ABSTRACT
John Hick's earliest work was concerned with religious epistemology. Although Hick's primary focus is the meaning of religious faith, his thinking extends to all aspects of belief and knowledge. Moreover, as Hick prefers to talk of knowledge as 'acquaintance-with' rather than 'knowing-about', he is doubtful about the philosophical validity or religious value of 'proofs' for the existence of God. An interesting feature of Hick's work is that he sometimes seems to embrace views that could be perceived as significantly different or even opposed. Thus, his emphasis on personal experience rather than propositional knowledge in religious faith could lend itself more readily to a merely poetic, mythological or subjective account of religious faith. The logical positivists were seeking to make statements and philosophical propositions meaningful or meaningless by a principle of verification. Hick turns to the question of what might be called the 'mechanics' of verification.
