Permission from the author to digitize this work is pending. Please contact the ICS library if you would like to view this work.

“Who am I / What is my identity?” This is one of the most important questions in a person’s life and also one of the most difficult to answer. The identity is developed and internalized mostly during the socialization process in childhood. Part of socialization is to learn what groups to identify with, ingroups, and distinguish them from outgroups that you do not belong to. This is a universal tendency of humans and it gives a bias in people´s thinking to see ingroups as “natural”, as opposed to outgroups with strange and different thinking and behaviour. At the same time we must realise that members of outgroups are human beings, just as ourselves, and that for them, what we see as an outgroup, is an ingroup. When borders and distances between in and out become too adamant and separated it can lead to ethnocentrism, stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination or racism. This is, unfortunately, common in our contemporary world with globalisation, and migration of large groups of people. One of the most important ingroups is religion or worldview and they are deeply embedded in a person´s identity. Can Hick´s theory can be used as, or be a starting point for, one of the tools we need to overcome barriers between different world views, including the major religions and secular world views? This paper critically investigates Hick´s theory of pluralism and its plausibility based on a critical analysis of claims/arguments for and against the theory. It also discusses what consequences it could, in an imaginary situation, have if the theory is plausible.

No description available.

John Rick's work is important in its own right and as exemplary of a dominant empiricist tendency in academic religious thought. This dissertation seeks to display that tendency by exploring the possibility of reading Rick's work as Christian theology. To this end it examines Rick's reflections on six themes: religion, theology, theodicy, eschatology, Christology and theology of religions. It seeks to expose the faults and fissures, disruptions and distortions in Rick's texts. This explains the form of each chapter: a lengthy exposition and criticism of how Hick handles a particular theme, followed by a short sketch of how the theme may be otherwise handled. In each case the sketch draws on insights discerned in the criticism. The central themes of the whole study are Rick's emphasis on experience and the place of interpretation: the dominance of naive realism and the need for hermeneutic as mediation.

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Katholisch-theologische Fakultät--Bochum--Ruhr-Universität, 2000. / Bibliogr. p. 485-503. Index.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [51-56]).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Louisville, 2003. / Department of Humanities. Vita. "December 2003." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 53-54).

Texte remanié de: Doct. diss.--Milwaukee (Wis.)--Marquette university, 1999. / Bibliogr. p. 207-227. Index.

Thesis (M.A.)--Denver Seminary, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 118-125).

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity International University, 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-115).