# Interfaith and the Future

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-19 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: John Hick, Interfaith and the Future, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Interfaith and the Future
> 
> John Hick
> 
> published in Bahá'í Studies Review4:1, pp. 1-8
> 
> London: Association for Bahá'í Studies of English-Speaking Europe, 1994
> 
> The modern interfaith movement can be said to have begun a hundred years ago at
> the Chicago World's Parliament of Religions. This "movement," as we have been
> calling it, simply consists in a new willingness of people of many religions to
> meet peacefully together, to talk together, to learn about one another's faiths, and
> to see what comes out of this. It is a matter of following the Spirit where it
> leads. I want very briefly to speak about where this movement has led thus far,
> and then very briefly about the possibilities for the future. We all inevitably speak
> on these matters from a particular point of view, which in my case is Christianity,
> but I want to speak from the point of view of a Christianity which is consciously
> part of the world-wide religious situation of humankind.
> 
> At the World's Parliament of Religions perhaps the greatest impact was made by
> the representatives of Hinduism and Buddhism. Since 1893 the new western
> awareness of Hinduism and Buddhism, and also of other ancient eastern traditions
> such as Silibism, Taoism and Confucianism, and such newer religions as
> Bahá'í and the Brahma Kumaris, has grown tremendously. Dialogue
> between Christians and Hindus and between Christians and Buddhists has
> developed and now reached quite an advanced stage of mutual understanding. As a
> typical example, I have myself during the last decade been involved, with mainly
> North American theologians, in Buddhist-Christian dialogue on an organized
> international basis. On the Christian side we have all found that some of our
> assumptions have been challenged by the impact of distinctively Buddhist ideas.
> For example, selfhood is not an enduring substance but a fleeting consciousness of
> part of the ever-changing universe from one point within it, what becomes of the
> doctrine of perfected persons eternally enjoying the life of heaven; and, even more
> fundamentally, what becomes of the doctrine of God as an eternal personal
> substance? In these and a number of other ways there are profound contradictions
> between Buddhist and Christian thought, and yet at the same time many of us have
> found an illuminating power in the Buddhist ideas which makes it impossible
> simply to dismiss them. We have to ask whether our substantialist conceptions are
> inherently Christian or are a legacy of the Greek philosophy which early
> Christianity absorbed. And on the other side there has been evident among many of
> our Buddhist colleagues a recognition that, for example, the political activism of
> contemporary liberation theology has something important to offer to Buddhist
> countries. These are examples, then, of the way in which, at some points at least,
> interfaith dialogue has progressed far beyond mutual politeness and goodwill to an
> openness which will inevitably affect the future development of each tradition.
> 
> Less prominently at Chicago in 1893, but much more prominent today, are the
> relations between the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
> During the present century, long-festering European, and basically Christian, anti-Semitism erupted in the Holocaust, the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jewish
> people. In the wake of this immense calculated human evil, horrific beyond
> description, the remaining Jewish community, both in Israel and in the Diaspora,
> has naturally had survival as its most pressing concern. In Israel the threat
> hitherto has come from its surrounding Arab neighbours. I think we may
> realistically hope that this threat has now definitively passed and that a peaceful
> regional settlement is at last in the process of being achieved, including an
> autonomous Palestinian state on the west bank of the Jordan and the Gaza strip. In
> the United States and Europe, the threat felt by Jews is the gradual attrition of
> the young marrying outside the Jewish community. All this inevitably means that
> interfaith dialogue, as a religious truth-seeking exercise, is not generally a top
> priority for many Jews today, although relations with their Christian and Muslim
> neighbours are always important, and it is never difficult to find Jewish
> participants for interfaith events. But that their interest should generally
> speaking be more practical than theoretical is natural, not only in view of the
> pressing survival issue but also because Judaism has in any case always been more
> concerned with communal practice than with theological speculation.
> 
> Islam was barely represented at Chicago in 1893. This was regrettable. But there
> have been major developments in the Islamic world since then which concern us
> all. Until the end of the second world war almost every Muslim country had been
> for more than a century under foreign colonial domination. Since then they have
> experienced the first enthusiasm of a new national freedom and then the
> multiplying problems of internal conflicts, revolutions, the failure of the power of
> oil to bring prosperity to more than the traditional ruling classes, continuing
> conflict with Israel, and finally the Gulf war and its destabilizing aftermath.
> Islam is thus a great and ancient faith and civilization which is today in turmoil,
> striving to renew—as I am sure that in due course it will—the religious and
> cultural glories of its golden age in the seventh to thirteenth centuries. At the
> same time it now counts approximately a billion adherents and is expanding
> rapidly through population growth, and is likely in the first quarter of the next
> century to come to outnumber Christianity. Most Muslims live in traditional
> societies that are culturally remote from the modern secularized West, and think
> in terms unaffected by the 18th century European Enlightenment which produced
> what we call modernity. Because of this Islam is often seen in the West as
> something disturbingly different. There is a perpetual temptation to fear that
> which is different, and Islam has suffered from this in its persistent
> "demonization" by the western media. It is regularly presented as inherently
> violent, aggressive, and "fundamentalist," despite the fact that there are immense
> internal variations within the Islamic world, and that the great majority of
> Muslims live peaceful lives pursuing the universal human goal of well-being or
> happiness, seen in a life lived in submission to God. The distorted picture lodged in
> the western imagination is mirrored by an equally distorted perception in many
> Islamic countries of the Christian West as violent, aggressive, and morally
> decadent. Each of these perceptions does contain an unfortunate element of truth
> mixed with a large proportion of misunderstanding and misrepresentation. But
> between them they can generate dangerous confrontations which are in the
> interests, on the one side, of medieval-style Muslim rulers in need of an alien
> threat, and on the other side, of western politicians and arms manufacturers who
> point to Islam as the great external enemy after the demise of Communism.
> 
> However when Jews, Christians and Muslims meet to talk about religious issues
> they discover a great deal of common ethical ground. And Jews and Muslims
> discover a common approach to religion in their reverence for what is roughly but
> rather inadequately called law, and also in a common distance from the doctrines
> of incarnation, trinity, and atonement developed by the Christian church. This
> comes at a time when there is considerable discussion within Christianity itself
> about the right way to understand these traditional ideas. Recent work on first
> century Judaism has shown how thoroughly Jewish a figure Jesus was. Within
> biblical Judaism the phrase "son of God" was a familiar metaphor both for Israel
> as a whole and for the special status of ancient Hebrew kings and for the religious
> status of pious Jews in each generation who were truly dedicated to doing God's
> will. But the original discipleship of the early Jesus movement to one who was, in
> this Hebraic metaphor, a son of God, came to be at odds with the Hellenistic
> development of Christianity which eventually won the day and provided the version
> of Christianity contained in most of the New Testament documents, though not
> without many evidences of the still active struggle. But the original but eventually
> suppressed Jesus movement had a continuing influence outside what became the
> mainstream church. The New Testament scholar Adolf Schlatter tells us that "the
> Jewish church...had died out only in Palestine west of the Jordan. Christian
> communities following Jewish customs still survived in the eastern regions, in
> Decapolis, Batanaea, among the Nabataeans, on the edge of the Syrian wilderness,
> and over towards Arabia completely severed from the rest of the Christian world
> and having no fellowship with it."[Quoted by Hans Küng in Hans
> Küng et al., Christianity and The World Religions (New York: Doubleday,
> 1986) 123.] Some scholars (including no less a figure than the great Adolf
> von Harnack) have suggested that this Jewish Christianity was still known in the
> Arabia of Muhammad's time, and that the Qur'anic picture of Jesus as a great
> prophet reflects this earliest Jewish Christian conception of him. I do not feel
> competent to offer a judgment on this fascinating suggestion. But regardless of
> the presence or absence of an historical link between the original understanding of
> Jesus in the early church and the Qur'anic understanding of him, there is today a
> small but growing minority of Christian theologians and New Testament scholars
> for whom christology is no longer a central point of issue with Muslims and Jews.
> Their view is of course strongly contested by others, and is not the position of the
> orthodox establishment. I venture to think, however, that something like the
> original Christian understanding of Jesus, as in the metaphorical sense son of God,
> is widely spread in the Christian world, to some extent within the churches and to
> a greater extent outside them. This stands in contrast to a traditional Christianity
> which insists upon the sole saviourhood of Jesus as God incarnate, with its
> implication of the unique superiority of Christianity as the only religion to have
> been founded by God in person. I thus foresee both traditional and non-traditional
> forms of Christianity existing side by side in the coming century.
> 
> Returning to the interfaith movement as a whole, I think we may say that in the
> last hundred years what has come about is a mutual recognition and a mutual
> respect which makes possible events such as this commemoration today and makes
> practical co-operation possible; and the major interfaith effort today is rightly
> directed towards developing this practical co-operation in the face of the pressing
> need to achieve peace and justice on earth within a sustainable global economy.
> The most significant development here is the attempt, led by the German Catholic
> theologian Hans Küng, to formulate a common basic global ethic, about which
> we shall be hearing more in the coming months. For many involved in dialogue, this
> practical focus means leaving on one side the thorny question of the conflicting
> truth-claims of our different traditions. Many hold that we are still not ready to
> tackle those questions, and should not risk contention by bringing them forward.
> My own view is that genuine questions of belief cannot be avoided and that we
> must prepare ourselves to face them—not instead of matters of practical co-operation but, for some of us at least, as well as these.
> 
> In the area of beliefs and truth-claims I see two contrary possibilities. One is the
> conclusion that our respective doctrines are simply contradictory and
> irreconcilable, and that this sets a final limit to the developing relations between
> the different religious traditions. And, on the face of it, this does seem to be a
> likely conclusion. How can the eternal, infinite reality with which religion is
> ultimately concerned be both personal and yet not personal; be both a trinity and
> yet unitary, be both the God of Israel whose chosen people are the Jews, and yet
> also be the God of the Qur'an, whose primary historical intervention was in
> seventh century Arabia; be both the Vishnu and the Shiva of theistic Hinduism; and
> be both the eternal nonpersonal Brahman, and the universal Buddha nature of all
> things, and the transcendent and yet immanent Tao? It does seem on the face of it
> impossible that the great world faiths can all be responding to the same ultimate
> divine reality.
> 
> But there is also another possibility. Let me point to it by means of a series of
> three analogies. Consider, first, a puzzle picture like, for example, the page made
> up of an apparently meaningless jumble of lines and squiggles drawn at random,
> and then as you look at it you suddenly see within it the outline of a face. Or,
> better, consider the famous duck-rabbit picture used by the philosopher
> Wittgenstein. This is an ambiguous diagram which can be seen as representing
> either a duck looking to the left or a rabbit looking to the right, and the mind tends
> to flip back and forth between these two ways of seeing it. Now suppose there is a
> culture in which ducks are a familiar sight but rabbits are completely unknown and
> have never even been heard of; and another culture in which rabbits are familiar
> but ducks are completely unknown. When people in the duck-knowing culture see
> the ambiguous figure they naturally report that it is the picture of a duck. And, of
> course, it is the other way round with the rabbit-knowing culture. Here it is
> manifestly a rabbit, and there is again no ambiguity about it. The people of these
> two cultures are fully entitled to affirm, and to proclaim, that this is the picture
> of a duck, or of a rabbit, as the case may be. And each group, when told of another
> group who claim that the picture is of something entirely different and alien to
> them, will maintain that that group are confused or mistaken in some perhaps
> inexplicable way.
> 
> But Wittgenstein would be able to offer an account of the situation according to
> which each group is right in what it affirms but wrong in its insistence that the
> other group is therefore mistaken. They are both, he could point out, right by virtue
> of the fact that what is actually there is capable of being equally correctly seen in
> two quite different ways, as a duck and as a rabbit, though not both by the same
> person at the same time.
> 
> The analogy that I am suggesting here is of course with the religious experience
> component of religion. And the possibility to which I want to point is that the
> Real, the Ultimate, is capable of being experienced in terms of many different sets
> of human concepts, as Jahweh, as the Holy Trinity, as Alláh, as Shiva, as
> Vishnu, and again as Brahman, as the Dharmakaya, as the Tao, and soon.
> 
> A second analogy may help to suggest how this might be possible. This is the
> wave-particle complementarity in physics as expounded by Niels Bohr in the
> 1950s. To quote Professor Ian Barbour, "Light in some situations (for example,
> interference effects) behaves as a wave, in others (for example, photoelectric
> effects) as a particle." [Ian Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion
> (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1966) 282] The essential point is that
> "No sharp line can be drawn between the process of observation and what is
> observed." [Ibid.] Thus if, in an appropriate experimental situation,
> one acts upon light in one way, it is observed to have wave-like properties, and if
> in another way, to have particle-like properties. The properties it is found to have
> depend upon how the observer acts in relation to it. The analogy that I have in mind
> here is with spiritual practices—prayer, meditation, sacraments, common worship.
> In these practices we act in relation to the ultimately Real. In devotional and
> petitionary prayer we expect to, and we do, encounter the Real as a personal
> reality with whom we stand in an I-Thou relationship. In advaitic Hindu meditation
> people expect to, and do, experience the Real as the infinite non-personal reality
> of Brahman. In Buddhist Zen meditation people expect to, and do, come to transcend
> the ego point of view and experience the Real as the universal Buddha-nature of a
> universe which in itself is empty of everything that the human mind projects im
> the activity of perception. And so on. Putting it in familiar Christian language,
> revelation is a relational matter, taking different forms in relation to people
> nurtured by the different religious traditions, with their different sets of
> religious concepts and their different kinds of spiritual practice.
> 
> A third analogy comes from cartography. Because the earth is a three-dimensional
> globe, any map of it on a two-dimensional surface must inevitably distort it, and
> there are different ways of systematically distorting it for different purposes.
> Thus there are gnomonic, stereographic, and orthographic types of projection,
> including the familiar cylindrical projection invented by Mercator which is used in
> constructing many of our maps of the world. But the point is simply that every map
> is systematically distorted in accordance with a certain mode of projection.
> However it does not follow that if one type of map is accurate the others must be
> inaccurate, If they are properly made, they are all accurate—and yet in another
> sense they are all inaccurate, in that they all inevitably distort. The analogy here
> is with theologies, both the different theologies of the same religion, and the even
> more different theologies and philosophies of different religions. It could be that
> the conceptual maps drawn by the great traditions are all more or less equally
> correct in their different projections, and more or less equally useful for guiding
> us on our journey through life. For our pilgrim's progress is our life-response to
> the Real. The great world faiths orient us in this journey, and in so far as they are,
> as we may say, in salvific alignment with the Real, to follow their path will
> relate us rightly to the Real, opening us to what, in our different conceptualities,
> we will call divine grace or enlightenment or awakening to reality, and which will
> in turn bear visible fruit in our lives.
> 
> The pictures to which these analogies point is that of an ultimate Reality which in
> itself is greater than all our human sets of ideas, but which is the source and
> ground of everything, and is such that in so far as the religious traditions are in
> alignment with it, they are authentic contexts of salvation or liberation. The
> religious traditions involve different human conceptions of the Real, with
> correspondingly different ways of experiencing the Real, and correspondingly
> different forms of life in response to the Real. Whether they are more or less
> equally valid human responses to the Real cannot be answered a priori but only on
> the basis of observing their fruits. In my opinion the true answer is that, so far as
> we can tell, the great traditions exhibit a rough salvific parity. They seem to be
> more or less equally productive of the outstanding individuals whom we call
> saints, more or less equally effective in providing a framework of meaning within
> which spiritual growth can take place, and also more or less equally unsuccessful
> in transforming societies on any large scale—for it is, alas, so much easier for
> evil than for good to be institutionalized.
> 
> Let me clarify a point at this stage. There is a sense in which most of us who are
> engaged in interfaith dialogue feel that our own tradition, whichever it is, is
> special, unique, and right in a way in which no other tradition can be. For we have—
> in the great majority of cases—been born into this tradition and have been formed
> from childhood by it. It has, so to speak, created us in its own image, with the
> result that it fits us and we fit it as no other religion can. It is thus, if you like,
> the only 'right' religion for us. But nevertheless we have come to realise in
> interfaith dialogue that the same holds for the adherents of each of the other
> faiths. And so I as a Christian know that whereas Christianity fits me and is
> uniquely right for me, Judaism fits and is uniquely right for Jews, Islam for
> Muslims, Hinduism for Hindus, Buddhism for Buddhists, and so on. But this is quite
> different from saying that any one of them is uniquely right for everyone. Each
> religion is a different form of human response to the Transcendent, the Real, the
> Ultimate, and each has created in its own image those born into it.
> 
> What I have just said is however to some extent an over-statement. I have perhaps
> made it sound as though every adherent of each tradition is totally satisfied by,
> and fulfilled within, that tradition. But of course 'fitting' one's religion is a
> matter of degree. Some are not very well satisfied with their own tradition, or are
> even highly critical of some aspects of it, without however being tempted to
> convert to another. And some others are so dissatisfied with their own, and at the
> same time so attracted by another, that they convert to it. But this is a matter of
> individual conversions for individual reasons. No doubt this will always happen,
> and happen in every direction; some Christians, for example, becoming Muslims and
> some Muslims becoming Christians, and likewise between any two traditions. But
> statistically this is a very small phenomenon compared with the massive
> transmission of each tradition from generation to generation within its own
> borders.
> 
> What difference does this way of thinking make for religion as we know it? In one
> respect very little, in another quite a lot. If we are Christians we should continue
> so, living in relation to that "face" of the Real that we know as the heavenly Father
> of Jesus' teaching; or, if you think of Christianity in terms of ecclesiastical
> dogmas, as the Holy Trinity of later church teaching. And hopefully we should have
> begun, in this nurturing context, to undergo the salvific transformation which the
> religions exist to facilitate. And the same, of course, applies to the people of the
> other great world faiths. Each tradition will continue as its own unique response
> to the Real. And as the sense of rivalry between them diminishes and they interact
> in friendly interfaith dialogue they will increasingly influence one another, with
> each changing to some extent as a result. But nevertheless within this growing
> interaction each will be basically itself. In this respect, the pluralistic vision
> makes comparatively little difference to the existing traditions. But in another
> respect it makes what is for some of them a major difference. For in coming to
> understand itself as one among several valid human responses to the Real, each
> will gradually de-emphasize that aspect of its teaching which entails its own
> unique superiority. Such an aspect has grown up within each tradition, though
> occupying a more central position in some than in others. And to modify, and
> eventually abandon, this implicit or explicit claim to unique superiority will in
> each case involve a development. This will be easier for some traditions than
> others, and within each tradition easier for some individuals than others. But this,
> as I see it, should be on the agenda for the coming century.
> 
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> — *Interfaith and the Future (Used by permission of the curator)*