ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a theo-biographical sketch of John Harwood Hick’s pilgrimage. It follows a detailed tracing of Hick’s theological and philosophical development up to the eve of his move to the pluralist paradigm in the early 1970s. For all of its life-long influence upon Hick, particularly the double-decker bus experience, there is little to say about this period of Hick’s Christian life with regard to this study. By adopting a non-propositional view of revelation, Hick has moved significantly from his earlier evangelical understanding of God’s mode of communication to humanity. While Hick acknowledges that at this stage of his pilgrimage his religious thought is “philosophically to the left,’” he recognizes that his theological slant—which he attributes to an appropriation of ”theological neo-orthodoxy”—has remained essentially tipped toward the “right.” Throughout the 196os and with the liberal turn in his theology, various aspects of Hick’s Christology underwent significant development.
