This widely discussed book faces four major challenges to rational religious belief. The first half discusses the optional character of religious faith in view of the fact that one need not refer to God to explain the workings of nature; the ancient and agonizing problem of suffering and wickedness in relation to a loving creator; and the viability of the concept of God.
The second half deals with a fourth challenge, posed by the conflicting truth-and-salvation claims of the different religions. Here Hick offers his much debated proposal for a Copernican revolution in our Christian understanding of the great world faiths-a revolution from a Ptolemaic theology which sees the universe of faiths revolving around the Christian revelation, to a Copernican theology in which the different world faiths are seen as responses to the one divine reality, called by us God. Hick sketches out the new map of the universe of faiths which the emerges. This leads to a re-understanding of the divinity of Christ, based upon an analysis of incarnational language as metaphorical or mythological. The result is a controversial conception both of Christianity and of the wider religious life of humanity.