John Hick (1922-2012)

Who is he? He allowed the platonic view of the soul. He agreed with Thomas Aquinas "my soul is not me" He is often described as soft materialism He argues that there is no mind without matter and to be a person is to be a thinking material being He believes that: the mental depends on the body but is more than simply a behaviourist reaction to stimuli. Hick is opposed that to die is something to be feared. Hick believes that the soul is immortal. Hick seems to suggest that the ‘empircal self’ is the body/soul unity but underlying and passing through a series of empirical selfs of the same person in many para-eschatological states is a ‘dispositional structure’ also called by Hick our ‘deeper self’, or our ‘inner self’ or our ‘spiritual project’.

Hick's view on the soul? Hick was a Christian and believed that to die was to be before God. God alone can bestow eternal life and it is something that we must be prepared for. Hick believes that the body and soul are one and inseparable. Therefore he does not think that the soul can exist separate to the body after death. However, he still believes in life after death. This is in the form of resurrection. Hick's description of resurrection would therefore be there being a REPLICA or duplicate of the person made by God in heaven, after the persons life on earth has ended. It is the same person, as they have the same memories and emotions.

Hick’s response to the mind body question: Hick rejects that the soul can exists independent of the soul he aid that there must be “some kind of continuation of the human story beyond the point of bodily death." This implies that must be a connection between the soul and the body, he has similar view to a Aquinus using religion to help prove that there is a soul attached to the body, and after earth it goes up to heaven and joins God. Hick believed that all that as important about us, this includes our identity and and relationship with others require a body. This is proving that both need each other when your alive but the soul can exist after death. Hick is what you call a ‘soft materialist’, where he believes things are materialistic but not always, therefore he believed there was a connection between the mind and body

Hick’s arguments for the soul and body connection: 1. That the God of love or love of God would not let his creature and creations perish having lived unfulfilled lives,  2. therefore God must allow a number of para-eschatological states (end of the world or life events like purgatory or heaven etc). 3. When an individual self, which is always a unity of body and soul, dies the deeper self, which contains all the dispositional attitudes of the individual, is reborn in a para-eschatological state with a transformed body.  This deeper self secures the continuity of identity between the various empirical bodies a person has. 4. The transformed body that each person receives in the next para-eschatological state is (a thus also the Christian idea of resurrection) A replica of the personality that has just died re-appears in the next para-eschatological state ready to continue the development of the that personalities dispositional structures toward their fulfilment in the likeness of God.

Hick's criticisms: John Hicks view of the mind body and soul critiques that of Plato as he is a materialist where Plato is a Dualist. Hicks replica theory states that the souls cannot be separated from the body and once a person dies, God creates an exact replica of that person in another place. He suggests this person would have the same memories and be an exact doppelgänger. This contrasts Plato as he believed that the soul and body are attached but separate and once separated from the body after death and it is not attached to another body after that.

Hick accepts that his account rests on belief in God but he argues that this belief is meaningful and can be verified eschatologically. ( events at the end of the world or life)

Thank you 👑

References: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Xu8R85MTW_MC&pg=PA158&lpg =PA158&dq=para- eschatological+definition&source=bl&ots=MZl2SFwKou&sig=sw6qvo- wb5fON_BVB0ZYQKC7OZk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiDn9rq1uH PAhVGC8AKHZQ_BwUQ6AEIIzAE#v=onepage&q=para- eschatological%20definition&f=false * https://mrslh.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/revision-life-after-death.doc