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A Critique of Hick by an evangelical pastor

Hick shows some inconsistencies and ambiguities in his method. On the one hand, he does not dispute the fact of a literal resurrection of others in the New Testament particularly those that Christ raised from the dead. “For the raising of the dead to life, understood in the most literal sense, did not at that time and in those circles seem so utterly earth-shaking and well nigh incredible as it does to the modern mind.”19 This argument implies that the resurrection was not a miracle or “earth-shaking,” perhaps because it happened anyway.

This conclusion denies the miracles in
Scripture but Scripture calls them miracles because they were not common occurrences as Hick might assume. Despite that agreement, “the claim that Jesus had been raised from the dead did not automatically put him in a quite unique category.”20 But on the other hand, he doubts the fact of Jesus’ resurrection and even entirely of physical resurrection that he previously implied. From our point of view today it is less easy to accept stories of a physical resurrection, particularly when they refer to an event nearly twenty centuries ago and when the written evidence is in detail so conflicting and so hard to interpret. But nevertheless if we imagine a physical resurrection taking place today it is still far from evident that we should necessarily regard it as proof of divinity.21

First, that the point of denial is not because the resurrection did not take place but simply because the story is too far away for us to believe is too flimsy excuse for a scholar like Hick to dwell on. He is probably following Hume who argued that one can have more confidence in his immediate sense experience than in the apostles’ testimony concerning miracles.22 The goal of the grand agenda of pluralists who depends on critical liberal scholarship is that if miracles, in the sense that orthodox tradition holds, do not exist then Christianity has nothing extraordinary that other religions do not have. Inasmuch as Hick doubts the resurrection, he has not given proof or evidence that the resurrection did not take place. Hick does no more than make a mere assertion. Irrespective of the so-called discrepancies in the Gospels, if the resurrection was not literal then the argument begs the question of the Passion narrative which the Last Supper, the arrest and trial of Jesus by the High Priest and Pilate and the crucifixion would also have been non-literal or metaphorical which critical scholarship has endorsed their literal or historical occurrence.23

The resurrection is the final point of the literal, historical narrative, so it is rather illogical to grant one side of the same historical event literal meaning while the other metaphorical. Second, the New Testament unanimously testifies to the resurrection of Christ, and so it is outright false that the written evidence is in conflict with itself on the fact of the story. Even if we were to grant that there is conflict in the details basically no Scriptural account disowns the fact of the resurrection and basically Scripture complements itself. And the inability of Hick to harmonize such supposed conflicting accounts cannot be the final conclusion for everyone else.

Concerning the harmony of the Gospels on the person of Christ, other authorities opine thus: The writers of the Gospels make no attempt to develop the life of Christ historically or chronologically. They make no attempt to provide a biography of Christ. The writers, using the same extant material, select and arrange according to their individual emphasis and interpretation that which presents the particular portrait of Christ they desire to convey. The Gospels present the life of Christ thematically and thus are to be viewed as complementary and supplementary rather than contradictory.24 The above view is more tenable than the liberal scholarship of Hick, because the purpose and goal of the Gospels’ accounts is not to discredit themselves or cancel one another out, but to present the authentic account of Christ as much as possible.

But given that the resurrection of Christ has no significance in Hick’s thinking he does not see any connection between incarnation and atonement. He argues: “There is no suggestion in Jesus’ teaching that during his ministry his heavenly Father was unloving, alienated, angry, unforgiving or condemnatory towards mankind at large but that this situation was to be dramatically changed by his own death.”25 Like the old liberal scholarship, this view puts a sharp division between the teachings of Christ himself on the one hand and between Christ and his disciples on the other. Hick wrongly places the concept of salvation in Christian experience rather than on what God has accomplished through the death and resurrection of Christ and the promise of eternal life by faith union with Christ. He doesn’t quite seem to follow the testimony of Scripture.

When the angel announced the birth of Jesus, he explained his name and mission: “you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). An angel also said at another place “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Lk. 2:11). Here then is a necessary connection between salvation and sin and between incarnation and redemption. Without sin the incarnation would not be necessary. The Nicene Creed states thus: “who for us men and for our salvation came down and was incarnate, becoming human…”26

This nature of salvation here is not merely of the physical dimension such as freedom from the Roman bondage which the Jews were anticipating but it was of a greater magnitude, the spiritual which is of eternal weight. The sins in view are obviously of human degeneration and violation of divine glory. The additional name that was given to Jesus, Immanuel, points to the fact that the one who came to save his people is no ordinary human being but God himself.

19 Ibid, “Jesus and the World Religions,” The Myth of God Incarnate, 170.
20 Ibid, 171. 21 Ibid. 22 David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Eric Steinberg (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 1977), 73. Hume’s argument is drawn from Newtonian physics; Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 45-56, 158-164; see also C.F.D. Moule, ed. Miracles (London: A.R Mowbray & Co., 1966), 3-17. 23 Howard Clark Kee, Franklin W. Young and Karlfried Froehlich, Understanding the New Testament (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965), 130-144.
24 Darrell L. Bock, Jesus According to Scripture (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 23. He is citing J. Dwight Pentecost, The Words and Works of Jesus Christ: A Study of the Life of Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1981), 24. 25 Hick, “Incarnation and Atonement: Evil and Incarnation,” Incarnation and Myth: The Debate Continued, ed. Michael Goulder (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 77. 26 John H. Leith, ed. Creeds of the Churches (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1973), 31.