Hick has provided an astonishingly lucid analysis of all the major areas of Philosophy of Religion. This text is ideal for anyone studying the subject at higher or university level, who wants a sound overview of the theistic proofs, problem of evil, miracles, and western and eastern after-life traditions. My only caveat would be that his analysis of Religious Language can sometimes be too brief and thus slightly misleading (eg his section on Language Games). As a teacher, I recommend this book very highly.

John Hicks wrote this, the original classic, of the populist movement. It is easy to read and flows smoothly from page to page. It is very thorough and is the most in-depth book I know of about the Farmers' Alliance. An excellent history! Begin with this classic, then read Goodwyn and McMath and you will have all you ever need on the history of the Populist movement! A must have!

If you've never been exposed to the "Great Books" movement in higher education, you probably don't know who Robert Hutchins was. I only knew him as a dazzling champion of this almost-forgotten ideal of learning, as did his contemporaries. Milton Meyer showed me a man superhuman in his aims and yet tragically flawed. He espoused the Classics without being a true student of them, and yet was he not more Shakespearean than any of the professors he governed? Anyway, the book moved me. If you have any ability to be inspired by the story of an imperfect man, read this book.

In this book, the authors study the 10 character traits given in Psalm 15, and how we can incorporate them into our lives. It is a useful, practical approach that meets people where they are today

SPADA is a journal that contains some of most current ideas on historical swordsmanship by a number of the field's leading researchers. As a student of historical swordsmanship myself, I think it is an excellent step in the right direction for the progression of this school of study.

As far as the contents of the book are concerned, my hat goes off to the editor, Stephen Hand, for distilling such a diverse, and yet interesting range of papers from the vast array of excellent treatises available.

The book also features some interesting reports on some of the most recent activities undertaken in the WMA community. This provides the reader with a very good 'big picture' perspective into what advances are being made in what fields, and an appreciation for the vast range of people who are now interested in historical swordsmanship.

With regards to it's practicality, the book caters for many different tastes - whether you are interested in the finesse of renaissance fencing, or simply a medieval re-enactor using the trusty 'sword and shield' method. SPADA provides useful insights and a greater understanding of historical methods of fighting.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in gaining a greater appreciation of historical swordsmanship, and anyone who is curious to know what the swordmanship community out there is doing. I rate it as a 'must have' item, and I look forward to more SPADA releases in the future.

cheers

Matt Partridge
Secretary
Order of the White Stag

He is a serious, yet not mainline Christian theologian who gives a lot of new ideas on Theodicy. If you are a mainline Christian, you may not agree with some of his premises, but if you read the book, it will open your mind.

It's been 20 years since I first read Hick's book. Looking back, that experience proved to be a definitive turning point in my life.

John Hick presents two philosophies which Christians have used to explain the existence of evil in a universe created by a "good" God. The first philosophy states that God's plan is ineffable--we ought to have faith & not question. What we see as evil, with our limited, mortal vision, is just one feature of God's marvelous plan for the cosmos.

The second philosophy seeks to find reason in the occurrence of evil. Hick echos Ortega y Gasset's philosophy that growth does not happen in comfort, but rather when challenged. Hick adopts this second philosophy, tracing it back to Origen.

Since growth, or soul building, is the purpose of life, Hick argues that God must ensure that everybody achieves the growth necessary for "paradise." This leads to espousing reincarnation, where the soul continues to evolve, until maturity.

I enjoyed this book very much. It is well written with a lot of action, set against the backdrop of poverty, kidnap and ransom in South America. The story was very deep and thought provoking; the characters were convincing. The ending was terrific.

An adventure/love story set within the political tumult that is Columbia. This book was very engaging - I read it from cover to cover in one day. The author paints a very vivid picture of the Columbian landscape. The characters are intriguing. I wanted to know more about them. A great read!

This book was very helpful when identifying birds of Hong Kong. The color photographs of each bird were clear and extremely helpful, and the descriptions helped me distinguish similar species if I was still in doubt after seeing the picture. The range maps seem accurate, and the book's small size makes it very portable and convenient to carry. The only drawback was that several species I saw, some fairly commonly, were not listed or pictured, so I was unable to identify them at the time. Overall, I would recommend this book for someone wanting to identify Hong Kong birds.

This is one of the first books I read after moving from Christianity to agnosticism to a more theistic worldview. John Hick is one of the leading philosophers promoting the idea that all axial (major) religions are valid paths to god as well as many lesser known belief systems. Being that his audience is mainly composed of Christians or influenced by Christian culture, Hick focuses on Christian exclusivists (those who believe in only one way to God and that being Christianity) must overcome their confining worldview in light of the fact Christianity has failed to bring about the Kingdom of God; we're no better than other cultures and sometimes worse. Anyone wishing to defend an exclusivistic path should read this or any of the other books among Hick's publications. Anyone thinking Christianity might be wrong in it's traditional approach should also read this book to discover a new, valid approach. As Paul said, "...when I became an adult, I put away childish things."

John Hick, perhaps best known as the editor of the infamous _The Myth of God Incarnate_, here undertakes a massive task: providing a philosophical justification for religious pluralism.

I'm surprised to see that it hasn't been reviewed yet, because I think it's one of his best books. But then again, it's also one of his thickest and most demanding.

Essentially, his thesis is that all human religions are (as his subtitle indicates) human responses to a transcendent reality which (or Who) "has many names," as another of his book titles puts it. On this view, the measure of a religion's "success" is its ability to move people along the path of salvation/liberation/call it what you will.

Now, there are tremendous difficulties with this view, and Hick does not duck them; that's one reason the book is so thick. I won't try to summarize his arguments here; readers who want shorter and more accessible discussions can turn to one of his other books for a good introduction. At any rate he sorts carefully through a bewildering array of "responses to the transcendent" and tries, mostly successfully, to sort them into some sort of pattern despite their occasional apparent contradictions of one another. (At bottom he relies on a Kantian distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal to argue for the existence of a single transcendent Reality not exhausted in human conceptions thereof.)

What I find most interesting about his attempt is that the outcome is very close to the view of mainstream Judaism. Judaism has never claimed to be a universal religion; on the traditional Jewish view, all people (and peoples) have their own particular spiritual strengths and weaknesses, with the Jews in this sense being only one people among others. Nor are all of the mitzvot (commandments) universal and "objective" in the full sense: there is not, for example, anything inherently unclean about pork; it's just that Jews are forbidden to eat it. (Breaking the kosher laws is "malum prohibitum," not "malo in se." Certain foods are said to be "unclean for you," not unclean in themselves.)

Moreover, Judaism's major philosophers have long held that God "in Himself," the Ein Sof, is not directly knowable (at least through anything short of mystical insight) although His "attributes" may be. Here again, some people (and peoples) are better equipped than others to deal with this or that particular attribute, but no one party or group has the full scoop; the arrangement is one of interdependence, not of everybody-follow-the-leader.

So whatever disagreements I may have with this or that point in Hick's massive work, I agree wholeheartedly with the spirit of it and recommend it to any reader interested in the nature and purpose of "religion." There is a real, deep problem as to whether a religious believer can acknowledge the existence and even "validity" (a much overused word) of other faiths without simply folding them into one's own. Hick tackles the question with great intellectual vigor.

I must also note, however, that his monumental effort still leaves out, or deals inadequately with, a couple of major approaches. One of these is philosophy itself, which at its best has also been conceived as a "religion" in the sense Hick requires. (I would particularly have enjoyed seeing Hick deal with both Spinozism and Idealism.) Oh, well; not everything will fit into one book.