Participation

Essay prompt

Discuss and reflect upon the following extract from an interview with John Hick by the PBS-show Closer to Truth and draw upon examples from your own experience within your culture and from experiences at UWC. It could be written as a philosophical essay, or as a freer, personal reflection.

Interview:

Robert Lawrence Kuhn: John, I would desperately want all religions to be true, or even one religion to be true. It would give me some hope for the future, other than the bleak picture that my cosmologist friends offer me. But you see such contradictions between religions, that it is very tempting to just reject them all. It’s impossible for them all to be real and, therefore, how could any of them be real?

John Hick: Well, what are contradictory are their doctrines, their beliefs, aren’t they?

Robert Lawrence Kuhn: That seems to be pretty important.

John Hick: But what are their beliefs about? The general assumption is that they’re beliefs about Ultimate Reality. 

Robert Lawrence Kuhn: Yes.

John Hick: But I would say they’re not. They’re beliefs about the way in which we are perceiving reality within our own tradition, and through the lens of our tradition. So, actually they don’t contradict one another, because they’re awarenesses of different things. One set of doctrines is a description of, let us say the Christian understanding of the Ultimate, and Islamic Doctrine is a description of the Islamic understanding of the Ultimate. They’re not different descriptions of the Ultimate in itself, but of the Ultimate as thought and experienced by us within our tradition. 

Robert Lawrence Kuhn: Well, the only thing you can say they have in common is they all have an Ultimate.

John Hick: Right.

Robert Lawrence Kuhn: And that Ultimate is a Transcendent Ultimate beyond the physical world.

John Hick: Yes. 

Robert Lawrence Kuhn: But that’s where you stop, because after that they are directly contradictory.

John Hick: Yes, well that’s correct, yes. 

Robert Lawrence Kuhn: And that disturbs me, but doesn’t disturb you quite as much. 

John Hick: Not quite as much, no. No, I mean I can put up with facts when I’m presented with them, and it is a fact that within different traditions, the Transcendent, the Ultimate, is very differently thought about and experienced. And why not? That’s OK.

(The extract is taken from the first 2 minutes and 20 seconds of the auto-generated transcript of this Youtube video from the channel of PBS series Closer to Truth. The transcript is shared with the expressed permission by Closer to Truth. We have taken away sounds of hesitation, like “uh” and “um” from the transcript.)

Instructions:

1. Read the assessment criteria and write a paper of no more than 1200 words.

2. Use the following support questions to help organizing your essay:

• Do you agree with what Hick states in the quote? Justify your answer. You are expected to argue for your opinions and your conclusions.

• To what extent does the quote relate to your experiences in a multicultural and multireligious community at UWC?

• Do you think it’s beneficial to use Hick’s approach to differences in religion in discussions about different beliefs in a UWC-context and beyond? If so, how?

4. To be able to meaningfully engage with Hick’s ideas you should do some research on (and make sure that you understand) the following concepts and ideas: 

   1. The Real (his name for Ultimate Reality/what some people call God). 

   2. Religious pluralism (as in all major world religions being valid paths to salvation). 

   3. The difference between the Real in itself (an sich) and the Real as experienced. 

Although you are not expected to write a full-fledged philosophical analysis, you are expected to engage with the ideas of Hick and develop a response to his ideas, as well as reflecting on your own UWC-experience. 

5. Submit your entry via the Google Form on the site of the competition. Your submission needs to be in by the 25th of March, 2025. 

6. The prize money (250 USD) will have to be sent to an account that can receive it in the currency of USD. Please make sure that either you or your parents can receive it.

If you have any questions about the submission or the competition in general, you may contact Dan Silfwerin at d.silfwerin@uwcdilijan.am.

Please submit your entry using the following form:

• The winning essay will receive a prize of 250 USD and will also be published in the journal Interreligious Insight. This is a journal organized by the World Congress of Faiths and is edited by Revd Canon Dr Alan Race.

• Essays that stand out from the rest -because of creativity, original examples, good writing, etc- will receive an honorary mention and will also be published in the journal Interreligious Insight.

We know that life as an IB student can be quite busy and you might forget about this competition, so we invite you to fill in our Interest Form, which allows us to generate a mailing list to send you reminders about the competition, resources and also to notify you of any Q&A session with the competition's organisers.