Whose Truth? Which Rationality?: John Hick’s Pluralist Strategies for the Management of Conflicting Truth Claims among the World Religions

If there is really only one truth, and if truth qua truth must be universal, then how is the human being to make sense of the multiplicity of religions, all of which claim special access to ‘The Truth’? John Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis addresses the problem presented by religious diversity insofar as this problem impacts upon contemporary social, political and cultural developments. In this sense, Hick’s pluralistic reconstruction and reinterpretation of religion reveal at least as much about twentieth-century Western values and concerns as they do about ‘religion’. The author argues that the Pluralistic Theology of Religions, as presented in John Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis, is the attempt to apply ‘scientific’ methods and data to ‘religious’ allegiances and practices in order to justify and legitimate an ‘aesthetic/emotive’ response to a rapidly changing socio-political global situation.