meanings of one’s situation. Nonetheless, religious meaning is hugely important.

Hick elaborates these three levels of meaning: “There are of course very many, indeed innumerable, different forms of non-linguistic meaning corresponding to the different characters that we find objects to have; and there are also, I shall suggest, various orders or ‘levels’ of meaning, namely the physical or natural, the socio-ethical and the religious. In terms of the natural meaning we inhabit the physical world, moving about in it as animal organisms. In terms of ethical meaning we inhabit this same world as an environmental mediating personal relationships and moral claims. And in terms of religious meaning we inhabit this same world again, with both its physical and its ethical significance, as an environment either mediating or manifesting the ultimately Real. Thus meaning, as the perceived character of an aspect of our environment which renders a particular type of response appropriate, occurs at various levels: all cognition is a tentative grasping of meaning on the basis of which we act, thereby confirming, developing or refuting our cognitive hypothesies. And at each level of awareness – natural, ethical and religious – we exercise a cognitive freedom which is at its minimum in relation to the immediate physical environment and at its maximum in relation to that ultimate environment of which the religions speak” (132).

Later in the book, Hick addresses the issue of the truth of any religious tradition. Firstly, it is important to note that Hick refers to ‘God’, the ‘Divine’, whatever you want to call it, as “the Real.” And the Real, he insists, is “the ultimate mystery” (349). There is no way of answering questions about its truth. But the importance of religion is in its function as myth:

“But nevertheless such literal and analogical language about the objects of religious worship or meditation always intends to be about the Real itself. And as such it functions mythologically: we speak mythologically or analogically about its phenomenal manifestations. We have seen (in Chapter 8) that all human awareness is in terms of meaning and that meaning always has a practical dispositional aspect: to be aware of a thing or a situation as having a particular meaning or character is to be in a dispositional state to behave in relation to it in ways that are (believed to be) appropriate to its having that character. And the function of mythology is to express the practical meaning of its referent by evoking in us an appropriate dispositional response. Thus although we cannot speak of the Real an sich in literal terms, nevertheless we live inescapably in relation to it, and in all that we do and undergo we are having to do with it as well as, and in terms of, our more proximate situations. Our actions are appropriate or inappropriate not only in relation to our physical and social environments but also in relation to our ultimate environment, the Real. True religious myths are accordingly those that evoke in us attitudes and modes of behaviour which are appropriate to our situation vis-à-vis the Real” (351).

The point is not whether there is actually a God, in other words. What matters is what believing in that God compels us to do. It orients us towards an ideal. And in fact, this ideal is itself always unattainable. So too, for example, is the notion of Sustainable Design – it is a contemporary mythology – and while we likely will never become completely sustainable, does that mean we should not strive towards being as sustainable as possible?

So we finally arrive at the great legacy of religious/spiritual traditions (whether or not we agree with the specific tenets): they teach us how to be human in this world. And very often, this is communicated in terms of how to relate to our fellow man. For example, Hick identifies the universality of The Golden Rule. Also universal is the “moral ideal of generous goodwill, love, compassion” (316), also known as “agape”.

Now is a good time to recap. The major commonalities of traditional spirituality are the following:

1) Salvation/liberation

2) Some conception of The Real

3) Providing meaning

4) Valuing Selflessness/Egolessness

a. Agape/love/compassion (14)

b. The Golden Rule (316)

c. Orientation toward The Real (rather than self) (40-1)

d. Self-control (317)

e. Giving (317)

5) Valuing Stability (rather than change)

6) A sense of mystery (67)

In comparison to now, in earlier ages these religious meanings were much more highly integrated with daily life: “Whereas in the thinking of modern technological people ‘the spiritual’ is generally relegated to a margin of private fantasy or ‘faith’, it seems that for pre-literate people it has always been part of the everyday world” (24). But meaning has undergone a profound transformation in the post-industrial age. Meaning is associated with progress (see Taylor). Hick writes: “Love, compassion, self-sacrificing concern for the good of others, generous kindness and forgiveness – which we have seen to constitute the basic ethical principle of the great traditions – is not an alien ideal imposed by supernatural authority but one arising out of our human nature (though always in tension with other aspect of that nature), reinforced, refined and elevated to new levels within the religious traditions” (325). Clearly, too, these values can be de-elevated, and have been, by the more aggressive (and so much cooler!) technological values.

I believe that the selflessness promoted by all religious traditions is adaptive, i.e. it has evolutionary benefit to us, as explained by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene. We are better off in the long run if we are community oriented. I fear that the reason we have only recently begun to live so unsustainably is because we’ve lost touch with our community-orientation. Technology promotes individuality.

So we come back, finally, to the mission of this research project. It is worth addressing this loss of religious meaning within our technology. Hick ends his book with this sentence: “Ethically its central theme should be the love/compassion to which all the great traditions call us; and in our sociologically conscious age this is likely to be increasingly a politically conscious and active agape/karuna which seeks to change the structures of society so as to promote rather than hinder the transformation of all human life” (380). Applied to this project, technology should be promoting these positive behaviors and values handed down to us by traditional religion/spirituality.