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Prescriptive Pluralism

John Hick Religious Pluralism is either descriptive or prescriptive . The descriptive version is merely the observation that there are many different religions. It is hard to imagine anyone disagreeing with this premise. However, prescriptive pluralism is what appears to be implied by such an observation.

Van Til vs Hick

John Hick is most well known for his argument for religious pluralism. He argued that, given that so many people are religious and believe in some kind of divinity, there must be something that all religions refer to. That thing Hick called the "real," a kind of incomprehensible reality that best explains the existence of all religions. Religion is the human appropriation of the "real" in the phenomenal realm. The fact that they are different only goes to show that the real is unknowable in itself and only empirically expressed in human culture. How would a presuppositionalist like Van Til respond? First of all, the Christian presuppositional approach to a philosophy of religion is also a theological approach. Since the analysis of arguments proceeds by way of presupposition it is self-consciously Christian in approach. Cornelius Van Til writes “To argue by presupposition is to indicate what are the epistemological and metaphysical principles that underlie a...

More Than a Feeling

Francis Spufford, in a metaphor laden piece for the Guardian , defends his Christian faith against atheism on the basis of his feelings: "I assent to ideas because I have feelings; I don't have feelings because I've assented to the ideas." Spufford claims that no one can know if there is a god or not; God "isn't a knowable item." And so all he can go by is his feel of God.