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Hick and Loughlin on Disputes and Frameworks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Gavin Hyman
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It was Wittgenstein who said that in order to ‘combat’ a point of view, one first has to establish whether that point of view is within or without one’s own framework. That is to say, one has to establish whether the ‘combat’ is to be a dispute within a framework or between frameworks. For Wittgenstein, that was of the utmost importance if one was to avoid falling into confusion. This is because whereas disputes within a framework proceed by means of reasoned arguments which are held fast and validated by that common surrounding framework, disputes between frameworks do not proceed within a common milieu, and so the common validity of reasoned arguments subsides. Thus, a dispute between frameworks has to proceed by means of quite different methods, that is, methods of persuasion and charm.

This insight has a particular significance when one considers some of the developments that have been taking place in theology in recent years. For the last three centuries or so, theological discourse was conducted within a framework that was, at once, both ‘theological’ and ‘scientific.’ As Amos Funkenstein has argued, it was a framework ‘in which theological concerns were expressed in terms of secular knowledge, and scientific concerns were expressed in theological terms. Theology and other sciences became almost one.’ Virtually all theological disputes in those centuries were located within that framework, and consequently, they were conducted by means of reasoned arguments.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 79 , Issue 931 , September 1998 , pp. 391 - 405
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 See Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 609‐617.

2 Funkenstein, Amos, Theology and the Scientific Imagination: From the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 346Google Scholar. See also Buckley, Michael J., At the Origins of Modern Atheism (New HavemYale University Press, 1987)Google Scholar. For a more positive account, see Byrne, James, Glory, Jest and Riddle: Religious Thought in the Enlightenment (London: SCM Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

3 Although, as Graham Ward reminds us, ‘modernity’ was not quite as homogenous a period as is often thought, especially when one considers Hamann against Kant, Nietzsche against Hegel, and Cassirer against Heidegger. See Theology and Contemporary Critical Theory (Basingstoke Macmillan, 1996), p. 6Google Scholar. It should also be noted that ‘modernity’ has sometimes been seen less as a ‘period’ and more as a ‘mode of thought’ or as a ‘sensibility.’ See, for instance, Lyotard, Jean‐François, ‘Universal History and Cultural Differences’ in Benjamin, Andrew (ed.) The Lyotard Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), p. 314Google Scholar.

4 See Loughlin, Gerard, ‘On Telling the Story of Jesus’Theology 87 (1984), pp. 323‐329CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ‘Paradox and Paradigms’New Blackfriars 66 (1985), pp. 127‐135CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ‘Persons and Replicas’Modern Theology 1(1985), pp.303‐319CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ‘Myths, Signs and Significations’Theology 89 (1986), pp.268‐275CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ‘Noumenon and Phenomena’Religious Studies 23 (1987), pp.493‐508CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ‘See‐Saying/Say‐Seeing’Theology 91 (1988), pp. 201‐209CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ‘Prefacing Pluralism: John Hick and the Mastery of Religion’Modern Theology 7 (1990), pp. 29‐55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Squares and Circles: John Hick and the Doctrine of the Incarnation’ in Hewitt, Harold Jr., (ed.) Problems in the Philosophy of Religion: Critical Studies in the Work of John Hick (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 181‐205CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also his unpublished doctoral dissertation, 'Mirroring God's World: A Critique of John Hick's Speculative Theology (University of Cambridge, 1986), some of which has been published in the articles listed above.

5 SeeHick, John, ‘A Response to Gerard Loughlin’Modern Theology 7 (1990), pp. 57‐66Google Scholar and Hick, John, ‘Reply’ in Hewitt, Harold Jr., (ed.) Problems in the Philosophy of Religion. Critical Studies in the Work of John Hick (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 206‐209Google Scholar.

6 It must be said, however, that the phrase ‘philosophical framework’ is something of a misnomer when applied to Loughlin's own work which is more theological than philosophical, and would better be described as a narrative than as a framework. The word, however, derives from Wittgenstein and is certainly appropriate to Hick's system.

7 John Hick, ‘A Response to Gerard Loughlin’, p. 66.

8 John Hick, ‘Reply’, p. 206.

9 ibid.

10 Hick, John, Faith and Knowledge 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1988), p. 97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Loughlin, Gerard, ‘Mirroring God's World: A Critique of John Hick's Speculative Theology’ (Unpublished dissertation: University of Cambridge, 1986), p. 22, n. 24Google Scholar.

12 John Hick, ‘A Response to Gerard Loughlin’, p. 66.

13 John Hick, Faith and Knowledge, p. ix.

14 Gerard Loughlin, ‘Mirroring God's World: A Critique of John Hick's Speculative Theology,’ p. 58.

15 Lash, Nicholas, Theology on the Way to Emmaus (London: SCM Press, 1986), p. 114Google Scholar.

16 See, for instance, Hebblethwaite, Brian, ‘John Hick and the Question of Truth in Religion’ in Sharma, Arvind (ed.), God, Truth and Reality: Essays in Honour of John Hick (London: Macmillan, 1993)Google Scholar, Ward, Keith, ‘Truth and the Diversity of Religions’Religious Studies 26 (1990), pp. 1‐18CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Badham, Paul, 'John Hick's An Interpretation of Religion' in Hewitt, Harold Jr. (ed.) Problems in the Philosophy of Religion: Critical Studies of the Work of John Hick, pp. 86‐97Google Scholar, and Ian Markham, ‘Creating Options: Shattering the “Exclusivist, Inclusivist and Pluralist” Paradigm’New Blackfriars 74 (1993).

17 Apcyznsky, John V. ‘John Hick's Theocentrism: Revolutionary or Implicitly Exclusivist?’Modern Theology 8 (1992), p. 40Google Scholar.

18 John Hick, ‘A Response to Gerard Loughlin’, p. 61.

19 ibid.

20 ibid., p. 57.

21 On this distinction, together with a call to move beyond it, see Cupitt, Don, ‘After Liberalism’ in Hardy, D. W. & Sedgwick, P. H. (eds.) The Weight of Glory (Edinburgh; T & T Clark, 1991), pp. 251‐256Google Scholar.

22 John Hick, ‘Reply’, p. 206.

23 Loughlin, Gerard, Telling God's Story: Bible, Church and Narrative Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 ibid., p. 25.

25 Hebblethwaite, Brian, ‘“True“ and “false” in Christology’ in Hebblethwaite, Brian & Sutherland, Stewart (eds.), The Philosophical Frontiers of Christian Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 231Google Scholar.

26 John Hide, ‘Reply’, p. 209.

27 Soskice, Janet Martin, Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 24Google Scholar. Quoted by Gerard Loughlin in ‘Squares and Circles: John Hick and the Doctrine of the Incarnation’, p. 190.

28 Janet Martin Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language, p. 27. Quoted in ‘Squares and Circles: John Hick and the Doctrine of the Incarnation’, p. 191.

29 Gerard Loughlin ‘Squares and Circles: John Hick and the Doctrine of the Incarnation’, p. 191.

30 John Hick, ‘Reply’, p. 207.

31 Gerard Loughlin, Telling God's Story: Bible, Church and Narrative Theology, p. 124.

32 ibid., p. 126.

33 John Hick, ‘Reply’, p. 208.

34 Phillips, D.Z., Faith After Foundationalism (London:Routledge,1988), pp.317‐318Google Scholar.

35 John Hick, ‘Reply’, p. 208.

36 John Hick, ‘A Response to Gerard Loughlin’, p. 66.

37 ibid., p. 62.

38 The other instances are: ‘….why does Loughlin want us to be interested in such biographical minutiae (p. 61), and,’ May I suggest, as an example of a much more profitable type of public debate, dealing with the same areas directly and not in terms of personal biography the contributions (other, regrettably, than Loughlin's own) to Problems in the Philosophy of Religion: Critical Studies of the Work of John Hick, edited by Hewitt, Harold (London: Macmillan, 1990)Google Scholar.' (p. 66) My emphasis.

39 Gerard Loughlin, ‘Prefacing Pluralism: John Hick and the Mastery of Religion’, p. 31.

40 Hoy, David Couzens and McCarthy, Thomas, Critical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), p. 105Google Scholar.

41 ibid., pp. 14‐15.

42 Vattimo, Gianni, The End of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Post‐Modern Culture, Tr. Snyder, Jon R (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988), p. 103Google Scholar.

43 Hick, John, God and the Universe of Faiths 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1988), p. 103CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My emphasis.

44 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, On Certainty Ed. Anscombe, G. E. M & Wright, G. H von. Tr. Paul, Denis & Anscombe, G. E. M.. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969), 609, p. 80Google Scholar.

45 ibid., 611, p. 81.

46 ibid., 612, p. 81.

47 ibid., 617, p. 82.

48 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief ed. Barrett, Cyril (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969), p. 27Google Scholar.

49 ibid., p. 28.

50 Gerard Loughlin, ‘Noumenon and Phenomena’, p. 502.

51 Gerard Loughlin, ‘Prefacing Pluralism: John Hick and the Mastery of Religion’, p. 48.

52 I am most grateful to Dr. Graham Ward and Dr. Gerard Loughlin for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper.